Performance Testing Continued

3DMark

dGPU, Overboost profile

Unigine

dGPU, Overboost profile

Luxmark

dGPU, Overboost profile

Memory, Storage, and System

Gaming in Different Operating Modes

As gaming is the main premise behind the XMG brand, I used a selection of a few different games (FPS, RPG, MOBA, RTS, and racing) I had at my disposal and measured the average performance in the various operating modes of the laptop. Note that many of these are unrealistic, but this will give you a general sense of the realistic performance differences between them. Here, dGPU is with NVIDIA Optimus turned off, Optimus in turn refers to the use of the RTX 3080 Ti, as a point contrast from when the Intel Iris Xe was forced as the display adapter. I suppose having two external display outputs from two different GPUs has an unintended use case after all!


This chart alone took over a week of testing, but yields very useful results. Unsurprisingly, there's a clear performance deficit between the Intel Iris Xe and NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti, as well as battery vs. plugged in. That having been said, note how the so-called Balanced mode is not ideal for anything except reducing power draw from the AC mains. You should instead use either of the two other profiles with custom fan curves; turning off NVIDIA Optimus will provide a tiny performance bump, too. There wasn't much room for overclocking though, with the combination of the Intel Core i7-12700H and NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti mobile hitting power and thermal limits both. I did try to optimize the CPU as best as possible, but the GPU was not giving much at all, but it's more critical to gaming anyway. This is where the RTX 3070 Ti might make more sense on this platform.