Asus Rog Strix Scar 17 (g733) Review

Asus has made over its flagship 17.3-inch gaming laptop since we closing reviewed it. But even so a refreshed design, the ROG Strix Scar 17 (begins at $1,999; $2,499 as examined) packs the newest Intel “Alder Lake” Core i9 processor and Nvidia’s refreshed GeForce RTX 3000-series graphics, paired with a high-resolution display screen and quiet cooling lovers. Its maximum obvious omission is a webcam, but when you’ll be able to reside with out that, this big-screener rolls out the crimson carpet all over the place else, even incomes excellent marks in our battery lifestyles check. It’s our Editors’ Selection honoree amongst high-end 17.3-inch gaming laptops.

This Scar Cuts a Unique Design

The ROG Strix Scar 17’s hulking, edgy chassis pegs it as an archetypal gaming laptop. Touring with this beast—it’s 6.4 kilos and measures 1.1 through 15.6 through 11.1 inches (HWD)—isn’t one thing you’ll wish to do each day, and don’t put out of your mind to think about some other two kilos for its 280-watt persistent adapter. That mentioned, its dimension isn’t essentially a con; this laptop does have enough space for an expansive 17.3-inch display screen, in any case. It’s simply one thing to comprehend getting in.

RGB results at the entrance and facets, and some other strip underneath the display screen’s backside edge, nearly ensure the ROG Strix Scar 17 will probably be observed. The ROG lid brand and the backlit keyboard also are RGB-infused. You’ll make a choice from preset lighting fixtures results within the Asus Armoury Crate app or combine your personal in Air of secrecy Writer. All of the lighting fixtures can, after all, be became off, however the place’s the thrill in that?

Construct high quality meets expectancies. The lid is steel whilst the remaining is thick and durable plastic. The chassis is brim-full of main points, together with a see-through diagonal at the appropriate part that displays the inner body. There’s additionally what Asus calls a customizable “armor cap,” the gray-colored, ROG-embossed piece on the again left nook of our unit. It slides off and can also be switched out for different designs. Two armor caps are integrated, one opaque and one darkish.

The keyboard features a numeric keypad or even with those added keys, it nonetheless doesn’t span all the width of the chassis. Key presses have a gentle, linear really feel and abundant go back and forth.

This laptop uncommonly comprises devoted macro keys. 5 are situated on the higher left of the keyboard; they’re assignable in Armoury Crate. In the meantime, the touchpad is lots massive and clicks satisfactorily.

The Show: Now not Simply Any other 1080p Display

Cinematic gaming is the ROG Strix Scar 17’s strong point. Its expansive 17.3-inch display screen has a local 16:9 QHD (2,560-by-1,440-pixel) display screen decision, which displays 50% extra element than FHD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel).

This display screen combines a 240Hz refresh price and Adaptive Sync for easy, tear-free fragging. Image high quality is first-rate; our Datacolor SpyderX Elite measured 99% DCI-P3 colour protection and a 300-nit top brightness. I’ve observed brighter displays, however this one couldn’t be known as dim.

You additionally received’t be disillusioned with the ROG Strix Scar 17’s quad speakers. Dolby Atmos tuning creates complete, wealthy sound that’s excellent for gaming and song. As for the webcam, smartly, there isn’t one. It’s this laptop’s sorest omission, and on this age, it is not sensible. Plan to shop for an exterior clip-on fashion. There’s no fingerprint reader, both.

Transferring on, bodily connectivity satisfies, beginning at the rear with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Kind-C port, Thunderbolt 4, an HDMI 2.1 video output, and 2.5Gbps Ethernet.

I’m a fan of rear port picks because it assists in keeping cables out of sight. The ability adapter connects right here, too. It has a right-angle connector that doesn’t stick out.

The rest ports are at the left, which come with a couple of USB 3.2 Gen 1 Kind-A ports and a headset jack. The only real function at the appropriate is Asus’s proprietary Keystone slot, a flash-drive-style module that retail outlets your profile settings. The module is integrated within the field.

