The ROG GA502D: A Notebook that Walks the Fine Line between Power and Portability

When it comes to designing high-performance, power-efficient mobile processors, Intel still takes the lead. The 15-watt TDP chip and its ability to dish out 692 into the Mensch part 15 is a testament to this. In contrast, AMD's Ryzen 7 3750H, which powers the ROG GA502D, still has some catching up to do in this area.

One of the key differences between the Intel CPU and AMD processor is the clock speed. According to AMD, the CPU is supposed to hit 4 gigahertz on boost, but I never saw it hit that frequency even under full 100% load. The maximum I saw was like 3.8 or 3.9 gigahertz. This lack of consistency in clock speed may be a concern for some users.

The ROG GA502D is a powerful notebook that can handle demanding tasks with ease. It features the 1660 TI Max-Q, which is a terrific performer and can comfortably play most triple-A titles well over 60 frames per second. The notebook also handles gaming at high settings, including Battlefield 1, Overwatch, and Apex Legends.

However, the ROG GA502D does come with some major downsides. One of the biggest concerns is the cooling solution, which uses a fan that can be quite aggressive even under light load scenarios. This means that the notebook can get pretty loud when you're trying to do something creative or just browsing the internet. On the other hand, under idle scenarios, the notebook is completely dead silent.

The display on the ROG GA502D is also not the best, especially if you plan on doing content creation. The webcam is non-existent, which may be a major concern for some users. Additionally, the fans can get quite loud under heavy load scenarios, making it difficult to use the notebook for extended periods of time.

Despite its limitations, the ROG GA502D has earned my respect for its performance and battery life. The notebook's battery life is just insane, lasting overnight hours of use on a light load test from an indie notebook. This makes it an excellent choice for users who want to work or play for extended periods without needing to recharge.

The ROG GA502D also features the latest storage technology, including NVMe SSDs, which provide fast loading times and responsive performance. The notebook also has a range of connectivity options, including USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, and an SD card reader.

In conclusion, the ROG GA502D is a solid performer that can handle demanding tasks with ease. However, its limitations in terms of display quality, webcam availability, and fan noise make it difficult to recommend over other notebooks in its class. At $1,200, the notebook may be considered a great value for some users, but personally speaking, I would have to compare it to other options before recommending it.

