ASUS ROG Phone 3 vs ASUS ROG Phone 2: Game Benchmarks Comparison

ASUS ROG Phone 3 vs ASUS ROG Phone 2

The ASUS ROG Phone 3 is one of the fastest smartphones we’ve reviewed. It overtook OPPO Find X2 Pro and last year’s ROG Phone 2. Today, we thought of comparing the 2 devices based on the game benchmark results we ran using our methodology.

ASUS ROG Phone 3

Similar to our previous comparison, I’m going to show again empirical results of over 20 gameplay tests using our review methodology and provide a drill-down of what I think about the 2 devices from a reviewer’s and gamer’s perspective.

ASUS ROG Phone 2

Specs Breakdown

Average FPS (ROG Phone 3 vs ROG Phone 2)

Our game benchmark results show that some games perform better on the ROG Phone 2. Games like Black Desert Mobile and Genshin Impact get considerably higher FPS when played on the ROG Phone 2. Genshin Impact, for instance, play way smoother on the ROG Phone 2 at maximum settings and with 60fps enabled. I’ll talk more about it later.

ROG Phone 3

This case is very likely caused by an optimization issue, which impedes the games to reach the highest FPS relative to the hardware. I am hoping for this to be addressed in the next OTA software update that will be pushed to the ROG Phone 3.

It is, however, good to address that the ROG Phone 2 is still a very capable system and if you own one, there’s actually no easy to immediately upgrade to the latest iteration.

Average CPU (ROG Phone 3 vs ROG Phone 2)

Lower consumption is technically better in this department. The ROG Phone 3 has a higher clock speed than the ROG Phone 2, which means there’s more wiggle room for a performance boost.

ASUS ROG Phone 2

Among all the games I played, Genshin Impact consumes the most amount of CPU resources at 39.7% on ROG Phone 2 and 38.5% on the ROG Phone 2.

Average Memory (ROG Phone 3 vs ROG Phone 2)

ASUS ROG Phone 3

The same goes for memory consumption. ROG Phone 3 has a better edge because of its RAM configuration. The LPDDR5 RAM is better in terms of overall performance and speed than the LPDDR4X RAM on ROG Phone 2, not to mention that the latter has a data rate speed of up to 6,400 Mbps.

ASUS ROG Phone 2

Genshin Impact

I thought of putting up a separate benchmark run for Genshin Impact. As an open-world Gacha game, Genshin Impact posts a significant challenge to all phone manufacturers and consumers.

ASUS ROG Phone 2 (left), ASUS ROG Phone 3 (right)

While the game is playable on both devices, it demands a lot of hardware resources for it to run at 60fps. The ROG Phone 3, with X Mode On, struggled to run the game at 50fps, but the ROG Phone 2 managed to reach. In my multiple tests, the average FPS at the highest settings is 49.28 on ROG Phone 3 and 58.33 on ROG Phone 2. In fact, this game runs better on the former across the board.

As mentioned earlier, it is very likely that this anomaly is caused by game optimization relative to the chipset.

ROG Phone 3 (X Mode On) vs ROG Phone 2 (X Mode On)

ROG Phone 3 (X Mode Off) vs ROG Phone 2 (X Mode Off)

Thermals

ROG Phone 3

ROG Phone 2

What now?

The ROG Phone 2 is still a very powerful smartphone. If you’ve got one, there’s no reason to replace it with the current flagships in the market. Based on previous benchmark tests with other flagship smartphones like Galaxy S20 Ultra and Note20 Ultra, the ROG Phone 2 is still the clear winner.

On the other hand, the ROG Phone 3 remains to be the fastest and best gaming smartphone in the market right now. The actual gameplay tests we did further proves this point. If you own one or if you’re thinking of getting one for mobile gaming, you’ll never go wrong with the ROG Phone 3!

Giancarlo Viterbo

Website

Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.