Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 2023 review

Frame rates

1920×1080, High preset, upscaling off.

Measured on this machine. Source: Notebookcheck, 2023-02-22.

In use

The short version

The Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 in this 2023 configuration is a genuine flagship: an RTX 4090, a Core i9-13980HX, 32GB of memory and an 18in 2560x1600 IPS panel at 240Hz, in a 3.1kg chassis, at a UK price our record puts at £4,000. Everything about the specification says top of the stack, and Notebookcheck's measured frame rates broadly agree — Strange Brigade at 386fps and F1 22 at 273fps are the fastest numbers in this class of machine, and the slowest result in the whole measured set is Elden Ring at 60fps, which is the game's own engine cap rather than a limitation of the hardware.

The specification that deserves scrutiny is the one buyers rarely check. Our record puts this machine's RTX 4090 at a 150W power limit. Nvidia's laptop graphics cards are configurable, and 150W sits at the lower end of the band this particular card is sold in — the Lenovo Legion 9 in our comparison set is recorded at 175W with the same GPU. At £4,000 the distinction between a 150W RTX 4090 and a 175W one is not academic, and it is the thread this review pulls on.

The comparison data makes the point in an unusually clean way. Against the Legion 9 at 175W, the Scar 18 is one frame per second behind across three shared games — effectively level, despite the power gap. Against the Razer Blade 16 2024, also on an RTX 4090, the two are level across three. Against the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17, again an RTX 4090, the Scar 18 is 22fps behind across three. And against a Schenker XMG Apex 15 with an RTX 4050 at 140W, it is 107fps ahead across four.

That 107fps margin is what makes the rest interpretable. A comparison method capable of opening a gap that large when hardware genuinely differs is not blind. When the same method returns a one-frame difference between a 150W RTX 4090 and a 175W one, the reason is not that the measurement failed — it is that the three shared games in that comparison are not asking the graphics card the question. At 1920x1080, on hardware of this class, the lighter and older titles in any shared set are limited by processor throughput rather than graphics throughput, and processor-limited games compress genuine graphics differences towards nothing.

There is no score on this page. Our scoring suite is five games and we hold three: Dota 2 at 202fps, GTA V at 185fps and X-Plane 11 at 143fps, averaging 177fps. Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3 are both missing — and those are the two suite titles that would actually interrogate an RTX 4090. Three games cannot be ranked against every other machine's five, so we do not publish a number.

Buy the Scar 18 if you want an 18in screen and the fastest measured frame rates in our records for a machine of this generation, and you want them at a size and weight that treats portability as an afterthought. Look elsewhere if you are paying £4,000 expecting this to be the fastest RTX 4090 laptop available, because the Scar 17 comparison shows it is not, or if you want a machine that leaves a desk with any regularity.

Performance

What a 150W power limit means on an RTX 4090

Nvidia's laptop graphics cards are not fixed products. The same silicon is sold to manufacturers within a configurable power band, and each manufacturer selects a point in that band according to what the chassis can cool, how much fan noise is acceptable at the target price, and how the machine is positioned against its stablemates. This is the single most consequential fact about buying a laptop in this generation, and it applies at the top of the stack as much as the bottom: two machines can carry the same RTX 4090 badge and deliver measurably different performance because one is allowed to draw more power than the other.

Our record puts the Scar 18's RTX 4090 at 150W. That is a legitimate configuration for this card and it is not a low number in absolute terms — it is more power than most laptop graphics cards of any generation are given. But within the band this specific part occupies, it sits at the lower end. The Lenovo Legion 9 in our comparison set is recorded at 175W with the same GPU, and that is a meaningful difference in favour of the Lenovo.

What makes that surprising is the chassis. At 3.1kg with an 18in footprint, the Scar 18 has more internal volume than almost anything else in this comparison — more room for fan diameter, heat pipe cross-section, fin stack area and exhaust aperture than a 16in machine can offer. On the physical evidence there is no obvious reason this chassis could not support a higher power limit, which makes 150W look like a deliberate positioning decision rather than a thermal necessity. That figure comes from our record and is worth verifying before spending £4,000, because if it is correct it means a buyer is paying flagship money for a graphics card configured below its ceiling.

