ASUS U500vz/UX51vz Owners' Lounge!

Nonetheless, I prefer this "non-premium" IPS panel over even the best of TN panels. Having good color reproduction on a TN panel is good perhaps for some specific graphic work, but as soon as your viewpoint changes even slightly, so do all your colors and contrast. In fact, I had a "premium" TN panel before in 13" size in a Sony VAIO Z, and I am much happier with the U500 panel. It is my strong impression that most users will feel the same way.

With all the scepticism out there about the panel in this laptop, I thought it would be good to have a more down to earth account of the quality of this panel...

 

Thank you very much for doing this test! I'm happy with this battery life!

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

yeah so what tests aside taking pics you are going to do?

 

Can I ask you in specific what is Vaio Z model you are comparing?

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

the vaio z panel is TN, its not going to have good viewing angles, however its much better than your average TN panel, and the color gamut is quite great, it is one of the best TN panels

 

Perhaps you misunderstood my comment? I was merely giving my subjective opinion on the screen. I make no claims about specific tests, and indeed I do not have equipment to conduct these myself.

I'm just saying despite what formal tests may or may not show, I am quite happy with the screen.

@Mac: I owned a Z11 with a 1600x900 resolution panel.

 

We read about the throttling, but I'm still curious to know if the u500 performs very well in day to day - non gaming - stuff. Very intensive browsing and the like.

I don't think throttling comes into play then, but fan noise might. I can stand a little noise, but its difficult to make a real assesment about it.

 

hey im interested in the touchscreen version...
but i need to know about the throttling issue?
what happens? does it slow down lag? and is there any cure or prevention for thrttling? thanks

anyone can reply to this? i just gotta know what does throttling actually do?

 

Congratulations. I was going to look at those this weekend, but I've been preoccupied...

1. is the fan noise bearable in idle?
2. still throttling issues under high load?
3. anyone succeeded running windows 7 or Linux on it yet?
4. is windows 8 tolerable?

I find it funny that watching a 1080p movie gives about the same (1h shorter) battery time as when it's idle. Is the screen sucking up all that power, or what is it?

 

I don't need great color accuracy (just good enough), and I don't need IPS either, just good enough viewing angles. The 15" Series 9 screen is horrible in person. I love the screen on the Vizio. If someone took the Vizio screen and put it on the Series 9 I'd probably buy that instead. I just need a FHD screen that at least rivals the colors/viewing angles of my non-IPS Elitebook screen.

I think I'd be very satisfied with everything on this laptop at this point except for the fan noise (and lack of kensington lock, but there are ways around this).

 

I just completed a 1h10m BF3 singleplayer test. I played at settings 1600x900 and at LOW, it was playable but for a hardcore quake player as myself I am very picky about FPS and would not be satisfied with this if i would play multiplayer. The FPS was about 30-50, and im sure that alot of users would be ok with this.

Regarding the temperatures, the max was;
GPU 73c
CPU 82c

These temperatures are fantastic as BF3 is one of the most demanding games/application you would use in real world scenarios. The laptop gets very warm at the bottom and above the keyboard, but it barely spreads down to the areas where u have your hands.

The throttling pattern is interesting in this log. CPU clock was at 2700MHz for the first 5 minutes, then going down to approximately 2000Mhz the next coming 35 minutes. After that it's down to 1200Mhz as we have seen before. Anyone experienced that can tell us more about the log?

Link to hwinfo64 log: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4480781/u500vz_bf2-1h10m.CSV


EDIT: LOL, I just realized I accidentially unplugged the power cord in the middle of the game session.. maybe this is when it clocked down to 1200. The game ran OK even after this as I didnt even notice it.

 

those temps and those clocks are not fantastic at all. when you put things on low you are not forcing the gpu nor the gpu as they could be forced, thus lower heat.

it just means that asus has put some bios limitations so that the notebook wont shut down or throttle everything.

 

Oh ok, I see. Let's hope they open up the possibility to change this ourselves in BIOS.

 

Nice test,
There is some throttling going around..

Could you do the same test with throttlestop turned on?
No need to change anything, just instal it and turn it on.

it used to be a solution for this problem on other asus laptops.

P.S:already posted this on the other thread but this seems a better place.

 

From a quick look at the log, there appears to be some correlation between the 2700-2000MHz CPU downclock and a CPU temp of 80-81*C... while correlation does not automatically equal causation, I'm guessing that if we were able to see into the BIOS we'd find the throttle trigger set at that point. The CPU never went down to 1200MHz while the unit was on AC power.

