What we have today is the ASUS STRIX SCAR 17 ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733QS-HG153TS, a behemoth of a gaming laptop that comes with powerhouse performance.
ASUS Strix ROG Scar 17 ROG Strix SCAR 17G733QS-HG153TS TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Processor | AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX Processor 3.3 GHz (16M Cache, up to 4.6 GHz) |
Graphics | NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 Laptop GPU With ROG Boost up to 1645MHz at 115W (130W with Dynamic Boost) 16GB GDDR6 |
Display | 17.3-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) 16:9 anti-glare display sRGB:100% Adobe: 75.35% Refresh Rate: 300Hz Response Time: 3ms IPS-level |
Memory | Max Capacity : 64GB |
Storage | 1TB + 1TB M.2 NVMe™ PCIe® 3.0 Performance RAID0 SSD |
| Keyboard and Touchpad | Optical Mech Keyboard Per-Key RGB |
| Camera | FHD 1080P@60FPS external camera |
Audio | Smart Amp Technology Audio by Dolby Atmos AI mic noise-canceling Built-in array microphone 2x 4W speaker with Smart Amp Technology 2x 2W tweeter |
Price | Php199,995.00 |
UNBOXING AND INCLUSIONS
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| My Sazabi RG looks so small next to the ROG SCAR 17 box. |
ASUS means business with the ROG Scar 17. Right off the bat, it comes in a seemingly massive box that’s befitting of a monitor than a laptop. It’s a 17-inch laptop, granted. But then again, it’s still a massive box. It’s not just a laptop that’s inside here, though. It comes with several inclusions such as a backpack, headset, a mouse, and a webcam.
DESIGN
I’ve said this before and I’ll say this again. ASUS definitely knows a thing or two about design. Because my god this thing is a looker.
The base of the laptop has a translucent cut at the upper right side that gives you a view of the internals. Adds a nice touch of uniqueness.
There’s also an RGB lightbar on the bottom edge of it. The back has that ROG logo, along with a stylized text on the other end of it. You could also swap out some parts of it for more style.
There are two USB A ports on the left side, while on the other end gives exclusive space for the ROG Keystone.
At the back of it is a single USB A and a USB C port, together with an HDMI port and the DC port for power.
The keyboard on the other hand is optical mech. These seem to be blue switches that are quite clicky. ASUS didn’t specify which exact switch this is, however.
My gripes, though? It’s a fingerprint magnet. There’s so much wiping to be done that if you want to keep your aesthetics you have to work hard for it. There’s also not enough USB ports, and it could really use a card reader slot. I could see this as a replacement for desktop workloads, but with the limiting expansion possibilities, you’ll have to workaround it and compromise.
DISPLAY
PERFORMANCE
So, moving forward with our test here, the ROG Scar 17 comes equipped with a Ryzen 9 5900HX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, with 32GB of RAM. We tried to test out its Vega iGPU as well but that’s somewhat counterproductive to our case use anyway so we opted out of it. The tests were done on the Turbo profile, with ambient room temp going around 34-35 degrees Celsius. It’s quite hot in these parts.
CINEBENCH R15 and R20
Cinebench is a real-world cross-platform test suite that evaluates your computer's hardware capabilities. Improvements to Cinebench Release 20 reflect the overall advancements to CPU and rendering technology in recent years, providing a more accurate measurement of Cinema 4D's ability to take advantage of multiple CPU cores and modern processor features available to the average user. Best of all: It's free.
3DMark Time Spy
3DMark Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark test for Windows 10 gaming PCs. Time Spy is one of the first DirectX 12 apps to be built the right way from the ground up to fully realize the performance gains that the new API offers. With its Extreme counterpart rendering visuals in 4K. CPU Score and GPU Score are logged separately for more information.
3DMark Firestrike
Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark for modern gaming PCs. Its ambitious real-time graphics are rendered with detail and complexity far beyond other DirectX 11 benchmarks and games. With Extreme and Ultra versions raising resolution in 25650 x 1440 and 4K.
Cyberpunk 2077
Needless to say, if your machine can run CD Projekt Red’s hype machine with RTX On to Psycho level, then you’re already set up for a long time. Probably. You get the point. If that’s not enough indication, here. It’s demanding AF. If you ever played it with RTX On without DLSS during the talk with Dexter DeShawn, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Settings:
Ultra Preset
Film Grain: On
Chromatic Aberration: On
Depth of Field: On
Lens Flare: On
Motion Blur: Off
Contact Shadows: On
Improved Facial Lighting Geometry: On
Anisotropy: 16
Local Shadow Mesh Quality: High
Local Shadow Quality: High
Cascaded Shadows Range: High
Cascaded Shadows Resolution: High
Distant Shadows Resolution: High
Volumetric Fog Resolution: Ultra
Volumetric Cloud Quality: Ultra
Screen Space Reflections Quality: Ultra
Subsurface Scattering Quality: High
Mirror Quality: High
Level of Detail: High
Ray Tracing Off/Psycho
DLSS Off
Gears 5
Gears 5 is a third person shooter that features a cover-system mechanic and a mini-game reload mechanic. It also features an exact 1-minute benchmark that we're going to use for our data.
