ACTUAL C90 Owner's Lounge

well just so u kno im glad your giving us this play by play. it actually feels like im sitting right there....which would be super odd...but thanks anyways

 

crap....that last lockup seemed to screw vista up bad. I think it would be best if I just started all over. Using Alex's prop up method for cooling and windows xp...ill go ahead and do some gaming benchmarks too...tommorrow or much later tonight ill do vista. So if anyone has any questions ask them now please.

 

God, I wish I didn't have work or I would be right there with you swoley. I have about 2 or 3 hours tonight, which I am benching, 3DMark 4 times and PCMark twice. If I have time after I have to take new pictures and upload them. Then the review will just need editing. This sucks. Everything is ready, but I can't publish it because of all of the pictures.

 

I wish my laptop had arrived today, but there was some error. Gentech has no record of the purshase, but the credit card was charged. So much for it arriving today. And next week ill be away camping. Damn

*EDIT* Its been shipped. Yay

 

I have half a gig of space online it you need it. im putting my half ready multimedia os on it too.

 

Do you have an FTP...or what would be the fastest way to upload?

 

Yeah I have the next 3 days off actually...

 

lemme find out. my old laptop just crapped itself

 

Also, I get 100 points higher with the overclocked CPU, not at the most, consistently. That is to say, after applying error bars to both, the min/max and average of the CPU OC scores are 90-100 points higher than the min/max and average of stock. So it does have some effect.

EDIT: Also, my C90 is handling 500/550 Core/Mem with no problems.
Those clocks increase the scores 600 points from stock.

 

Okie doke!

 

I think I made a mistake about the cpu score not affecting 3dmark06...Im really not sure anymore...

 

Uh Ohh......

 

Anyone who currently has a C90S, end of the day are you happy with your the shiny new C90S?

 

i will be when it gets here tomorrow

 

Of course cpu is part of 3dmark score. It is an integral part of the score.

 

Seeing all of these scores, I'm thinking that this and most other 8600M GT 512MB carded notebooks, if not all of them, are running the GDDR2 RAM at 400x2mhz instead of the 700x2mhz of the GDDR3 cards, which would explain why Newegg.com brags about the GDDR3 on the G1S-A1 here.

What I'm wondering is what the performance difference between the 8600M GS and these, seemingly crippled, 512MB 8600M GTs might be. Math-wise, they should be about the same, but I can't tell that without someone testing them both. Not sure anyone here has the ability to do so, but if someone does, that would be a great thing to let us all know.

Just wanted to let those of you working with the C90S know that I, for one, appreciate all that you've done so far. I've been waiting for this to become available so that I can make an educated purchase decision. Keep the news coming, good and/or bad.

Thank you.

 

All you guys need to remember that at the end of the day, you are just trying to squeeze performance out of a GPU which you will.... be able to upgrade later!

Plus you have a lovely, sleek looking machine that will make people who know nothing about laptops drool. The fans, while some may not appreciate them, look like freaking jet engines and add to the ambeance of the machine.

It's a lovely machine, and regardless of its initial quirks, you who have purchased one will only dislike it if you convince yourself it is somehow inferior. Appreciate it for what it is, a lovely machine at a good price.

 

That's an awfully good first post there seamonkey79. I agree with you. Also, I would like to thank all of you guys again for posting so much information here, it is incredibly helpful to me as a notebook neophyte and as a guy looking to purchase a notebook myself here in the next couple of days.

 

Im happy with my c90s, for the money its great. It also has a great screen/keyboard and stuff. (touchpad kinda sucks)

It has one major flaw tho, atleast for me the cpu runs too hot. nearing 70c just idle in windows, if I kick on overclock mode the comp resets becase heat levels get too high. Not a huge deal since from 2.66ghz to 2.93 hardly does anything for performance, but thats why its so odd that the fans go 5x faster and the heat goes way way up for only a 300mhz overclock.

I build computers and took my time and even re-did the cpu heatsink so I know the install is 100% on my end. My only guess is that I have a defective heat sink unit.

 

how did you get your temps down from what they were yesterday? mine are still high.

 

67c on both cores with speedfan just idle in windows vista ultimate x64 so pretty much the same as I had with xp, infact abit higher probably because vista uses some cpu power (xp was like 65c)

I dont know what to do about the heat issue, it runs ok in normal mode but overclock mode is a definite no go.

 

if i remember correctly, did you mention removing the thermal pads? if so, that might be a problem. i know that with other barebones models, a lot of people had overheating problems because they thought that they could remove the thermal pads and everything would be fine....but they are an integral part of the cooling.

also, you might want to try out undervolting with nhc or rmclock....though admittedly, i don't know if it will work with conroe processors....

 

mine right now, after running 3DMark 4 times and Oc'd to 2.93 is 55/57 Core 0/1

 

No I left them on, the pads are for the gpu ram, the space between the ram and the heatsink is lager than that of the gpu core so the pads need to be there.

the cpu is what I am having problems with, the heatsink just comes coated with a very thick portion of standard tim. I took that off and put AS5 on instead. When I rechecked the heatsink today I could tell it was making good contact, but to be safe i added abit more as5 and took my time making sure the heatsink was fasened perfect.

the fans are blowing alot of hot air out, so its not like the heat isnt making it out, its more like its just running hotter than it should. Is it possible I just have a hotter than normal cpu??

I have never heard of that in all my years, but right now it just makes the most sense. Unless there should be more hot air and indeed my heat pipe device is malfunctioning. The build quality of it is very sub poor, and I dont like how you have to squeeze it into the fan bay.

 

Thanks for your posts, all. We need more people testing so that these problems can be focused and eliminated. I will be right there helping as soon as mine arrives.

