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Geoff strode into my office, dressed in his Sunday best and enjoying a glass of 9AM Vodka Daniels. “I got a job for you,” he shouted, clearly hoping that by raising his voice he would frighten out any leftover interns who had escaped our previous purges. “We got some new hardware in, and I want you to review the Asus G750J laptop”. “But Geoff,” I started blubbering, “I can’t do it. You know I can’t do hardware. Not after the war. Not after what happened at…Macho Grande”.

“NONSENSE,” Geoff screamed, while replacing the highball glass that he had left stuck in my face with one of my favourite My Little Pony glasses, pouring himself a concoction that was part rum, part leftover Charlie Sheen blood. “Matty got his afro stuck in the ceiling fans again, and Al is busy reviewing a new bee hive from Apple,” Geoff explained with a hint of demented glee in his eyes at he heard Sandy scream about bees in the hall. “You’re the only person we have left who can review this laptop. And besides, Gavin is busy meeting with various studios and arranging 11/10 reviews for their games”.

“Fine, I’ll do it. give me some time to disengage the auto-writer so long”. I put my review gloves on, and tightened up my big boy pants. It was time to review some hardware again, and I was hoping that any of my various gods would have mercy on me.

Chapter 1 – Back in black

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An hour later, the Asus G750J was lowered into my office. It was big. No, that’s an understatement. It was bloody massive. It was big enough to land fighter jets on. It was massive enough to be used as a blunt force trauma instrument should I ever want to get rid of that damn stalker we had lurking in the ceiling. Hell, I could hold meetings with the Avengers if I wanted to, because this laptop was as massive as the SHIELD Helicarrier. And hot damn, it was sexy.

The Asus G750J looked like the bastard child of a Lamborghini Aventador and a Decepticon. Plain black, with a rubberised texture and some sexy exhaust fans in the trunk. Opening her up revealed a screen so damn bright that I could use it to blast moths out of the sky, while the chiclet keyboard below the 17 inch display had a faux stainless steel feel, making the hardware feel solid. It may have been love at first sight.

I switched the G750J on, while she turned me on in response. Whisper-quiet, and quicker than your first time in the sack when she started up. She started humming, and was purring like a tiger after it had eaten some lost tourists. The Asus G750J certainly talked the talk. Now it was time to see if it could walk the walk. With some games.

Chapter 2 – Let there be rock

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We had a bunch of games to try out. Need For Speed Most Wanted had me dodging traffic and earning new cars at a blistering smooth frame-rate on max settings. But that was merely the appetizer. I then moved onto some Medal Of Honour: Warfighter, which despite boasting a terrible name, still had some decent visuals that could contribute to the test. At 1920 x 1080 resolution, with all those settings cranked to the max, the G750J once again made light work of the challenge before it. It was like throwing a hundred ninjas at a 1980s version of Steve Seagal, except with less blood and talk about the environment.

But it was time for the main course. There’s a reason why everybody asks “Can it run Crysis?”, and that’s because that’s the end-level boss of games when it comes to testing graphics. The big kahuna, the Ayotollah of rock ‘n rolla, the king and queen of cheese. We didn’t have Crysis on us though. What we had, was Crysis 2, the Maximum Director’s Cut Edition and a few high-res mods. It was time to get serious.

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And by the hammer of Mighty Thor, did the Asus G750J ace that test. This was a game that we were running at full spec, ultra details dialled up and a fire department on standby in case we overheat the CPU and burn down another small Russian village. With those settings activated and the resolution at full high definition, Crysis 2 ran like a dream. It played like a fantasy, while console fanboys looked at their shiny new Xbox Ones and PlayStation 4s in disgust. The biggest hurdle we had was thrown at the Asus G750J, and the gaming laptop didn’t just jump over, it paused in mid-air and landed a Wrestlemania elbow on the obstacle in front of it.

Interestingly enough, we did discover one small caveat to all of this. Despite the Asus boasting the advantage of being a device that you can move around LANS without needing to use a exoskeleton and an 18 wheeler truck to transport everything, playing games on the go resulted in diminished returns. Games are best played when this machine is plugged, with the GPU clearly compensating for travel, leaving games to suffer.