Where would a power-budget deficit of that size actually show up? Not in the light titles at the top of this machine's table. Strange Brigade at 386fps and F1 22 at 273fps are constrained by something other than graphics power — engines that scale cleanly and settings that do not stress modern hardware. The power limit expresses itself in the titles that consume everything available, and in this measured set those are Spider-Man Miles Morales at 109fps and, to a lesser degree, Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 144fps.

The measured spread, top to bottom

Twelve games are recorded, all at 1920x1080 on High with upscaling switched off, running from 386fps down to 60fps. That is more than a six-to-one spread, but the bottom figure is a special case that needs handling before anything else.

Elden Ring at 60fps is not a performance result. That game's PC release is capped at 60 frames per second by its own engine and no hardware, of any generation, exceeds it without external modification. A 60fps figure there means the machine hit the ceiling, which is the best outcome available. Reading it as this laptop's worst-case performance would be a straightforward misinterpretation, and it should be excluded from any judgement about the graphics card. Doing so, the genuine range of the measured set is 386fps down to Spider-Man Miles Morales at 109fps — a spread of about three and a half to one, and a much more useful description of the machine.

At the top, Strange Brigade at 386fps is the highest figure in this comparison group and a useful health check. Strange Brigade's Vulkan renderer scales cleanly and asks little of the processor, so a result in that region confirms the graphics card is being properly fed and nothing is wrong with power delivery or cooling. F1 22 at 273fps is a more modern engine producing a similarly emphatic number.

The upper-middle band is dense: Dota 2 at 202fps, GTA V at 185fps, Control at 184fps, High On Life at 180fps, Final Fantasy XV at 178fps and Far Cry 5 at 172fps. Three of those deserve separate treatment. Dota 2 at 202fps and GTA V at 185fps are both scoring-suite titles and both are substantially processor-limited at 1080p on hardware of this class — Dota 2 because its visual complexity does not trouble a modern graphics card at all, GTA V because its renderer leans heavily on single-thread processor performance and stopped being graphics-limited on hardware this fast some time ago. Those two results are very largely statements about the Core i9-13980HX, not about the RTX 4090. Control at 184fps is the exception in this band: a genuinely graphics-heavy title from a studio that pushed rendering technology, and 184fps at 1080p High is a proper flagship result.

Below that sit Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 144fps and X-Plane 11 at 143fps, and the two could not be less alike despite being a frame apart. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a graphics benchmark in all but name — it responds to graphics power and settings in a predictable, linear way. X-Plane 11 is the opposite: a simulation loop notoriously bound by processor performance and notoriously indifferent to how much graphics silicon is present. That they land in the same place is a coincidence, but an instructive one, because it shows how completely the underlying limits differ between titles that produce similar numbers.

Spider-Man Miles Morales at 109fps is the lowest genuine result and the most informative single figure in the table. That port combines dense city geometry, heavy streaming and demanding effects work, and it is the closest thing in this measured set to a pure test of graphics throughput. 109fps at 1080p High with upscaling off is a strong number in absolute terms — but it is also the one place in the table where a 150W power limit rather than a 175W one would have cost measurable frames.

The Core i9-13980HX is doing more work than it looks

The processor is a Core i9-13980HX, the top of Intel's mobile stack for its generation and a desktop-derived part with the core count and sustained power budget to match. That is not incidental to these results — it is the reason several of them are as high as they are.

Every title identified above as processor-limited — Dota 2, GTA V, X-Plane 11 — has its ceiling set by how fast the processor can feed the graphics card. In those games the Scar 18's numbers are a measure of the 13980HX. That is a genuine strength of the machine: a laptop with a lesser processor would produce lower figures in those titles no matter what graphics card it carried, and buyers whose libraries lean towards competitive multiplayer, older single-player games, strategy or simulation will benefit directly from it.

But it has an important consequence for interpretation. All three of this machine's scoring-suite results are processor-weighted, and so, in all probability, are the three-game samples used in three of the four comparisons below. The frame rates are real, but the component they are measuring is often not the one on the specification sheet that justifies the price.