Scarring the Charts: Checking out the ROG Strix Scar 17

The $2,499 ROG Strix Scar 17 observed and examined right here, fashion G733ZW-XS96, has a 2.5GHz (5.0GHz Turbo) Core i9-12900H processor, an 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card, a 1TB SSD loaded with Home windows 11 Professional, a MediaTek MT7922 card offering Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, and a one-year guaranty. Our unit has 32GB of DDR5 reminiscence, despite the fact that manufacturing fashions have 16GB. (This laptop is user-upgradeable to 64GB by the use of two 32GB So-DIMMs.) Asus lists different configurations beginning at $1,999.99 on its site, together with ones with AMD processors, despite the fact that maximum are not these days to be had stateside.

Assuming you’ll be able to to find one in inventory, the ROG Strix Scar 17 is somewhat priced. The Alienware x17 R2 commanded $2,645 at this writing, with a lesser-clocked Core i7-12700H and a 165Hz FHD display screen. The $2,449 Aorus 17 XE additionally sticks with a Core i7-12700H and an FHD display screen. The display screen is the larger differentiator between the Asus and the ones fashions, despite the fact that the Core i9-12900H has benefits over the Core i7-12700H but even so fairly upper clocks, together with virtualization enhance.

Talking of “Alder Lake,” our desktop Core i9-12900K evaluation is a must-read for background on Intel’s new hybrid structure, which mixes two various kinds of cores onto the similar chip. The Core i9-12900H’s 14 cores are constituted of six Efficiency-cores and eight Potency-cores, and it might procedure 20 threads. Our benchmarks will reveal it’s an intensive jump for laptop processing persistent over previous-generation AMD and Intel chips, which crowned out at eight cores and 16 threads. (See our initial assessments on laptop-grade “Alder Lake.”)

The ROG Strix Scar 17 additionally sports activities Nvidia’s refreshed RTX 30 Ti-series graphics silicon, particularly a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti with 8GB of devoted GDDR6 reminiscence. This implementation is rated for 125 watts of overall graphics persistent (TGP) plus as much as a 25-watt spice up through enabling the laptop’s Turbo function. (Extra on that within the benchmarks.) That’s a decent quantity of wattage for a laptop GPU. (See our primer on why GPU wattage issues.)

Ultimate, the ROG Strix Scar 17’s enhance for DDR5 reminiscence is noteworthy. Even though Intel “Alder Lake” CPUs also are suitable with DDR4, DDR5’s upper reminiscence bandwidth is helping push functionality limits in a high-end Core i9 system like this.

Let’s transfer onto checking out. I pitched one of the most quickest gaming laptops we’ve examined in opposition to the ROG Strix Scar 17, together with the Alienware x17, the MSI GE76 Raider, and the smaller however similarly potent Lenovo Legion 7 Gen 6 powered through an AMD Ryzen HX-series chip. The Aorus 17 XE is the one different “Alder Lake” laptop we’ve examined up to now. See their elementary loadouts underneath.

Productiveness and Content material Introduction Checks

Our first check is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates plenty of real-world productiveness and place of work workflows to measure total gadget functionality and likewise features a garage subtest for the main power. The ROG Strix Scar 17 vied with the Aorus for peak honors in the primary check, nearly doubling the 4,000 issues we believe an indication of fine productiveness. It additionally did smartly within the garage check, because of its PCI Specific 4.0 SSD. (Our evaluation unit makes use of a Micron 3400 power.)

Our different three benchmarks focal point at the CPU, the usage of all to be had cores and threads, to price a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 makes use of that corporate’s Cinema 4D engine to render a fancy scene, whilst Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Professional simulates common apps starting from PDF rendering and speech reputation to system finding out. In spite of everything, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to transform a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p decision (decrease instances are higher).

Our ultimate productiveness check is Puget Methods’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which makes use of the Inventive Cloud model 22 of Adobe’s well-known symbol editor to price a PC’s functionality for content material advent and multimedia programs. It is an automatic extension that executes plenty of common and GPU-accelerated Photoshop duties starting from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving a picture to making use of mask, gradient fills, and filters.

There was once no catching the ROG Strix Scar 17 in those assessments; its Core i9 and DDR5 reminiscence commanded the sector. Geekbench was once its very best appearing, the place it outscored the Aorus through 18% and the previous-generation silicon within the MSI through a whopping 57%.

