SAN FRANCISCO— A month after we first laid eyes on the Asus GX700 and G752 gaming laptops at the IFA trade show in Berlin, the machines have made their way stateside. And there’s a lot for gamers to like about these powerful portables.
As we learned last month, both the GX700 and G752 come with SkyLake processors from Intel, Nvidia graphics and a new Asus Republic of Gaming color scheme featuring Armor Titanium with Plasma Copper accents. The laptops also have backlit keyboards with 30-key rollover capabilities, balancing gamers’ need for responsive keyboards with portability. The GX700 is easily the more eye-catching of the two models since it features an attachable water-cooling system, making it the first water-cooled laptop.
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But after a press event in San Francisco today (October 9), more is now known about the G752, including its asking price. You can now preorder laptops from the G752 series starting at $1,499.
That 9.6-pound base model comes with a 6th-Gen Core i7 processor and GeForce GTX 965M GPU; it also includes 16GB of memory and a 1TB hard drive. For another $100, you can upgrade to a GeForce GTX 970M GPU, while the $1,799 and $1,999 configurations add 128GB and 256GB solid-state drives, respectively. (The $1,999 G752VT-DH74 also boosts RAM to 24GB.)
High-end configurations of the G752 include a $2,599 model that features a 6th-Gen Core i7 6700HQ processor, GeForce GTX 980 GPU with 4GB of DDR5 memory, a 1TB hard drive with 128GB of SSD storage and a Blu-ray optical drive. The $3,499 G752VY-DH78K ups the processor to a Core i76820HK, doubles the amount of graphics memory to 8GB and boosts the flash storage to 512GB on top of that 1TB hard drive.
In my brief time playing a Star Wars Battlefront beta on a G752, I found the first-person shooter action smooth and seamless, as I traded laser blasts with an onslaught of Imperial Stormtroopers. Sure, I fell to my death when I inadvertently backed off a cliff in the Tatooine desert, but you can chalk that up to my own tactical incompetence rather than any lag in gameplay. More skillful gamers — literally, anyone on the planet — will be able to use the G752’s responsiveness to their advantage.
We still don’t know pricing for the water-cooled GX700 — only that Asus is promising the laptop will ship later this year. When it does arrive, the GX700 will feature a 6th-Gen Intel Core i7 6820HK processor and GeForce GTX 980 graphics. Both the CPU and graphics processor are overclockable: Asus has recorded a 48 percent boost in processing performance and a 43 percent gain in graphics.
The GX700 will support up to 64GB of RAM and offer up to 1TB of PCIe SSD storage. Its 17.3-inch display has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and can support 4K Ultra HD gaming.
Asus says the GX700 can offer desktop-level performance, particularly when used in tandem with that self-contained cooling dock. The GX700 I saw wasn’t attached to its cooling system or running any games, so I could only fiddle around with that backlit keyboard. (The keys are very responsive, and I imagine you’ll be able to get a lot of work done on the GX700 when you aren’t blasting enemies to kingdom come.) Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of performance boost -- and how cool the system can stay -- once the GX700 arrives by year’s end.
