Nvidia recently gifted laptop gamers with fully functional GeForce 10 series GPUs. Our coverage of the launch and details on Nvidia'southward new mobile lineup tin can be found here, merely for those who missed the declaration the big news is that Pascal brings GPUs with most verbal specifications to laptops as their desktop counterparts. This is in stark contrast to essentially every other mobile GPU always released.

In other words, on a GeForce GTX 1080-powered laptop you lot can look 1080-like desktop performance, or thereabouts.

To put those claims to the test we received a paradigm of Asus' ROG GX800. Those of y'all familiar with the previous-gen ROG GX700 will know it'due south an over the superlative liquid cooled laptop. Well, brace yourself because the GX800 is fifty-fifty more extreme. The Chiliad-Sync panel on the new model is larger, the Core i7 processor is clocked higher, there are now three SSDs of the NVMe diverseness, the keyboard is mechanical and not just the GPU is liquid cooled but besides the CPU.

We totally expect to see more than graceful laptops powered past the GTX 1060 and perhaps 1070s, however the GX800 is not nigh balances, information technology'due south most operation and it'south the offset laptop we've held that carries two GTX 1080 GPUs which will let the states test mobile Pascal on both single and dual GPU scenarios.

The clunky old GTX 980 has been dropped for GTX 1080 SLI. In combination with all the other enhancements information technology sees the laptop's thickness increase past almost 30% and weight by 46% to a dorsum breaking five.7kgs. This all sounds crazy and wildly impractical, but Asus doesn't care. That is kind of the point.

Asus is well aware this laptop isn't for anybody and it doesn't make sense for almost, but the claiming here is to push button the premises of current PC gaming technology, in creating something out of curiosity, out of pride. For that we commend them.

As slap-up as nosotros are to testify y'all the GX800 in detail, the unit nosotros received is still a paradigm, so our official review will come at a afterward time. For now, we'll be content to see just how well the GTX 1080 performs in a laptop and how comparable the performance is to the desktop. While nosotros are at it, it won't hurt to look into the SLI functioning likewise.

So with that nosotros'll get into benchmarks. In full we accept tested 8 AAA titles at 4K, and so that should give u.s.a. a clear idea of how Pascal performs when condensed downwardly to notebook grade.

Can Laptop Gaming Be Just as Skilful?

All results nosotros gathered were using the Asus ROG GX800 docked to the liquid cooling unit which also supplies the laptop with more power. This is required to power both GPUs. At that place is the option to undock and the laptop will however run commonly but then the ii GPUs are throttled down, throwing less than desired performance. In such scenario, you can utilise the ROG Gaming Center to disable one of the GPUs and still get pretty good functioning.

Asus' ROG software can besides be used to enable XMP mode which enables a 100MHz college CPU heave clock and operates the DDR4 memory at 2800MHz. Asus recommends users run with this mode equally it boosts retentivity functioning by nearly 20% and the combined CPU and retentiveness performance ensure college minimum frame rates when gaming.

With XMP mode enabled but SLI disabled it is possible to apply the GX800 on air and get virtually the same performance yous would when docked and simply i GPU enabled. So the unmarried GTX 1080 figures you are about to meet are achievable using just air cooling, while the SLI results require the dock, not and so much for its cooling abilities but for that actress 330 watts of power.

First upward we compare our Core i7-6700K desktop test system to the Asus ROG GX800. Using a single GTX 1080 we find the same 49fps on both platforms. Enabling SLI boosted the GX800 frame rate performance by 90% to a seriously smoothen 93fps at 4K. This is again comparable to a fully-fledged ATX desktop system running a pair of GTX 1080 Founders Edition graphics cards.

This time nosotros find exactly the same SLI functioning on both platforms while the GX800 laptop managed to come out slightly ahead in the single carte du jour comparison. The fact that the card is being liquid cooled is likely helping information technology maintain higher clock speeds.

No doubtfulness someone was going to say "but can information technology play Crysis", well the answer is yes, at 4K. Granted nosotros aren't exceeding 60fps just the game is beingness played with 4xTXAA enabled, and so the 50fps boilerplate with SLI enabled is still very impressive.

Tom Clancy'southward The Segmentation was very smooth at effectually 60fps on the GX800 with SLI enabled and with frame dips no lower than 47fps the 4K performance was exceptional.