**The Strix Advantage Edition: A Gaming Laptop with a Hidden Performance Gap**

As I compared the specs of the latest gaming laptop, the Strix Advantage edition, to other laptops on the market, I couldn't help but notice that it was missing some key features. While the ARS we compared it to goes for $2,400 dollars, the Strix Advantage edition is priced at $1,650 US dollars. This difference in price may seem like a significant gap, but what's even more interesting is the trade-offs that come with choosing this laptop.

The main performance issue I noticed was related to the RAM density. The ARS we compared it to has x16 RAM sticks, while the Strix Advantage edition only uses x8 sticks. This means that for most users, the performance gap between these two laptops will be minimal, as the x8 RAM can still provide a good gaming experience. However, if companies start putting higher-density x16 RAM into laptops that previously featured x8 sticks, this performance gap could become more significant. The problem is that manufacturers won't disclose this change in specs, which means users may not be aware of the potential performance hit.

To illustrate this point, let's take a closer look at how RAM density affects gaming performance. Inside most laptops are two GPUs: an integrated GPU built into the CPU and a dedicated GPU that pushes good FPS scores for gaming. While this sharing of work is great for end-users, it does come at a cost. Most laptops are set up so that the dedicated GPU is routed through the integrated GPU before displaying on the built-in monitor. This adds an extra step, resulting in a performance hit. High-end laptops alleviate this problem with a multiplexer (MUX), or electronics switcher, which allows users to choose between integrated and dedicated graphics cards.

The Strix Advantage edition does not have a MUX, which is surprising given its high price point. The answer lies in cost: adding a MUX requires a motherboard redesign, increases complexity, and adds components. ASUS and AMD clearly decided that the performance benefits of using a MUX outweighed the added cost. However, this means that users are getting less than advertised, especially when hooked up to an external display. According to the reviewer, even with an external display, the Strix Advantage edition can't beat the performance of the $2,400 dollar ARS.

The specs of the Strix Advantage edition end up being misleading, and not one, but two major ways contribute to a 25 plus percent performance deficit in gaming. While it's marketed as a high-performance laptop, users are actually getting less than they pay for. This is a prime example of how manufacturers can mislead consumers with inflated specs.

**The Importance of RAM Density in Gaming Laptops**

As we discussed earlier, the RAM density of a laptop can have a significant impact on gaming performance. With the increasing availability of higher-density x16 RAM modules, it's becoming more and more common to see laptops switching from x8 to x16 RAM. However, manufacturers won't always disclose this change in specs, which means users may not be aware of the potential performance hit.

To address this issue, I believe that laptops should have the density of their RAM right in the specs. This would allow consumers to make informed decisions about their purchases and ensure they're getting what they pay for. Manufacturers could use marketing strategies like this to promote high-quality products and attract customers who value transparency.

**The Impact on Desktops**

While the issues with RAM density are primarily a concern for gaming laptops, they can also affect desktops. The main difference between laptops and desktops is that it's much easier to visually inspect a module and see exactly what it is when building your own machine. This makes it significantly harder for manufacturers to pull off misleading specs.

Additionally, the specs provided by manufacturers on their websites are often more detailed than those found in laptop specifications. For example, I could find all the information I need about a specific memory kit from reputable manufacturers like G.Skill or Corsair. However, this level of transparency is still missing from laptops, which can lead to similar performance issues.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, while the Strix Advantage edition may seem like an attractive option at first glance, its hidden performance gap due to RAM density and lack of MUX makes it a less-than-ideal choice for users who prioritize gaming performance. As consumers, we need to be aware of these trade-offs and demand more transparency from manufacturers. By pushing for better specs and more accurate marketing, we can ensure that users get what they pay for and avoid falling victim to misleading advertising.

**Recommendation**

If you're in the market for a new gaming laptop, I would recommend looking into laptops with higher-density x16 RAM modules or those that clearly disclose their RAM density. Additionally, consider building your own gaming desktop, which will give you more control over the components and allow you to make informed decisions about your purchases.

