Asus 1201N Reviews and Owners Lounge

Left USB Power problem.

Just got a nasty suprise when I dropped into battery mode. My WD on left usb port failed. Both right usb ports OK. If I set power from auto to full power mode, no problem on battery. Why, Asus, that just the left USB port fails in Auto power mode

I guess this is a feature.. not a bug

 

This is correct. nVidia unfortunately, doesn't have the legal capacity to produce a dedicated chipset specifically for Pinetrail processors, so the next best option would be to build a GPU platform which is basically hung off Intel's own chipset. It makes alot of sense. This way, you get a system which has both a dedicated GPU and an integrated one, and the option to switch between the two.

Also, the point about connecting via southbridge is a very valid one, but the bandwidth is more than enough. Anandtech talked about this in their article on NG-ION. It's quite informative, even though the didn't have a review sample.
http://anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3754&p=2

 

So at risk of steering this thread off topic, i see the m11x comes with a su4100 or su7300, they appear to be similar CPUs just one is a core2 other is a stripped down version branded a pentium, passmark benchmarks seem to be similar, worth the extra $100, and does anyone want to buy a almost brand new 1201n stable at 2GHZ, 3DMark06 at 1900+? lol

 

Back to the 1201N, I did a battery of tests on mine last night and came up with some interesting and odd results. I did the CPU OC before I installed the 4gb memory, so that can probably be tweaked. Here are my results-



Switching to the faster hard drive and more memory actually dropped my score compared to the first, but the others bested the first score. Then at 650/1300 the driver crashed and Windows restarted it. I then restarted the computer and continued the tests, but from there on, they were terrible and not comparable. For the last test, I killed every process that wasn't essential to running 3DMark and the temp and OC progs, but it still did not return to normal. What could have caused this?

I am using OCTuner, Nvidia's own System Monitor, and HWMonitor.

 

for one thing you overclocking the gpu shader and core way too high.

usely around 580 core and 1180 is were mine is stable any higher it will crash or restart.

i say try around 1150 1180 shader and 500 too 580 core and see what you get.


with my cpu overclocked around 2120 and gpu core at 580 and shader at 1180 and gpu memory at 800.


i get around 1900 1950 3dmark 06.

 

I run at 600 and 1250 stable for the GPU.

 

Well I was able to get 600/1300 stable, but the score was still too low. I am going to try getting the CPU a little higher, then try again.

What is odd is how the score went south after the driver crash. I am not sure what changed, but I haven't got a score above 1600 since then.

 

yep i pretty much ment too say too each gpu or cpu doesn't clock the same


mine might go higher sense i got the new ram but i don't really like too push the ion incase it dies than well dead netbook lol pretty much the same with the cpu but cpus can take alot more abuse than gpus. over clocking the ion really doesn't do much difference in games either i say maybe the max i saw was 2fps.

Silentheero did you reinstall the driver? also usely if you overclock too far scores will drop it happens even with my desktop amd quad core 965 @4.1ghzs with a 4890@ 900core and 1000x4 and its 100% stable but if i push it farler scores will drop even tho its stable.

but i would try too reinstall the driver and see if that fixes the problem.

 

Thanks gordesky, I reinstalled the drivers and tweaked the CPU to 2.1. With the stock 450/1100 I got 1867 and with 600/1300 I got 1946. Very pleased with that.

I noticed the odd temperature difference with the CPU that others have described too- as you go up in CPU Frequency, the temperature goes down and acts strangely. It would be nice if we could get into the BIOS and make our changes there and maybe compensate for the disparity.

 

no problem


ya i wish they would get a bios update out and fix the temp reading problem.

and let us overclock from the bios that would be nice and problee would fix the temp reading problem too.

 

Just tried out Left4Dead 2 at 2.1ghz and 600/1300 and got max of mid 30s and min of 10. For me, this is totally playable. Also meant to mention that when I installed the new hard drive, I also put some AS5 on the CPU/GPU and it seems to help. The GPU temp never went higher than 69, but the TZ00 (motherboard temp?) hits 81.