Overall, the ROG GA502D is an excellent choice for users who want a powerful and portable notebook that can handle demanding tasks with ease. However, its limitations in terms of display quality, webcam availability, and fan noise may be a concern for some users.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso this is the asus rog ga502 thatwas a mouthful but I'm gonna refer tothis as the 502d for the rest of thevideo now it's really interesting aboutthis particular laptop is that itfeatures AMD's Ryzen 7 mobile processorand an NVIDIA GTX 1660 TI max-qgraphics card that's rightan AMD CPU with an NVIDIA GPU on anotebook in 2090 what a great time to bealive this notebook starts at $1,100 butthe model that I have costs $1,200 andthe difference in specs is that I'mgetting a high refresh rate display andmore memory so 16 gigabytes vs. 8gigabytes and I'll get to the restsuspects a little bit later in the videonow I do want to make something veryclear this is our first AMD notebookvideo and one of the reasons for that issimply because finding a AMD notebookthat was being sold wasn't that easya lot of them were announced but tryingto get hold of one was pretty difficultand back at CES Asus announced a toughseries notebook featuring a Risonprocessor and rx 560 graphics but thatno book felt downright cheap so ifyou're interested in a first look I'llactually leave a video or link to thatvideo right over here you see there's astigma about AMD processors running toohot and consuming too much battery lifeon a notebook and I think that's aboutto change with the 502D so let's findout what the deal is about this guyright after a quick word from oursponsorwell hello there where'd you come fromit don't matter it's a back where I'mgoing well I don't really need a newMouse right now sure we'll see everybodyloves a 4-way hidden d-pad and a coolOLED display plus I'm quite sensitive at24,000 dpi Plus RGB you got a try whatwas I thinking saying no to you the MM830 by Cooler Master the mouse youdidn't see comingcheck it out below all right so let'sdive into the specs and as you can seethe only difference between the basemodel and the model that I have is thatyou're getting more memory and a fasterdisplay now in terms of CPU you'regetting a Ryzen 7 3750H it is a quadcore eight third processor comes at thebase clock of 2.3 gigahertz but itboosts up to 4 gigahertzaccording to AMD it also has the Vega 10graphics integrated which switchesbetween the 1660 TI and itselfdepending on the workload which ispretty nicethere are 16 gigs of ram and dualchannel mode running at 26 66 megahertza 512 gigabyte nvme SSD that has somesolid read by performance and the starof the shows of course the gtx 1660 TImax q graphics cardok so let's kick things off with thedesign and honestly I have mixedfeelings about this one I mean there aresome aggressive elements throughout thebody like the two-tone brushed metalfinish at the top that is a seriousfingerprint magnet you've also got theROG logo that lights up in a dim redcolor that's barely noticeable inwell-lit environments it's a pointlessimplementation in the first place takinga look on the inside it looks ok I'veseen better design gaming notebooks inthe past I will admit the sandstonefinish on the interior of the 502D isactually very comfortable to place yourpalms on honestly I would have preferredthe front portion of the display or thefront portion of the laptop to featurethe exact same finish but it is Asus sothat's what we're dealing withalso don't confuse yourself thinkingthat there are front-facing speakers onthis laptop because it doesn't in factthat's just an air vent the speakershowever actually placed at the bottomand it isn't ideal for the best audioprojection they sound ok I'm gonna saythat they're more emphasized on the baseit completely just obliterates thetroubles so it's not really ideal forlistening to musicbut you know for notebook especiallythis price point it's passable oh andthis laptop does not have a webcam whichseems normal right I mean they had tocut some corners and that's exactly whatthey did they just took out one of themain features that a lot of people valuenow partially speaking for myself Idon't use webcams on a notebook and adesktop like I don't even have one on mydesktop PC because if I want to get on avideo conference call I would just usemy smart phone because it has afront-facing camera so that's theconvenience but I want to know yourthoughts about this it is an interestingoff topic conversation but do you guysactually use webcams on you know no butPC or desktop PC curious to know now interms of build quality I'm really happythat Asus hasn't cut any corners withthe 502d because the chassis feelsrobust it's not an all aluminum unibodydesign but the hard plastic materialsused here are pretty solid the keyboardlayout is compact and the keys are sizedperfectly except for the arrows they'rejust way too tiny and I had a difficulttime getting through Excel files andsome other tasks I really wish if theywere the same size as the rest of thekeysI mean continuities a thing asus thekeys themselves feature a shorter traveldistance and they do feel shallow I'mnot gonna say it's the best out therebut it's very similar to my Razer blade15 it is backlit in white but not RGB sokeep that in mind the trackpad is notthe best at first when I started usingthis laptop I had a difficult timegliding my finger through the surfacebecause of its high resistance but overtime with the help of my finger greaseit slowly started to become smooth it'sgross I know but it is a fact now I alsonoticed that it wasn't as responsivebecause I noticed you know the cursorskipping here and there at times but onthe positive side it does featureWindows position drivers but I think I'mjust spoiled by the glass surface on myblade 15 I just I just really AM portselection is pretty good on the 502D soon the left hand side you have yourpower in rj45 jackHDMI 2.0 USB 3.1 gen2 type a and thetype C port that also acts as aDisplayPort 1.4 port and a headphone /mic jack switching to the right you geta Kensington lock and two more USB 3.1one type 8 ports unfortunately no SDcard reader the display is good but notgreat you see it's a 15.6 inch 