MAY 2020 PCWorld 51and can be held by one corner without
feeling like it’s going to buckle. Does it have
the built-like-a-tank feel of a Razer Blade (go.
pcworld.com/rzbl)? No, but it feels like a good
compromise of performance-to-weight ratio.
CPU PERFORMANCE
We’ll keep most of our CPU performance talk
over in the Ryzen 4000 CPU review (go.
pcworld.com/49hs), but we know you just
want to see one number. Here we have our
basic Cinebench R15 results for multi-core
performance, and they speak for themselves:
Despite being in a weight class typically left to
low-power, lower performance “U”-class
CPUs, the G14 is able to stand with Intel’s
mighty Core i9-9980HK. And that’s when the
Core i9-9980HK is
running in a far larger and
far heavier laptop. Let’s
just say if you want
multi-core CPU
performance in as light of
a laptop as possible, it’ll
be hard to beat the ROG
Zephyrus G14 right now.
GPU
PERFORMANCE
The most important part
of any gaming laptop is
its GPU. In this case, it’s
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX
2060 Max-Q chip with
6GB of GDDR6 memory. If you’ve never
heard of the 2060 Max-Q, we haven’t either.
Nvidia launched its Max-Q variants with only
the 2080 and 2070 versions, but somewhere
along the way it appears to have quietly
introduced the RTX 2060 Max-Q (although
again, this is the first laptop we’ve seen with
it). Notebookcheck.com offers specs on the
RTX 2060 Max-Q (go.pcworld.com/r206). It
appears to be a 65-watt version versus the
standard RTX 2060’s 80 to 90 watts.
Gaming laptops being gaming laptops,
we can tell you no matter how good a Ryzen 9
is, it won’t make a GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q
into a GeForce RTX 2080. Still, it’s valuable to
see just where it falls, so we tested it using
3DMark’s Time Spy Graphics subscore. TheThe keyboard is a little stiff but has generous travel. There’s fixed function
keys on top to let you access the Armoury Crate for changing system
settings, as well as volume keys and a dedicated mute button.