To make matters easier, we've partnered with LTT Store to offer our viewers an exclusive discount on insulated gaming headsets. These headsets are perfect for long gaming sessions and will help you stay comfortable and focused throughout your gameplay.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Holy (beep)I don't even,I can't even wrap my brainaround this much of a performancedifference from RAM.If you were to buy a computer today,it could easily be slower thanthe same machine would havebeen just a month ago.And not a little bit, like 20% slower.As far as I can tell OEMshave known about this problem for a while.But they were planning onjust sweeping it under the rugin hopes that no one would find out.Unfortunately for themJarrod'sTech noticedthat something was amiss.And after completingour own investigation,we've come to the conclusionthat this issue could affecteverything from laptopsto prebuilt desktops,to even your own custom built gaming PC.And the scariest part is thatalmost no one includes thisvital information on their spec sheets.Which means that youwon't know it's a problemuntil it's already too late.CableMod allows you topersonalize the look of your PCwith custom colored sleeved cables.Try out their configurator andbuild your cables exactly howyou want with theirrealistic cable preview.We're gonna have that linked down below(edgy music)On paper, the memory in these two systemsappears to be identical.16 gigabytes, 3200 megahertz, DDR4.But the one in the AMD system hereis hiding a dirty little secret.It's density.I'll explain what thatmeans in a moment though,because I want to showyou guys something first.- Uh, Do you wantto turn those off first?- Yes.We've already pre-testedboth of these laptopsas they came from the factoryand in our original videoabout the Radeon 6800M,which is the GPU and our AMD laptop here.We said that it was slowerthan the RTX 3080 mobile because,Well, here are the graphs.Slower.But, watch this, we'regonna swap these RAM sticks.We're gonna see if that changes.Interesting, isn't it?Even once we've dug into the system,everything about theselooks totally identical.That is, until you do this.Interesting.So the one in the Intelsystem has eight chips on it.And the one in the AMDsystem has only four.Also, if you look carefully at the specs,the one in the Intel systemsays one rank by eight.And the one in the AMDsystem says one rank by 16.It's unclear if this slatechange to memory module specsis going to be the norm going forward,or if it's down to the ongoingworldwide chip shortage.But, what we do know for sureis that swapping these memorymodules makes such adifference to performance.That honestly, if you told me a week agothat it was gonna be like this,I wouldn't have believed you.I'd have told you balderdash.And you guys might not believe me either.So, let me show you.Now, Alex pre ran thisstuff multiple times,averaging it out, blah, blah,blah, scientific results.But this is my first timeactually getting to experience it.So I'm not, I mean, Ihave his word for it but?Now something to note isthat while I am expectingthis to help AMD,going to this better memory.I'm not necessarily surewhat to expect from Intel,because one of the theories is thatdue to the way that AMD manages memory,this problem coulddisproportionately affect them whileleaving Intel unaffected.which has led to some conspiracytheories that it's likean industry initiativeto make AMD look bad.I'm not sure if I buy thatbut I guess we'll have to see the results.So, I'm sitting at 4964 on Intel.Wait, that is a lot better then.- Oh, it's a bit worse.- Oh wait, we'll how ...- Mildly worse.- I'm at 5267 on AMD.Isn't that worse too?- Yep.I don't know why,but that's consistentwith my test results so,- So both of them get worse.- Yeah.- In Cinebench.- Do you wanna do out of 64?- Yes, I would.I would like to get someidea of what's going on here.Now, this is really interesting.It appears as though it'snot quite as simple asfour chips bad, eight chips good.Because look at this,the Intel system with thex16 memory modules in ithas about the same latency as before,but suffers a precipitoushit to memory bandwidth.That would explain why theCinebench score got worse.But then the AMD system,it gets a proportional boost to bandwidth.So the maximum speedthat you can write to andread to from the memory,but it's latency actually takes a hit.Which might explain the performance drop.We do know that AMD Ryzen isextremely sensitive to memory latency.- Can I start with rainbow six?- Yeah, sure.- Let's start with rainbow six.This game started outwith about a 10% advantagefor team blue.But let's see what a memory swap does.- How good are your eyeballsat telling the differencebetween 250 and 230 FPS Linus?- Not very.This one's more like gamer mode boosted.You can see more detailin the shadows and stuff.So that might be part of justa tuning process that they'vegone through.I disagree with thosekinds of tuning processes.Whoa.I mean, we promised a 20%difference in performancedidn't we?Boy, did we ever deliver on that oneladies and gentlemen.That's a straight up role reversal.The AMD system is now 10%faster than the Intel systeminstead of the other way around.