1080p 120arts i PS like panel notice that imentioned it like because it isn't trueIPS it lacks contrast and a bit ofsaturation the best way that i candescribe this panel is when an IPS and aTN panel had a baby that's basically itit has good viewing angles but if you'rethinking of doing color work this isn'tfor younot being sent it is an amazing screenfor gaming that 120 hertz refresh ratecomes in clutch for fast-paced titlesand i have nothing to complain here interms of upgradability you have instantaccess to the memory storage and Wi-Ficard the main SSD has thermal pads ontop it's a great design by issues forheat dissipation there's an extra m2slot but it's pci gen3 by 2 instead ofby 4 so keep that in mind now withregards to ram you only have access to asingle dim slot since the other 8gigabyte module is soldered on to themainboard now one of the biggesthighlights of this laptop is the batterylife because it has a 76 watt hour unitand i was easily able to get over ninehours of use by just refreshing awebpage for 15 seconds in chrome andthat is just insane I did notice thatthe clock speeds on the Ryzen CPU washovering from 1.4 to like 1.8 gigahertzduring those tasks so optimization isactually really well done on the g502moving on to performance and as Imentioned earlier the Ryzen 7 3750h isa decent performer because it has fourcores on a threads now do keep in mindthat this CPU is not based off the SEMnanometer Zen 2 architecture becauseit's still the Zen plus so that'ssomething to keep note of and it alsohas some ups and downs depending on thetype of work you do so let's start offwith some synthetic tests in Cinebenchr15 v 3750h scored 774 in themulti-core test and to give you a littlebit of context the blade 15 basefeaturing the core i78750h which is a 6 chord 12 terreprocessorspit it out 983 and what's reallyinteresting is that both of theseprocessors have the same amount of TPnow that there was something reallyinteresting into this mix i decided tothrow in the i7 8565 youkeely processor this is a 15 watt TDPchip and it was able to dish out 692into the Mensch part 15 so the pointthat I'm trying to make is AMD is stilla generation behind when it comes todesigning a high-performance powerefficient mobile processor because inthat area Intel still takes the edgemoving on to blender running the BMWbenchmark the 37:58 completed that taskin less than 10 minutes compared to 7minutes and 33 seconds on the 87 thagain this is all thanks to the twoextra cores on the Intel CPU PremierePro does not favor the 3750 H because Itook this 12 minute 4k project and Iexported it to the YouTube 4k preset andas you can see there is a significantdifference between the Intel CPU andRison and that's obviously thanks toIntel Quick Sync on Intel but I wouldn'ttry editing a video on this notebook inthe first place because I noticed dropframes and consistently in the timelineso like I said for content creators thisnotebook is not ideal I do want toquickly touch base on clock speeds forthe 3758 so according to AMD the CPU issupposed to hit 4 gigahertz on boost butI never saw it hit that frequency themax I saw was like 3.8 3.9 gigahertz butthat was just like you know very rareinstances and this is under full 100%load rendering this 4k project switchingover to gaming and the 1660 TI max-q isa terrific performer you can comfortablyplay most triple-a titles well over 60frames per second and be high settingsincluding battlefield 1 overwatch andapex legends far cry 5 and shout out theTomb Raider we're a bit demanding so Ihad to tone down the settings to getover 60 frames per second now if I wereto compare this to the blade 15 basedfrom last year featuring the 8750H anda 1060 max q they're relatively closebut keep in mind that the higher CPUfrequencies favored the 1060 max Q inbattlefield 1 we're asked for therestless has they were pretty behind nowI'm only showing two tests for the blade15 base model in gaming since I'mupdating my notebook testing and backwhen I tested the blade I didn't havethose games in the benchmarks taking alook at temperatures they're pretty goodbut there's a major downside you seeunder heavy load scenarios the CPU didsettle around 89 c and thegee you peaked at 80 but it's thecooling solution that they'veimplemented on the 502D the fans arejust way too aggressivethis thing is a jet fan when you'regaming or even trying to do somethingcreative now on the positive side underidle scenarios it's completely deadsilent so that's nice so to conclude theGA502D you from Asus has certainlyearned my respect for what it is you seethe Ryzen 7 3750H is a solid performerfor a casual task as well as gaming andthe numbers really do speak forthemselvesplus the battery life is just insane Imean overnight hours of use on a lightload test from an indie notebook guysjust think about that now my biggestproblem is that AMD isn't quite set tocompete with Intel yet especially on thenotebook space because they are still ageneration behind so we're just going towait and see what they have to offer inyou know the next few years becauseright now they are slowly capturing thedesktop market and we would love to seethe same thing on the notebook spaceit's just a matter of time but the nobleby itself also has some major downsidesit does not have a webcam the display isnot the best especially if you plan ondoing content creation most importantlythe fans are just way too loud undergaming scenarios now at $1,200 a lot ofyou might think that this efforts G is agreat value but personally speaking ifyou look at something like the AcerHelios 300 you know that notebooks getsyou a faster and nitrogen Intel CPU abetter display and more flexible specsso it's just difficult for me torecommend this over the competitionin its current state so that's myverdict on the ROG GA502d you man thesenames this is just insane but I'm gonnabe your thoughts about this particularlyyou know with AMD's implementation ofthe 3750H what do you guys think aboutit in general specifically are youimpressed with the performance I love toknow in the comments down below I'm Eber with Hardware Canucks thank you so muchfor watching and we'll see you in thenext one a display is not the bestespecially if people Oh\n"