Asus' new gaming laptop is a serious sight to behold. That's because the ROG G701V1 (starting at $3,099) is the first system to feature a wide-viewing angle panel equipped with Nvidia's G-Sync technology with a 120 Hertz refresh rate. That means it should have nothing but stunning vistas with blistering frame rates and not a bit of lag in sight.
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In case you're unfamiliar with G-Sync, the technology is designed to eliminate unsightly graphical tears and ghosting by synchronizing the monitor's refresh rate directly with the GPU. The result is smoothly rendered graphics at consistently high frame rates while eliminating stutter and input lag. The wide-angle display means that you can properly seat an audience behind you to witness your skills. Unfortunately, the panel only has a 1920 x 1080 resolution. However, it can output to a 4K monitor.
In addition to the premiere panel, the 17-inch G701V1 is also outfitted with a factory overclocked Intel Core i7-6820HK processor with either 32 or 64GB of RAM. Storage-wise, you have a choice between a single 512GB NVMe PCI-e SSD or a pair in RAID 0 configuration. A single PCI-e SSD is capable of delivering blistering transfer speeds, so I'm excited to see what two can do. The pièce de résistance in this rig is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU, which will tear through just about any game you throw at it and still have plenty left over to support your Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset.
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Other key features include an anti-ghosting keyboard with 30-key rollover, which means you can enter up to 30 keystrokes simultaneously that will be correctly log. The system also has a built-in headphone digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and amplifier. On the surface, the ROG G701V1 has all the makings of a bonafide gaming beast, but I'm going hold my judgement until we get it in for testing.
