Asus launched its first 14-inch gaming laptop based on AMD’s Strix Halo platform in North American markets. This official launch of the TUF Gaming A14 FA401EA device coincided with the publication by one of the famous technical channels of a comprehensive review that puts the computer and its new Ryzen AI Max+ 392 processor under severe tests, revealing impressive results in running the latest AAA games at a resolution of 1600 pixels and with performance that exceeds expectations.
The new Ryzen AI Max+ 392 processor comes with twelve out of 16 cores built on the Zen 5 architecture found in the most powerful version, Ryzen AI Max+ 395, to provide excellent processing power. The company made minor adjustments to the processor speeds while reducing the second-level cache to 12 MB instead of 16 MB, while keeping the integrated Radeon 8060S graphics processing unit without any change with 40 computational units and a frequency of up to 2900 MHz to ensure superior graphics performance.
Multi-core performance tests such as Cinebench 2024 indicate a decline in the performance of this processor by approximately 25% compared to its bigger brother, although the gap appears much narrower in the 3DMark TimeSpy tests dedicated to gaming. Aside from theoretical numbers, the computer succeeds in maintaining a power consumption of about 100 watts under extreme pressure in turbo mode, with the ability to reach 115 watts in manual mode to provide the maximum possible power when needed to run heavy applications.
Actual graphics performance matches expectations from the powerful Radeon 8060S chip. Practical experiments show the computer’s ability to achieve a rate of about 80 frames per second in the latest massive games on the screen’s original resolution in Turbo mode. What is impressive is that the device maintains excellent and stable temperatures of approximately 80 degrees Celsius using the manufacturer’s default fan settings, even when drawing 100 watts of power from the processor.
This new version represents an excellent and tangible graphic upgrade compared to the older FA401WV model, which is currently available for $1,455 on Amazon. The power of this computer is enhanced by allocating 16 GB of memory for the integrated graphics processing unit, which gives it the ability to achieve strong and stable results even when relying on charging via the 100-watt USB-C port, a feature that clearly outperforms many competing computers that rely on graphics cards from NVIDIA.