- Yeah, the AMDone actually got exactlythe same FPS as the Intel with that RAM.- What?These frame times.So the peaks are not nearly as high.Like we get, wow!Look at this.We have regular frame timesthat are above what the scale onour graph even is at on the AMD system.That's incredible.The mind blowing thing aboutthis is how strong that CPUbottleneck is.I mean, clearly the GPU, it's RTX 3080.It's capable of pushingthose extra frames.We saw it do it.But, that RAM bandwidthis limiting the CPU'sability to keep up by that much.And wow, it happened again.Holy ...I really was not expecting this.I was expecting in amore GPU demanding game,that the CPU bottleneck caused bythis memory mismatch wouldhave been less of an issue.Holy (beep) this is mind blowing.Whoa, hey wait a minute.Here he's wearing different clothes.We just dropped 20% of ourperformance on the Intel system,and just gained 20%performance on AMD system.- Yeah they just swapped.- As promisedladies and gentlemen,almost exactly perfectly traded results.Just from swapping outthe computer memory.You got to remember guys,these are completely different systems.Other than that,I don't even,I can't even wrap my brainaround this much of a performancedifference from RAM.How did AMD allow this torepresent AMD Advantagein our initial look?All they had to do was upgrade the memory.And the craziest part is wedidn't have to look far to findmore examples that highlight this problem.Look at CS GO for example,it's a huge performance leadfor the Intel Nvidia systemuntil you upgrade thememory in the AMD system,and all of a sudden, it'swithin spitting distance.Now that's not to say thatthere weren't exceptions.Dirt 5, for example, verysmall performance differencesgoing from one type of memory to another.And actually performance wentdown a little bit with ourx8 memory modules.Now that's weird.It could be that this particulargame is more sensitive tolatency on our AMD system,but it could also be that it'sa more modern game with moremodern techniques for memory management.Throwing a wrench intothat theory though is forForza Horizon 4, also a newer game.But one that sees a hugedifference changing out the memory.I mean, this is mind blowing, right?The performance differencein some of these games iscomparable to going froman RTX 3070 to an RTX 3080.Those two parts costs adifference of $300 on Alienware'sM15 R4.And for what?So that they couldpotentially save a few bucks?I mean, it's not like thesemanufacturers kit, you know,get the good stuff on Neweggfor about $45 dollars a stick.So what exactly is going on here?Well, I'm gonna explainit to you like your five.Mostly because despitetalking to the big A's,ASUS, AMD and Anthony,nobody actually had a perfectexplanation for why thismatters so much.So here's our best shot at it.You can think of your system memorykind of like a big librarywhere a whole bunch of ones andzeros are stored.Every time that memory is accessed,the memory controller builtinto your CPU needs to trackdown where that data is andeither read or write it.Kind of like a librarian.By increasing thedensity of the RAM to thepoint where you can get rid ofhalf the chips on the module.You're basically laying offhalf of your librarians withoutreducing the number of booksthat they need to take care of.This means that in some casesit can take longer for them toretrieve your data.This manifests as higher RAM sub timingsand your computer becomes slower.Now the existence of more affordable,slower RAM, isn't a problem.I'm all for consumer choice.The problem is that there'sbasically no way of knowing whattype of RAM you have withoutopening up your computer.Like, to be clear, I'm not that surprisedthat the ASUS Strix Advantage editionhas this budget RAM in it,because it is a cheapergaming laptop.It's currently $1650 US dollarswhile the ARS we comparedit to goes for $2,400.And as an end-user, I mean,you can substantially narrowthe performance gap betweenthese machines for at most $90 dollars.Then flip your oldmemory on eBay, I guess.It's inconvenient, but you'restill coming out ahead.The problem though is ifcompanies start putting higherdensity x16 RAM into laptopsthat previously featured x8 sticks.Because they almostcertainly won't disclose thischange in the specs,and it causes a massive performance dropthat won't have been capturedby reviews of those machines.I mean, imagine the commotion,if Nvidia randomly decidedthat all 3080 laptopsnow can just use a 3070, becauseit saves them $15 dollars.Of course pointing out problemswithout presenting solutions?It's not very helpful.So, here's what I think needs to happen.Going forward, I think laptops should havethe density of theirRAM right in the specs.Because I mean, even froma manufacturer standpoint,after watching this video,it seems like really smart marketing.If you're shipping x8 sodems,the high performance ones.Put it on your product pageso people know