Settings:
API: DirectX 12
Ultra Settings Preset
Min/Max Frame Rate: None/Unlimited
Character Texture Detail: Ultra
Effects Texture Detail: Ultra
Dynamic Shadow Quality: Ultra
World Texture Detail: Ultra
Texture Streaming: Ultra
Capsule Shadow Quality: Ultra
Screen Space Reflections: Ultra
Ambient Occlusion Quality: Ultra
World Level of Detail: Ultra
Tesselation Quality: Ultra
Animation Quality: Best
Bright Memory: Infinite Ray Tracing Benchmark
Bright Memory: Infinite Ray Tracing Benchmark is a benchmark tool on Steam that tests performance of Ray Tracing capable hardware. So, yeah, RIP past gen cards. Test is done with DLSS set to Balance. That's probably the lowest we're willing to go.
Godfall
Godfall is an action role playing game developed by Counterplay Games and published by Gearbox. It's flashy, and kinda clunky, but has big ambitions ahead.
Settings:
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution: Off
Vertical Sync: Off
Quality Preset: Epic
View Distance: Epic
Shadow Quality: Epic
Anti-Aliasing: Epic
Texture Detail: Epic
Visual Effects: Epic
Post-Processing: Epic
Foliage Quality: Epic
Motion Blur: Off
Ray Tracing: Enabled
AMD FidelityFX LPM: Off
AMD FidelityFX CAS: Off
Apex Legends
Apex Legends is a three/two-team battle royale that features an arsenal of unique heroes in a gorgeous arena of either trees and mountain range and lava or a luscious green city. Fun.
Settings:
Vsync: Off
NVIDIA Reflex: Enabled + Boost
AAdaptive Resolution FPS Target: Disabled
Anti-Aliasing: TAA
Texture Streaming Budget: Insane
Texture Filtering: Anisotropic 16X
Ambient Occlusion Quality: High
Sun Shadow Coverage: High
Sun Shadow Detail: High
Spot Shadow Detail: Very High
Volumetric Lighting: Enabled
Dynamic Spot Shadows: Enabled
Model Detail: High
Effects Detail: High
Impact Marks: High
Ragdolls: High
Overwatch
There's no better way to show you how it works on esports titles like Overwatch than to actually show you how it plays. Can't standardize this since Overwatch deletes recorded gameplay after an update, so this will work for now.
Settings:
Epic Preset
Render Scale: 100%
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filtering Quality: Epic - 16X
Local Fog Detail: Ultra
Dynamic Reflections: High
Shadow Detail: Ultra
Model Detail: Ultra
Effects Detail: Ultra
Anti-Alias Quality: High - SMAA Medium
Local Reflections: On
Ambient Occlusion: On
wPrime
wPrime tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions. 1024M and 32M scores are recorded.
Temperature
Temperature on our current Turbo profile leaves much to be desired. Averaging at 95° CPU and at 86°GPU on average temp after a 30-minute run on Realbench is eye opening, and you could surely make things better switching to another profile, but for our test case, here we are. Idle room temp is 34-35° here, so yeah it gets stuffy and hot.
CONCLUSION
As much as I want to digress and talk about how it hurts a lot of us and our wallets, it's time to get back to the topic at hand. This variant of the ROG Scar 17 costs Php199,995.00. It comes with ROG Chakram Core, ROG Delta Gaming Headset, ROG Backpack, ROG GC21 Eye, PD Adapter, Windows Home & Student 2019. As an Esports solution that gets you equipped with everything? It works wonders. Throw everything at it and it won't even flinch. Cyberpunk 2077 could try tho. That game's still demanding AF.
The price and performance gap between gaming laptops and desktops are getting closer. There are trade-offs and compromises on both ends that there's no definitive answer. So, where does that leave us with the ROG Scar 17? If you're out on the market for a capable workhorse for the most demanding of games and whatnot, and you don't want to give in to the lofty pricetags by the low-supply-high-demand conundrum, you want something mobile, and you need something stylish like nothing else comes close, the ROG Scar 17 can easily deliver, for a price.
COMMENTS