Review Asus Zephyrus G GA502 w Ryzen 7 3750H processor / Geforce 1660Ti Impression and Benchmarks

[JustMe21]

I purchased this laptop a few days ago, so I would share some impressions and benchmarks. The Zephyrus G GA502 (GA502DU-BR7N6) I purchased from Best Buy has:

AMD's new 35W Ryzen 7 3750H APU
Geforce GTX 1660Ti Mobile-Q w 6 GB GDDR6
120 Hz vIPS LCD
512 GB Intel 660p M.2 NVMe SSD
Realtek 8821 CW Wireless LAN 802.11 AC 1x1
Realtek PCIe Gigabit NIC
Realtek Audio
2 x 8 GB DDR4-2666 SDRAM (One shows as Samsung Part # M471A1K43DB1-CTD 17CL) Specs indicate it can be expanded to 32 GB, but I don't know if one is soldered on or not.
76Wh 4-cell litium ion battery
Realtek Bluetooth 5.0
1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C w DisplayPort 1.4
3 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A
1 x HDMI 2.0b
1 x 3.5 mm audio combo jack
1 x Kensington lock
180W AC adapter
2.1 kg / 4.63 lbs

https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ROG-Zephyrus-G-GA502/

Likes:
I like the fans on this laptop. It sound like a strong breeze blowing under load and not loud like most laptop fans.
It's a light laptop, which was one of the reasons I went with this laptop.
The screen looks nice and has good viewing angles
New Ryzen 7 APU, so less Spectre/Meltdown issues
New 1660Ti video so new generation of video performance
76Wh battery suggests long battery life, unlike Asus' Tuf 505 DU which only has a 48 Wh battery. The battery capacity is larger than many other gaming laptops as well.

OK:
The speakers are downward firing and have decent volume, but I do wish it were front facing.
No camera. No one seems to put a good camera on a laptop, so I'm ok with not having one.

Dislikes:
The Intel 660p SSD performance can be terrible if you have Windows 10 System Protection enabled, but with System Protection disabled, it does perform well. Here are the times to unzip the 500 MB blender benchmark:

Intel 660p with System Protection On: 17 min 30s
Intel 660p with System Protection Off: 2 min 32s
My Ryzen 5 2500U laptop with a 500 GB SATA Samsung 860 EVO w System Protection ON: 3 min 54 sec
My Ryzen 5 2500U laptop with a 500 GB SATA Samsung 860 EVO w System Protection Off: 3 min 30 sec

Here's a link to the Intel SSD Toolbox, which will help to restore some of the performance of the SSD if it should start slowing down. The utility recommends running the SSD Optimizer once a week.
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28674/Intel-Solid-State-Drive-Toolbox

(I listed the 660p as a dislike because I spent a few days trying to figure out performance issues when I had Nivida shader caching to disk enabled.)

The chiclet keyboard, while serviceable, isn't my preferred keyboard type for a gaming laptop. I also wish any gaming laptop had a spill proof keyboard.

Driver support for Nvidia Mobile-Q video cards. It seems you have to use the manufacturer drivers if you want the APU and 1660Ti to cooperate peacefully, but unfortunately, laptop companies don't update their drivers as often as AMD and Nvidia releases new drivers. I experienced lower performance with testing the APU compared to the Ryzen 5 2500U, so I removed the AMD/Nvidia Optimus drivers and went with AMD's 19.4.3 drivers and got better results. After I was done testing the APU, I reinstalled Asus' drivers for both.

So, on to some benchmark results. I also included numbers from my Lenovo Ryzen 5 2500U laptop and my Ryzen 5 2400G desktop.

Video Driver
Ryzen 5 2500U - Radeon 19.4.3
Ryzen 5 2400G - Radeon 19.4.3
Ryzen 7 3750H Integrated - 19.4.3 (I did this so people have an idea how the 3750H only laptops performs in general)
Ryzen 7 3750H 1660Ti - Radeon - 25.20.14132.2002 (3/7/2019) / Nvidia - 25.21.14.1971 (3/18/2019) (419.71)

Cinebench R20 - Multi
Ryzen 7 3750H - 1831 cb
Ryzen 5 2500U - 1366 cb
Ryzen 5 2400G - 1793 cb

Cinebench R10 - Single
Ryzen 7 3750H - 402 cb
Ryzen 5 2500U - 356 cb
Ryzen 5 2400G - 388 cb

Firestrike
Ryzen 7 3750H Integrated - 2987
Ryzen 7 3750H 1660 Ti - 4433
Ryzen 5 2500U Integrated - 2462
Ryzen 5 2400G Integrated - 3160

