I recently dissuaded a good pal of mine from upgrading their GPU, which has to be a first for me. After all, I freakin' love upgrading graphics cards... unquestionably too often, to my only minor shame.
Said graphics card doesn’t even exist yet, either! Although the as yet announced Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 GPU could yet ship before the end of 2024, my friend would be using it on a 1440p (2560 x 1440) 27-inch monitor. Meaning a card of such colossal power would be wasted on such a small screen.
That’s got me thinking about the current king of graphics cards: Nvidia’s RTX 4090. And to be more specific, how I’ve not been using mine as much of late, even though it powers one of the best gaming PCs that I’m lucky to own.
I first purchased Inno3D's version of Team Green’s mighty GPU when it launched back in October 2022. Though Nvidia’s official price tag for the most powerful consumer card you can currently buy initially retailed for $1,599, it’s rarely actually been sold for that lofty price tag. Indeed, various third-party manufacturers continue to sell the RTX 4090 for closer to $2,000 two years after its release, and it rarely goes on sale. Although…
Right now The Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 4090 GPU is on sale at Amazon for $1,804. That’s hardly an Earth-shattering discount considering the list price is $1,899 (meaning you’re only saving $95). But hey, a deal is a deal, right?
The fact that I’ve been using my RTX 4090 desktop a whole lot less of late can squarely be blamed on the amazing Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024). Outside of the incredible LG G3 OLED TV, there’s not a product I’ve written more about since I joined Tom’s Guide a shade over a year ago. And Asus’ astonishing gaming laptop only came out in February!
It’s just the absolute best. I went for the top-tier RTX 4070 version, which also packs in an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS CPU and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. When it comes to taking on the best PC games, it absolutely slays them. Throw in an essential $7 Steam app that can triple the frame rates of games thanks to a canny form of supersampling, and I can often reach between 80-120 fps in many modern titles.
The latest Zephyrus G14 is also only one of two OLED gaming laptops on the market that currently supports Nvidia’s frame-smoothing G-Sync tech, and even my ultra-obsessive peepers can’t tell when a game dips.
Builders beware
There are a couple of other factors that I’ve talked about on the site before that also contribute to why the G14 is eating up my evening hours over my mega rig. As much as I love my high-end desktop — which aside from the RTX 4090, has an AMD Ryzen 7800X3D CPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a frankly ludicrously fast 4TB SSD that can reach read speeds of up to 11,700MBps — when it comes to quitting time, I often simply don’t want to spend any more time in my home office where my desktop resides.
Sure, buying a fantastic PC stand on wheels allows me to roll my absurdly hefty 65 pound PC through to my living room with relative ease. Yet that simple pushing process weirdly aggravates my husky, so I’ve stopped gaming on my desktop in my lounge as much of late.
There’s also the not inconsiderable issue that stuff with home-built rigs can go wrong all the damn time totally out of the blue. Sometimes it will be a random “Blue Screen of Death”, while occasionally my PC will just straight up force to boot, requiring a mildly annoying CMOS reset. Suffice to say, as you can see in the photo a few paragraphs above, I’ve had to tinker with my PC a looooot. Also, what reasonable person owns that many screwdrivers?
Man-cub alive is the G14 good
The ROG Zephyrus G14 isn’t just great for gaming — and holy cow is it ever — it’s also a superb Netflix machine or a laptop you should consider buying if you’re a fan of the best Disney Plus movies (hence the shot from 2016’s live-action remake of “The Jungle Book” above). Paired with a decent set of the best Bluetooth speakers, streaming movies and shows on the G14 is a joy.
Despite owning Asus’ wonder of a laptop for less than a month, it’s already become my go-to device when I want to chill out in the evenings. The flipside of that is my LG OLED, gaming desktop and M4 iPad Pro are getting a whole lot less love than they would be if I hadn’t bought the G14.
I’ve suddenly become one of those people who the likes of all-time great filmmakers like Spielberg and Scorcese would despise, as I’ve watched more content on my new laptop recently than my 77-inch OLED TV. I can only offer the two legendary Hollywood helmers my most grumbling of apologies.
So am I going to sell my RTX 4090 anytime soon now that the Zephrus G14 and its wonderful 2.8K (2880 x 1800) OLED display has captured my heart? Probably not. I still love having a gaming PC, and thanks to how seamlessly cloud saving works on Steam, I’ve got the option of playing the likes of perhaps my favorite video game of all time — Red Dead Redemption 2, in case you were wondering — seamlessly across my gaming desktop, the G14 and my Steam Deck OLED.
To wrap things up in semi-succinct fashion, why the hell did I wait so long to buy my first gaming laptop?!
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