The FASTEST* Laptop We’ve Ever SEEN
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,298 words · ~6 min read
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i can see the product development meeting now
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no one's buying AMD laptops because they're slow
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but everyone likes AMD ryzen desktops
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with lots of processing cores
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today's video is brought to you by Corsair their void pro gaming headsets
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feature microfiber mesh fabric and memory foam ear cups as well as custom
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with its black back panel and red accent lighting the ASUS
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zcc looks mean but not in an
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over-the-top gamery way and opening it up immediately reveals the stars of the
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show a ryzen 7 CPU and Radeon graphics
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processor that make this the first all
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AMD gaming notebook that we've seen in
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many years or not i think of it ever
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and it's no slouch the ryzen 7 1700
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eight core 16 thread processor boosts to up to 3.7 gigahertz the rx 580 is a very
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competent GPU for 1080p gaming the 16
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gigs of RAM out of the box and the ample
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i o that comes with the territory of a large and in charge 17-inch machine like
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this one make the gl 702 zc on paper one
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of the most compelling gaming slash workstation pcs that we've ever seen but
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i'm sure what everyone is wondering right now is
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can they keep all of that cool and the answer is hell yeah
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for a while 3.2 gigahertz under synthetic load the
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temps well they just kept on rising
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at five minutes we hit 80 degrees celsius after 10 we were above 90 and
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then after 20 minutes it seemed to level off but at 95 degrees and while still
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remaining super quiet for some reason maybe ASUS needs to do some fan curve
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tuning here once my CPU is over 90 degrees i don't care if it sounds like a
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typhoon it needs some tlc
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tender love and cooling and remember our testing was done in a climate controlled
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room all of that being said we were impressed
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to see any laptop maintain 3.2 gigahertz
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on 8 cores so to find out how this kind of grunt
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compares to a more traditional Intel 4 core laptop we put it up against the
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ASUS g503 vm a similarly priced
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15-incher that packs an Intel core i7 7700 hq and an NVIDIA gtx 1060.
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firing up cinebench we wow oh wow just wow that's some savage
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destruction of i mean not just our comparison laptop
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all laptops by a lot even beasts like ASUS's 6 000
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water cooled gx 800 and the acer
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predator 21x are no match for the
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multi-threaded prowess of the gl702 zcc
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and the theme continues in other CPU focused tests like 7zip and blender
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it's not all amazing though in rendering tasks that can take advantage of the GPU
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the gap narrows somewhat with the gl702 zcc still taking a convincing lead
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though and then when we move from compute to graphics the rx 580 just
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can't quite keep up with the gtx 1060 no
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matter how hard it tries which judging by the sound of the fans
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while gaming was pretty hard
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in 3dmark it loses out by a bit to the 1060 and then in actual games the gl702
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zc consistently loses although not by much to its smaller green and blue
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brother not that those couple of frames will probably be noticeable in actual
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gameplay but there's more to life than FPS anyway
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if you run out and buy a gl702cc today that's our AMD version here it's
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both heavier and thicker than the Intel NVIDIA version and honestly the 702
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didn't light any exciting fires for us at this price in general the keyboard is
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not amazing it does have a numpad if you're into that and after typing for a
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bit getting up to speed accurately won't be a big challenge but it's a bit mushy
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feeling and pretty much the same can be said for the trackpad it's serviceable
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but uninteresting and the same goes for the screen it is ips so viewing angles
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brightness and colors were all suitably adequate
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and freesync is a boon for improved gaming smoothness at low frame rates but
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60 hertz screens are better suited for laptops that don't have to go up against
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120 hertz models at a similar price in
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esports titles this amounts to a big difference in the gaming experience
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moving on to the webcam it's not bad by laptop standards but it's unexceptional
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especially in low light and you might want the light low since you'll be doing
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everything you can to conserve the battery like
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there's bad and then there's one hour and 22 minutes until all the
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electrons have escaped bad to be clear the performance while it's
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doing it is good but this still puts the 702 zc on the
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worst battery life we've ever seen in pc
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mark's test podium okay so that last bit was a bit of a
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downer there's more good stuff though opening
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up the gl702 zcc you are greeted with surprising upgradeability there's an
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empty RAM slot non-soldered solid-state storage and a
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two and a half inch bay and and a mother freaking full-sized desktop am4
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socket now we can't guarantee that ASUS will
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provide BIOS updates but AMD has confirmed am4 support until 2020 so it's
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possible pretty unlikely but possible
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that you could have top-tier AMD CPU performance for years to come
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with all that being said we're not that into buying this thing as a gaming
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laptop it's competent at gaming but if that's what you plan on doing there are
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better options right now with that said we see the gl702 zcc with its
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unprecedented multi-threaded performance as more of a
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powerhouse-on-a-budget mobile workstation
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that can also game on the side and in time we're really excited to see what
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other ryzen 7 designs make their way to the market i mean maybe with a more
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powerful NVIDIA GPU or mobile vega
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gmd we could see the ultimate streaming
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laptop only time will tell
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