ASUS G74SX Owners' Lounge

Hi BrodyBoy, again you help me out! What would I do without you, thanks, I'll get rid of it tonight. I found a great program for drivers, its called driver reviver from riviversoft. Pcworld reviewed it and praised it. I tried it yesterday and it backed-up my old drivers, and updated 36 drivers. Just thought people on this list might be interested!

 

Asus has it....they just don't make it easy to find! Try this link.

 

anyone? no one tried to get out 3D on a 120Hz monitor thru HDMI from your best buy model of G74Sx? i would really appreciate if someone would confirm if its possiblee

 

Sorry...I don't have the BB model and I'm not very familiar with it.

 

i have to find out before black friday cuz i got my eye on one 120Hz monitor..but if it doesn't work...:|. well thanks anyway!

 

Not all 120Hz monitor has HDMI 1.4 input, but as long as the HDMI input is 1.4 it will work.

 

7.6 Hardisk Score? how come? because of SSD or no partials or what?

 

hmm alright. THANKS for the replay..i guess i'll give it a try

 

hello again just got mine today i have 1 question how would u enable 3D to watch video on youtube can't enable 3d at all there is no button to do so ..?

 

Ken I'm afraid that's not true at all.

Not all 3D screens are compatible with Nvidia 3D Vision such as many of the recent Samsung monitors which use different timings in their shutter glasses.

On top of that you can only send 720p (1280x720) @ 120Hz over HDMI as it does not have enough bandwidth for 1080p (1920x1080) @ 120Hz.

For full resolution 120Hz stereo 3D you need to use a compatible screen with Dual-Link DVI or DisplayPort neither of which the G74SX has.

 

Looking for some SSD install guidance for my G74.

I'm looking at buying a 128GB version of either the Intel 510 or the Samsung 830.

On the hardware side, would I need to buy a caddy, or can it just be installed?

On the software side, I want to do a clean install of Windows (and all drivers, apps, etc.) onto it. How do you do that since we don't get Windows media with the computer.

Thanks in advance.

 

You should already have two HHD caddies, so you just use one of those for your SSD. I'll send you a PM about the clean install.

 

Hello Dear forum members

If anyone could help me with the following issue for my G74SX

I have read some reviews and posts regarding the WEI rates of G74SX and have seen the numbers

However, mine are the following:

Processor: 7.5
Memory (RAM): 7.6
Graphics: 6.6
Gaming graphics: 6.6
Primary hard disc: 5.9

Am i missing something, because everywhere i see both graphics scores are 7.2. May i have missed installing something or is this an option I must change

My specs are:
Intel Core i7-2670QM 2.20GHz/3.10GHz
16GB DDR3 1333MHz
1.5TB (1500GB) (2x 750GB), 7200, SATA
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M с 3GB GDDR5

I have installed the latest Nvidia drivers - 285.62

Thank you very much

 

As I recall, there's a 3D function in the Nvidia Control Panel that must be turned off for non-3D models to attain their maximum WEI score. (I'm not at the G74 right now, so I can't look at it to see its name.)

I think it only affects the WEI benchmark and has no impact on video performance during normal use, so it likely doesn't matter whether you turn it off or not.

 

still waiting plz how can i enable 3D to watch video on youtube ?

 

Thanks mate. I have the 3D model which comes with the NVIDIA glasses

In NVIDIA control panel there is a stereoscopic 3D option. I just disabled it and my WEI graphics score went to 7.2

Makes sense...

 

What configuration do you have? Is it a 3D model? (I didn't even know there were 3D YouTube videos! )

 

Actually there's plenty of bandwidth - with HDMI 1.3 in 2006 they more than doubled the available bandwidth so that was easily possible, and with 1.4 they even added support for up to 4k resolution.

 

Yes the spec supports the required bandwidth but current HDMI chipsets do not.

