Asus C90S Review and OS shootout!

Hey guys, i am really interested in the C90 after all the good things i heard.
However one thing i am really interested is the batt life. Now i know i shouldn't expect much from a powerfull laptop like this, would would any of you guys, who has used it for a while, be able to tell me just how much batt lasts in real life? like with 70% birghtness, and just surfing the net?
Does it have an application to down clock it to lets say 1.5ghz when its on batt? Is there a 9 cell option?

I also heard that the mobile T series Santa Rosa chips are just as power hungry as these E series, is that true?

any comments would be great!

Thanx

 

Hi boys, hopefully you can help a girl here

At the moment I'm shure the C90 will become my next laptop but there is somethings that is bothering me.

I hate vista so I'm going to go with XP. Those different modes you can put your computer in (gameing mode, powersaving etc.) Can I get them in any kind of way when running on XP? Or are they just something for vista?

I'll be waiting for an answer

Thanx

 

They work 100% in XP, with just one difference.

The "quick key" located on the laptop itself that you can press to switch between modes does not seem to work. You have to open the turbogear software and manually select a different mode. Just a small inconvenience and not a big deal.

 

Actually, the quickey works in xp also. If you do a search for my name I posted it somewhere. Its work looking. Im lazy to repost it. Put simply, you have to install the defaul quickey driver, the atk utility, and the new quickey driver...but in a certain order...I may post it tommorrow but i just got off work from 15 hours day after thanksgiving at major electronics store...tired mentally

 

The quick key definitely works in XP as I'm using it right now.

 

Congrats on the C90s decision, you can always step up to Vista if you find you can't do something anymore.

 

Thank you guys for you answers!

Hopefully the OS upgrade from XP to Vista is still far away for me.

Good to know they are working somehow, at least. Hopefully I will get those quick keys to work because I love quick keys.

Yes I googled around a bit and found a very helpful thread about it here on the forum.

And I really do hope that this machine is not as noisy as my Acer .

 

Hey eefi, I went from an Acer Ferrari to the C90s and this C90s doesn't get anywhere as hot as my Ferrari (still have it). I game on both.

 

No problem with the hotness. I think my Acer 5000 series warms up the whole apartment at the moment No not the whole but almost.

I'm having sleeping problems so I usually get up and surf, do something I photoshop or play a game and I have to go to the bathroom because my Acer is so noisy. It sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it is at the top "speed".

But I think that the C90 is much quieter than my Acer.

Has anyone measured the noise level of the C90? I have tried to look for it but haven't found it. Or can you compare it to something?

 

Noise is pretty much unoticeable under battery mode, AC will often start for whatever reasons. When I game I don't notice the fans because of the game's sound. The only part (except the Asus logo and under the GFX) that gets hot is the left palm because of my HDD always running at 55C (160GB 5400 RPM =/) but now I don't really mind it

 

Hi

I just complited reading this whole thread and i have one question.
Is there any longer lasting batteries that i can buy? (internal or extrenal)

And on side not im dying while waiting my c90 ;<
ASUS C90S 15.4/E6600/8600GT/2G/160/
Should be on my hands in few days.

 

can or did anyone on earth for god's sake tell/told that whether C90 can recognise Q9450 (yorkfield) or not. for god sake C90 is out for a year and cant find a single line on internet about it.

Q9450 is 45nm brother of Q6600 but with SSE4.1 and 95W TDP though Q6600 B0 revision has 90W TDP.

Please guide me on these above points.

Thank you.

 

If you want to try something thats not supported, chances are you have to be the first and tell us. Just like I was probably one of the first to try 4gb of ram when it said it was not supported, just to find out it doesnt work and report back to everybody else that it didnt work.

 

There is an external one, it plugs into the wall socket

 

Don't you just love it when people think that all we have all the answers? You really should direct your anguish to Asus rather than us here or try it yourself. Making posts like this serves no purpose to the community at all.

