We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The second pair, Steel Nomad’s regular and Light subtests, focuses on APIs more commonly used for game development, like Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance in a synthetic environment. This benchmark subjects 3D scenes to increasingly intense ray-traced workloads at 1440p.
Our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at the system’s full HD (1080p or 1200p native) resolution—represent competitive shooter, open-world, and simulation games, respectively. If the screen is capable of a higher resolution, we rerun the tests at the QHD equivalent of 1440p or 1600p. Each game runs at two sets of graphics settings per resolution for up to four runs total on each game.
We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Minimum graphics preset—aimed at maximizing frame rates to test display refresh rates—and again at the Extreme preset. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs fully, so we run it on the Ultra graphics preset and again at the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 represents our DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD systems) test, demonstrating a GPU’s capacity for frame-boosting upscaling technologies. The capacity of these frame-rate boosts changes with the version of frame-generation tech available, with DLSS 2 and 3 stitching in one AI-generated frame for every originally rendered frame, and the latest version of DLSS (DLSS 4) inserting up to three additional frames.
In 3DMark, the ROG Strix Scar 16 proved a top-class machine, with excellent scores in every test, though the Razer Blade 16 led throughout. We’d expect as much from any high-end gaming laptop. But in gaming tests, the Scar proved its mettle. In F1 2024, the Asus actually led the pack with DLSS on at both resolutions. In Cyberpunk 2077, the Scar fell a frame or two behind the rest, within the margin of error.
Asus’ laptop lagged a bit further behind in Call of Duty, but it still reported sky-high frame rates at all of our test settings. (The MSI laptop could not complete the Call of Duty test due to software issues.) We’re talking about some of the best gaming performance you’ll see in a current laptop, thanks to the GeForce RTX 5080 laptop GPU inside.