Timespy
Ryzen 7 3750H Integrated - 1096
Ryzen 7 3750H 1660 Ti - 4679
Ryzen 5 2500U Integrated - 867
Ryzen 5 2400G Integrated - 1186

Skydiver
Ryzen 7 3750H Integrated - 10041
Ryzen 7 3750H 1660 Ti - 4399 (I restested multiple times and uninstalled and reinstalled drivers, but for some reason, this has terrible results. Will restest if I replace the SSD)
**After resolving the issue with the Intel 660p, here's the new score for the 1660Ti: 22816
Ryzen 5 2500U Integrated - 8379
Ryzen 5 2400G Integrated - 11051

Unigine Heaven (DX11 / Med Quality / Tess - Dis / Stereo 3D - Dis / AA - Off)
Ryzen 7 3750H Integrated - 850 (33.7 FPS - 18.1 Min - 65.1 Max)
Ryzen 7 3750H 1660 Ti - 3148 (125.0 FPS - 31.4 Min - 175.2 Max)
Ryzen 5 2500U Integrated - 690 (27.4 FPS - 14 Min - 50.3 Max)
Ryzen 5 2400G Integrated - 915 (36.3 FPS - 21.0 Min - 74.6 Max)

PCMark
Ryzen 7 3750H - 4390 (Essentials - 7828 / Productivity - 6328 / Digital Content Creation - 4635)
Ryzen 5 2500U - 3338 (Essentials - 6736 / Productivity - 4699 / Digital Content Creation - 3189)
Ryzen 5 2400G - 4122 (Essentials - 7660 / Productivity - 6191 / Digital Content Creation - 4009)

I wanted to check power levels, but I can't find my Kill-A-Watt meter, so if I pick one up again, I'll post some Furmark scores. I also plan on doing a movie/streaming marathon at some point to see how long the battery lasts.

Also, note that the Zephyrus G on Newegg and Amazon for $1099 is the GA502DU-PB73 model, which just has the 60 Hz screen.

 

[moonman14]

Thanks so much for posting this, while I am very new to this type of laptop and can only understand a little of what you mention...I really appreciate the intel link for the update to the ssd. I will want to upgrade the memory and storage sooner or later...I ordered this last weekend and it arrived at the store early on Tuesday, so I've only played a little bit of steam games...not a super pc gamer but I thought this looked like a decent entry point. Also, as I sit here after I installed the update, now the pc is on a perpetual "restarting" loop ugh, I hate this kind of thing

 

[JustMe21]

Also, the user manual states that M.2 SATA isn't supported, so if you replace it with another drive, make sure to get M.2 NVMe.

As for the 500 MB zip file, it was the Blender benchmark
https://opendata.blender.org/

On my Ryzen 5 Laptop with a 500 GB Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD drive, it extracted the file in 3 minutes and 54 seconds.
On the Zephyrus G with the Intel 660p 512 BG M.2 NVMe SSD drive, it extracted the file in 17 minutes and 30 seconds. While I did run the Intel Optimizer and clear the cache last night, I haven't done anything disk intensive until unzipping this file. Performance was around 100KB/sec on the py files, but went as high as 10 MB/s when extracting the blend files.

I'm still waiting to hear back from Asus to see if they can help me troubleshoot the drive performance.

The last gaming laptop I had was about 15 years ago and I've built regular desktops since then, but I wanted something portable while I wait on the newer 4.0 GHz base processors either later this year or next year.

 

[JustMe21]

I found the old Windows 7 SSD optimization guide I used to use and decided to try some of the settings to see how the zip file performance went and here's what I got.

860 EVO - 3 minutes 30 seconds
660P - 2 minutes 32 seconds

So, wow, massive improvements on the 660p. Here's what I did and I'll update for Windows 10. Unfortunately, I don't have links to the people that posted the information, but I applaud you all. I did them all at once, so perhaps just one change will make the difference, like the note indicates for System Restore

DISABLE SYSTEM RESTORE (SYSTEM PROTECTION in Windows 10)

Although not as crucial now as it once was, System Restore allocates restore points within many SSDs that do not work well with the SSD or TRIM. There have been numerous examples of System Restore degrading SSD performance significantly within a few weeks and makes it very difficult for TRIM to function. Disabling System Restore is not only recommended throughout the web, but also, Intel has lately also included this advise with respect to its SSDs.

Disabling System Restore will also return to you a fair amount of ssd storage space. Some time ago, we had published an article discusses these issues and also provides a simple test process to determine if System Restore may be affecting your SSD Performance.

