Asus ROG GX800VH Monster Gaming Notebook Preview

Born for 4K. Fans of high-resolution gaming are often faced with performance problems. Even the flagship model from Nvidia’s Maxwell generation, the GTX 980, struggles in 3840 x 2160. The situation is much better with the Pascal successor GTX 1080. This is confirmed by the Asus GX800, which is even powered by an SLI configuration.

Asus is one of the most courageous laptop manufacturers on the market, and one prominent example to support this statement is the GX700 we reviewed in the end of 2015. The 17-inch high-end system was not only cooled by conventional fans, but was also equipped with piping for an external water cooling, more precisely the Hydro Overclocking Station. The interesting concept did reveal some drawbacks (high price, enormous weight, …), but not many notebooks were able to compete with the performance.

Asus will soon launch the GX800, which is just as spectacular, to meet the requirements of 2016. The desktop replacement gets a bigger screen (18.4 inches) and much more performance. Instead of a single GTX 980, the graphics calculations are now handled by two Nvidia GPUs. While the first prototype we got from Asus a couple of weeks ago was still equipped with Maxwell GPUs, the new prototype is based on the brand-new Pascal architecture. Two GTX 1080 chips in an SLI system is the fastest notebook solution you can currently get.

To ensure that the dual-GPU system is not slowed down, Asus equipped the test model with 64 GB DDR4-RAM (4x 16 GB @2400 MHz) as well as an overclocked quad-core processor from Intel (Core i7-6820HK). The integrated IPS panel has a native resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels (UHD).

Asus GX800VH Prototype (GX800 Series)
Processor : Intel Core i7-6820HK 2.7 GHz @ 4.2 GHz (Intel Core i7)
Graphics adapter : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 SLI (Laptop) - 2x 8192 MB, Core: 1632 MHz, Memory : 5200 MHz, GDDR5X, ForceWare 368.97 (372.53 for Steam Games)
Memory : 65536 MB , 4x 16 GB DDR4-2400, Dual-Channel, 4 von 4 Slots in use, up to 64 GB
Display : 18.4 inch 16:9, 3840x2160 pixel 239 PPI, BOE06DA, glossy: no
Mainboard : Intel CM236 (Skylake PCH-H)
Storage : , GB , Intel Raid 0 Volume, 2x 500 GB m.2 PCIe SSD
Weight : 5.69 kg ( = 200.71 oz / 12.54 pounds), Power Supply: 2x 1280 g ( = 0.07 oz / 0 pounds)