Next thing I was concerned about was transparency of the OC programs. Was I going to have to run these things each time I want to game? I see that OCtuner's settings remain in effect after it is closed and can be set so that it applies its settings when the computer starts. Nvidia's Ntune can be set to the overclock you wish and left, since the only time it activates is when switches to the 3D program profile (can Ntune modify the other profiles?) So it looks like if you want to game, all you need to do is run OCTuner and play.

 

You can use windows task scheduler to automatically run OCTuner for various different reasons (at startup, when resuming from sleep, when launching a specific program/game, etc)

 

1201PN Benchmarked.

It is beating the 1201N at stock settings. Notebookcheck got 3400 points in 3dmark03, the 1201PN got 4500 points. 1201N gets about 1600 in 3dmark06, 1201PN got 2100.

It's looking like a very impressive netbook so far. Switchable Ion graphics that's outperforming previous gen Ion netbooks along with the n450 which is getting great battery life (the flagship 1005PE gets 10 hours with the same 63whr but a smaller screen).

 

The Ion 2 does look nice, I wonder how the battery life and CPU will stack up against the 1201N. Maybe 5.5 hours for the 1201PN v. the 4 hours for the 1201N?

I still don't think the N450 will be able to compete with the dual core 330. Since I barely game and travel and like to have lots of programs going at one (WMP, Google Chrome, OpenOffice) I think I still would have stuck with the 1201N, but the 1201PN is looking like it's gonna be another winner especially with battery life given the lower TDP with the N450. Can't wait to see benchmarks of games, I wonder if the N450 could be a detriment for games which have a higher dependency on the CPU.

 

thats very impressive!

its hard for me to believe considering all the mediocre reviews i read on the pinetrail CPUs that this single core is besting the 330.

considering this trend i cant wait to see a review on the dual core version of this with ION2. i imagine that will make me regret my 1201n purchase. not only for the performance but for the battery life....

 

i still say in apps and games that require cpu power the 1201n still gona be the best at that sense its duel core.

and for the duel core verison thats if they make one again seems like they going for more battery life than performence so a 330 cpu with ion 2 pretty much not gona have good battery life.

sense the 330 is what hurting the battery life in the 1201n right now.


still be nice if they make one tho and be the same price as the 1201n but problee be awhile from now.


but so far im not regreting buying my 1201n sense it does what i want it too do.


i think im gona hold off buying any more netbooks till they get a more beefyer cpu than just a atom lol


all they got too do is copy off the m11x and put thoes specs in the 1201n series and have the price below 600 and that right there is when i will buy it lol

sense the m11x is getting really good battery life i herd 4 too 5 hours with the nvida card on and 7 too 8 hours with the intel card... lol


still thinking of going with a m11x but i think i might wait for a refresh herd they might put a i3 or i5 in it...

till than im happy with my 1201n for light portable gaming.


also how do i put down my sig on the bottom? i tried but it put it all in my profile ony..

 

Isn't the 3DMark06 benchmark heavily dependent on the GPU and not so much on the CPU? I was expecting the Ion 2 to outperform the Ion. I don't think it is a representation of CPU efficiency or strength.

 

I agree. This thing does what I need it to do NOW, not in 6-12 months. That system does look good, and I was kicking myself at first, but I am happy with this.

@gordesky- click "User CP" in the menu up top and click Edit Signature.

 

3Dmark06 does easily show bottlenecks and to be quite honest it is more GPU depended 80% of the time.

in this case the 1201n its the 330 thats the bottle neck. you can tell by OCing the GPU. see what happens to your score... basically nothing. now OC the CPU.... now you see a nice real jump in numbers.

the reason being is the 330 is just not up to the task of handling all the background stuff and giving the GPU instructions at the same time. its just to weak.

this is why im so suprized to see the 2100 score from the ION2 single pinetrail combo. if you take note of the HP mini 311 scores vs the 1201n you should get an idea of what im getting at. the 311 scores lower only because of the single CPU. in theory it would score higher with DDR3 being shared with IONs memory and being much faster than the DDR2 in the 1201n. if the GPU was the deciding factor 311s would score higher if the CPU had nothing to do with the equation.

you can see for your self when you run the benchmark by looking at the SM2, SM3 and CPU scores. if your SM2 and SM3 scores go up when you OC your CPU then you know the CPU is holding the GPU back.