 

wei score is for looks imo real world performance is much more important. example would be a cheap ocz solid 3 SSD gets me 7.8 wei score but when i put 2 of the same SSD into my asus, and copy files from one drive to another, i get only about average 130-135 MB/s copy speed.

although on their website stated max could go to 450 on write, my burst was only about 350. and this was checked and done under intel RST with intel driver installed, stating that its under sata 6.0 gbps as well as crystal disk clearly showed max is about 137 mb/s and read is only about 200 for both SSD.

bench marks are crap, i stopped trusting those now

 

know how people say the max read/write in ATTO is important but just for show, and iops really isnt about copying speed, its just the snapping feeling, well thats obviously not 100% true.

if anyone getting SSD, make sure you get either intel/kingston for max performance cause something to do with intel motherboard and both of these companies are intel.

or get the SSD which clearly states and seperates read and write IOPS, either sustained or random in both read and write. 20k iops nets about 120 mb/s read/write so about 50/60k would get you double/tripple the speed.

if a SSD just states the max iop for example mushkins chrono max iop 90k, its probably combined of 4 different iop values, random read/write and sustained/sequential read/write, thus read/write by themselves arent very high.

 

I wholeheartedly agree..... If you could actually find someone who can tell the difference between 1333 and 1600MHz memory, for example, in actual use, they can have my computer. It's even more true of SSDs....real-world use has so many variables that faster or slower read/writes are almost irrelevant for most of the things we do.

I probably wouldn't go that far, since they can be useful for comparative purposes. But as a way to evaluate the actual performance of an actual computer in use by an actual person, they're of limited relevance. The obsession with WEI scores amazes me.

 

i was one of them! obsessed with the wei score and upgraded my computer, even the cheap ocz solid 3 gets me a 7.8 score for hardrive capability. i would picture having high iops in read and write would be real good. currently my window starts up in about 15 sec with this solid3, and thats around 190 mb read as per crystaldisk.

thing was, G74sx i went into the bios it doesnt support raid0, only ahci mode, so i cant just have 2 crappy ssd in raid to out perform or get the same performance as a higher end ssd. thats when the iops details are important.

if a ssd that has high iop, ocz vertext3 max iop 240 gb version and mushkin chrono 240gb gives about 480mb in crystaldisk, thats nearly 2.5x the read speed which can almost load up any program instantly.

so obviously iops is important, but do ignore when they say MAX iops. look for sustained/random read/write iops is the key imo.

 

but it does kind of feel like my cpu is the bottle neck.. lol

 

Hi just bought a samsung 830 series 256gb ssd and wd scorpio black 750gb hdd for my g74. Just wondering how hard it is to swap hdd's? I've never cracked open one of my laptops before, and am kinda hesit

 

I opened a friend's G74 and honestly, it isn't hard at all, you just need a philips screwdriver for a HDD swap.

 

open up that biggest screw, and the plate is plastic made to somehow stuck and stick to the laptop. rip that plate off with a decent amount of force but not too hard, it will come off with some force.

primary hardrive left, 2ndary right, if the vents is facing away from u.
swapping the primary hardrive is harder than the 2nd one cause 2nd one will come up if you pull the tape, and can be disconnected easily. 1st one will NOT come out, its a slide/connect method to the left of the drive, thus you need to disconnect 2nd hardrive to take the 1st one out.

 

Ok big problems on my G74sx, but its not the g74sx itself. BSOD's from my vertex 3 120GB. Not its not detected. I highly RECOMMEND NOT getting a OCZ vertex 3 or any OCZ SDD, just issues all the time non stop Bsod and now its completely failed. RMA another one and another long wait for its return

 

There is a firmware fix for the BSOD issue. Some people are still experiencing it, but it did fix it for others. When you receive the new drive, flash it to the latest firmware available.

 

im using 2 OCZ solid 3 SSD, 1 in my alienware and 1 in the asus. update both them to latest firmware, has no bsod, has them for about 3 weeks now. and i use my comp ALOT like, 10 hrs a day or sometimes even 24 hrs a day.. since i am gamer

 

I used mine for 3 months 24/7. And its dead it had the latest firmware 2.15. Best part of it all is OCZ wont let me RMA it now as it wasn't an authorized dealer i brought it from. I didn't think to ask the dealer if they were authorized by OCZ.. Load a rubbish, now I have a 200 dollar brick.

I'm moving over to Intel SSD's from now on.