Three suite games, and the two that would have mattered

Our scoring suite exists so machines can be compared on identical software rather than on whichever titles were current when each was reviewed. For the Scar 18 we hold three of five: Dota 2 at 202fps, GTA V at 185fps and X-Plane 11 at 143fps, giving a mean of 177fps. Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3 are both absent.

That is the worst possible pair to be missing for a machine like this. Of the five suite titles, GTA V, Dota 2 and X-Plane 11 are the three most influenced by processor performance at 1080p; Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3 are the two that ask the graphics card the most. The three games we hold are the three least capable of demonstrating what an RTX 4090 does, and the two we lack are the ones that would have shown whether 150W is enough.

The mean of 177fps is therefore a high number that mostly reflects a very fast processor. It is not wrong — those are the frame rates — but it should not be used to reason about graphics performance, and it certainly should not be used to argue that this machine's power limit is unimportant.

The procedural consequence is no score. Averaging three games and ranking that against machines averaged over five introduces a systematic bias, and in this case the direction is identifiable: the missing titles are the harder ones, so the partial average flatters the machine. Publishing it as a ranking would be misleading in a way we can specifically name, which is the strongest possible reason to withhold it.

What this means when you play something

Practically, this is as fast as laptops of this generation get. Excluding the engine-capped Elden Ring result, every measured title runs at 109fps or better. Ten of the twelve run at 143fps or better. Six run at 180fps or better. If your library is competitive multiplayer, older single-player work, strategy or simulation, this machine produces frame rates far beyond what most players can distinguish and does so with substantial headroom left over.

If your library is the heaviest end of modern releases, Spider-Man Miles Morales at 109fps is the number to hold onto, and it is a good one. Achieved without upscaling, it means DLSS remains available as reserve capacity rather than as a requirement — which is what determines whether a machine of this generation stays comfortable as games get heavier.

Our record holds no measurements at the panel's native 2560x1600. That resolution carries roughly two-thirds more pixels than the 1920x1080 the benchmarks use, and almost all of the additional load falls on the graphics card. In the processor-limited titles the drop would be modest, because the graphics card had spare capacity to begin with; in Spider-Man and Shadow of the Tomb Raider it would be substantial. Those are structural expectations rather than measurements, and this review will not attach numbers to them.

The screen

18in at 2560x1600

The panel is an 18in 2560x1600 IPS at 240Hz. The 18in diagonal is the defining feature of this machine and the main reason to choose it over a 16in alternative with similar internals. It is a genuinely different experience — closer to sitting in front of a small desktop monitor than to using a laptop — and for strategy games, simulators, and anything with dense interface elements it is a real functional advantage rather than a marketing one.

2560x1600 across 18in gives a lower pixel density than the same resolution on a 16in panel, which is a trade rather than a fault: text and interface elements are physically larger and more comfortable to read at a typical viewing distance, at the cost of some fineness. The 16:10 aspect ratio provides more vertical working space than 16:9, which shows up in every application with a toolbar and every game with a vertically arranged interface.

Crucially, this is a resolution the hardware can actually drive. A machine with an RTX 4090 producing 109fps at the hardest measured title at 1080p has the capacity to run QHD-class resolutions in real games, which is not something that could be said of the 4K gaming laptops of earlier generations where the panel outran the silicon.

240Hz, and what reaches it

Working through the measured set at 1920x1080: Strange Brigade at 386fps and F1 22 at 273fps clear 240fps. Nothing else does. Dota 2 at 202fps comes closest and falls short. GTA V at 185fps, Control at 184fps, High On Life at 180fps, Final Fantasy XV at 178fps and Far Cry 5 at 172fps are all in the band where a 240Hz panel is displaying everything the machine produces without capping it, but is not being fully used. Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 144fps, X-Plane 11 at 143fps and Spider-Man at 109fps are well below.

At the panel's native 2560x1600 those numbers would all fall further, and the two titles that clear 240fps at 1080p would likely stop doing so. The realistic reading is that 240Hz is reachable in light titles at reduced resolution and aspirational everywhere else.

