We’re just over a month away from CES 2022 and though it’s been scaled down over the last couple of years due to the pandemic, the 2022 edition is sure to include many product launches. One of the launches that’s likely to take place includes a new Asus ROG Zephyrus gaming laptop, specifically a model which includes some exciting unreleased hardware.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 GX650 reportedly includes a Ryzen 9 6900HX CPU and Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti GPU. The CPU in question is likely a Rembrandt APU, or the successor to the current Cezanne series APUs while the RTX 3080 Ti is a new high-end GPU that’s quite a jump over the current RTX 3080 laptop flagship.
The high-end Asus Zephyrus models usually come packed with hardware. Mylaptopguide (via Videocardz) speculates that the new model will include a 16-inch screen with a 300Hz refresh rate. It also claims the unit will be available with options including an 8TB SSD and 48 GB of DDR5 memory. Though we’re a little skeptical of those specs, big spenders will spend if Asus does release a Zephyrus with all of that included.
The RTX 3080 Ti is reportedly based on a new GPU, the GA103. Its expected to be an improvement over the GA104 based RTX 3080 in every way. A Geekbench listing teases some truly desktop class specs with 58 SMs for up to 7424 CUDA cores and a clock speed of 1395 MHz. The GPU also features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. Performance at that level means it will suck a lot of power, meaning you’ll find it in bulky desktop replacement machines. This GPU is likely to find its way into many high end 12th Gen laptops that are also slated to appear at CES.
The AMD Rembrandt APU is rumoured to be a 6nm refresh of the current 7nm Zen 3 Cezanne APU. DDR5 memory support has been rumoured, but if so its likely to be alongside DDR4. There’s also welcome PCIe 4.0 support. Apart from that there’s not much change expected on the CPU side of it, with higher clocks likely thanks to the slight efficiency gain from moving to 6nm. The GPU is something else entirely. The venerable Vega integrated graphics unit is finally being put out to pasture, in favor of RDNA 2 based graphics, though details are scarce. Current Vega integrated graphics are heavily bottlenecked by system RAM so we look forward to seeing how RDNA 2 performs with bandwidth limitations. Of course, in a high-end gaming laptop, you’ll be using the much more powerful discrete graphics.
CES 2022 gets underway in Las Vegas early next month. We can expect a lot of laptop unveilings including a slew of 12th Gen models alongside AMD’s offerings. On the desktop side, we could see Nvidia reveal its RTX 3090 Ti, RTX 2060 refresh and RTX 3070 Ti 16GB and AMD’s V-Cache enabled CPUs. Stay tuned for our coverage.