Asus C90S Review & Live Video

I'm missing something here... all of the components are the same or better (cpu) than the G1s, so how could the C90 perform worse?

EDIT: so what about those advertised 3dmark06 scores of 4628?:
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/computex/day0/p8.htm

 

To be honest, I don't give a flying f--- what a 3dmark number is, as long as I'm getting higher FPS in games...which barring something really freakin weird, will be the case.

 

True dell uses the 256mb version of the 8600GT, but it has the same clocks so I just assume everything would be identical except the amount of ram (like the 256 and 512 mb versions in the ifl90).
Colorshine glossy (the description used by resellers) only speaks so much to me lol. Thought it was an upgrade, silly me.
With having an identical card to the IFL90 and a jet exaust on the back, the only thing I'm jealous of the C90S is the shipping date. Apparently Asus didn't go for the cheap "cross ocean by boat" option...

 

hahaha, I was just imagining that on a UPS online order:

"UPS Standard: XX.XX"
"UPS Next Day Air, transcontinental XXX.XX"
"UPS Super-Saver, Cross Ocean by Boat X.XX"

 

yeah, the Compals are slow - but what was the wait time for the pre-orders on the C90s? Haven't you guys been waiting for a long, long time?

 

yeah...but they never said it was shipped or in stock until about 12 hours ago, and now they're starting to show up.

 

i placed my order from milestonepc on 5/9.... order is still pending

 

any update on the battery life?

 

Battery life and fps would be awesome. Also, some knowledgeable perspective on build quality/reliability would be deeply appreciated.

 

can you test 3dmark 06 at 1024x768?

 

If the 3dmark scores are alot lower, its just common sense the game performance will be lower too. I mean thats what 3dmark is... a standard to judge game performance on.

When a new video card comes out or something you cant go by 3dmark scores to judge game performance because usually they optimise drivers for 3dmark and it can give a poor reflection on game performance. This video card is not new tho, we already know how its supposed to perform, and the cpu scores are definitly higher on the c90 than the other notebook wich boost the 3dmark scores. So for it to be that low there is definitly an issue that needs to be solved.

We get a few more test later today when Alex gets his. Lets hope asus jumps on this and fixes things fast and has alot of support for the c90. Since the last DTR with a desktop cpu crashed and burned (literally!) with the P4's, notebooks like this already have a bad name, so if Asus lets this bomb thats pretty much going to be the end.

I remember how somewhere along the lines it was said asus was inspecting every single unit for quality control rather than one out of every 50 for the c90 because it was there "baby" then suddenly we get units with missing screws... wow thats just horrible.

I think both btotech and gentech have picked up the slack and included the missing screws for those who preordered with there own parts. So thubs up to both of you guys, may you give asus a nice reaming for that tho.

 

I agree with you completely. Asus really jumbled this up. The clevo d900c with the conroe and sli 7950s is working fine. Lets just hope this is a quick fix. Still no word if this is ddr3 or not, I thought it was? Even if it is ddr2 no reason for those low scores especially since the conroe should beat the g1s processor portion of the 3dmark06.

 

Thanks for the review eddie.
I'm hoping the 3dmark score isn't representative of fps in games because of a driver issue but like it was said b4 the GT has been out for a while so lets all hope its an inefficient driver or bios that can probably be fixed or modded.

 

i really do hope it's an easy software fix. vicious has a good point, 3d mark is still a benchmark for gaming performance. while a few hundred points won't really make a difference in gaming (ie: when ppl are comparing an OCed 8600gt to a non-OCed one), but an almost 2000 point difference is a lot. we can only wait to see alex's review... hopefully some good news

 

Even this low 3DMark06 score is 900 points more than my desktop, and that has an AMD 4800, 2 gigs of ram, and a 7600gt
*EDIT* Damn. Its a ddr2 graphics card.

 

just talked to ken and he said that he thought the touchpad was just fine and he liked it, so maybe its not that bad afterall

 

Maybe a diagnostic tool such as everest would reveal whether the GT has DDR2 or DDR3 RAM. It tells me on my desktop so I'm assuming it would work on the C90 as well. Just a thought if anyone has the time since I don't have mine yet.

 

Well, since it shows scores that fall in with the compal IFL90/sager 2090 and dell 1520, I believe that they put in the lower clocked card in (I wouldn't get my hopes up for a magic bullet fix). There hasn't been anyone that was able to overclock to the g1s clocks, but the 8600gt is good nonetheless...

