Gigabyte have refreshed their Aorus 15 gaming laptop with the new i7-9750H CPU and 240Hz
screen, but how well does this new model perform in games with the RTX 2070 graphics? I’ve
benchmarked 18 different games at all setting levels to show you how well it runs, and compared
it against some other laptops to see how it stacks up.
Just quickly before we jump into the benchmark results I’ll cover off the specs in my unit.
I’ve got the highest specced version here, which has an Intel i7-9750H CPU with Nvidia
RTX 2070 graphics and 16gb of memory running in dual channel. The Aorus 15 is available
in different configurations, you can check updated prices for different models in the
description.
I was running Windows 10 with the latest Nvidia drivers provided by Gigabyte, which are a
little behind the latest from Nvidia. Just a reminder we’re only looking at gaming
performance here, if you’re new to the channel get subscribed for the upcoming full review
which covers everything. We’ll start off with the results from all 18 games at all
setting levels, then compare with some other laptops afterwards.
For these tests I ran the fan maxed out, and when you do this the laptop will actually
overclock the graphics and boost the CPU TDP limit to improve performance, so these are
the settings I’ve tested with.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode and not in multiplayer mode, as it’s easier
to consistently reproduce the test run. The purple bars show the results with ray tracing
disabled, while the green bars show RTX on. The RTX results weren’t great at ultra and
high settings, though it was usable at high. For a game like this I’d want higher frame
rate though, and RTX off at ultra settings both looks and runs better than with RTX on
at low settings.
Apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum, or all settings on the lowest
possible values, as it doesn’t have predefined setting presets. The results in this game
were a little lower than I expected based on the specs, but it’s running well enough
even maxed out, while minimum settings boosted FPS by 30%.
Far Cry New Dawn was tested with the built in benchmark. Not too much to say here, above
60 FPS at ultra settings is good, oh and it was coming out ahead of the 2080 Max-Q in
the Razer Blade I recently reviewed at every setting level.
Far Cry 5 was also tested with the built in benchmark, and the results were ahead of the
newer Far Cry New Dawn just covered, and we’ll see how this one compares to other laptops
soon.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature, and while I have to regularly refresh the
replay due to updates I test in the same area. This game doesn’t need powerful hardware
to run, so even with epic settings we’re seeing 120 FPS averages, with low settings
actually able to make good use of the 240Hz display.
Overwatch is another well optimized game and was tested in the practice range, as other
players, bots and even different maps in actual gameplay affect the frame rate and this allows
for consistent testing. At low and medium the 300 FPS frame cap is hit, while epic settings
still played extremely well.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark, the results were pretty
good, just a couple of FPS behind the 2080 Max-Q in the Razer Blade I recently tested,
and actually ahead at lower settings, possible due to the higher clocked 9750H CPU.
Metro Exodus was tested using the built in benchmark, most parts of the game perform
a fair bit better than this, so don’t take these results as a good indication of what
to expect throughout the entire game, it’s more of a worst case but does let you perform
the same test to compare against.
CS:GO was tested using the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and like always high frame rates were coming
out of this test. This is the sort of game the 240Hz screen would be more useful for
if you’re playing competitively.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark, and in general is a game I’ve
found to benefit from Nvidia’s new turing architecture. I’ve only recently started
using a 100% render scale here, as the built in presets use 50% by default, so the results
can’t be compared to most of my previous tests. I’ll also note this was another test
where low settings were getting frame rates that would be well matched with the 240Hz
screen.
PUBG was tested using the replay feature, and even at ultra settings almost 100 FPS
was possible in this test, with lower settings getting us closer to 130 FPS, which seems
to be about as well as this game performs on laptop hardware, I don’t think I’ve
ever seen it much above 140 FPS in my test run.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark, and I was seeing some
fairly high frame rates at the lower setting levels when compared to other laptops I’ve
tested. This is my first 9750H machine and this does seem to be a CPU heavy game so it
may be helping a bit there. I’ll have a whole video comparing the 8750H to 9750H though,
so make sure you’re subscribed for that one.
Dota 2 was tested playing in the middle lane with an average amount of action going on,
and it was running very smoothly without any problems at all. At maximum settings it was
still performing very well at 150 FPS, with closer to 200 at lower settings also possible.
Watch Dogs 2 is a resource intensive game, though with a solid 30 FPS it plays just fine
to me, so hitting the 60 FPS sweet spot at ultra on this laptop was quite a nice result.
Ghost Recon is another demanding game and was tested using the built in benchmark. Unless
you’ve got a top of the line laptop, 60 FPS at ultra in this test is basically not
possible, though decent frame rates were achievable with lower settings.
The Witcher 3 was running well with hairworks disabled, and it played perfectly fine for
me even with ultra settings. 90 FPS with 60 for the 1% low works well, and while you can
get higher FPS at lower settings I don’t think this game benefits much from it and
would prefer the higher visual quality with high settings.
Strange Brigade was tested with the built in benchmark using Vulkan, and was also running
quite well, with low settings actually able to smash out enough frames to put the 240Hz
screen to use.
Shadow of War was tested with the built in benchmark, and is another game that I’ve
found to benefit from Nvidia’s new Turing architecture. Even ultra settings was only
just behind 100 FPS, we needed very high to hit that.
Let’s also take a look at how this config of the Aorus 15 compares with other laptops
to see how it stacks up, use these results as a rough guide only as they were tested
at different times with different drivers.
In Battlefield 5 I’ve tested ultra settings and I’ve got the Aorus 15 up the top in
red, and it was doing quite well, only coming in behind the 90 watt 2080 Max-Q laptops I’ve
tested. It’s worth remembering this is my first 9750H laptop test, so all the others
have the 8750H.
Here are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark, and the
Aorus was doing well here, coming in at second place, only behind the ASUS GX701, which is
ahead of the other 2080 Max-Q laptops due to G-Sync.
These are the results from Shadow of the Tomb raider with the built in benchmark at highest
settings, and in this test the Aorus is a little ahead of the Alienware m17, which isn’t
too surprising, as I had some thermal throttling on the graphics in that one.
This is the first time I’ve tested a laptop with RTX 2070 graphics, and for the most part
it seems to be slotting in about where I expected, between the 2070 Max-Q and 2080 Max-Q, though
it does of course depend on the game, in some it was beating the 2080 Max-Q machines. Overall
we’re seeing pretty good performance, and we’ll take a look at thermals and everything
else in future videos. It’s worth noting that there was no Nvidia Optimus here, the
display is connected straight to the Nvidia graphics, meaning we should be seeing higher
performance when compared to laptops that need to send the signal via the Intel graphics
first. This does however come at the expense of battery life, it’s a trade off. I’ve
got a video linked in the description covering this topic further if you’re after more
information.
So how do you guys think the new Aorus 15 gaming laptop did in these games? Let me know
your thoughts down in the comments, and get subscribed so you don’t miss the upcoming
full review.