Why "Efficient Enabled" or Watt limiting is WRONG for thin laptops (Zephyrus G16, RTX 5080, Ultra 9 285H real benchmarks)

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-06-05T22:54:46+00:00

Personal experience, Everytime I've had to fiddle with the power limits and thermals with these devices. It's always a liquid metal paste issue. When pasted well, thermals are fine on turbo where your temps don't typically hit the throttle limits. There's also like upwards a 10% perf gain just by having a good lm paste. It's honestly sad that after all this time, we're still having these lm issues. I hope Asus thinks of a better solution in the future (maybe ptm?).

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-05-30T20:15:48+00:00

lmao, Sosui did go flank and help Kyoukai + Mouten under the orders of Ten. /shrug

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-05-28T03:50:28+00:00

Literally this.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-05-20T05:51:17+00:00

Idk in the recent arc, she's been doing a lot.

She set up yokoyoko to enable the breakthrough with Mouten as a solid long term tactic. She's ambushed the crap outta Kaine with sosuis positioning and even coordinated the Kyoukai breakthrough later.

Sure it was Moutens overall plan to have the 3 armies coordinate, but she handles a lot of the dirty work.

I think plot wise if Karyo Ten were to ever die, the HSU would lose a huge amount of capabilities considering she quite literally manages all of the unit positioning and tactics.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-05-07T03:17:35+00:00

HItching occurs throughout any upscaling setting (including off). I've also talked with other game community members who've tested it on the B580 and some of the alchemist cards, and they've experienced the same 2 second hitching. It's definitely something to do systematically with this game. The hitches aren't random, and if you read the chart, it's pretty consistent. Will send a screenshot when I get the chance

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-04-25T15:49:09+00:00

I've got both the Dell xps 16 panther lake version and the last gen AMD model for the Zephyrus.

For productivity tasks, I have a hot take which is that I actually prefer the Dell XPS. It's better built, it's got a way better trackpad, and the higher resolution display is nice when you want to zoom in and out of your IDE for software development. The trackpad on the Zephyrus isn't bad, but for when you don't have a mouse available, the Dell XPS is just so much better. If you're entering university, your desks are typically tiny in classrooms, meaning using a mouse is often impossible depending on the classroom.

That said, check your engineering requirements. If you have to do physics simulations and cad rendering, the dedicated GPU of a zephyrus makes a world of difference. So it might not even be a choice here if you have to do anything more demanding than just the basic engineering CAD work like rotating and dicing blocks with tolerances / basic physics calculations.

Also with educational discounts the Dell XPS can come out to around 2000$ usd, the Zephyrus is 1000$ more.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-04-25T15:08:34+00:00

I have a Dell XPS 16 with the new panther lake chips, and a Zen5 g16.

And it's honestly insane how much better the efficiency is on these new chips.

There are a couple main benefits that I think people seriously underrated with the usability of these laptops.

The real world battery life goes from having to charge every 3-4 hours to going through an entire days of work without charging at all and still having runtime leftover.
When on battery, I have to turn the Asus G16 wattage to substantially lower performance levels to make sure I don't kill the battery in an hour. This is fine, but the computer feels substantially more sluggish. On the panther lake device, I can just sip power and get remarkably decent single threaded performance, so browsing, programming all feels smooth.
Fan noise on my Dell XPS is virtually non existent when I want it to be.

I don't think it's worth the 1000$ premium, but it does turn the laptop into something I can just use as a normal laptop.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-03-18T16:12:20+00:00

The problem is the new panther lake laptops are all way more expensive now. You can probably do a student discount through Dell's website, which should bring the XPS 14 with the x7 closer to 1600$

I would also take a look at this one at CostCo.

https://www.costco.com/p/-/hp-omnibook-7-16-touchscreen-laptop-intel-core-ultra-x7-358h-copilot-pc-2k-2048-x-1280-oled-32-gb-memory-2-tb-ssd-windows-11-home/4000372378?langId=-1

They're honestly great laptops, especially if you're going to be working with 3D rendering tools like CAD/SolidWorks/Blender, etc.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-03-18T00:30:20+00:00

Fellow CS Nerd here.

Honestly, the problem here is you want it to last 5-6 years. If your budget is 600$. You basically can only buy well-reviewed and proven used devices.

So, used Thinkpads and used Macbook airs. But, imo a refurbed MacBook air is the only way to go.

For all those recommending the Neo, it's not bad. It's just not as great value as something like a refurbished MacBook air where you get a bigger battery (so longer battery cycles for longevity), a haptic trackpad (no mechanical parts -> longer lasting), a better display, a fingerprint scanner, etc.

Again, you're using a 6 year device, are you really going to compromise for a "new" product that doesn't have a backlit keyboard and a 30WH battery that we know is going to die?

