Serra
08-24-2008, 12:23 AM
The other day I picked up a new laptop. I didn't particularly want a gaming laptop, but I was looking for a 15" screen and a whole lot of horsepower and it turns out that if that's what you're looking for a gaming laptop is what you pretty well have to buy. That's OK though, the added GPU heat is surprisingly small. Anyway, I'm quite satisfied with it so I thought I'd take some time to deliver a quick micro review and generate some awareness for this new Asus series.
Oh, and did I mention it's overclockable without voiding the warranty?
Anyway, what I got was an Asus G50V-A2 and I'm posting a mini review to let you know what I think of it. Here are the specs:
- CPU: Intel C2D T9500 (2.5GHz, 35w TDP) [stock overclockableto 2.78GHz]
- GPU: Geforce 9700M, 512MB dedicated GDDR3
- RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400, 6-6-6-18.
- OS: Vista Home Premium, x64
- Screen: 15.4" 1680x1050 "glossy type" widescreen LCD (glare isn't that bad)
- HDD: Dual 200GB 7200rpm drives, configurable in RAID-0 [I will be swapping out one of the hard drives for a 64GB OCZ Core Series SSD]
- ODD: 2x Blu-Ray reader / DVD writer
- Ports: 4x USB, 1x HDMI, 1x eSATA, 1x Firewire, 1x TV tuner, speaker ports
- Wireless: Intel b/g/n
- Weight: A bit over 6lbs
- Warranty: 2-year overnight replacement
- Price: ~$1930 CAD
Goodies it comes with:
- Alone in the Dark (an effing TERRIBLE game, but runs very smoothly)
- Re-branded MX518 gaming mouse
- "Republic of Gamers" branded backpack
I have a camera, but stock pictures are better than the ones I can take:
I'm taking the easy way out & linking to a retailer for pics (http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=32615&vpn=90N-SPYA8Q35286KQL0Y%20&manufacture=ASUS)
Looks / First Impressions
So OK, the look is a little controversial. It does indeed have an orange trim, but it looks better than I thought it would. It also has LED bling on the top cover and all around the mousepad, but you can turn off the annoying bling on the top and the mousepad LED's look good. A cool feature of this laptop is that it has a small OLED screen between the keyboard and LCD. It's not terribly useful, but you can use it to keep track of CPU/RAM usage, just display a note, or even notify you of IM's and e-mail.
The screen is quite firmly attached with very little wiggle on the hinges. I was a little disappointed to see there are no latches to hold the screen down to the chassis when closed, but it stays down pretty well regardless.
The keyboard layout is excellent. The biggest benefit I see is that it includes a full number pad without minimizing all the other keys and, of course, has many convenient shortcuts using a function key. For gamers who don't understand how WASD works, it has the arrow equivalents posted on those keys.
Before we even boot into the OS, there is an option to just wave your hand over an LED-lighted key next to the power button to enter an embedded mini linux variant that gives you immediate ability to surf the web, play some terrible flash games, use Skype, or listen to music/watch videos. True to advertising, it does only take a little over 10 seconds to get loaded (though sadly the native/max resolution of this embedded linux is not the native resolution of the LCD).
Booting Up / Playing Around
Once I got all the Vista set-up stuff out of the way I noticed two things: the next boot-up was very fast for a laptop, and according to the CPU utilization LCD, Vista bootup only makes use of 1 core (?).
The Asus features are pretty cool. The best one is the Direct Console 2.0 - it lets you turn off the LED's you don't want to have on, change your power profile, and - most importantly - lets you overclock the thing up to 2.78GHz (which is doubly cool when you realize you keep your warranty).
One strange thing I quickly noticed though was that Asus decided to partition both hard drives for you. I don't quite understand why, but both hard drives have been broken into two equal 90-some GB partitions.
Final Thoughts
Ok, this has been really brief so far but it's all you're getting for now. In terms of real-world performance, I'm not much of a gamer but I did set up the game they gave me with it - Alone in the Dark - and it ran very smoothly on this laptop. What's more impressive is that although the CPU display read as full load (and presumably the GPU was at least somewhat loaded) the fan was so quiet I couldn't hear it over the ambient noises the game was making. What probably helps with this is that there is an 80mm intake vent under the notepad itself.
I don't really know what else to say with only another minute or so before I have to go. You know what, it has a very good LCD that I haven't been able to notice ghosting on, a full-size keyboard with a complete number pad, a great CPU (for a laptop), a great GPU (for a laptop), comes with 4GB of DDR2-800, a 64-bit OS, Blu-Ray drive, dual 7200rpm hard drives that you can configure in RAID-0, and some slick looking options such as the OLED screen and brush-over hotkeys. For the price/size, it's a powerhouse.
Downsides? There are a few. Most notably is battery life. In high performance mode it claims I get a little over an hour of battery life doing general desktops tasks like web browsing (though I do keep it in high performance mode). Next downside is the crazy partition system they decided to come up with... I just don't understand why they would do it. My third and final downside is that the touchpad only has left and right buttons - as someone who enjoys firefox I've gotten used to using a third button for tabbed browsing (though, in fairness, they do give you a mouse with the laptop).