That is not a complaint so much as a correction to how high refresh rates are usually sold. The value of 240Hz is not that games hit it. It is that the display is never the limiting factor at any frame rate below it — whatever the machine produces is shown without tearing or judder, motion clarity improves progressively across the entire range rather than only at the ceiling, and a competitive player who deliberately lowers settings has somewhere for the extra frames to go. A machine producing 386fps in Strange Brigade and 202fps in Dota 2 genuinely benefits from a panel that is not capping it at a lower figure.

IPS at £4,000

Our record lists the panel technology as IPS, and at £4,000 that is worth discussing frankly. By 2023, Mini LED backlights and OLED panels were both appearing in machines at this price, and both deliver black levels and contrast that no IPS panel can match. What IPS gives in return is consistency: no image retention risk over a long ownership, no variable-brightness behaviour from a zoned backlight, no aggressive dimming on static content, and generally uniform response across the panel.

Our record holds no brightness, contrast, colour coverage or response time measurements for this display, and at this price the difference between a good panel and a mediocre one is a significant fraction of what you are paying. This review can tell you the resolution and refresh rate are sensibly matched to the hardware; it cannot tell you whether the panel is well made. Anyone spending £4,000 should establish that independently, and should specifically check whether an alternative panel is offered in the same chassis.

Build, size and portability

3.1kg, and what it is for

At 3.1kg, plus the substantial charger an RTX 4090 and a Core i9-13980HX require simultaneously, this is not a portable machine in any meaningful sense. It is a desktop replacement — a computer that lives on a desk and is moved occasionally rather than routinely, and buyers should approach it on that basis. If the laptop needs to be carried daily, this is the wrong category of product entirely, not merely a heavy example of the right one.

What the size buys is the thing everything else depends on. Cooling capacity scales with internal volume: fan diameter, heat pipe cross-section, fin stack surface area, exhaust aperture and thermal mass to absorb transients. An 18in chassis at 3.1kg has more of all of it than anything smaller, and that is what allows an RTX 4090 and a top-of-stack HX processor to run simultaneously without either being throttled into irrelevance. The 386fps Strange Brigade result and the 109fps Spider-Man result both depend on that cooling being adequate.

Which brings the power limit back into focus. If a chassis of this size and weight is running its RTX 4090 at 150W while a 16in machine in the same comparison set runs the same card at 175W, the size is not being fully converted into performance. That is the strongest argument for verifying the figure: a machine that has accepted every portability penalty available should be extracting the maximum performance benefit in return, and on our record it is not obviously doing so.

The 90Wh battery

Our record lists a 90Wh cell. In a 3.1kg 18in chassis that is a moderate rather than generous allocation — there are considerably smaller machines carrying larger batteries — and it reinforces the reading that this is a desk machine. Our record holds no battery runtime measurement and this review will not guess at one.

What can be said structurally is that no laptop of this generation runs an RTX 4090 at anything close to its power limit from a battery. The draw exceeds what any cell can deliver, so unplugged gaming means substantially reduced performance regardless of capacity. On a machine of this type that is barely relevant: it is designed to be plugged in, and its 90Wh cell exists to cover the walk between rooms and a few hours of light work, not to enable a mobile lifestyle.

32GB of memory

The configuration in our record carries 32GB, and at this price it is the right amount. It is enough for a game running alongside streaming software, a browser, communication tools and whatever else a serious user has open, and it removes the constraint that 16GB machines of this generation have run into as titles have grown. For a machine at £4,000 anything less would have been a genuine criticism; 32GB means memory is simply not a consideration.

How it compares

Four machines from the same graphics generation are set against the Scar 18, chosen to give a spread rather than only the nearest neighbours: the two closest results, the machine it beats by the widest margin, and the machine that beats it by the widest margin. Each comparison uses only the games both machines hold, preferring scoring-suite titles. None of the four has a confirmed UK price in our record, so nothing here is a direct value comparison in cash terms.

