This powerful all-AMD Asus laptop is $300 cheaper right now

Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition — (Image credit: Asus)

Asus ROG Strix G15 | 15.6-inch | AMD Ryzen 9 5980HX | Radeon RX 6800M | 1440p | 165Hz | 16GB RAM | 512GB SSD | $1,699.99 $1,399.99 at Best Buy (save $300)
This is a lot of laptop for the money. That AMD Ryzen 9 5980HX may be last-gen now, but it's still a powerhouse, and the Radeon RX 6800M is a cut above what you'll usually get at this price point. It sits somewhere between an RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, unless you turn ray tracing on. That SSD is going to be a bit of a squeeze, but otherwise, this is a really good deal, and besides, you can always upgrade the storage later on.

There are plenty of versions of the ROG Strix G15, but the model that is on offer right now is the Advantage Edition, which is an all-AMD SKU. You're looking at a Ryzen 9 5000-series mobile CPU alongside a Radeon RX 6800M for a powerful combo for gaming and more serious enterprises. This machine is currently enjoying a $300 saving, reducing its price down to just $1,400. Quite a bargain.

Technically, the Ryzen 9 5980HX you'll find inside this smart-looking system is a last-gen processor, but it was the top chip of that generation and it still packs a serious punch today. You're looking at an 8-core, 16-thread CPU with a max boost clock of 4.8GHz and a nominal base clock of 3.3GHz. This 'Cezanne' processor has more than enough power to keep your games ticking along basically, and it'll handle your video editing and rendering needs as well if needed.

The major part of the gaming equation is obviously the GPU and here there's plenty like in the form of the Radeon RX 6800M. Nvidia may be the preferred option for many gaming laptops, but such machines tend to cost a lot more than this. When you discover that the performance from this GPU is generally at least somewhere between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, you'll quickly see how much of a deal you're getting here.

There is a caveat here, and that is AMD's GPUs don't enjoy ray tracing quite as much as Nvidia's offerings. As such, you'll suffer quite a performance hit if you turn on the most extreme of pretties, so if you're specifically after tracing light rays, you may want to go for a different machine. For the vast majority of games though, there's plenty of power on offer.

Asus has paired this GPU with a decent screen too. You're looking at a 165Hz 1440p display that does a good job of showing off what the GPU is capable of. There's not much of a bezel on the sides or top either.

The only mark against the Strix G15 Advantage Edition is that the SSD is a bit on the small side, particularly for what this machine should sell for. With the $300 reduction, you won't feel quite so short-changed, and you can upgrade later down the line. Still, on the desktop, we're essentially seeing 2TB drives as the new norm, and on laptops, 1TB would be a preferred capacity, simply because games are getting pretty big these days.

Overall though, this is a brilliant laptop at a great price. Throw in a big bag of RGB lighting and plenty of room to keep those top-end components running cool, and you have a proper gaming laptop that will last you well.

Alan has been writing about PC tech since before 3D graphics cards existed, and still vividly recalls having to fight with MS-DOS just to get games to load. He fondly remembers the killer combo of a Matrox Millenium and 3dfx Voodoo, and seeing Lara Croft in 3D for the first time. He's very glad hardware has advanced as much as it has though, and is particularly happy when putting the latest M.2 NVMe SSDs, AMD processors, and laptops through their paces. He has a long-lasting Magic: The Gathering obsession but limits this to MTG Arena these days.