 

Hi BrodyBoy. My G74sx is coming in today and I'm also getting an Intel ssd based on advice garnered from this forum. I'm
a newbie at laptop modification but I'd like to learn.
Any chance you could send me the same info on doing a clean install?

 

Sure. PM sent.

EDIT: Oops, I think you need 5 posts before you can get/send PMs. I'll send you a PM once you've got those and the system unlocks that for you.

 

Ok I've got a really big problem. I switched my hdd's with my new ssd+hdd, and somehow the ribbon cable that connects the second hdd bay to the motherboard became disconnected and apparently my wife threw it out. Anybody know the part number for that cable so I can order a new one? Also, how is it attached, I mean I didn't put any pressure on it and its gone, so how is it attached? Thanks!

 

HERE is the exact part.

It attaches at the M/B with a little slide connector. If you look closely, you see that horizontal brown "bar" where the cable enters the connector. You lift that up from both its ends (I use a little screwdriver to get in there) until it's loose, and the cable comes right out. When re-installing, put the cable in the open connector until it feels seated, then push that little bar back down. It forms a pressure fit against the cable.





PS: It is just the cable that's gone, or also the little connector/PCB it attaches to on the other end?

 

Ok thanks. I wasn't home today when UPS got here so I'm going to pick it up at the depot tomorrow. At least he didn't leave it in the rain!

 

Just wondering if anyone can recommend a hardshell case for transport? I'll be carrying mine with a lot of video gear and would like to avoid a disaster just before a show.

 

Funny thing happened, my old Asus G73JH broke down few weeks ago when my new TV was connected to non-grounded power outlet... When I took the laptop for fixing, the maintenance guy dropped the laptop to the ground :/

Long story short: I got a G74SX as a replacement. Now I have some questions that have been bugging me. I installed my old SSD to the laptop and did a clean install and there is peculiar problem with WEI.

How come when running WEI (and specifically disk part of it) the program somehow activates the Power4Gear Entertainment mode in the end. The same thing happens with winsat disk in command prompt.

I have OCZ Vertex 2 120Gb as primary hard drive installed in the laptop.

Other good to know stats:
i7 2630 processor
8Gb memory
CMO full HD screen

Also I'd like to know should I buy one of these Everki's or this Slappa and get it delivered to Finland, or should I just buy Targus XL backpack from Finland?

 

Just got my G74SX!! (XN1). Also got my Samsung SSD 830 60 gig...should I use Norton Ghost to migrate data to SSD or do clean install on SSD? (I would like to remove bloatware anyways so I feel clean install is best step)

Also I know I want to keep Microsoft Office Starter...should I copy it before clearing HDD?

Also if I do clean install on SSD and use that to boot should I swap the primary HDD that came with it into the secondary?

I think i might as well because once SSD is installed and running I'm going to hook it up to PC and reformat the hard drive (as long as that doesn't affect warranty or anything like that...)

 

actually, that is normal. SSD has shorter lifespan than hdd anyway, the write cycle only about few thousand for either MLC or SLC compare to an usual USB flash drive has probably 100k write cycle. basically if u browse net 2 hrs /day for a year and half straight, your SSD will die. only thing different is when ssd dies, u can still read, but not write. and in your case, you use it 24/7 so make sense it dies in 3 months.

i think that is normal. i have my screen brightness on low/lowest cause its too bright for my eyes. when i do the wei test, screen goes bright then gets dark and does it several times, i think its trying to test graphic card + everything else, thats without power4gear. not suprising if you have power4gear installed so it'll turn that on and off.

imo, install fresh window is the way to go, that way u can tweak settings in window7 for best SSD performance. ie superfetch, pagefiles, hybernation, guiboot etc etc. i also suggest you to use open office, thats what i use, its got almost everything.

and be verycareful how much you use your SSD, dont download files onto SSD instead save the downloaded files onto hardrive it'll make your drive last a bit longer.

 

best way to go is probably get 10k or 15k rpm hardrives and put it into the laptop, too bad there isnt one out yet. both seagate cheetah and wd velociraptor are 2.5 inch but too 6mm too thick to fit into a laptop, its meant for desktops.

i say if the laptop supports raid 0, get a good raid driver and installed 2 WD black scorp and raid them together for max performance. and last a lot longer.