One caveat applies throughout. The comparison against the Schenker covers four shared games; the other three cover three each. Small samples of processor-weighted titles are exactly the conditions under which genuine graphics differences fail to appear, and that shapes how much weight each result can carry.

Schenker XMG Apex 15 (Late 23) — the widest win

The XMG Apex 15 carries an RTX 4050 at a 140W power limit, and across four shared games the Scar 18 averages 107fps ahead of it. That is an enormous margin and it requires no interpretation whatsoever — three tiers of graphics hardware separate these machines and the benchmark records the difference emphatically.

This result does the most important job in the section: it establishes that the measurement can see. A method that opens a 107fps gap when hardware genuinely differs is demonstrably capable of resolving differences, which is what makes the near-ties below meaningful rather than dismissible as noise.

It is also worth noting what the Apex 15 is: a machine running an entry-tier graphics card at a high power limit — 140W on an RTX 4050 is generous configuration. Even so, the gap is 107fps. That is a useful corrective to the argument, made frequently and correctly elsewhere in these reviews, that power limits matter more than model numbers. They matter enormously within a tier. They do not close a three-tier gap.

Razer Blade 16 2024 — level, on the same card

The Blade 16 2024 carries an RTX 4090 and across three shared games the two machines are level. Our record holds no power limit for the Razer's graphics card.

Three shared games is a small sample and the absence of a recorded power limit for the rival means this comparison cannot be analysed as far as one would like. What can be said is that two RTX 4090 machines producing identical frame rates in three games is entirely unsurprising, particularly if those three are the processor-weighted suite titles this machine holds. Both machines carry fast processors; both carry the fastest graphics card of the generation; in games where neither the graphics card nor anything else is the constraint, they will report the same numbers.

The buying implication is the practical one. If two machines are indistinguishable on frame rates, the graphics card has stopped being a reason to choose between them. The Scar 18's argument against the Blade 16 becomes its 18in screen; the Blade's argument becomes its size. Neither is a performance argument.

Lenovo Legion 9 — level, despite a higher power budget

This is the most interesting comparison in the set. The Legion 9 carries an RTX 4090 at a 175W power limit — a higher figure than our record gives the Scar 18 — and across three shared games the Scar 18 is one frame per second behind. That is a tie in every practical sense.

A naive reading is that the power limit does not matter. That reading is wrong, and the reason is visible in this machine's own table. The three shared games in a comparison like this are, on the evidence of which suite titles this machine holds, weighted towards Dota 2, GTA V and X-Plane 11 — the three most processor-limited titles in the entire suite. In a processor-limited game, both machines are waiting on their processors, and the graphics card's power budget is simply not the variable being tested. Two RTX 4090s at any power limit within the configurable band would report the same numbers there.

The correct conclusion is narrower and more useful: in these three games the power-budget difference is invisible, and a buyer whose library resembles them will not perceive it. In Spider-Man Miles Morales, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, or any genuinely graphics-limited title, the 175W machine would be expected to pull ahead. Our record does not hold a comparison in those titles, so this review cannot say by how much — only that the tie should not be read as evidence that the Scar 18's configuration is equivalent.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 — the widest loss, and it is in-house

The Scar 17 carries an RTX 4090 and across three shared games the Scar 18 averages 22fps behind it. Our record holds no power limit for that machine's graphics card.

This is the comparison that should give a £4,000 buyer most pause, and not only because the margin is meaningful. It is a machine from the same manufacturer, in the same product line, one size down, carrying the same graphics card — and it is faster across the shared games. Twenty-two frames per second is not an enormous gap in the context of the 107fps this machine opens on the entry tier, but it is not noise either, and it appears in a three-game sample weighted towards processor-limited titles, which is precisely where differences are hardest to detect. A gap that survives those conditions is likely to be larger in graphics-limited ones.

What the Scar 17 is doing differently, our record does not say — no power limit is listed for it. The two obvious candidates are a higher graphics power budget or a cooling design that sustains its limits better under load. Either way, the practical conclusion for a buyer is that the 18in Scar is not the fastest machine in its own family, and if raw frame rate is the objective, the smaller model is the one to look at.

