At the intersection of ambition and imperfection, Asus has released the ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage Edition — the first gaming laptop to pair AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX with the Radeon RX 6800M GPU, arriving in mid-2021 at $1,650 as a direct challenge to Nvidia's long-held dominance. The machine delivers genuine benchmark victories and extraordinary battery life for its class, yet stumbles on software stability and carries a design aesthetic that speaks more to the past than the future. It is a landmark that reminds us progress rarely arrives fully formed — the hardware heralds a shift in power, eve
Asus ROG Strix G15 AMD Edition delivers strong gaming performance, but early bugs temper recommendation
The GPU gap that seemed insurmountable a year ago is closing fast.
Mark
Why does this laptop matter right now? AMD's been trying to break into gaming for years.
Mimi
Because this is the first time they've done it with both the CPU and GPU at the same time, at a price that's actually competitive. You're not making compromises anymore.
Mark
The performance numbers look good, but you mentioned bugs. How serious are we talking?
Mimi
Serious enough that I'd hesitate to recommend it to someone who doesn't have patience for troubleshooting. We saw a performance cliff that required a restart. That shouldn't happen on a $1,650 laptop.
Mark
What about the design? You called it dated.
Mimi
It looks like a gaming laptop from 2016. Black, red accents, RGB lighting, aggressive angles. If you want to use this in public without drawing attention, you're out of luck.
Mark
But the battery life is unusual for a gaming machine.
Mimi
Unusually good. Eleven hours in office workloads, nine hours streaming video. That's the kind of endurance you'd expect from an ultrabook, not something with a Radeon 6800M inside.
Mark
So who should actually buy this?
Mimi
Someone who values raw performance and battery life over aesthetics, and who's willing to deal with early software issues. If you need a laptop that looks professional or works flawlessly out of the box, keep waiting.
O Pulso
- AMD's Radeon RX 6800M outpaces the Nvidia RTX 3070 in real gaming benchmarks, signaling that a GPU rivalry long considered settled is suddenly alive again.
- A dramatic mid-test performance collapse — from 78 fps to 18 fps in the same game — exposed software instability that no amount of raw power can paper over.
- Battery life exceeding 11 hours under office workloads is a near-unprecedented achievement for a machine this powerful, quietly rewriting expectations for gaming portability.
- The chassis design, downward-firing speakers, absent webcam, and oversized charging brick collectively drag the experience back toward compromises gamers have long been asked to accept.
- AMD and Asus are actively refining drivers and firmware, but the product as shipped asks buyers to absorb early-adopter risk in exchange for hardware that genuinely leads its category.
At the intersection of ambition and imperfection, Asus has released the ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage Edition — the first gaming laptop to pair AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX with the Radeon RX 6800M GPU, arriving in mid-2021 at $1,650 as a direct challenge to Nvidia's long-held dominance. The machine delivers genuine benchmark victories and extraordinary battery life for its class, yet stumbles on software stability and carries a design aesthetic that speaks more to the past than the future. It is a landmark that reminds us progress rarely arrives fully formed — the hardware heralds a shift in power, even as the experience asks for patience.
Asus has shipped the first gaming laptop built around AMD's new high-end graphics pairing — a Ryzen 9 5900HX processor alongside the Radeon RX 6800M GPU — and the hardware makes a compelling case for itself. Priced at around $1,650, the ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage Edition sits in competitive territory, and in benchmark after benchmark it edges out Nvidia's RTX 3070: 78 fps versus 73 fps in Metro Exodus at ultra settings, and over 10,000 points in 3DMark Time Spy against the RTX 3070's 9,333. The GPU gap that once seemed permanent is closing.
Battery life is the machine's most surprising achievement. Over eleven hours under simulated office use and more than nine during video streaming are figures that would have seemed implausible in a gaming laptop even two years ago. For users who want real portability alongside real performance, the Strix delivers in a way few competitors can match.
