ASUS G73SW Owners' Lounge

Thanks a Lot. That sure relieves me of the strain....!!!!!

 

Just received mine

Have to finish burning the recovery DVDs and then install W7 on my SSD before i can start trying out games

 

^^Lucky, still waiting for me :\.

HFHF

Oh, did you get a backpack or mouse with it?

 

No I did not, didn't think I would since it's an "X" edition.

 

Has anyone had problems with missed/dropped keys while typing on the 73sw yet? I experienced that problem on the g73sw being sold through microcenter before the recall... just hoping they got it fixed as its the main show stopper preventing me from going for it.

 

So I got my G73SW from CompUsa today. Turns out that the ones they are selling are still the ones with the affected SB chipsets. I'll be sending it back tommorow ... I might just buy the one from Amazon

 

That sucks, sorry to hear that =\. Yeah, just got my amazon one, so far runs nice and cool/stable, need to type on it more to check for the missed keys prob, but I did see this laptop has the CMO panel not the hannstar like I previously thought it would have.

Overall the CMO is still pretty good, has decent viewing angles, not sure if the JW or the newer JH's ever had it, but seems like this laptop will be a keeper for sure. :>

 

That sucks! Definitely good information to pass along though... suddenly the sales of g73sw from compusa/circuitcity/tigerdirect comes to a screeching halt.

 

The G73SW-XA1 from Amazon has 8GB of memory.
If I order one I want to upgrade it to 16GB of memory.
The specs say it has 4 SODIMM Sockets...hopefully they are not all populated with 2GB memory sticks, which would necessitate throwing away 8GB of functional memory to add 4-4GB sticks.

It also sounds like you have to remove the keyboard to get to 2 of the memory sockets???

Has anyone looked at the machine they got from Amazon to see how the memory is populated? I could only wish that the 8GB is populated with 2-4GB sticks under the keyboard...leaving two easily accessible empty slots...
Dream on.....

Also, I may want to buy a SDD drive to use as a c: drive leaving the hard disk as the d:drive. I'd want to move the OS and apps over to C:. How hard would this be?

Or would it be better just to get a copy of Windows 7 and do a clean install from scratch of OS and apps on the C: SDD drive?

 

As I saw on the manual, they are supposed to be 2x 4GB under the keyboard. But I'm not sure if it's real.
Also if you want to do those upgrades, why don't you buy from a seller that already does that?
I bought mine from hidevolution and they did all for me, also for a good price and excellent service.

 

Yeah, it sucks, at least CompUsa's got that 30 day guarantee for this item.
I actually asked them before I ordered if this is the new revision units but as we all know, most of the phone sales people could not give a definite answer, so I just decided to take the risk since I could return it.

 

Do any of You know if the Amazon model g73SW has a second drive bracket or do I have to buy it?

 

Only comes with 1 bracket, and @Alchemist, I type about 60wpm, so not that fast, but havent had any kb lag now that I've tested a bit more.

So far, its been lot more stable than the JH models I had last summer, time will tell though.

 

Hey all,

I'm looking to buy a G73SW-A1 but I can't seem to find any websites that have the new revision in stock. I normally buy from Newegg.com but they seem to be out of stock.

I was wondering if anyone could recommend a few good resellers (that you've had good experiences with in the past) that have them in stock.

 

you can order them from www.xoticpc.com, where i ordered mine, very helpful and they can ensure you get the revised version.

hope that helps.

 

Thank you shogunxp! Mind if I ask you another question or two?

1. What are your thoughts on the included backpack? Does the laptop fit in there nicely?
2. Can the two hard drives be put in a RAID0 or RAID1?

 

You could buy at hidevolution too... Mine was fully customized and was shipped within 2 days. Very good customer service too...

 

Just ran 3dmark06 with a new installation of Windows 7 on my SSD everything stock
14073
Result

Here's with a little OC
750core/1500shader/1400memory

15160
Result

800/1600/1500 (max memory in Nvidia system tools)
15735
Result

850/1700/1500
16124
Result

 

n1 lpnowland, yeah I've got some good runs after I reformated as well, still running on HDD, but maybe by the years end I'll have an SSD.