Graphics and Gaming Checks

For Home windows PCs, we run each artificial and real-world gaming assessments. The previous comprises two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Evening Raid (extra modest, appropriate for programs with built-in graphics) and Time Secret agent (extra not easy, appropriate for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Additionally looped into that crew is the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which we use to gauge OpenGL functionality.

Transferring on, our real-world gaming checking out comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Murderer’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege representing simulation, open-world action-adventure, and aggressive/esports shooter video games, respectively. On laptops, Valhalla and Siege are run two times (Valhalla at Medium and Extremely high quality, Siege at Low and Extremely high quality), whilst F1 2021 is administered as soon as at Extremely high quality settings and, for Nvidia GeForce RTX laptops, a 2nd time with Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing became on.

The ROG Strix Scar 17 jumbled together with the others in each artificial and real-world gaming, suggesting that its GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is the restricting issue, now not its CPU. That’s now not a foul factor as, barring the Aorus, the others use the theoretically more potent GeForce RTX 3080. Informally, I ran Time Secret agent with the ROG Strix Scar 17’s Turbo mode engaged and noticed a 7% achieve (to 11,256 issues). I’ll take that for urgent a button.

I additionally ran the gaming benchmarks (with out Turbo) on the ROG Strix Scar 17’s QHD display screen decision, which you’d wish to do for the sharpest image. It was once easy crusing, averaging 183fps in Rainbow Six: Siege (Extremely), 62fps in Murderer’s Creed (Extremely), and 88fps in F1 2021 (Extremely).

As for thermals, the ROG Strix Scar 17 stored itself cool; this FLIR One Professional symbol was once taken after an hour enjoying Cyberpunk 2077. The WASD key cluster didn’t exceed 100 levels F. We choose to peer all surfaces at or underneath 110 levels F.

Internally, my GPU-Z logs confirmed the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti soaring between 80 to 82 levels C and the Core i9-12900H within the mid-70 level C vary, each applicable. The GPU board persistent draw various between 115 and 130 watts, leaping to 150 watts when I enabled the Turbo mode (as this laptop is marketed to do). The GPU ran fairly cooler in Turbo, round 78 levels C, which is sensible because the lovers run quicker. The lovers are impressively quiet both method; it is advisable simply recreation in this laptop in a front room with out worrying others. That’s now not a declare many gaming laptops could make.

Battery and Show Checks

PCMag assessments laptops’ battery lifestyles through enjoying a in the neighborhood saved 720p video record with display screen brightness at 50% and audio quantity at 100% till the gadget quits. Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting are became off all through the check.

We additionally use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite observe calibration sensor and its instrument to measure a laptop display screen’s colour saturation—what proportion of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 colour gamuts or palettes the show can reveal—and its brightness in nits (candelas in step with sq. meter) on the display screen’s 50% and top settings.

The ROG Strix Scar 17 trails the others in display screen brightness, despite the fact that it’s now not dim as I famous above, and it has wider colour protection. What’s in reality spectacular is this huge 17.3-incher will get over seven hours of battery lifestyles. A lot credit score for that is going to its use of Nvidia Complicated Optimus, which routinely switches to the Intel CPU’s power-saving built-in graphics whilst now not gaming.

Esports avid gamers and someone delicate to enter lag will recognize that the ROG Strix Scar 17 has a MUX transfer to disable Optimus. Optimus has the prospective to create enter lag because it sends the Nvidia GPU output during the onboard Intel GPU ahead of it reaches the show; with the MUX transfer toggled (during the Armoury Crate app), the Intel GPU is disabled and the Nvidia GPU outputs immediately to the display screen. Naturally, battery lifestyles will undergo like that, however you’ll be able to simply re-enable Optimus in case you plan to head unplugged.

One Tricked-Out Gaming Rig

Asus’s ROG Strix Scar 17 nails what a high-end gaming laptop will have to be. It has functionality in abundance, because of its Intel “Alder Lake” Core i9 CPU, DDR5 reminiscence, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 Ti graphics. It additionally surprises with all-day battery lifestyles and quiet lovers, and it excels with regards to all over the place else. If you’ll be able to reside with out a webcam or are keen to make use of an exterior one, the ROG Strix Scar 17 is the high-end gaming laptop to overcome.