Review | ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY Laptop

The ASUS FX505DY has got to be one of the most anticipated gaming notebooks ever since it has been announced. For starters, it features an all AMD ecosystem, meaning it is powered by the Ryzen 5 3550H and has the Radeon RX 560X inside. To make things even better, it comes with a 120Hz IPS panel under a 39955 Peso offering. That’s about $749 USD locally.

Now as for the features, ASUS wants us to know that this is one of their military-grade laptops. This particular model for an instance is a certified MIL-STD-810G though protection only pertains to sudden jolts and drops. The ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY also comes with an RGB LED lit keyboard, a dual fan cooling solution and AMD FreeSync with a range of 48-120Hz.

With all those features built right in at under 39995 Pesos, ASUS had to compromise – and they did. Memory capacity is down to 4GB and the storage device is a 1TB 5400RPM spinner. That’s at least on the local model we’ve got.

Technical Specifications

Packaging and Accessories

The TUF Gaming FX505DY comes inside your typical ASUS laptop packaging. The product should come with the following items inside:

• User Manual
• 120W Power Adapter

A free ASUS shoulder bag should also be included depending on your retailer.

Design, Layout and Build Quality

The ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY is a rather edgy 15.6″ gaming notebook, sporting a brushed aluminum inspired casing with a dash of candy red. This is a budget gaming laptop after all, yet it weighs in at about 2.2 kilograms.

The laptop sports a thin bezel design as opposed to its older FX504 brother. It comes with a thickness of around 25mm which is easily not the slimmest we’ve seen for its class, but it’s not bad either. Hinges on the other hand are located at the extreme ends of the laptop. This should make the display panel a bit more stable over its already flexible housing.

The ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY sports all of its IO ports on the left hand side. There’s also a perforated area here for the 2W speakers.

The right hand side of the laptop on the other hand only had the Kensington lock. This is a design decision to make more wiggle room for right handed gamers.

Cooling is courtesy of a dual radial fan spinning out the hot air from the dual heat-pipe based solution. They are conveniently positioned at the far ends of the laptop to keep the radiating heat to a minimal.

The belly surprisingly lacks practically positioned perforations for the fans. Air could still slip-in though via the center of the hatch.

Maintenance requires you to remove 11 screws. Once opened, you’ll have direct access to the M.2 slot, the SO-DIMM slots, the 2.5″ drive bay and the 48Wh battery.

Firmware Interface

The ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY shares the same UEFI design with the recently released TUF Gaming models. The most basic system configuration could be found here yet it doesn’t feature much option compared to lets say a proper gaming motherboard.

Options are again limited even with the Advance Mode. You could disable virtualization, access some storage options and change the frame buffer size which is technically the VRAM of the onboard graphics.

Test Setup and Methodology

The system performance shall be evaluated by various benchmarking tools and applications. We are testing this system with the high-performance settings enabled at the OS, with the default UEFI configuration. Background processes such as anti-viruses and third-party applications are disabled as well. Outlined below are the applications and benchmark tools for reference:

TEMPERATURE, POWER AND NOISE:

• AIDA64 Extreme Edition – Stability Test

SYNTHETIC PERFORMANCE:

• Super PI – 32M Calculation
• wPrime – 1024M Calculation
• AIDA64 Extreme Edition – Memory Benchmark

PRODUCTIVITY PERFORMANCE:

• GIMP – 7 MB worth of image processing
• HandBrake – 150 MB MP4 to H.264 video encoding
• WinRAR – Compression speed

GAMING PERFORMANCE:

• Overwatch – Ultra Settings, Render Scale 100%, V-SYNC off
• Battlefield 4 – Ultra Settings, V-SYNC off
• DIRT: Rally – Ultra Settings, V-SYNC off
• Project CARS – Maximum Settings, V-SYNC off
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Ultra Settings, FXAA off, V-SYNC off
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Ultra Settings, HairWorks off, V-SYNC off

MISCELLANEOUS:

• AS SSD – Storage performance
• RightMark Audio Analyzer – Audio performance
• NetIO-GUI – Network Performance

Temperature, Power and Noise

System power consumption is evaluated via the AIDA64 System Stability Test. Power readings are recorded with a watt-meter.

The AIDA64 System Stability Test is also used to evaluate the system thermals. Readings are taken with AIDA64 and is cross-referenced with HWiNFO.

System noise level is also evaluated via AIDA64’s Stress Test. The noise measurement is taken by a sound level meter.

Temperature wise, the ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY is among the laptops tested with a decent thermal output. Power on the other hand is good, featuring a consumption similar to the laptops with the GTX 1050 in tow. It is the worst out of the bunch when it comes to noise output though.

Battery Life

The System battery life is evaluated via the Wh/W formula with readings taken from our power consumption test. This is to ensure a leveled result across the systems.

Battery life is more than decent with around 210 minutes of run time at minimal workloads. Never attempt playing AAA titles with the batteries alone though.

Synthetic Performance

Super PI is a single-threaded program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point. It is a widely used benchmark within the industry.

WPrime is a multi-threaded program that calculates a set number of square roots. It verifies the results by squaring them, then compares it with the original numbers.

The AIDA64 Memory Benchmark measure the data transfer bandwidth and latency of the system memory. We are measuring the latency on this benchmark.

The ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY with the Ryzen 5 3550H featured a not so favorable single-threaded performance at SuperPI. At wPrime, which is a multi-threaded benchmark, the chip could hold its own even with the Core i7-7700HQ. That’s even with a 4GB RAM inside.