I was able to get 14,088


With 800/1600/1350 I got 15,675


Have you tried SuperPi 1m yet? So far best I can do is 12.995.

 

That is some good scores I see here with GTX 460m. How is the stability when gaming? Is there a big difference with FPS?
thx

 

I can't recommend Donald Stratton at Custom Laptops by PowerNotebooks.com™ - Custom Built Gaming Laptop Computers highly enough . We've had many dealings with him and he's never let us down . Here's a link to his ratings and thousands of reviews . PowerNotebooks.com - powernotebooks.com/index.php3 - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings

Great family run company . BTW I just ordered a ASUS G73SW-3DE from him and he customized it and shipped it the same day and it'll be here in Monday . I'm really getting excited especially after the weeks of research on which system to purchase . Good luck .

 

still waiting on mine in the mail, the back pack fits the laptop.

i dont think there's raid option for the g73's

 

Have you tried higher?
As for SuperPi, I haven't tried any games or other benchmarks yet, maybe later tonight
Unless this counts LOL

 

Anyone encountered missed/dropped keys while typing on the g73-sw yet? Really hoping they fixed that one.

 

I've seen this query before, and the answer is always, no - there's no RAID controller in this laptop.

I've also heard, from people who work with these things, that the "consumer" RAID controllers which you can get on ordinary mobos are not very well regarded (to pretty up the phrase actually used). A couple of years ago I read advice from one custom gaming machine shop, who made desktop rigs. "We will install RAID if you insist on it - but we always advise against it. For this sort of machine it has little practical use, and if it goes wrong it's a pain to put right."

RAID is still, really, for people running servers, or using their machines for big databases, or for some specialist apps - all of them unlikely candidates for laptop use. And let's face it, how often are you going to be able to hot swap a disk drive in a laptop?

Of course, there's always the bragging rights, but apart from that I haven't heard of situations where RAID is technological asset. That, I think, is the calculation made by the people putting the G73SWs together and so they haven't bothered finding the space or the budget for RAID when gamers need it all spent on graphics cards, or RAM.

 

Not that I have seen so far, but then again I only had it for a day now

 

Nope, was getting pretty sleepy last night so didnt want to keep going. I'll prob push it more soon. Temps stay pretty good, max temp with that OC after a few runs of 3dmark06 was 69c. Without OC it maxed 65c, not bad for being in a 24c room. Though come summer time my room will be 30-32c :\.

Nice WEI score, you're making me really want an SSD now. It seems only main prob I've had is it when transferring lots of files to the hdd, it tends to get sluggish trying to open other apps. I just assume this drive cant keep up with the rest of the system.

Everything else stays smooth, only happens if I'm writing lots of files to the hdd, so hopefully thats all it is.

 

I tried some 3dmark Vantage, here's what I got so far:

Stock clocks
P8296
Result

850/1700/1500
P10197
Result

850/1700/1625 (max memory in MSI afterburner)
P10264
Result

Temperatures are really good, max of 74 degrees on the GPU so far

 

I have to respectfully disagree with this overall sentiment. Raid0 in a dual drive config will give you a much faster disk IO experience which is especially good for gaming and other disk intensive use cases which this laptop is uniquely designed and well suited for, especially given the dual drive configuration. Additionally, many folks use Raid1 mirroring on their PC's for redundancy, hot swapping has nothing to do with it, if you mirror the drives and one fails, at most you need to reboot and you are up and running immediately. You only get the capacity of one drive but if you don't need all that space, having this redundancy can be a lifesaver! I do find it odd that they don't include RAID functionality as generally speaking the intel chipsets have this built in and I don't believe there is significant work or expense in making this work. Many off the shelf PC's from Dell, HP, etc. all have RAID via the intel MATRIX controller and have for several years so this is somewhat common in inexpensive business class and even many consumer class PC's now. For this not to be in such a high end laptop as the G73SW series is somewhat baffling to me...

I just ordered my G73SW-3DE on Tuesday, it should come next Tuesday and I can't wait to turn the beast on! I was originally looking at the A1 but for the money I think the 3DE is superior especially given the better screen technology and BD Writer.