 

If you don't mind carrying an Attache you could always get a UPS

 

Actually, APC sells a portable battery unit called the UPB70 and UPB80 that support the C90S(it doesn't state it but the plugs work and the output fits the bill). I have the W3V and the UPB50 and that works fine, but the UPB50 doesn't have quite the output to support the C90S's 4.73A all it can do is charge it when it's off but not enough to power it while it's on; the upb50 output 3.6A max whereas the the upb70 has 4.76A max.

So it's safe to assume that it works. Need verification though.

 

What kind of battery life we looking at here?

dvx1000, why does your sig say 8800M GT 512MB for your C90s?

 

Well with my UPB50 I get about 2 .5 to 3 hours additional to the battery for the W3V at around -16-20w drain with 2 HDDs and medium brightness and depending what I'm doing. I don't own a UPB70 but by looking at the specifications it nearly doubles the UPB50 in battery capacity, so it would be safe to say it'll be around 4-5 hours additional at least.

The specifications of the UPB70 off of APC's website claims 5-8 hours depending on the laptop. So this basically fits the bill.

Now the C90S has high drain, probably something like 30W to 35W drain depending on the mode, on standard mode i would assume lower. Anyone have actual numbers? I would assume double of my W3V (single core, pentium m) it would be safe to say that the UPB70 would add at least 2 hours to the battery life of a C90s.

But again, we need someone to verify this.

p.s. 8800m GT was a typo.. really embarassing LOL

 

i can expect such reply from 97 post-ers. Gurus with thousands of replies here matters to me and comunity. I am frustrated because for 1+ year people are just praising C90 or denouncing C90. I could never find a line describing C90's motherboard's capability for Yorkfield or Q9xxx. Asus never replies, i have emailed to them. Also what would one want to hear from them.. "we cannot coment on unreleased products and we dont recomend to try this at home"... crap.

I nned to request to gurus here to dig into compatibility of C90 with yorkfield/Q9xxx/Q9450 also please tell which Custom notebooks with Core2Quad have Q6600 Conroe "Rev B0" in them.

Grateful.

 

Oh gimme a break, you have no idea what a guru is if ypu think that the number of posts is everything. Having 10000 posts on a public forum doesn't make you instantly a guru of anything. This is where you either: go try and test it yourself, or sit patiently and wait. *****ing about not having the information you want isn't going to help the community.

The C90 is relatively new product, and ASUS has not released any information as to future support. On paper Wolfdale or Yorkfield processors seem to work quite nicely and works towards C90s favour as the die shrink would reduce heat & power with existing motherboard architecture. However, all lies in the hands of ASUS who really has a mediocre track record when it comes to driver/software support in my books. They are never quick with their releases so it may be some time when we actually see an update.

Infact, the Q6600 has not been officially stated by ASUS whether or not it works on the C90S. The E6700 is already hitting the C90s limit running at 2.93ghz, some of us often suffer from the BSOD on Gaming mode and this has been verified as an heat issue. Yes, there are plenty of rumors of the Q6600 working in the C90S, but the reality is that at 2.4Ghz with 4 cores, the cooling mechanism would not be able to actively cool it without extreme modifications(hatch open, huge fan etc)

If you think any of the so called "gurus" will drop $300-800 on a new processor to test this out for the sake of the community, think again, it'll be more likely that the system builders and resellers that would do the actual testing when they get the go ahead from ASUS. Nothing will work without a BIOS update.

 

Not sure about the Q9450 1333 FSB, but I did tried QX6800 on C90S and it doesn't even post.

I don't really think 945 chipset can support Quad Core processors or above 1066 FSB.

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/945p/index.htm

in order for C90S to support 1333FSB you need change chipset, to change chipset you need to change MB, to change MB you need wait or buy a new notebook.

 

ACtually! You are right! Both Penryn processors : Wolfdale and Yorkfield both run on 1333FSB. The C90S is based on the 945 chipset, which will not support anything higher than 1066FSB. In other words, The C90S will never support Penryn unless Intel makes a 1066FSB version.

 

yeah it's about the chipset, back it old times with 386/486 mainboard, it uses crystal to adjust CPU speed not chipset, at that time, the crystal is removable on the MB, you can buy different speed of crystal and put in the motherboard using cable tight to tight it, this is what crystal looks like on the MB:



but right now it all supported by chipset so it's not possible for C90S to go beyond 1066MHz FSB.