 

swoley upload it to a place like
www.imageshack.us
and then use your tags with the URL

 

Sorry for clutter cori please delete my last 5 post

 

thats EXACTLY what i just did. you were about 45 seconds too late but thanks though

 

Im installing Oblivion, Farcry, and Battlefield 2142 now on my fresh Windows XP install. I will take FRAPS screenshots. I would do video but id need someone to tell me someplace to upload to...

 

:laugh: i forget often myself. did you get the temp down?

 

Email it to [email protected]

 

I have no idea yet, im still installing things. I have it sitting on a small game box just perfect so that all the vents have about 2 inches of clearance though.

 

Is that a joke?

 

no. I have 200 megs of free web space. And im on a powerbook

 

I wonder if that 'small' heatpipe setup in the C90S is to blame for the temps. Remember that even the stock Intel heatsink for the desktop CPUs is considerably larger than that thing, and that's only cooling a CPU, not the GPU, and chipset, and RAM, and hard drive, and power block (the inside one, obviously, not the power brick)... may just be over-taxed, or, worse yet, just enough?

 

Im uploading a 5.5mb file to putfile...its pretty slow....

 

http://media.putfile.com/Asus-C90s-clip

 

yup
my home server is faster than that

 

Is that fan noise I'm hearing? What is she running at right now?

 

i always upload videos to youtube or google video. it works well and its free.

 

http://media.putfile.com/Asus-C90S-video

 

The 8600gs benches right around 2200 I believe. If the 8600gs were gddr3 maybe there would be a race, but since almost all the gpus from 8400 on up are gddr2 I dont think its fair to call the 8600gt with gddr2 "gimped". Its more accurate to call the 8600gt in the C90 "standard" and the one in the G1S the "turbo" version.

 

http://media.putfile.com/Asus-C90S-video

another one which demonstrates the noise it makes when loading ANYTHING. its at 2.66 going into safe mode

 

mine is pretty quiet in standard mode, but anything that uses the cpu when in game mode is very loud, way way to loud/hot for only a 300mhz overclock.

I belive the standad mode is running the cpu under volted tho, and thats probably why. I show 1.1v with cpuz in standard mode, i need to go look up what the stock voltage is on a c2d, then see what the voltage is in game mode.

 

http://media.putfile.com/Ok-this-is-the-best-one

Ok, now im done testing the uploads an crap. Next thing i upload will be an ingame video for oblivion.

 

While I agree with you on the surface, there lies a somewhat deeper issue.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8600M.html

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2984&p=2

While the second can obviously be taken with a grain of salt, seeing as it's a review by a third party, the first link brings one directly to NVIDIA's own spec on the card. I see nothing there about lower speed iterations for either the 8600M GS or the 8600M GT. There's a problem there. While I understand that NVIDIA allows companies to alter clock speeds and type of RAM included, I think a 600mhz difference in speed is something that should have been, well, given as information available for the purchasing public, whatever the reasons for it. Knowing WHY a barebone notebook is priced considerably lower than it's seeming sibling is as important, in my mind, as the barebone notebook being priced considerably lower than it's seeming sibling.

I understand that this is shaping up to be a fairly good performing notebook, in some (most) cases beating out it's nearest neighbor, the G1S-A1, however, being given enough information to make an educated purchasing decision is very important, and at this point, it almost looks like Asus is trying to get people to say "oh, well, the C90S doesn't perform as well as the G1S-A1, so I'm going to get the G1S," and that's mildly irritating

Anyway, keep up the information giving, folks. Part of our responsibility as consumers is making sure that we're on top of the manufacturers, making sure we're getting what we're paying for (which, by the way, I think we get out of the C90S).

Later all, I'll check back later, sleep beckons.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3794

That's a review of the F3SV-A1 showing 2344 in 3DMark06, however, that *IS* with only 1 GB of single channel RAM, so we'll have to wait for someone to post some scores with 2 GB of dual channel RAM to give more of an apples-to-apples comparison of cards.

Here is one with 2 GB of dual channel RAM, but seems to perform slower anyway.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=125246

It does look like the F3SV-A1 is using the same speed GDDR2 as the C90S is, so it appears as though the best gaming notebook out there is simply the G1S right now. Unless someone has another option that uses GDDR3?

Thank you, and goodnight.

 

Oh, I totally agree that its hardly fair for manufacturers to call the gddr2 and gddr3 versions the same card. To top it off, most of us are running rivatuner once we have the notebook at our house to find out whats in it, its happened with the Compal, the Dell and now the C90. Its like buying a car and once you get it home, you open up the hood to see what size engine is inside.

The other thing that is annoying is how long gddr3 has been around and it is still not even close to being used the majority of the time. I guess that is speaking only for notebooks, I haven't followed gpus on the desktop end as far as memory goes.

 

Here is a kinda crappy video i did with my webcam of some in game Oblivion footage. From now on ill use the ingame FRAPS movie utility, and then convert it to make it smaller then upload it. The quality should be better than this but not perfect....

http://media.putfile.com/Kinda-crappy-oblivion-video-on-c90s

 

I got the beta BIOS V502, testing it right now.

the BIOS version came with C90S is V401, it reads memory speed at DDR2 533, Asus product manager told me because their R&D think DDR 533 is better for overclocking so they locked the memory speed at 533/PC4300.

It's not that I have problems with V401, it's just I want C90S to read DDR 667. I flashed the new BIOS and it did show the memory speed at 667, I'll let you guys know if I have any problem with the new BIOS but so far so good.

 

Excellent news...i guess...I still want to know if anyone else has been able to overclock to 2.93 without it locking up though