The highest CPU temp recorded was 82 and the highest GPU temp was 73. The GPU ran at 835/1000 until the laptop was unplugged, at which time it mostly switched back and forth between that setting and 405/400, while the game was running.

 

Thank you for your insights. Since this is one of the most demanding games/tasks out there for the laptop, it does look like it will stay at 2000Mhz clock in real world scenarious with the power cord plugged in. At least it's better than 1200Mhz we saw in furmark+prime95!

 

This is not necessarily true. The GPU load on a 650M with a game like BF3 is probably going to be 100%, no matter the render quality setting. The lower quality setting just allows for better framerates/playability. You can confirm this by running GPU-Z during these tests. Log to a file and check the temperature and load for different quality settings and I think you will find them to be the same for BF3. Maybe for a less demanding engine like WoW, quality settings might affect GPU load, but unlikely for any recently released game.

That said, I do not own this notebook, so I cannot verify this myself. I'm waiting for a local dealer to get one so I can see it person. Like most people here, the benchmark comparison is a rMBP, but I since I will be running Win7 100% of the time, that's a less desirable choice.

 

EDIT - I got ninja'd. What he said ^^

I don't know if I agree with this. Why would putting the game on low make a difference? Thermal output is a function of clock speed, load, and voltage. The relationship between heat and voltage is exponential. If the CPU/GPU are running at max clocks, max load, and max voltage, it doesn't matter where you have your in game settings. Changing the graphics settings will obviously have a huge effect on the GPU, but not so much the CPU. With BF3, they'll both be pushing as hard as they can.

I cleaned up the log a little, leaving only some of the key metrics: CPU Core 0 voltage and clock speed, CPU hottest core temp and CPU load, and GPU clocks, voltage, temp and load. I chose core zero to represent all cores because it had as high of utilization as any other core. I also truncated the data at the point where AC power was removed.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16298667/ipkryss log truncated.csv

As you can see, the GPU is at 835/1000, 1.012v, and 97-99% for most of the session. There is a one minute exception around the 30 minute mark - I'm guessing this was a new map loading, paused game, or something similar. The GPU is putting out as much heat as it possibly can. Max clocks, max voltage, and max load. As I wrote above, temps hovered around 72C. Not too shabby.

The CPU is a bit of a mixed bag. As you can see, load was mostly around 45%. The clocks were back and forth between 2700MHz and 2000MHz, with an occasional drop down to 1200MHz. Voltage varied directly with clock speed. The temp was up and down between 75C and 80C, with a max of 82C. Clearly, there is some throttling occurring, and my guess is that it's a thermal rule. Again, I don't know this for certain, but it appears as if the CPU is getting as hot as the thermal policy is allowing it to get.

I really don't think turning up the in-game graphics settings will make any difference whatsoever, other than to lower his framerate. You are seeing the maximum thermal output (and therefore, maximum stock performance) of this machine under the current BIOS rules.

What that tells me is that undervolting may be very useful for the time being...

 

actually there is a utilization property on that as well. It doesnt matter much that the gpu stayed at those clocks or that voltage, one thing is related to the other. The utilization would be lower still.

Here is the deal, for a certain processor, doesnt matter if its a cpu, a gpu or whatever the hell it is, to stay at a certain clock it needs to stay at a certain voltage. Thats why there would be voltage variations. GPUs aint that much smart, they have very few power plans (usually 2-3), so despite the underutilization, they are still going to stay at the same clocks and the same voltage, despite not being fully utilized, this is what happened to the 7970m using enduro, the clocks would stay up, the voltage to achieve the said clocks would be there, but you would still be in the underutilization scenario.

The temps for kepler cards are much lower than what I think you guys are used to, when you reach 80ish C you are going to have throttling issues with those gpus. Its not like the cpus that can reach TJ points of 105C, those kepler cards need to stay at the most at 80c. So yeah those arent great temps, they are necessary ones, with a card that is being underutilized.

its clear for me that to avoid much heat build up there are settings in the bios so that the cpu wont use turbo for prolonged periods. IF there is a utilization of the cpu and gpu for more serious things its going to throttle. And Im not even saying 100% load on both, far less.

 

@Karamazovmm, what he is trying to say is regardless of the settings, (low medium or high), 100% load on gpu is going to generate approximately the same heat.
it may even produce more heat on low since more fps means more cpu load.

the throttling isn´t temperature related, even in the beginning of the game the cpu throttles, now the cpu seems to disables it´s turboboost when it reach 80º which is good, since it lowers the power consumption ie reduce the throttling, so actually this machine throttles less after it heat up.