Tom

 

Wow, nice scores, yeah I've been pushing mine a bit more, definitely cant go past 850core as seems to cause errors in 3dmark.

I'll post some pics/temps/clocks a bit later. But been meaning to ask you, did you get the CMO1726 panel too?

Have to admit, looks way better than the hannstar panel from the JH, so glad to finally not have backlight bleed probs like before. :>

 

Yeah that's the panel i have also, looks pretty nice, no bleeding here
So far this laptop is a winner, can't really beat it for the price anyway.

 

I agree with you assessment . You can always use the little known software RAID that comes with the Windows 7 Professional and above versions . I've read several articles and it sounds like a very good option . In fact it's actually faster than most hardware-software RAIDS . Here's a quote from one of the Windows 7 forums followed by several articles that you may enjoy . You can purchase a key from Microsoft or even Amazon that will update to the version of Windows 7 that you may think you'll need . All the software is there just waiting to be unlocked by the supporting key . I hope this is as interesting to you as it was to me when I first heard about it . BTW my G73SW-3DE will be here on Monday , and like you I can hardly wait to boot her up .

Windows 7 Software RAID: Disk, Partition and Volume Context Menus - Software Secret Weapons

RAID on the Cheap: Windows 7 Software RAID vs. inexpensive “fake RAID” Kevin’s Blog

How To Create Software Raid In Windows 7

 

@ Typecast, I see your M17x R3 has the Intel i7 2630QM and you have a 1600 Mhz memory,. will it work? I thought the 2630 can only read 1333 Mhz speeds.

 

It will probably just downclock to 1333 if the CPU can't support 1600. Thats what 1333 will do if its on a 1066 machine.

 

I have an unopened Windows 7 ultimate I am considering throwing on there. I could be mistaken but if I remember correctly, the inbuilt software RAID functionality in Win7 is only for dynamic disks created for additional storage though, not the system partition/volume. I'll have to double check but if that's the case, it really doesn't apply for this use case.

I'm frustrated that I let my impatience get the better of me when I bought my unit on Tuesday. I saw Amazon was still on preorder and figured I'd rather not risk it going out of stock so I pulled the trigger with one of the smaller west coast vendors, well then I look wednesday and Amazon had them in stock and by end of day it was down to $1919 with free 2 day shipping (I have Prime) or $4 to upgrade to 1 day shipping. So now I have to wait for stupid ground shipping which is Tuesday when I could have had it today, and paid $60 less for it. What can you do!

The ultimate question, no pun intended, is whether I should run it the way it comes out of the box or flatten it and load 7 ultimate on it...

Ok did a little more reading, looks like you can mirror the primary volume but it will convert it to a dynamic disk which could cause some issues with drive utilities etc. Still, good to know it's an option should you upgrade the windows version...

 

That's a coincidence , I had the ASUS G73SW-3DE Preordered for $1,999.00 from Amazon and canceled it too and when I just checked they're out of stock and priced at $1,939.03 with free 2 day delivery . If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all as the old saying goes .

Also like you I went ahead and purchased it from a west coast dealer . I did get an Intel SSDSC2MH120A2K5 510 120GB SSD put in as the boot drive and a clean install of Windows 7 and it came with a Win 7 DVD too . But I ended up spending a little more than I had planned but I did end up with what I originally wanted with the added bonus of not having to do the SSD drive swap out and the clean install which of course saved me the time and whatever headaches would of accompanying the work .

To upgrade to the Ultimate version I believe that all you have to do is enter the proper key from within the Home version . I think that I'd try it for a while the way it comes and when I found the time do a clean install of Ultimate . The Asus comes with a driver DVD that installs all of the correct drivers automatically , from what I've been told .

We'll undoubtedly enjoy the new computers even though we ended up paying a little more .

 

To the guys who recently received their G73SW's, did it have stickers on the box or laptop saying "New Revision Certified Design" ?

 

Yup, also has small "New Revision" sticker on the laptop palm-rest.