 

I can most probably tell everybody if its DDR2 or DDR3 later today, I need to find a listing of the stock memory and core speeds for the gpu if somebody has that send a link my way I can use that to compare. However I plan to actually look at the gpu and see what kind of memory is on it while I put it together.

 

Asus G1S:
Core 475mhz (note that RVtune shows the wrong value of 513mhz here)
GDDR3 Memory 700mhz

IFL90/Zepto 6224W (I think the Dell 1520 is the same also)
Core 475mhz
GDDR2 / GDDR3 (unsure) Memory 400mhz

Macbook pro 15,4"
Core 470mhz
GDDR3 Memory 635mhz

Macbook pro 17"
Core 520mhz
GDDR3 Memory 650mhz

I think all of them downclock to Core 169mhz and memory 100mhz when in 2d mode

 

I was able to find the offical stats here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8600M.html

says 475mhz core and 700mhz memory so now we just need sombody to look at the clocks and see what the c90 is up too.

 

how come apple's MBP get 4,674 3DMark06 with 8600 GT 256 MB?

 

what resolution did they use in the benchmark? Dont think it was the standard resolution of 1280x1024, 4600 is too high for that. Maybe 1280x800.

The Macbook pro and the G1s do have faster memory then the rest and it shows in benchmarks.

 

he used 1280x1024 on the test that came out to 3000~ im sure its a problem that can be solved one way or another and not the actual performance of the hardware when everything is going right.

So far every machine gets the same scores with the same video card and cpu, the cpu is stronger here so the scores have to be just as good or better.

Thing is all the other machiens had the 256mb version not the 512mb thats the only real factor that can change up things. "how will a slower memory with more capacity effect scores" in something like 3dmark the faster memory is probably abit better, in a game with high resolution textures that take up alot of memory the larget amount of memory is probably better.

However the whole lack of memory is really off set by turbo cache, wich puts us back at square one. Still tho I have a strong feeling that things are not performing correctly right now and that sometime here shortly sombody will find the problem and have a fix.

My tracking shows mine 1 city away from me, so it could be here very soon. Shame that I have to go do stuff with my wife when I get off work in an hour. Im afraid they may leave a "we were here, sorry you missed your shipment we will try tomarrow" note at the door. I dont know if they will just leave it at the house or not.

Hopefully I dont find out the hard way.

 

If you're comfortable with it, leave a note on your door saying to leave the package and sign it (indicate that's your sig for the package). It's worked for me in the past.

 

lol, maybe it would dunno. still thats almost like leaving a note that says "please steal me, here is my written permission to steal my stuff"

I can just stay home and not go with the wife, I think she will semi understand. But reguardless of how supportive she seems upon asking I know I will suffer her wrath at some point in time if I dont go.

 

i hope this problem can be fixed!

 

Thanks for that review. I look forward to the video.
I am not a hardware expert, but did I read a previous post that had the CPU initially underclocked to make the overclocking look better? Or was that done just to make the laptop run cooler.

 

It makes no sense to me that Asus would use GDDR2 and not GDDR3 since the c90 has the cooling to be able to really overclock it. Is it because they don't want it to cut into their G1s sales?

What ever happened to those 3dmark06 scores from computex of 4628 (maybe they were at 1024x768?):
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/computex/day0/p8.htm

 

No it makes sense since the c90 is rather a good competitive price that it is because of ddr2. Also I think this is the same case with the sager 2090 people that have the same card? I think stock speeds on this card are just alot lower, they were having the same issues.

 

I retested teh c90s with 1024x768 and while overclocked in the asus soft by 20% the laptop scored 3995. i am almost sure when i ran tests on the g1s and g2s the scores were about 3700 give or take and they were tested with the base resolution in 3dmark of 1280x800. I tried everything but the notebook simply scores lower. On a side not i do not recall the g1 scoring considerably higher with 1024x768. maybee 200 points or so. why is the c90s scoring 800 points higher when res is changed from 1280x800 to 1024x768. very odd. oh well back to the drawing boards.
The good news is that when i ran and reran pcmark05 the c90s is scored considerably higher in every field except graphics but i belive the graphics module in pcmark05 is a little off becuase it did not show similar results between the g1s and g2s while 3dmark did. whats a good test to run except 3dmark?

