Asus G74SX

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After a season of wafer-thin ultrabooks and pocket-sized ultraportables, there's nothing quite like a giant desktop-replacement gaming rig. Despite making a name for itself with the original Eee PC Netbook and the new Zenbook, Asus has always had a solid line of gaming laptops (sometimes marketed under the "Republic of Gamers" subbrand), the latest of which is the G74SX-A2.

While that jumble of letters and numbers may not be very illuminating, the system it refers to is a strong performer that has the added benefit of not looking like the typical ugly gaming laptop. The US$1,949 G74SX is an angular black box, and its muted matte finish helps it from feeling as massive as it actually is.

These days, two grand is really an astronomical amount to pay for a laptop, and generally only Apple gets away with charging that much. In this case, you do get some serious hardware for the money, including a quad-core 2.0GHz Intel Core i7 2630QM CPU, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560M GPU, a 160GB solid-state drive (SSD) coupled with a 750GB hard-disk drive (HDD), and a whopping 16GB of RAM. A similarly configured Asus G74SX will cost around S$3,100 in Singapore.

All that makes it good for mid- to high-level gaming, though not on the same level as our current gaming laptop leaders, the Origin EON17, which is an overclocked US$3,500 monster built into a hideously generic Clevo chassis, and the US$5,000 configuration of Dell's Alienware M18x that we tested earlier this year. But even serious gamers are unlikely to notice a difference except on the highest details settings of the latest PC games such as Skyrim and Battlefield 3.

If you're only a casual (or semi-serious) gamer, this system may be overkill, but the possibilities of the large dual hard-drive setup and 16GB of RAM may be appealing to video editors and other multimedia types. If you want gamer-oriented power, without the over-the-top designs and blinking lights of an Alienware PC, the G74SX could be your wolf in sheep's clothing.

While the specific configuration reviewed here runs US$1,949, there is a less-expensive US$1,500 version that drops the RAM from 16GB to 12GB, and ditches the 160GB SSD for a single 1.5TB, 7,200rpm hard drive.

Big gaming laptops are, if not rare, then at least not terribly common these days. Most of the 2011 models use one of Intel's quad-core Core i7 CPUs--in this case it's the 2.0GHz Core i7 2630QM. More than enough for gaming, HD video, multitasking, or whatever else you want to throw at it, this is undoubtedly more laptop power than most people will need.

The system performed very well in our benchmark tests, falling behind an overclocked (and much more expensive) Origin system, and landing in the same ballpark as other 2011 quad-core gaming laptops from Toshiba and Dell.

The Nvidia GeForce 560M GPU is part of the top tier of that company's current line of mobile parts, but the newer 570 and 580 GPUs are more powerful. In our very challenging Metro 2033 test, at full 1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution, the game ran at 20.3 frames per second. Street Fighter IV, a more mainstream test, ran at 59.7fps. Anecdotally, playing Skyrim at the same resolution, with all graphics settings at either high or ultra, the game was usually smooth and playable (and obviously looked a lot better than the console version).

A big desktop replacement laptop isn't designed to spend a lot of time on the road, so it would be unfair to judge its battery such as Asus A42-A3 Battery, Asus A8F Battery, Asus F3T Battery, Asus F3Sc Battery, Asus F3Sv Battery, Asus 90-NI11B1000 Battery, Asus 90-NIA1B1000 Battery, Asus 90-NF51B1000 Battery, Asus 70-NF51B1000 Battery, Asus A32-A8 Battery, Asus Z99J Battery, Asus Z99H Battery life too harshly. That said, the G74SX did reasonably well in our video playback battery drain test, lasting 2 hours and 27 minutes. The Origin EON17 ran for 2 hours, 19 minutes in the same test, while the Dell XPS 17 3D ran for 3 hours and 6 minutes.

Conclusion

The US$2,000 configuration of the Asus G74SX feels a bit too expensive to us, but the less-pricey US$1,500 version could be a solid gaming choice, especially as Asus has a good rep for gaming laptops. True high-end gamers will want something a bit more boutique, and showoffs may gravitate toward Alienware's glowing alien-head logos and blinking lights.