 

Recently purchased the 1201n for my girlfriend and am waiting for it to arrive from Amazon tomorrow. Definitely more computer than she needs, but the 1005pe at 10in. is just too small for her to be on it all day for online classes - subpar eyes. The 12 inch is perfect and her budget was just under 500, so this was def. at the higher end of her budget.

I know very little about computers, but I did a little research and it got some stellar consumer reviews. My worry is that I could have gotten a bigger more powerful machine (with an optical drive) for 500, or she could have dealt with the 10 incher and saved some cash. The 500 dollar computers I was looking at had mixed reviews.. some from Toshiba, Dell (a lot of bad reviews and I've heard some really bad things) and a few others. My head was spinning reading all the various specs, so I went back to the consumer reviews and this seemed to be the best fit. Faster processor, more ram stock, bigger screen and a more complete OS in Windows 7 than the 1005. Battery isn't too much of an issue as she'll be plugged in for school at home.. Does she need ultra portable? Not really. Does she game? No. I have a feeling I can get something that suits her better, but has great reviews. Newegg has the ASUS P50IJ for 549..which is tempting because it has the optical drive and bigger screen for only 80 more...

I'm a layman/noob when it comes to computer terms/comp. jargon, and would appreciate some help. It's obvious I don't need to upgrade the ram for her needs, but would very much like to get rid of all the bloatware to make the comp more efficient at 2gb ram. I have a mac and don't deal with virus programs. Is there one that is light that won't be a hog? Is there a program that removes bloatware, etc.? Or is it a matter of going through and removing everything? Thanks for your help in advance.

 

if you hold down the key with the windows symbol on it (bottom left of the keyboard) and hit "R" at the same time it will bring up the run command.
type "msconfig" then hit enter. select the check box that says "selective startup" then go into the "startup" tab and start un-checking the boxes to the programs you don't want to run at start up then hit "apply". you wont break anything if you un-check the wrong boxes (AS LONG AS YOUR IN THE "STARTUP" TAB). something just wont end up working like your hot keys or the camera application. which if you want to re-enable just follow the steps before and re-check the box that pertain the the programs that you want to run at start up.

you will notice the 1201n to become much more responsive one you get the right programs disabled. oh and i uninstalled that anti virus it comes with right off the bat. it seemed to be the main cause of the slow down. if you want something a little lighter go with AVG free.

 

Awesome - thanks!

 

hmm seems like my sig is not showing... on the bottom even tho i edit it..

it just shows it in my profile..




edit i guess it ony shows in new posts not the old ones lol..

 

Cool thanks for the explanation, I'm learning so much from this forum.

 

Do you know what "AsusSender" does? It has several boxes that can be unchecked, I figured out most of the other bloatware from another forum but I haven't figured out "AsusSender" yet.

 

@Jaebird82 - You should not care about the optical drive, who uses CD/DVD's these days, for all there rest this one should be just fine for her.

 

hey N/P.

unfortunately i don't remember what it did off the top of my head and my 1201n is out for RMA right now...

 

TL;DR.

Why are you RMA'ing your notebook again?

 

same prob as before. the power brick is dieing (or getting killed by the 1201n) makes the seaming noise inside the laptop and it dies down in db and freq as the light also starts to dim on the power brick till completely off.

 

So I played BioShock with Fraps and have some interesting results

FYI my set up has everything at stock settings no OverClocking at all, I have 4 GB of Ram

1366*768 High
Low-teens
9~15
Not playable, I could walk around and it looked nice but the obvious was too much, the real time reflections, trying to fight, too much on the system. However maybe the people who OverClock could get something going. I see those posts with people bragging about their 2.0 GHz CPUs and faster GPUs.

