Asus TUF FX505
ASUS PARTNERS WITH AMD AND NVIDIA TO THROW ANOTHER HARDBALL AT THE BUDGET LAPTOP GAMING SCENE.
ASUS LAUNCHED ITS TUF Gaming laptops last year as a reengineered entry level gaming laptop for those wanting a little more durability at an affordable price point. A year later this is still the by-line, but the revamp has a number of new features that make it stand out in other ways too. Top of this list is a new set of AMD Ryzen CPUs that give similar performance for a considerable price cut. Backing this up is the inclusion of Nvidia’s latest GTX 1650 and 1660 GPUs, which jettison the Ray Tracing and DLSS perks introduced on the 20-series RTX GPUs to get near 2060 performance with another solid price cut. If that wasn’t enough, Asus has also slapped a 120Hz 15.6-inch screen on the front for super smooth gaming and it’s even included a whole new suite of MIL-STD810G military certifications for durability against shocks and extreme temperatures, humidities, altitudes and solar radiation exposure.
At first glance, without any of this background knowledge, you might think the design of the TUF FX505DU Gaming laptop was nothing special since it sports a vinyl-like plastic keyboard surround and a simple painted-metal top shell. The radial perforated vents on both the topside and undercarriage also aren’t our favourite design, but peel back the facade and these vents have been designed for function not form. The ‘Anti Dust Cooling’ system introduced on last year’s models returns to spin out any particles that would otherwise be flushed through your laptop, running the risk of getting stuck and building up. And while the membrane keyboard is a little mushy, it’s not bad for typing and is tested to last in excess of 20 million keypresses, double the industry standard.
The TUF FX505 can be fitted with either an Intel Core i5, Intel Core i7, AMD Ryzen 5 or an AMD Ryzen 7, but we couldn’t see the lower end Intel option ranged anywhere locally. The Core i7 model comes with either 8GB of RAM and a GTX 1050 GPU for $1299, or you can pay $100 extra and get 16GB of RAM and a GTX 1050 Ti GPU. The FX505DD, DU or DT models come with various combinations of the Ryzen 5-33550H or Ryzen 7-3750H CPUs, either 8 or 16GG of RAM, one the three GTX 1050, 1650 or 1660 GPUs, and either 256GB or 512GB of PCIe SSD storage. The AMD models start at $999 for the DD and range up to $1592 ($1,699 RRP) for the DU.
While AMD’s Ryzen processors may have the edge when it comes to PC CPUs, the notebook versions are only quad-core arrangements, which means there’s a considerable cut in raw power against Intel’s hexa-core chips. On Cinebench’s R15 Multi-threaded benchmark the FX505DU got 782, 29% lower than our average for devices running an Intel Core i7-8750H.
The Nvidia GTX 1660Ti offers between 45 and 100% frame rate boosts over last year’s FX504 running a GTX 1050Ti. This means you’re getting 35+ fps averages on the latest titles using 1080p Ultra settings, and you can start to really use that 120Hz screen if you lower the graphics settings or you play older/ less demanding titles.
The TUF FX505DU makes some critical improvements on its predecessor and cleverly cuts costs to make a serious contender for the best budget gaming laptop in 2019.