1. In the search bar, search for Create a restore point
2. Select the System Protection tab
3. Click Configure
4. Select Disable System Protection
5. Click Apply


DISABLE PREFETCH

1. Type Regedit into the Start Menu box;
2. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
3. Right click on both EnablePrefetcher
4. Select modify on each of these to change the value from 1(or 3) to 0; and
5. Restart.

DISABLE DRIVE INDEXING

The purpose of drive indexing on a hard drive was to allow quicker access to a file. As access times on an SSD are almost instantaneous (.01ms), there is a common belief that indexing does nothing more than increase the total number of writes to the SSD which results in a lesser life cycle. Having stated this, there is no confirmed performance increase by disabling indexing and the chances of wearing out ones SSD is somewhere in the area of impossible to one in a million.


1. Open File Explorer
2. Click This PC
3. Right-click the Local Disk (C) drive and go to Properties
4. Un-check the box marked Allow files to have contents indexed in addition to file properties. If it asks for administrative permissions allow it to do so.
A popup may appear stating an error applying attributes has occurred which is normal. Select ignore all and it will continue. This process will take about 2 minutes.

 

[JustMe21]

I reenabled Prefetch and the scores are still the same, so the improvement appears to come from disabling System Protection, but I will leave the other settings listed in case anyone encounters any other performance issues with other brands of SSD drives.

 

[killster1]

would be cool if you update the original post with the 660p vs 860evo since my first impression was the 660p is BAD! i guess you didnt have system restore on the 860evo machine during the test? or just the 660p has issues with restore and the 860 evo doesnt?

 

[JustMe21]

OK, I updated it. The 860 EVO did have System Protection turned on, but it appears Intel has had issues with System Protection/Restore as the notes I had about disabling System Restore came from many years ago and there was a comment about it affecting Intel SSDs as well.

 

[JustMe21]

So, I finally got a voice mail and e-mail yesterday from Asus after submitting a support request with them on Thursday about the Intel SSD performance. They informed me I have a 2060 Ti Max-Q, not the 1660 Ti Max-Q. But, I had returned the laptop on Sunday because the speakers had gone out on me. The headphones still worked, but not the speakers. I even tried Linux and reinstalling Windows but nada. Also, Dave Lee's You Tube review confirmed that 8 GB is soldered on, which I find odd considering the spec states 32 GB max, so perhaps there will be a model with 16 GB soldered on at some point. Oh well, I guess I'll see what Asus puts out when Ice Lake or Zen 2 mobile comes out.

Other reviews are a lot more positive towards the Zephyrus G, so perhaps my unit was just a lemon.

 

[killster1]

So, I finally got a voice mail and e-mail yesterday from Asus after submitting a support request with them on Thursday about the Intel SSD performance. They informed me I have a 2060 Ti Max-Q, not the 1660 Ti Max-Q. But, I had returned the laptop on Sunday because the speakers had gone out on me. The headphones still worked, but not the speakers. I even tried Linux and reinstalling Windows but nada. Also, Dave Lee's You Tube review confirmed that 8 GB is soldered on, which I find odd considering the spec states 32 GB max, so perhaps there will be a model with 16 GB soldered on at some point. Oh well, I guess I'll see what Asus puts out when Ice Lake or Zen 2 mobile comes out.

Other reviews are a lot more positive towards the Zephyrus G, so perhaps my unit was just a lemon.

wow how cool that you didnt even know what gfx card you had! i wish i was that rich to bad it broke or kinda sounds like you wanted to return it anyway?

 

[JustMe21]

It's just bad when support takes a long time to get back to you and doesn't even know what's in their own product. I would have considered buying it again if Best Buy had more in stock, but after finding out 8 GB is soldered, then nope, forget it. To me, a gaming laptop should never have soldered memory so I can put in the RAM that I want to put in there. I may seem a bit picky, but considering how expensive gaming laptops can get, you want the best you can get for the money you pay.

 

[killster1]

It's just bad when support takes a long time to get back to you and doesn't even know what's in their own product. I would have considered buying it again if Best Buy had more in stock, but after finding out 8 GB is soldered, then nope, forget it. To me, a gaming laptop should never have soldered memory so I can put in the RAM that I want to put in there. I may seem a bit picky, but considering how expensive gaming laptops can get, you want the best you can get for the money you pay.

ya my most recent laptop has 16gb ram but would you expect it to be a single 16gb soldered onto the board? nope! but now i do the last 2 lappys i bought came with soldered ram 8gb and now 16gb but at least this time i got the 16gb one tho it doesnt matter about upgrading to a fast 32gb kit as im stuck with pos soldered ram forever!