 

Small world isn't it? I was going to pull the trigger a few weeks ago on the jw-3de but figured this was worth the wait when I saw some of the benchmarks of the sandybridge i7, it blows the doors off the 740qm from everything I read. I'm just using it stock for the time being from a hardware perspective. I really have no need to go to SSD at this point and would rather have the capacity. Sadly the majority of the time this unit will sit on my couch for my daily web surfing needs. I wanted the power so that when I travel I can play games, I had bought my current laptop last year around this time, a Sony F series with the i7 quad core, but the GPU is a GTX 330M and has been a disappointment. I'm certain this asus will quickly remedy that. Dropping 2 g's on a laptop is a bit extreme but you only live once and the way I see it, you go big or you go home! Can't wait to get back into a 17"+ screen, going to this sony with the 16" was definitely noticeably from my previous dell with the 17. Very much looking forward to the new toy in any case. I'll likely run it out of the box for the short term and then decide if it's worth flattening, not sure how much crapware come on these and I'll have to see how they partition things etc, but I'm not remotely concerned about reloading ultimate from scratch if push comes to shove. Good to know on the driver DVD but I would imagine the drivers are all available online also and may be more up to date than that which they provide on an optical media shipped with the unit. Since it's so new that may not be the case here, but either way I've built many machines from scratch so I'm not worried. Also looking forward to the display on this being 120hz, as I understand it it's also significantly brighter than the stock 1080p panel in the non 3d versions of the g73sw series.

 

I could of written the majority of your post , it is amazing how many people experience the same things in their day to day lives . My Dell Inspiron 9300 bit the dust ( I actually had a Sony 15" before the Dell ) and I had to start looking for a new notebook ( I came very close to ordering a ASUS G73JW-3DE the day before , I'd of had a bad case of buyers remorse , thats for sure ) . When I read your recent two posts it was almost like Déjà vu

You might also find the Asus Utility and Bloatware Guide that was posted on this forum some time back . It's well worth reading .

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/380681-asus-utility-bloatware-guide.html

 

The world is like that sometimes, what is funny is that my prior dell was an E1705, which is the consumer branded version of the inspiron 9400 ;-) Thanks for the bloatware link, I'll give it a read.

 

I was wondering: Can the G73SW play WOW, with graphic settings maxed out?

Just read that the G74 is announced, but I also read that the new GTX560M, isn't a great update for the 460m. It is first till May I wil get money for a new gaming laptop - So I was wondering if I should wait for the G74 to come out, or buy the G73SW till that time? Will the new GPU be remarkable better? Don't like the G74's design too.

Is the GTX460m strong enough for future games? Not games like Metro 2033, but for less graphic demanding games?

 

Yes except shadow settings.

 

Hi!

I ve just bought a g73sw notebook but i didnt get a backpack with it. Could you give me an advice what kind of backpack would be the best for the notebook and where can i get it? i live in europe. Thx.

 

Ok, the one that I got from CompUsa last week didn't have any so I sent it back.

Is there somebody else here who got their G73SW online from CompUsa / Tigerdirect ? Did you guys have the revised design ?

I talked to someone in the Compusa retail store here in Texas thru the phone but he said that they didn't have any demo units available as of now but they have some units currently in stock on their stores so I still can't verify if the ones in the stores are the revised design ...

Is there someone here on the forum who has dropped by any Compusa retail store and verified that the G73 they have are the revised ones ? The nearest Compusa store is around 2 hours from where i live

 

In my search for info on the new G74SW I came across this website with comparisons and thoughts about the current G73SW and the new up and coming G74SW 3D model with a quick look on YouTube.

Tech Tabloid: Asus ROG G74 SX : Will it have the same problems as G73?

I gotta say they were not very complimentary towards the G73 which kind of surprised me a lot actually, and for one who can't make up his mind about whether he wants his first ever laptop or to build a new desktop, I'm wavering, do I or don't I?.

Cheers,
John

 

That truly sucks they are still managing to sell the old units, I live in TX too, but havent been to any local CompUSA stores in years. So sorry cant help there, though took a pic of the new sticker for ya and everyone else just so they know what to look for(not the best quality :<)

 

yup same sticker as mine..there's also an indication on the brown box that the laptop ships in.

 

I noticed in the pic it says "12 months warranty"? i thought Asus had 2 years warranty ?

 

my sticker says 24 months warranty