If anyone has any particular questions about this laptop, just let me know. I'm not posting a lot these days but I do read through regularly.
Oh, and did I mention it's overclockable without voiding the warranty?
Anyway, what I got was an Asus G50V-A2 and I'm posting a mini review to let you know what I think of it. Here are the specs:
- CPU: Intel C2D T9500 (2.5GHz, 35w TDP) [stock overclockableto 2.78GHz]
- GPU: Geforce 9700M, 512MB dedicated GDDR3
- RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400, 6-6-6-18.
- OS: Vista Home Premium, x64
- Screen: 15.4" 1680x1050 "glossy type" widescreen LCD (glare isn't that bad)
- HDD: Dual 200GB 7200rpm drives, configurable in RAID-0 [I will be swapping out one of the hard drives for a 64GB OCZ Core Series SSD]
- ODD: 2x Blu-Ray reader / DVD writer
- Ports: 4x USB, 1x HDMI, 1x eSATA, 1x Firewire, 1x TV tuner, speaker ports
- Wireless: Intel b/g/n
- Weight: A bit over 6lbs
- Warranty: 2-year overnight replacement
- Price: ~$1930 CAD
Goodies it comes with:
- Alone in the Dark (an effing TERRIBLE game, but runs very smoothly)
- Re-branded MX518 gaming mouse
- "Republic of Gamers" branded backpack
I have a camera, but stock pictures are better than the ones I can take:
I'm taking the easy way out & linking to a retailer for pics (http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=32615&vpn=90N-SPYA8Q35286KQL0Y%20&manufacture=ASUS)
Looks / First Impressions
So OK, the look is a little controversial. It does indeed have an orange trim, but it looks better than I thought it would. It also has LED bling on the top cover and all around the mousepad, but you can turn off the annoying bling on the top and the mousepad LED's look good. A cool feature of this laptop is that it has a small OLED screen between the keyboard and LCD. It's not terribly useful, but you can use it to keep track of CPU/RAM usage, just display a note, or even notify you of IM's and e-mail.
The screen is quite firmly attached with very little wiggle on the hinges. I was a little disappointed to see there are no latches to hold the screen down to the chassis when closed, but it stays down pretty well regardless.
The keyboard layout is excellent. The biggest benefit I see is that it includes a full number pad without minimizing all the other keys and, of course, has many convenient shortcuts using a function key. For gamers who don't understand how WASD works, it has the arrow equivalents posted on those keys.
Before we even boot into the OS, there is an option to just wave your hand over an LED-lighted key next to the power button to enter an embedded mini linux variant that gives you immediate ability to surf the web, play some terrible flash games, use Skype, or listen to music/watch videos. True to advertising, it does only take a little over 10 seconds to get loaded (though sadly the native/max resolution of this embedded linux is not the native resolution of the LCD).
Booting Up / Playing Around
Once I got all the Vista set-up stuff out of the way I noticed two things: the next boot-up was very fast for a laptop, and according to the CPU utilization LCD, Vista bootup only makes use of 1 core (?).
The Asus features are pretty cool. The best one is the Direct Console 2.0 - it lets you turn off the LED's you don't want to have on, change your power profile, and - most importantly - lets you overclock the thing up to 2.78GHz (which is doubly cool when you realize you keep your warranty).
One strange thing I quickly noticed though was that Asus decided to partition both hard drives for you. I don't quite understand why, but both hard drives have been broken into two equal 90-some GB partitions.
Final Thoughts
Ok, this has been really brief so far but it's all you're getting for now. In terms of real-world performance, I'm not much of a gamer but I did set up the game they gave me with it - Alone in the Dark - and it ran very smoothly on this laptop. What's more impressive is that although the CPU display read as full load (and presumably the GPU was at least somewhat loaded) the fan was so quiet I couldn't hear it over the ambient noises the game was making. What probably helps with this is that there is an 80mm intake vent under the notepad itself.
I don't really know what else to say with only another minute or so before I have to go. You know what, it has a very good LCD that I haven't been able to notice ghosting on, a full-size keyboard with a complete number pad, a great CPU (for a laptop), a great GPU (for a laptop), comes with 4GB of DDR2-800, a 64-bit OS, Blu-Ray drive, dual 7200rpm hard drives that you can configure in RAID-0, and some slick looking options such as the OLED screen and brush-over hotkeys. For the price/size, it's a powerhouse.
Downsides? There are a few. Most notably is battery life. In high performance mode it claims I get a little over an hour of battery life doing general desktops tasks like web browsing (though I do keep it in high performance mode). Next downside is the crazy partition system they decided to come up with... I just don't understand why they would do it. My third and final downside is that the touchpad only has left and right buttons - as someone who enjoys firefox I've gotten used to using a third button for tabbed browsing (though, in fairness, they do give you a mouse with the laptop).
If anyone has any particular questions about this laptop, just let me know. I'm not posting a lot these days but I do read through regularly.