 

Even a TN panel can have excellent viewing angles
HP ENVY dv6z-7200 Screen Demo with 1920 x 1080 Full-HD Matte Screen - YouTube
keep in mind that IPS panels have a higher response time so they are not ideal for gaming or movie watching.

Actual Vaio Z (13.1") has one of best display on market it has a 1920X1080 resolution and almost 100% of Adobe RGB, so it's another panel respect your Z11.

 

it is temp related otherwise it wouldnt make sense to throttle at bios.

its not going to produce more heat. but you all were correct in terms of temps, I was wrong

[QUOTE='[-Mac-];8938933'`]


Actual Vaio Z (13.1") has one of best display on market it has a 1920X1080 resolution and almost 100% of Adobe RGB, so it's another panel respect your Z11.[/QUOTE]

actually the z11 has the same display as the z2 and z13. the 1080p is somewhat better than the 900p one.

 

This is what i posted sometime ago to explain why it is power and not temperature related

Sandybridge Throttle Issue and Workaround

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/635266-sandybridge-throttling-permanent-fix.html

Review Asus N55SL-S1016V Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

Review Asus N56VZ-S4044V Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

As you can see on the last link, the asus n56 get a much worse score on Cinebench R11.5 but i guess its not that easy to triguer as i made to see.
From personal experience i know that my sister's asus n55 will throttle during games if i don´t disable turboboost.

 

Hi, I'm about to by the u500 but have heard that the fans should be very loud is that true? and how is the battery time, is it 7h in normal use as they say? and is it worth the money? thanks for creating this lounge
//Patrik

 

its a 120w charger its more than enough

 

The charger for u500vz is 90w.

Edit: I was asking around for a wattage meter so that I can measure how much watt the laptop is using, but was unable to find one. Would this prove that the u500 is throttling because of power?

 

Hi Guys,

I reported the idle noise to Asus and they told me that the bios has already been reworked!?
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download UX51VZ

Is this bios on the support zone newer than the one which came on your machines? Does it change anything in terms of idle noise? If not...please report it to Asus!!! The really seam to listen and change things on demand!

 

The BIOS my machine shipped with was 203, which is the same as on the homepage. There are however two entries with the same version 203, how would we know if there is any difference between them? :/

I may send this in to ASUS but first I need to find the best solution for my chassi issue..

 

If the problem is the AC adapter, then it's enough to buy a bigger one for gaming. Hope so!
On a side note, did anyone try to play with Throttlestop?

Prompt assistance by manifacturer is always a good thing! Hope to read positive reports about this new bios

Did you check the suggested page?
http://support.asus.com.cn/faq/deta...t&os=&no=e2df6235-08a1-4f4c-a6c1-ad53d00448bc

 

As I understand it, it only tells you how to find the model number of your laptop so that you can navigate to the right support site on ASUS homepage to download the correct BIOS...

EDIT: Also, I will try and test throttlestop gaming today, however I get a bit nervous about running an application that potentially might get the laptop to run VERY hot and maybe even damage it. I will try a short gaming session just to verify if it stops the throttling or not.

 

Have you already tried to set CPU at 99% in Windows Power Management? It should disable Turbo Boost (no real differences in gaming session regarding FPS) and keep the CPU cooler... try this before usind ThrottleStop

 

Thank you very much! I'm sure it will be enough!

 

I suggest to test throttlestop with prime95 + furmark and some software to check temps in real time, so if you see that temps are becoming too high you are able to stop the test without any risk.
In every case there should be no problems, because if something is becoming dangerous there will be a thermal shut down.

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

Hi Guys,

Please update me about your idle "noise" and Bios version. I want to update the Asus guy who contacted me and please report to them also if idle noise is higher than necessary. We will all benefit from that ;-) THX!

 

I too got the same reply when reporting the problem. However, that appears to be the old BIOS that people already have applied. It was noted previously that it included an update to the thermal policy, but the fan noise seemed to be an issue in spite of that. When I pushed the Asus rep further, he said it must be a hardware issue and that it could be sent it. Not really the response I was hoping for, especially when coming from an Elitebook where I have NBD on-site support. Bleh. Hopefully they take some action.