1280*720 medium
mid-twenties
15~30
Definitely playable, weird thing I noticed was that the FPS dropped more during the real time cut scenes than while battling

I tried messing around with custom settings and it seems like the "Real World Reflections" or "Real Time Reflections", can't precisely recall the name, hits the system very hard, it is off in the medium settings. What I found interesting is that when knocking settings down a bit further, not to low, but in custom settings in between low-and-medium is that I did not obtain any noticeable increase in frame rate. Maybe it is because I kept the resolution relatively high. After all since the display is widescreen I'd like to use a 16:10 or 16:9 resolution as opposed to a 4:3 or 5:4.

 

Hey guys!

I just bought a 1201N for my girlfriend and it's turned out that it's very hot!

I've got 72C idle CPU temperatures in power saving mode and 50C for GPU.

With prime95 stress testing the cpu goes up to 95C!!! (GPU @ 75C)

Should I RMA this baby or everyone has same temperatures?

 

72 is a bit high, what is your room temperature and is the laptop on a flat service?

 

at stock settings my temps pretty much will raise up too the 70s idle but when over clock its 40s and 50s.. lol so i wouldint trust the cpu censors much.


tho 95c is pretty high for load max mine goes too is 70s overclocked and max 82c @ stock.

but ya the censors is weird sense overclocking shows lower temps which should be the other way around lol..



oh and also make sure it has alot of room around it and make sure the ac adapter not sitting by the vent or that dongle thing before the tip that plugs in the laptop aint in the way.

cause that usely when mine use too be really high temps than i just moved the ac thing and temps went back down.

 

This could also be a sign of it being a cpu/ram bottleneck not GPU. If you make any graphics setting changes with no effect on performance. There are plenty of games out there that make heavy use of the CPU for alot of code, to one make use of multi-threading cpus/cores, and take some of the lesser work off the GPU to boost performance, and vice versa.

The same could be said for when you OC your GPU and get the same reverse results via hardware. Where you should see improvement but nothing happens.

 

Totally makes sense given the Intel Atom CPU, I don't see how something else could be a bottleneck. I've seen people OC the 330 Atom to 2.1 GHz! That is insane! That's a overclocking by 30%! I wouldn't do that without reapplying the heatsink on the CPU with a real good thermal compound like AS5 versus the more anemic heat pads I've seen in systems. At idle my CPU is roughly 60C, which seems to be lower than a lot of others.

Whats the general relationship to overclocking relative to performance increase? Can it be measured in terms of a linear function or is it way to complicated for that given all the pieces involved? Probably need to update the video drivers too, haven't done that, using the out of the box drivers.

 

I use real world IN GAME benchmarks. Several games have this feature without needing external programs such as FRAPS.

OC FPS/non OC FPS = performace increase for that particular game. The reason we OC, no?

 

your 72C seems higher than what I normally see. These are my non OC temps in a 70F room.


Mainboard Model 1201N (0x00000112 - 0x00020960)

LPCIO
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hardware Monitors
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hardware monitor ACPI
Temperature 0 61°C (141°F) [0xD0E] (TZ00)

Hardware monitor Intel Atom 330
Temperature 0 49°C (120°F) [0x38] (Core #0)
Temperature 1 53°C (127°F) [0x34] (Core #1)

Hardware monitor NVIDIA ION
Temperature 0 52°C (125°F) (GPU Core)

Hardware monitor Hitachi HTS545025B9A300
Temperature 0 27°C (80°F) [0x1B] (Assembly)

 

When I have the time I'm gonna pop open my Asus 1201N and apply either AS5 or Arctic Cooling MX-3 to the CPU

When I turn on my computer the CPU starts at ~50C, if it's on for awhile it moves up to ~60C while under idle and light use as stated before. So I'd like to see the change if I change the thermal compound.

I'll get more accurate stats before the change and afterwards

If the GPU has it's own heat sink under the hood I'll switch out that thermal compound as well, I've been hearing a lot of good things about Arctic Cooling 3. Maybe by the end of next week. Got a lot of things to do.

 

Does anyone know if there are hard snap on covers for the 1201N? I've seen them for the smaller 10.1" netbooks.

 

Just ordered a Alienware M11x so my 1201n will be for sale soon.

 

Nice! Specs?
What caused the desire to change systems? Gaming performance? It would be great if you took some comparison pictures before you sold the 1201N. Let us know how it performs.