Productivity Performance

GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a free and open-source image editing tool. A 7 MB worth of images is be processed and converted.

HandBrake is a free video encoding tool that supports a wide variety of media codecs. A 150MB worth MP4 video is converted using the H.264 codec.

WinRAR is a file archive utility that can create, view and unpack numerous archive file formats. The software’s built in benchmark tool is utilized.

Real world performance is decent, rather expected honesty due to the 4GB RAM. Had the FX505DY we’ve got been equipped with at least 8GB of RAM in dual channel configuration, we could totally see better performance output.

Gaming Performance

Overwatch is Blizzard Entertainment’s critically acclaimed First Person Shooter, running on a custom game engine utilizing the DirectX 11 API. Settings are set to Ultra with a Render Scale set to 100%.

Battlefield 4 is Electronic Art’s popular First Person Shooter, running on the Frostbite 3 game engine developed by DICE utilizing the DirectX 11 and the Mantle API. Settings are set to Ultra.

DIRT: Rally is CODEMASTER’s take on the rally racing game genre. It utilizes the EGO game engine with support for the DirectX 11 API. Settings are set to Ultra.

Project CARS is Slightly Mad Studios’ latest simulation racing game, running on the Madness game engine utilizing DirectX 11 support. Settings are set to maximum.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is Bethesda’s critically acclaimed Action Adventure RPG. Skyrim utilizes the Creation Engine with DirectX 10 support. Settings are set to Ultra with V-SYNC turned off.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is CDProjekt RED’s award winning Action Adventure RPG. The Witcher 3 utilizes the REDengine 3 with DirectX 11 support. Settings are set to Ultra.

Gaming wise and where it really matters, the ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY fared decently with the GTX 1050 equipped laptops on the tests. The RX 560X sure is no powerhouse, delivering decent framerates at 1080P with the highest settings available. Since this laptop features a 120Hz display, it is a must to lower the settings to achieve at least over 60FPS constantly on demanding titles. The addition of AMD FreeSync also solves tearing issues with titles that supports it so consider the feature on.

Storage Performance

AS SSD is a storage benchmarking software widely used throughout the industry. On this test, we are using its scoring system to evaluate the storage performance using the system’s native controller.

Nothiing special with the mechanical drive here folks. A 5400RPM spinner is just the worst thing you could use as a boot drive on a gaming laptop.

Audio Performance

The RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) is a tool designed to test the quality of audio devices. We used a sampling rate of 24-bit at 48000Hz for the loopback test. We are essentially testing the quality of the line-in and line-out of the audio solution.

The ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY is also not the best when it comes to audio noise levels. At the very least it is not the worst.

Network Performance

The NetIO-GUI is a good application to test any network’s performance. The LAN round trip time is our concern here, checking out latency anomalies if there are any. The client and server are connected on the network via Cat5 cables using a 100Mbps router.

Nothing to worry here folks. Let’s carry on to the next section.

Software, Lighting and Special Features

ASUS had the TUF Gaming FX505DY bundled with tons of applications that should help you optimize your system’s performance. That should include the following software tools:

• ASUS ARMOURY CRATE
• ASUS GiftBox
• ASUS Hello
• ASUS Aura
• ASUS ROG Live
• McAfee LiveSafe
• McAfee WebAdvisor

If keyboard lighting is important to you, then I’m happy to report that it is good. The LED lit ASUS logo at the back of the panel glows nicely as well.

One of the main attractions of the FX505DY is its 120Hz IPS panel. It is also full HD and supports AMD FreeSync with a base frequency of 48Hz. In my opinion, this feature alone made the laptop a worthy challenger around the $700 USD mark.

Final Thoughts

Alright, let’s start with the performance. With the AMD Ryzen 5 3550H in tow, the FX505DY is undoubtedly a true multi-threaded performer. It managed to stay near the Core i7-7700HQ’s performance at wPrime while it offered decent performance compared to the other laptops at real world benchmarks. Performance around that area is quite similar to the ASUS FX504 we’ve tested. After all, both units only had 4GB of RAM to play with.

Battery life is also decent while power figures are unexpectedly better than what I initially thought. Thermals are a-ok too but the noise output from the fans are kinda off-putting whenever they hit maximum.

The ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY is what I could say a somewhat balanced gaming laptop. Somewhat is the magic word, since the measly 4GB RAM and the 1TB 5400RPM HDD are not the best components to go – with such a capable backbone. Had this been equipped with at least 8GB of RAM and or an SSHD, then that combo would definitely be better. Don’t get me wrong though. This is again an already balanced gaming laptop as shown by its features and on the most important benchmarks.

In spite of its short comings, I would still gladly recommend the FX505DY any time of the day. The base price is just too good to pass up for a capable 120Hz panel equipped gaming laptop.

The ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY available in ASUS Robinsons Ermita Concept Store and all ASUS Concept Stores nationwide for 39995 Pesos.

ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY Laptop

• 7/10 Performance – 7/10
• 8/10 Build Quality – 8/10
• 8/10 Features – 8/10
• 7/10 Design – 7/10
• 9/10 Value – 9/10

7.8/10

Summary

In spite of its short comings, I would still gladly recommend the FX505DY any time of the day. The base price is just too good to pass up for a capable 120Hz panel equipped gaming laptop.

Keyword: Review | ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY Laptop