 

So...there's really nothing to look forward to the C90S beside the 9600...

 

Ok. Did a little research on the Penryn processors. We all know that these processors will be backwards compatible for all motherboards, in essense they are identical in architecture(other than the 45nm die shrink, cache size and native fsb). It would be logical that these processors can be dropped into a C90S and not post based on the identification of the CPU model by the BIOS. However, since the C90S was manufactured before any engineering samples of the Penryn were available, it would be a guess, that the current ASUS C90S Bios will not recognize the CPU and could possibly post (with unknown CPU). If it posts, it will know the multiplier since it's locked on the processor itself.

The facts are at the moment is that Penryn runs at 1333 FSB(quad pumped 333mhz). A E6550 Wolfdale (Penryn) will have frequency numbers of this:
7 x 333 FSB = 2333Mhz.

If all above hypotheses are true, it's technically possible to drop a Penryn into a C90S and boot. However it will run the the processor at 7 x 266 FSB by default = 1800mhz. Which would allow it to run it at 2100 mhz in gaming mode(btw GentechPC, your wrong, after much thought the C90S can run at 1200mhz FSB).

Now normally nobody would like results like this, since it's essentially called "underclocking". However, this will be a benefit for C90S users, and I'll tell you why:


1. There will be other flavours of Penryn that will have a higher multiplier than 7; ideally a multiplier of 9+(which would be very expensive mind you as it would be a E8400-E8500 running at 3.0Ghz or above)

2. Underclocking Penryn will allow the C90S to run these processors under specification, therefore allowing lower heat and power consumption which in theory allow higher than 2.93Ghz ASUS limitation. Added benefits would be better battery life when running standard/battery mode.

3. There is a small possibility that Intel may release the Penryn stepping that would replace the current Kentsfield processors. In that case, there may be flavours that run at 1066FSB.

And if my presumptions are true, it may be possible that ASUS will update the BIOS to support Penryn but not run them at 333fsb until a refresh of C90 is released. After what's said, there seems to be a small glimmer of hope for the C90S. Now if someone could drop a Wolfdale into it, this will verify whether my hypothesis is true or not.

That's my 2 cents for now.

 

So you are saying that upb70 would have enough power(in theory) to power up c90s?
But even on "worst case" it would charge c90s own battery while using it?

 

Yes. It should power it up and run a good couple hours.

Worst case would be that it won't be enough power, and it would only charge the battery when the c90s is powered off. Someone needs to try this by purchasing one from a Best Buy, Target, Circuit City etc.. But this would be unlikely based on the specifications.

 

I hope you're right and we all bought a supreme portable computer

 

I believe Penryn cannot be put in C90 cuz Penryn is PGA-Socket where C90 MB is LGA-Socket...Yorkfield can be drop (but litrally means drop/fixing) in C90.

Does above discussion mean only VRM is holding Q9450 back from C90 !?!

What chipset should be in laptop for Q9450, ... X38 or X48 what is santa rosa !?! ... is it penryn chipset.

Should one wait for Phenom-9500 in notebook, i think it is 135W tdp and Phenom is doomed on notebooks.

 

That made no sense! Penryn will be released in LGA-775(Wolfdale & Yorkfield) as were the Kentsfield and Conroe were also LGA-775.

Penryn on the left, Kentsfield on the right.

Santa Rosa is the mobile platform that supports both Yonah (Core Duo) and Merom (Core 2 Duo Mobile)processors. And no, it's not a Penryn chipset. At the moment there is only one platform that supports a Q9450 and that would be the Clevo D901/Sager NP9251; a 17" notebook that utilizes a desktop motherboard.

Nobody knows, Phenom is still vaporware and at the moment there doesn't seem to be any news as to the mobile counterpart. I wouldn't say doomed but Phenom was never intended(Conroe/Kentsfield likewise), but time and development may allow it to be in notebooks.

