Earlier this year, the Republic of Gamers (ROG), the gaming brand of ASUS – world leader in motherboards, laptops and gaming peripherals— started their 2017 with a bang as they launched a series of gaming laptops, new peripherals and their 1/3 of a million peso laptop, the ASUS ROG GX800, touted as the world’s most powerful gaming laptop!
ASUS invited us to witness the Reign of the Republic as they give report on what has happened last year and what they plan to do in 2017. The gaming rigs and laptops scattered on the event venue allowed us to scratch our gaming itch and try ASUS’s latest wares fitted with NVIDIA’s latest Pascal Video Cards. As you’ll see from the images below, it was like we died and woke up in PC heaven! High powered rigs, state of the art technology, and the latest products were all here to make our eyes water with awe.
The main event, of course, is the unveiling and the showcase of the GX800, a successor of their GX700 line. The monstrous gaming laptop still comes with a liquid cooler so you can easily overclock your machine without much worry and make the most out of dual GTX 1080 SLi. YES. DUAL. It has so much firepower, it’s ridiculous! A lot of the current games we have can’t even fully maximize a single 1080 card – what more 2!? Surprising tidbit, we actually got to play a game that made those video cards work up a sweat! Read on to find out what we played!
So what was the point of fitting the best components into the machine then? Simple. Because they can. The GX800 is more of a proof of concept (and an uber bragging machine) than a normal gaming laptop. While it is not something that the normal gaming enthusiast may be able to afford, you know someone somewhere is writing up a check to take this bad boy home.
Guys, the whole thing comes with its own luggage. It is NOT handy. Not by a long shot. (Well, okay it’s somewhat easier to bring than your gaming rig, but still!) If you’re sporting what is arguably the best laptop in the world, you gotta keep that thing protected right? A flimsy laptop sleeve or a backpack won’t do, Asus rolls big and a full fledged luggage is the only way to go.
So what really is the purpose of this, aside from showing the world that ASUS can fit two massive GPUs in one laptop? According to their website, ROG wants to blur the edge of gaming desktops and gaming laptops by enabling overclocking and added customization on their gaming laptops. “Desktops end up with the best technologies and quite often laptops are left out – ROG wants to put a stop to it.”
Aside from the Dual 1080 SLi’s, the GX800 is equipped with a massive 18-inch Ultra-HD (3840×2160) display with G-Sync (this reduces or eliminates screen tearing), a MechTAG keyboard with mechanical switches and AURA RGB backlight effects for individual keys, three (3) 512 M.2 NVMe SSDs, ESS Sabre headphone DAC and amplifier as well as Thunderbolt 3 that can double as a USB Type-C port for faster data transfer (up to 40Gb/s). That was quite a mouthful, got all of that?
This, of course, is powered by Intel’s latest core processor chip the Core i7-7820HK (which we used to play SOLITAIRE, because we can)! To those that got lost in the technical mumbo-jumbo this simply means you’re getting the top-of-the-line processors, RAM, GPU, gaming display and sounds and all around components for a hefty Php 369,995! Oh it also comes with the carry-on luggage, an ROG backpack and a gaming mice. 😀
The event ended with a mini Overwatch media tournament and a Dota 2 exhibition match by the Dota 2 Pinoy wonder team, Team Execration against select tech media personalities (suffice to say they got beaten badly with a final score of 82-10 in favor of the Pro Team).
All-in-all, ASUS seems to be headed for a good start with a show of force this 2017. Knowing the tech giant, they have a few more surprises as the year progresses. We’ve joined the republic and we have seen the view from the top and it looks good! To the Republic of Gamers, here’s to a gaming-filled 2017!