 

I really like the specs with the m11x but it is so ugly looking. Sorry but looking forward to the new asus or acer

 

It's not so much the way it looks for me, but the weight. Even though it is an 11.6" screen it weighs 4.4 lbs, 1.2 lbs more than the 12" 1201N at 3.2 lbs.

From my perspective that means the m11x weighs more than my 1201N + it's PSU + my wireless mouse. The 11.6" Inspiron 11z weighs 3.05 lbs, granted the m11x trounces the Inspiron 11z in terms of gaming since the 11z has a integrated intel gpu.

Unfortunately in the world of netbooks and ultra-light laptops it looks like trade offs will alway exist

 

Weird, I downloaded OC Tuner and overclocked just fine. Went up to 1.83 GHz just fine (not brave enough to try the 2.1 GHz overclocks I've seen). Then I tried to underclock to 1.4 GHz to see how that works. After all why not underclock a bit to save battery life when doing non-CPU intensive stuff like OpenOffice? Well underclocking froze the 1201N and I had to restart it by holding down the power button.

When time permits I'll run BioShock again and post some stats regarding performance at different clock speeds. Most likely 1.60 GHz v. 1.83 GHz and if I am feeling brave enough to take it to 1.90 or higher I'll obviously post those stats as well

Edit: Probably going to uninstall it, after opening OCtuner again my screen started flickering (with merely opening the program and not OC'ing) and I had to restart it by holding the power button. I re-opened OCTuner with a pop-up which displayed "OC not successful last time". Since I'm not interested in a $500 doorstop I might not use it anymore, probably going to do an uninstall. Then again I may feel brave and up to it.

 

thats normal. OCtunner has a check box near the bottom that allows the FSB to be set on opening of the program. so unless you un-checked this box after the last time you closed OCtunner it reapplied the OC to the FSB upon opening the program.

just make a habit of un-checking the box until you find your stable OC. otherwise every time you open OCtunner this will happen again.

 

That would make sense, it froze when I tried to change the speed so I wasn't able to change it back to stock. The screen flickering totally freaked me out though! (shudders)

I'm gonna leave it installed and when I actually have the time I am gonna play with it more, got a lot of school stuff this week and next week is spring break. I really just want to find a nice OC level when I play games, other than that stock speed seems fine for everything else.

Edit: What's up with your 1201N? Why's it RMA'd?

 

you should be able to hit 1.8ghz just fine with the stock hardware. RAM seems to be the most limiting factor and using 667Mhz (1201n ships with 800mhz) seems to free up some more OC head room. as far as damage goes i wouldn't worry too much. in all my years of OCing the worst thing ive seen happen on stock voltages is windows corruption, which a reformat can fix just fine.

the video corruption you see going on is due to the memory not liking the higher clocks on the stock voltage. im pretty sure its due to the shared system memory as in, if you crank up the RAM speed when OCing it will affect the video RAM as well as the CPU RAM speed because its the same RAM.

i RMAed cuz my mobo keeps killing power bricks.

 

IMHO, I like using an external program to OC. You should hear all the crying when people have to learn to blind flash due to bricked video cards. This is much safer.

I get great results, stock running (155)1860mHz using OC Tuner. I plan to buy DDR800 ram for best all around performace. This is not a gaming notebook but love how she runs at 1860mHz.

I'm running Dragon Age Origins and getting playable frame rates using low settings, I'm going to try Fall Out 3 at a later time.

I can always dream of an i7 with m280 that sucks 3 watts or less in a netbook? In five years?

 

ony time my power supplies gets pretty hot is when charging the battery but playing games or just running doing normal stuff its just gets warm.

also this is with the cpu overclocked too 2120mhzs and gpu @ 580 core mem is stock 800 and shader is at 1170mhzs.

tho my psu still makes noises.. but haven't give me any problems yet which why i haven't let asus replace the ac adapter yet i did let them know about it but they said i have too call them but i didn't feel like it so i pretty much gonna wait till it acts up. might give them a call next week tho.


i was gonna buy a aftermarket ac acdapter but pretty much cant now sense i just orderd a 5870 for my desktop 380$ shipped ouch... lol but it was on sale regular price was around 420.