 

Wasn't planning on having anything except for Win7 and Starcraft 2 on my SSD. For some reason though computer can't seem to detect second hard drive. I know the HDD works as I used it to turn on the computer/mess around before I replaced it and installed my SSD there. Any reason why it's not reading?

 

Hmm....I think that's something of an exaggeration. I've got an Intel SSD installed in the laptop I'm typing on right now....it gets used about 14-18 hrs a day, every day for nearly a year now. Never had a so much as a hiccup out of it, and its wear indicator is at 99. I believe SSDs are expected to have a shorter lifespan than HDDs, but if it craps out in 3 months, something's wrong with it.

 

BrodyBoy,

What do you use to find a wear indicator on your SSD? Thanks

 

I've used the Intel SSD Toolbox, as well as CrystalMarkInfo, to read the drive's status data.

 

Thanks - I downloaded the CrystalMark and it works quite well.

 

Yeah, it's great little program, isn't it? Another very handy utility, in case you don't have it already, is HWiNFO64. Tells you just about everything you could ever want to know about your computer!

 

it also depends which browser you use. i think chrome work best with ssd thats cause it rarely writes stuff onto the drive. as for IE im not so sure, but for firefox, its terrible. unless firefox is changed from disk cache to memory cache, its suicidal for SSD imo.

also, SMART and other programs to detect ssd lifespan doesnt really work all that well. theres no way to tell when the drive will stop writing, all its doing that its testing and reading, so it shows its in good health. smart shows that my OCZ solid 3 is in 100% good health and lifespan left is around 8 years lol, but when i recall the last time i went disk check with cyrstaldisk mark, speed dropped by around 15-20%. read from 250-200, write from 140-90 mbps.

i also did tests with hd tune pro, and constantly showing parts of the drive read/write being unstable, instead more of a consistent line on the graph for the 1st portion of the drive, later portion shows a consistent line. using the drive to read is different from the write, if you transfer massive amount of files, the cell will die and thats it. it'll still read fine but its just something people sacrifice for speed.

when write speed decreases, i could definitely tell extracting a file takes longer, and delays too. i had to extract a 12 GB game at early SSD start time it only takes around 3 mins, now it takes 5.

(drop in speed for benchmark can be caused due to amount of files on drive, which i got around 50% full, but this should not have any effect on actual world performance, if performance drops by quite a bit, then the drive is probably already decaying.)

the cheaper ones can be killed rather quickly if you were to run something like spinrite or anything that will write a ton of data to the drive. cheap SSD's may be more in the 10TB+ range of data written to them. the current top of the line SSD from intel are advertised by intel to handle 35TB of data written to it before it fails. intel claims its enough to write 20GB / day for 5 yrs but then again thats around 350-500 dollars. intel did not provide lifespan on their crappier ssd but you can expect its probably a lot less than the good ones.

but also the fact that when portion of the drive dies, that portion is gone for good, so basically its just dead files sitting there, cant be deleted cause cant write to those cells anymore. so eventually drives become less and less useful, those 5 yrs talk is probably just for market purposes like they always do. as for me i got around 10-15 tbs stuff i want to back up, and constantly going through them maybe 4days/week so my drive dies quickly =/

however i do admit the copy speed is amazing though, i just hope it'll last as long as my laptop does, 3-4 years.

heres a link to have a general idea, but then again those are probably just for casual uses, not extreme writes.
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2...eason-you-might-want-to-avoid-the-chromebook/
leaving aside the drives thats less than 150 days for average computer usage, you can count them as defective drives. still the average # of days is probably just over 1.5 years, just terribad.

 

first check your bios, see if its there. if it is, then try going into computer management. right click my computer, click on manage, on the left pane under storage, go down to disk management, see if you can find any unallocated drive. if there is one, give it a drive letter or reformat it then give it a drive letter and it should work. (make sure to back up your files if you want to reformat your drive)

if you cant even find the drive then theres probably something wrong with your windows, sata driver, chipset driver or your actual hardrive, or who knows what the problem might be

 

Source? Anandtech did some testing and his conservative estimate is that for a heavy user, a typical SSD should last at least 5 years.