Chapter 3 – High voltage

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Like a fat kid in a candy shop, I knew the G750J was going to be hungry. After all, gaming laptops aren’t exactly known for being fuel efficient, and with a massive crisp screen, high-end hardware and other software running on it, the clock was ticking. Running the device in a power-save mode with the screen brightness turned down by half and general applications such as web-browsing, watching videos and typing up some stories, resulted in around three hours of use.

Not exactly spectacular, but more than capable for a day ahead. In real terms however, unplugging the G750J and going full speed ahead resulted in just over an hour of use, while recharging it all the way back up to 100% power took around two hours to complete. All in all, a very average battery lifespan.

Chapter 4 – For those about to rock, we salute you

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As a media device, the Asus G750J was like carrying a small cinema around. The massive screen was sharp and captured every single unwanted wrinkle and blemish on the face of a Hollywood star, while the sound was loud and clear enough to scatter various pigeons away from my neighbourhood. There are most likely various other methods of watching blu-rays or listening to music that don’t require setting up a small Dolby Surround Sound lab in your house, but all that hardware most certainly does benefit the games you want to play, and having access to it for more mundane entertainment certainly doesn’t hurt at all.

Chapter 5 – The nuts and bolts

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Right, enough hyperbole. Let’s break it down now. The Asus G750J isn’t cheap. It’ll set you back around R34 899, according to our friends at Evetech. So what’s in the sexy box? What does all your cash get you? Here are the official specs of the G750J that I used:

  • CPU – Intel Core i7
  • CPU Speed – i7-4700HQ 2.40GHz
  • CPU Support – 6M Cache up to 3.40GHz
  • Screen size – 17.3″
  • Memory Size – 16GB
  • Hard Disk – 256GB SSD + 1.5TB HDD
  • Optical Drive – Blu-Ray writer
  • Graphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 770M
  • Video Memory – 4GB
  • Graphic Type – Dedicated Card
  • RAM – 2 x 8GB DDR3L at 1600Mhz
  • Memory Slot (Total) – 4
  • Max Memory Supported – 32GB

And then it was time to use some 3DMark to give it a proper benchmarking. Remember, the benefit about 3DMark is that it’s the Switzerland of benchmarking programs. It doesn’t favour either AMD or Nvidia, so results are very, very fair. Here are the numbers that were spat out at us:

3d cloudgate

 

3D Firestrike

 

3D Ice storm

 

 

3d skydiver

 

3d total

Conclusion

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No matter which brand you buy when it comes to gaming laptops, you’re going to be forking out plenty of cash. That’s a fact of life. What you want when you buy such a device however, is a pack up and go LAN machine that is minimal fuss and just pure gaming. And in that regard, the G750J more than delivers. It may lose some power when it’s unplugged when you’re looking to do some high end gaming, but the size and weight of the latop most likely means that you won’t be keeping it away from an outlet for too long.

And in that respect, the Asus G750J is a lot like one of my favourite AC/DC songs. A whole lotta Rosie.

Last Updated: August 27, 2014

Asus G750J
Rad

27 Comments

  1. Impressive, most impressive!

    Reply

  2. Admiral Chief Assassin

    August 27, 2014 at 13:11

    10 points for ACDC

    Reply

  3. Viking Of Science

    August 27, 2014 at 13:11

    How Do you Not Have OG Crysis? It’s like $20 on Steam, Surely you can buy it from All that Sweet Sweet Industry money you’re making? Or Does All of it go Into @OddSockZA:disqus’s Liquor fund?

    Reply

  4. Rinceable

    August 27, 2014 at 13:16

    Awesome review Darryn! That first part had me laughing my coffee out my nose.

    Reply

    • Rudi

      August 27, 2014 at 13:19

      I totally agree. Lamborghini. Decepticon. Tigers eating people. Darryn, well done mate!