 

actually friend.. Penryn term has been so much abused over internet that even for yorkfield many websites including tomshardware used the word penryn... Actually penryn was a very catchy word and became such a generic term with 45nm that site used to say like dektop-penryn, workstation-penryn when these sites should have said Yorkfield and Xeon.

start reading from here, see socket column
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_future_Intel_Core_2_microprocessors#Core_2_Quad

 

Basicly Penryn technology (which is in development right now) is finding its way into Intel desktops and notebook processors of our generation, but we won't see true 100% Penryn chip till 2012 (so Intel claims). They're in development right now.

 

I don't know where you are going at, and you are contradicting yourself all over the place.

First of all, you said Penryn is a PGA-Socket and won't fit into a C90S, and now your recorrecting yourself saying that Penryn will be in everything. I understood the fact that Penryn term stands for the 45nm process and that this die shrink will be implemented in all Intel processors from here on end. I merely stated what Penryn technology may work in the C90S presently as the Wolfsdale processor fits into the C90S's LGA-775 Socket.

There's no need to pull up the Wikipedia citation as I understand what Penryn is, it seems that your more confused than I am on this. mi1400, you need to relax...

 

It's the same socket, but the c90s' chipset does not support it, simply
because the C90S' max FSB does nt reach 1333

 

As far as what ASUS says presently. Yes, you are correct.
Read post number 226 and you'll know what we're talking about.

 

Confirmed, Asus won't even try it, it won't work and it's not gonna happen.

If they can just first fixed the 2GB RAM compatibility issue I'll be happy.

 

Now I know how very limited the chipset is.

 

Well, it runs a faster fsb than the chipset in the G1S with a calculated tradeoff which I bought into. Let's don't lose sight of what a powerful 15 in laptop this is, especially for the money. All I want is a new gddr3 driver.

 

Ken my friend....have you conveyed/heard from Taiwan that we want/need a new a gddr3 driver?

 

Yes there is limit on the chipset of what it capable of, Asus will not try to update the BIOS for the processors that is not supported by the chipset or not originally intend to be use on C90S, if they want to use new processors they will follow Intel's design guideline with newer chipset.

Already asked them to update new driver a month ago.

 

You da man!

 

i am not corecting myself i m rock solid in my all stances. Try understanding this. Penryn in true definition is a Notebook only version of Cutdown-Yorkfield. Penryn is pin-cpu (pga), yorkfield is pin-less(lga) cpu which is debatable of why, one reason to make yorkfield LGA was that people replace cpu of desktop more often then notebook so chances of pin damage is higher in desktop than notebook.

Or try this Penryn is nothing more than an 45nm version of Merom with high FSB, SSE4.1 and other tweaks. Its not courtious english so please dont debate on Penryn is not 45nm Merom, i intend to give u only the hint to understand.

just as i m writing you and browsing... man r u lucky or what ... fudzilla has just today posted an article just for you...

Intel mobile Penryn X9000 previewed
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4440&Itemid=1
http://www.coolaler.com/content/node/1785

Penryn is PDA as u can see the actual penryn processor picture.

 

whatever, not gonna try and understand what you wrote there...you need to read up some more.

 

Well yes I know about that since I started checking infos on he C90S, but the chipset is an Intel 945G. If Intel does not make the cpus compatible for 945G , nothing can make it, it's not just the socket design but voltage/amperage is also to take in consideration

 

Very interesting thread, but by the time everyone figures all this out, I'll be moving on down the road with a C100

 

You mean a C80

The model numbers are to drop for the higher end models if I am not mistaken, although it has been awhile since we speculated on future models and the vodka may have warped my memory abit.

 

There hasn't been any news since april 10th I believe.

 

I sit corrected Well, it's nice knowing that we have a possibility of upgrading the C90 at least. If nothing else, it's easy to blow the thing out

 

Why all the references to penryn? We should be talking about if wolfsdale is possible like someone else said. And why the hype wth upgrading the cpu? THough with those attractive prices for the wolfdales it is tempting. I just find it irritating that the heat from the cpu limits overclocking the gpu and if a new processor would allow me to overclock the gpu alot more, than I might be willing to shell out fo rit.