The design tells a different story. Black aluminum, red accents, RGB strips, and aggressive angles place it firmly in a visual tradition that feels several years old. The keyboard is satisfying and the trackpad is genuinely excellent — closer to a premium ultrabook than a typical gaming machine — but speakers that fire downward, a heavy charging brick, and the complete absence of a webcam are practical frustrations that accumulate.
The most serious concern emerged mid-testing, when performance collapsed without warning — the same title that ran at 78 fps suddenly dropped to 18 fps, recovering only after a reboot. The incident made clear that AMD and Asus have refinement work ahead. The hardware is ready; the software is not quite there. Early adopters willing to absorb driver quirks and occasional instability will find genuine value here. Everyone else would be wise to wait a few months for the experience to catch up with the promise.
Asus has released the first gaming laptop to ship with AMD's latest high-end graphics, and the hardware is genuinely impressive—when it works. The ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage Edition pairs a Ryzen 9 5900HX processor with the Radeon RX 6800M GPU, a combination that AMD specifically designed to challenge Nvidia's RTX 3070. At an estimated $1,650, it sits between the Razer Blade and Asus's own Zephyrus G14, and on paper, it has the performance to justify the price.
For years, Intel and Nvidia have dominated the gaming laptop market. That began to shift in 2020 when AMD launched its Ryzen 4000 processors for laptops. The Strix G15 represents the next evolution—not just new processors, but paired with graphics hardware announced at Computex 2021. There's real weight to this release. The Radeon RX 6800M doesn't just match the RTX 3070 in benchmarks; it beats it. In Metro Exodus at 1080p on ultra settings, the Strix managed 78 frames per second compared to 73 fps on an RTX 3070 system. In 3DMark Time Spy, it scored 10,098 points versus 9,333 for the competing Nvidia configuration. The GPU gap that seemed insurmountable a year ago is closing fast.
Battery life is where this laptop truly shines. In testing, it delivered 11 hours and 23 minutes under simulated office workloads, and 9 hours and 22 minutes during video streaming. For a machine with this much raw power, that's exceptional. Gaming laptops used to die after two or three hours under load; all-day battery life was a fantasy. The Strix makes it real, which matters if you actually want to use this thing away from a desk.
The design, though, feels stuck in time. It's all black aluminum with red accents, RGB lighting strips, and aggressive angles—the visual language of gaming laptops from five years ago. The keyboard has satisfying travel and works well for long sessions. The trackpad is surprisingly large and responsive, more like what you'd find on an XPS than a typical gaming machine. Build quality is solid; the top is aluminum, though the bottom remains plastic. But if you're hoping to bring this to a coffee shop without announcing to everyone within earshot that you game seriously, you're out of luck.
There are practical annoyances. The speakers fire downward, which means sound gets muffled if you're using the laptop anywhere but flat on a table. The charging brick is heavy enough to be genuinely noticeable when traveling. There's no webcam, which is a problem if you plan to use this for anything beyond gaming. The 15.6-inch 1080p 300Hz display is sharp and fast, though most people won't need 300Hz to enjoy modern games.
Then there are the bugs. Midway through testing, performance tanked dramatically—the laptop dropped to 18 fps in Metro Exodus, a catastrophic fall from its usual 78 fps. A reboot fixed it, but the incident exposed a real problem. AMD and Asus clearly have work to do. This isn't a finished product in the way that established gaming laptops are. If you're comfortable being an early adopter, if you can tolerate potential driver issues and software quirks, the Strix G15 offers genuine value. The hardware is there. The performance is there. But the polish isn't—not yet. For anyone else, waiting a few months for updates and refinement is probably the smarter move.
Citações Notáveis
The Radeon RX 6800M crushes the RTX 3070 in pretty much every benchmark tested, marking a significant win for AMD in the gaming GPU space.— TechRadar review
Performance tanked to 18 fps in Metro Exodus during testing, a dramatic drop from the usual 78 fps, though a reboot restored normal operation.— TechRadar testing experience
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