 

If you are running ThrottleStop, why would you use some other monitoring program to monitor your CPU core temperatures? ThrottleStop runs at a higher priority compared to any other software which means it is always first in line when it is getting temperature data from your CPU. It also has the More Data option so it can sample your CPU core temperature sensors 8 times a second compared to the once a second or once every 5 seconds that some monitoring programs use. For accurate core temperatures, there is not a better monitoring program available than ThrottleStop.

You can also set up a second profile and get ThrottleStop to switch profiles and throttle the CPU to a crawl if you want to based on core temperature data. To be honest, you are better off letting the CPU throttle itself because Intel thermal management at the hardware level is second to none. Intel has done a great job of making sure their CPUs don't go nuclear but if you want to throttle your CPU at 80C or 90C, you can use ThrottleStop to accomplish that.

Edit: ThrottleStop can not be used to disable the built in throttling temperature that Intel set at the factory. If any of your CPU cores reach 105C, they will throttle regardless of how you have ThrottleStop setup. No software can prevent an Intel CPU from throttling when it actually needs to.

 

The 203 BIOS on the website is the one that came with the machine. If you press F12 in the BIOS, it will show its actual type number (tunrs out my "U500VZ" is a "UX51VZA" really), from which you can choose the appropriate BIOS update file. However, both are the same 203 version.

If you have a direct connection (e.g., webchat) to Asus, please let me know. I'd love to talk to them about this... and about options with regard to recovery DVDs, and why AI recovery doesn't work...

 

Does anyone of you have a standard mSATA to check if it might fit in the laptop instead of the two SSDs?

 

Even if it were to fit, the biggest problem is the proprietary connector, which would not accommodate the mSATA drive, unfortunately.

 

Won't fit because of the strange connector as Terpen Tijn said before. The room would be there.

 

The Macbook has a neat utility that switches graphics cards, from internal to discrete. Are there any apps that do this on the UX51? Not sure if that's a factor in the fans. I suspect that it's a BIOS update that we need here for better heat management. That said, it seems to be doing its job, the laptop does not get hot during casual usage.

For the record, the fan noise is a complete non-issue for me. It's there but I don't hear it unless I'm listening for it. It disappears into the background.

 

Asus U500VZ/UX51VZ uses the same SSD model used on UX21A and
these infos are coming from UX21A review of noteboookcheck:
Review Asus Zenbook Prime UX21A Ultrabook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

The connection may be the same, but the SSD model is not. We have the X100, not the U100. Not that this suddenly produces stellar drive performance, but still.

X100 Solid State Drive by SanDisk

 

So we can only use such SSDs!? Where could we buy them? I did not find any in a "normal" shop :-/ Pictures of the SSDs are attached (Sandisk picture is from UX21 - so U100 and not X100)

 

I have already posted in my previous post:
Home
Price is outrageous, asusparts.eu charges 385 Euros (~$495) for the 256 GB SSD.

@Terpen Tijn: Sorry for misunderstanding, but I wanted to say "SSD kind", even ADATA is a SSDs supplier for Zenbook family, and ADATA SSDs have even better performance than SSDs Sandisk.

 

Yea, I have seen that but I hoped that we might find it in a NORMAL shop somewhere for a normal price ;-) I will keep searching but its not that urgent for me anyway. I will focus on fan speeds and monitor now.

 

cmon man.... any news on throttling? its the only thing bothering me from buying this!!!
and is it like officially announced? why is it so hard to find it? and i want to buy the touch version....
wth

 

What do you want to know and why are you stressing anybody with the throttling results? Notebookcheck is preparing a review and they ALWAYS check throttling + you can expect it to happen with prime95 and furmark. Not sure what happens in games but some results have been posted already. The touch version did not show up anywhere so far so a launch is not expected that quick. So ... just relax!

 

In light of the SSD discussion (sorry for reposting from the other thread) - how do you guys find the SSD performance in real life? If you come from another SSD laptop, does the Sandisk perform bad also on this machine?

I think ASUS will remedy the fan noise issue or someone will supply a BIOS mod sooner or later and if orangegate is OK, then the SSD becomes the last weak point
I'm ready to click order on Xotic, but will wait a few hours to see if anybody has more input

 

Just wrote a possible answer in the other thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...-ips-gt650m-quad-core-i7-217.html#post8943652

@ ALL OWNERS
Do you have any idea which sleeve we could use for the UX51 that fits good? I need something that protects it (not for power supply or whatever) to carry it in my backback. Would be great to find something which fits good and removes fingerprints also. No idea if it fits into a rMBP sleeve for example. Any ideas?