 

Hey Eddie I think I found the problem. Check the gpu settings. I think the memory is clocked at 400 mhz instead of 700mhz. I read a review of a sager 2090 with this card and the review said the core clock came in at 475 which is what it should be but memory was stock 400mhz. It should be performing on par with the g1 at those settings (better) without the 20% overclock boost.

 

3dmark06 does not sho0w the clock. even if it did what util changes it?

 

Download ntune from nvidia or ati tool. Both work.

Edit:try ntune first not sure if ati one is fully vista compatible. Rivatuner is ur last option but it has misleading numbers as people reported (but all numbers are off by like 40 so you can just subtract).

http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.05.38.00.html

 

will try as soon as i get in

 

if it is clocked at 400mhz, you do not want to oc it to 700mhz. we do not know if it can handle that. you want to increase slowly and find a stable setting.

 

i may be rusty at overclocking but i am not a dummy

 

If its the DDR2 (gddr2) stuff yeah its not made to do 700mhz.

It would be a shame if thats the case, esp since all earlier reports were sugjesting GDDR3 for the card. Its just not a good match to take there flagship machine that supposed to have the best performance and then make it perform sub par to others just due to the gpu.

Looks like the HD2600XT that I wanted may become even more desirable.

 

something in the middle would do fine to know what it is the baby capable of...( I wouldnt try 700mhz whitout anymore technical details from the company itself)

WHy dont call/email ASUS itself and ask them directly?? sorry to be naive but is it any trouble to simple do that??

 

I agree with you completely. At least there is always the 9600M GT to upgrade to in a year or two (if MXM II is still supported that is).

 

Not a huge deal. Overclock the gpu a bit and then the cpu should take the slack in terms of 3dmark06 score at least.

 

I had to revise my earlier review of "deplorable" to just ok. I dont know if it was the heat yesterday but the touchpad seems better now. I think this touchpad is acceptable but many would find it poor

 

Okay, I have a hair-brained theory, but hear me out:

I think that nVidia and Asus may be releasing the same drivers for both the 256MB GDDR3 and the 512MB DDR2, which would mean that in the latter case, they would be RIDICULOUSLY inefficient. When you have twice the address space and half of the clock speed, the core GPU stuff may be identical and have no problems, the memory controller is gonna be whack.
I think this is substantiated by the fact that the programs show GDDR3, even though the clocks are for 400 (implying DDR2), and that the delta between the G1S and the C90 goes down as the resolution (and hence the dependency on memory management) goes down. If that really is the problem, then both nVidia and Asus are being ignorant by not having a new driver out...well at least by now.

 

ok the factory settings are 475 and 400 core to ram respectively. Looks like you were right. i will see what new scores are after changing

 

well it did not like setting the ram to 700mhz. i guess i should start lower as someone has sugestedd

 

Some rep points people? Show some love.

Also Alex I don't agree. The difference between gddr3 and ddr2 was bigger then i anticipated. The 8600m gs with gddr3 with stock speeds was 600/700 and another version with ddr2 has 400/500 has stock speeds and when overclocked to 600/600 the computer crashed. (taken from http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=131334)
Our situation seems to be the same.

 

Eddie try 500 for the memory and go from there. From this guys review he overclocked it 545 for the core and 495 for the memory. In our case lets just overclock the memory and see how far that goes since the core is at the clock speed it should be at.

 

I don't think that's the case...
Because the same drivers have always been used for the same GPU model (the memory controller is inside the chip itself). So I don't think we will see much difference there - not to mention ASUS's horrible driver support.
To me, it seems like ASUS are trying to draw the attention of gamer customers towards the G1/G2 models by making both C90 and S96S weaker.

 

I hope it isn't the case. I was just saying that it could be, and if it is (which I know was a common practice in the past) it would be a mistake, because 512 DDR2 and 256 GDDR3 is ridiculously different.

 

That was my initial thought I just didnt want to say it outloud

Since its a barebones I guess the left it in our hands to get a better card :/ that or quite simply the faster card may not fit within specs if this current one is 22w and the max is 25w....

Looks like a die shrink and some new cards may be what puts the c90 over the top, but thats money going down the drain since the current card really has no resell value and I cant imagine forking out 200-300$ for a gpu upgrade, id have to put that money into my desktop instead.

For those arriving late to the battlefield getting a c90 with no video card then buying something of the likes, like the hd2600xt or other cards that may be soon to come could be much better.

(take note that I only belive the hd2600xt is a much better card, we dont have much proof at this point)