thatit's a quality product.And for any manufacturerswho don't display this information.Going forward, we're gonnamake sure to let you guys knowthe RAM density of every gaming laptopthat enters our office.So, manufacturers know thateven if it's not in the specs,when we see x16 RAM,you better make sure thatit's in a budget system that'sdesigned specifically to helpour viewers put their extracash towards an insulatedwater bottle from lttstore.com.By the way I'm wearing theRAM Hoodie V2 right now.It's coming soon.Interestingly though, RAMdensity isn't the onlycontroversial thingthat's holding back theStrix Advantage edition.It also suffers from havingno graphics switching MUX.And let me demonstrate why that matters.Inside this laptop are two GPU's.The integrated GPU that'sbuilt into the CPU,that saves battery whenyou're browsing the internet,reading PDFs and so on and so forth.And the real dedicated GPUthat pushes them good FPS's for gaming,and sucks back a bunch of power.Now this sharing of the workis great for the end user,but it does come at a cost.Most laptops are set up sothat the dedicated GPU isactually routed through the integrated GPUbefore it displays onthe built-in monitor.And there's a performance hitfrom adding this extra step.High-end laptops alleviate this problemwith a MUX, or multiplexer.A MUX is basically an electronicswitcher that allows you toinput multiple signals.Then choose which one you'dlike to output at a given time.This allows a laptop tochoose integrated or dedicatedgraphics cards, without either of themrouting through the other.Meaning you don't have to dealwith that performance hit.So, why doesn't the StrixAdvantage edition have a MUX then?It's cost.The answer's always cost.Adding a MUX is expensive becauseit requires a motherboard redesign,it adds complexity and it adds components.So ASUS and AMD clearly decidedthey would rather sacrificea bit of performancein order to hit that $1650 asking price.And I guess it is pretty sweetthat if you hook it up to anexternal display,you can actually beat the performanceof a $2,400 dollar laptop.Look at that 135 FPS average.But it also means that the AMD advantageis more like an AMD compromise.And the specs of this machineend up being misleading.and not one, but two major ways,that together contribute a 25 plus percentperformance deficit in gaming.Which is what it's marketed to be good at.Now, hold on a second Linus,you said this can affect desktops too,and that's true, it can.Whether you're buying a prebuiltor whether you're pickingout the parts andassembling your own machine.If you end up with x16 memory modules,you could experience aperformance difference.Just like we talked about today.One of the big differencesthough on a desktop is thatA. It's a lot easier to visuallyinspect a module and seeexactly what it is.And B. The specs thatthe manufacturers provideare way more detailed.If I were to go on thewebsite of a reputable memorymanufacturer like G.Skill or Corsair,I would be able to find allthe information that I need tounderstand the trade offs that I'm making.So I might say, okay, thisis gonna be a slightly slowermemory kit, but I reallyneed the extra capacitythat I get with that additional density.So I'm gonna pull the trigger on it.So, really then, while itcan happen on desktops,this is mostly, yet another episode of\"Buying Gaming Laptopsis Way More Difficult Than it Should Be!\"which is terribly annoying,because it would be greatif consumers could just lookat the specs of the device andknow how fast to expect it to be,instead of the completemess we have right now.Like if this keeps getting worse,I might have to just get aMac book and be done with it.Which, sorry.Yeah, no forget it.I mean, even if the performanceis trash, I'm still gonna,I like gaming.So I'm gonna keep doingwhat I'm doing but,but I'm gonna be mad about it.And I'm gonna complain.Mine is the smart data assistantthat helps you discoverwhere your data is and helpsyou keep it where you want it.With Mine, you canexercise your data rightsand reclaim your right to beforgotten by asking servicesyou no longer use todelete your information.With how many data breachesthere are these days.I mean, I don't know about you guys,but I don't want companies thatI don't use holding onto mydata for no reason.So sign up and Mine will letyou know how many companies areholding your information.We ran our email and 155companies have our data.Westjet?Can't remember the lasttime I traveled anywhere.So there's no reason for themto have our financial data.You can send an official datadeletion request directly fromtheir app or from your inbox.And companies can confirmyour identity thenand delete your info.Data deletion requests can alsobe undone in the first hourif you regret it.So why wait?It's available for free for a limited timeat the link down below.If you guys enjoyed this videoand maybe you like betternews about laptops.Why don't you check out thevideo where we showed offCherry's new MX laptops,which is on DellAlienware's latest machines.They are really sweet.\n"