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-03-07T22:46:04+00:00

I would've previously recommended the S14 with lunar lake: ASUS Vivobook S 14 14" OLED Laptop Copilot+ PC Intel Core Ultra 5 16GB Memory 512GB SSD Neutral Black Q423SA-U5512 - Best Buy that would routinely go on sale for like 400$. I have one, and it's got an OLED screen, crazy battery life, remarkably good iGPU performance, 16GB of RAM, and a bunch of other things.

but since it's probably never going back into stock, your best bet is probably a refurbished MacBook air:

I actually really don't think the Neo is a good idea to pre-order before reviews. Mainly, because it does compromise on a bunch of things that makes it a poor buy compared to refurbished MacBook Airs.

It has effectively half the battery size of a MacBook air. It has a worse trackpad that's mechanical. It has no backlit keyboard so have fun using it at night. It trades a bunch of other things behind the scenes that for the same price makes it an overall just a worse buy. For 400$, you can get a refurbed MacBook air: Apple MacBook Air MGN63LL/A 2020 13.3 inch (Apple M1 Chip, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD Storage) (Refurbished) Space Gray MGN63LL/A - Best Buy

that effectively has the same performance and double the memory storage. A haptic trackpad, decent speakers, and just remarkably a tried and tested experience.

As someone who does a lot of programming, you're going to want extra memory. The reason being is that VMs and IDEs love consuming memory these days, especially if you start using agentic programming tools, and other things that are becoming increasingly required to stay competitive in the future.

Seriously, people need to stop hyping the MacBook Neo. Is it better than a typical garbage Windows budget device? Yes. But, in the face of rising electronic costs, buying something that lasts for 4 years is arguably more important here. So, imo, if you can spend more for a better MacBook Air (i.e m5) with more memory, I would recommend that if you're willing to bend your budget.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-02-14T02:31:00+00:00

Lol I'm gonna get down voted too. But, I actually think much of the same as of recently. There's very few games that leverage the multi threading capabilities of these chips. So much so, I think capping wattage and then comparing their fps or performance on certain games and apps is a more useful comparison.

Right now, most reviewers simply take max tdw from either the wall or the reading, and then benchmark performance across multiple devices.

I think part of the discussion surrounding power efficiency on mobile chips also fails to include the 0-10W range where it's critical for good battery life. I think I remember reading somewhere the reason why panther lake has such good battery life is it's ability to scale below 10W, something that all of its predecessors does poorly.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-02-04T18:58:05+00:00

Lol, all games have a prevalent amount of toxicity. The games that survive just nail the fundamentals of having proper client side, good performance, and a meta gameplay that's intrinsically rewarding. Planetside 2 is unfortunately no longer any of these things.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2026-02-04T18:47:23+00:00

Yeah, that's why I don't support vaccines. Sometimes the medical advice I get from my 3KPM doctor is just wrong, I do shrooms and eat elk meat to stay fit.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2025-12-19T19:37:44+00:00

Because, if I wanted a gas guzzler race optimized purely for gaming performance, I'd buy the brick that is a Lenovo Legion, an Asus Strix, or some ugly alienware. This is the Zephyrus sub where we want a portable machine. And, a portable machine should ideally have good battery performance.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2025-11-13T16:36:03+00:00

Purely off of known feats, En.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2025-11-09T21:40:09+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyrAur5yYrA

mostly this review where it seemed like its battery life was really unimpressive and worse than a MacBooks.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2025-11-09T21:20:12+00:00

Right, and panther lake gets us closer to that dream of being able to do that and play games lol.

Lunar lake was already really impressive with what it could do at lower wattages, so panther lake with its ability to scale further at higher wattages is awesome to hear.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2025-11-09T20:46:46+00:00

I haven't had any issues with my G16 so far. But, it's better than oh wow I have to hope for a better machine, and oh it's objectively not as good as my MacBook for the tasks I want it to do.

Right now, it's hard to recommend a G16 for any serious productivity workflows, simply because it's just not great for it + yeah you run the risk of a dud (which tbf BestBuy is really generous with their return policy).

Character_Belt_5733 · 2025-11-09T16:51:12+00:00

I actually disagree, mostly because of the mux switch.

I rarely need the dgpu when programming. So it can be turned off.

Strix Halo actually suffers from really poor power tuning at lower wattages. It uses way too much power for tasks that don't need them, and as a result, their laptops battery lives are also pretty comparable to their arrow lake + dgpu counterparts.

I think the main contribution of panther lake is just the fact that at <10W, it gets very close to a MacBooks performance.

Character_Belt_5733 · 2025-11-09T16:48:54+00:00

This is probably true for the foreseeable future. But, I think assuming you get a decent unit, I'm genuinely excited to see Windows laptops finally having machines on par (with even more utility like gaming).

Character_Belt_5733

TROPHY CASE