      Reply

    • Rock789

      August 27, 2014 at 13:28

      You should see a doctor about that… 😉

      Reply

  5. Sir Rants A Lot: On Pandora

    August 27, 2014 at 13:19

    Very impressive laptop. Loved the intro to the review 🙂

    Reply

  6. Sir Rants A Lot: On Pandora

    August 27, 2014 at 13:21

    I would not pay this for a laptop though. Half the price will see you beat the benchmarks of this machine on a desktop.

    I just don’t see the reason behind gaming laptops. I honestly don’t

    Reply

    • Weanerdog

      August 27, 2014 at 13:41

      Space, not the final frontier kind. I don’t really have the space for a desktop and I don’t know if I would want my kids messing with it if I had. Now a laptop I can hide in the tallest cupboard in all the land (next to the porn), sadly I don’t have a spare 35K hanging around or any more space in that cupboard.

      Reply

      • Sir Rants A Lot: On Pandora

        August 27, 2014 at 13:46

        That’s the reason I can’t validate a gaming laptop. The price. I understand the reasons behind wanting one. I just don’t understand why they are so expensive.

        Reply

        • Weanerdog

          August 27, 2014 at 13:54

          Couldn’t really say, but it seems to me that it is the graphics cards that skyrocket the price.

          Reply

          • Sir Rants A Lot: On Pandora

            August 27, 2014 at 14:06

            The GFX card is a 770m. The desktop 770 (Which is far stronger than the mobile 770m) is R5k. So I still don’t see how they get to 34K for price lol

          • Weanerdog

            August 28, 2014 at 08:58

            The 770m probably equates to a 670 desktop performance wise. But this is where the price lies, because it is so much smaller with less prospects of getting rid of heat. I am guessing that it also has a much smaller production run, so smaller more expensive components and all the R&D and set costs need to be absorbed by less units.

        • Alien Emperor Trevor

          August 27, 2014 at 13:59

          Because the word “gamer” automatically doubles the price of whatever hardware they’re selling.

          Reply

  7. Rock789

    August 27, 2014 at 13:29

    Okay that’s a pretty shweet laptop… Almost makes me wanna become a PC gamer again… Almost… 😉

    Reply

  8. Matewis Jubilai

    August 27, 2014 at 13:34

    R35k ?? No way man. Build a killer desktop with a 27” monitor and two enthusiast-level graphics cards. Then use the leftover money to build an outdoor wood-burning pizza oven, and tell your friends to come to your house lan. They’ll be insanely jealous of your pc, but they won’t care, because there will be an inexhaustible supply of pizza

    Reply

  9. Weanerdog

    August 27, 2014 at 13:38

    Quick question though why is the bench marking saying you have a GTX 770m and not a GTX 780m as specified in the specs?

    Reply

    • The D

      August 27, 2014 at 13:40

      Gah, slip of my edit. Thought I had fixed that.

      Reply

      • Weanerdog

        August 27, 2014 at 13:43

        So no GTX780m then

        Reply

  10. WarframedSquirrel

    August 27, 2014 at 13:41

    Nice machine, but way too pricey, and the G750JZ is coming soon according to my supplier… slightly better CPU and GFx card… at about the same price.

    Reply

  11. Rags

    August 27, 2014 at 15:58

    Its only so expansive, because Asus like to charge South Africans double for everything. Look at the new ASUS Rog Switft, R15 000 for a $800 monitor. While Dell, AOC etc is about %10 more expensive here. I wish some journalists will investigate this.

    Reply

  12. Jessica

    November 3, 2014 at 09:12

    I completely agree. I have this laptop & I love it so much! It definitely delivers what is needed & more when it comes to games.

    Reply

  13. doob

    March 31, 2015 at 15:16

    I recently got this laptop. My only problem with it is the keys are the worst I’ve ever seen. There’s only about an 80-90 percent chance the key will actually register when you push it. Even if I hit it hard. Luckily I have a desktop keyboard, however I expected a good gaming laptop to have good keys, since it’s kind of really necessary. 8/10 laptop. Not very portable, but it’s a gaming laptop, so that’s kind of expected. Keys are junk, and it has a pretty bad track pad, as most laptops do.

    Reply

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