What the spread proves

In order: 107fps ahead of a 4050, level with a 4090, level with a 4090 at 175W, 22fps behind another 4090. The single wide margin confirms the benchmark discriminates; the three near-ties among RTX 4090 machines confirm that this generation's top tier is closely packed and that, at 1080p in processor-weighted titles, the machines within it are largely indistinguishable.

The Scar 17 result is the exception, and exceptions are informative. In a group where three RTX 4090 machines report the same numbers, the fourth reporting 22fps more suggests something real — either a configuration difference our record does not capture, or a sustained-performance difference under load. Since the Scar 18's own power limit is recorded at the lower end of the band, the configuration explanation is the more likely of the two.

For a buyer at £4,000 the practical conclusion is this: you are not paying a premium for measured performance leadership, because on our figures this machine does not have it. You are paying for an 18in 240Hz panel, a large and well-cooled chassis, 32GB of memory and a top-of-stack processor. Those are real things and some buyers want them specifically. They are not the same as being the fastest.

Who it's for

Buy it if

You want an 18in screen. This is the clearest and most defensible reason to choose this machine. An 18in 2560x1600 display at 240Hz is a materially different working and playing surface from a 16in one, and for simulators, strategy games and anything with dense interface elements the difference is functional rather than cosmetic. No 16in machine offers it however fast its graphics card.

The machine will live on a desk. 3.1kg plus a high-wattage charger is a desktop replacement, and if that matches how you will actually use it, the size is a benefit rather than a cost: it is what allows an RTX 4090 and a Core i9-13980HX to run together without either being strangled.

Your library is broad and includes processor-heavy titles. Dota 2 at 202fps, GTA V at 185fps and X-Plane 11 at 143fps are among the strongest results our records hold for those games, and they are largely the work of the 13980HX. Buyers who play simulators, strategy or competitive multiplayer will feel the benefit of that processor directly.

You want no compromises in the supporting specification. 32GB of memory at this price is correct rather than generous, and it removes memory as a consideration entirely. Combined with the cooling volume, this is a machine that is unlikely to develop a bottleneck as software gets heavier.

Buy something else if

You want the fastest RTX 4090 laptop. On our figures this is not it. The Scar 17 — same manufacturer, same line, same graphics card, one size smaller — is 22fps ahead across three shared games measured in conditions that understate rather than exaggerate graphics differences. If maximum frame rate is the goal, that is the machine to investigate.

The power limit matters to you and you cannot verify it. Our record puts this RTX 4090 at 150W while listing a competitor's at 175W. At £4,000 that is a difference worth confirming before purchase, and the honest position is that this review cannot confirm it either way. If the figure is right, the machine is running its graphics card below the top of its band in a chassis that looks capable of supporting more.

The machine needs to move. 3.1kg and an 18in footprint is not a machine you carry. There is no version of this laptop that is portable, and buyers who need portability should be looking at a fundamentally different category rather than at a lighter configuration of this one.

You care about contrast more than motion. The panel is IPS and our record holds no measurements of its quality. At this price, Mini LED and OLED alternatives existed in the same generation and deliver black levels no IPS panel can approach. If dark games and film matter to you, that is worth investigating before committing.

You want a published score to compare against the rest of the site. There is not one, because Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3 are missing from our figures. The three suite titles we hold average 177fps, but that is a processor-weighted number and cannot be honestly ranked against machines measured across all five games.

The thing worth verifying

One number in this machine's record deserves independent confirmation before anyone spends £4,000: the 150W power limit on the RTX 4090. It is not implausible — it is a configuration this card is genuinely sold in — but it sits at the lower end of the band, it is below what our record shows for a smaller competitor carrying the same GPU, and it is difficult to reconcile with an 18in chassis weighing 3.1kg that ought to have the cooling headroom for more.

If the figure is accurate, it explains the Scar 17 comparison and it means a buyer is paying top-tier money for a graphics card configured below its ceiling. If it is not accurate, the picture changes and the machine looks considerably better. Our record says 150W, this review has argued from that, and the reader should treat it as the number to check rather than as settled fact.