Asus F8VA Montevina Mobile Platform review

Is the 2hours 12 minutes on power saving settings or like a dvd run down or something? It seems weird that the battery life is so short.

To the people who have purchased this laptop do you find the battery life to be about the same? (wondering if it was a faulty battery used in the review.. I guess I'm hoping it is, with better battery lfie this would be exactly what i would want to purchase)

 

Ken I was wondering when Gentech will start receiving the F8VA-C1 because newegg already is selling it and i would much rather buy from you.

Here is the newegg link-http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220338

 

You might want to email Ken to get his attention.

Weight 2.7 lbs.

...Jeez it's light. 11 in though.

 

I dont think you were looking at the right laptop. When I go to that link they dont have the size specs listed.

 

I just got an email from xoticpc saying that they are going to have the F8VA-C1 available later this week. I may just have to get this, only thing I dont like is the battery life.

 

Gentech now has it available.

 

can anyone chime in if the HDMI audio is 5.1 like the HD3650 or is it 2.1?

thanks

 

F8VA-C1 (F8VA-4S011C) vs F8SN-4S001G

I need to buy one of these within the next 8 days. I am going to install win xp and discard Vista.

I will use it for multimedia, writing, but also gaming (would like to play starcraft II and diablo III once they're out).

Which one of them would you advise me to buy?

Since I am not sure if the C1 is exactly the 4S011C, here are the specs:

4S011C:

Core2Duo P8600 2,4
14,1Zoll WXGA+ Glare
320GB HD
4096MB RAM
DVDRW DL
ATI Radeon HD3650

vs

F8SN-4S001G

Core2Duo T9300 2,5
14,1Zoll WXGA+ Glare
250GB HD
3072GB RAM
DVDRW DL
Nvidia GF9500M-GS


I know that the F8VA has express gate, hdmi (supposedly) and e-sata (supposedly), 1GB RAM more; yet the worse graphics card and .1Ghz less CPU.

Will it perform a lot worse than the F8VA?

The express gate does not have a good batterylife anyways. The 1GB RAM does not apply to me as I will be using Win XP.

Which one of them would you advise me to buy?

I also read that the GF9500M-GS is using the same chip as the 86 series from Nvidia. Does that mean that the 9500M-GS also has the weak die and will have the heat issues?

 

Got my F8VA-C1 from newegg... with 1 year payment deferral option sine I have a preferred account

It is much much faster than my old Z70V. The HD movies was using 60-70% CPU in my old laptop which only uses 10-15% in this one. Amazing...

I was a bit scary of the glossy screen since I was used to the matte one. ASUS seems to improve the quality of the coating so I can barely see a reflection. Color quality is a lot better... and I was lucky since there are no dead/stuck pixels.

The only minor flaw was with the RAMs which were running at 6-6-6-18 delays. I have ordered a new pair of 2GB RAMs which will run at 5-5-5-15 delays. I am not sure if I can notice the speed increase though.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I will be more than happy to help you.

Cheers,

 

The ATI card is better than the 9500 from what I have been told.

 

How much RAM can Vista actually see? Does having 1Gb of video RAM eat into the virtual address space more than having 512Mb of VRAM?

I know that 32 bit OS's can only utilise a certain amount of RAM so I am curious how the F8VA fairs...

 

Hey guys, well it looks like I have joined the family. My F8 is in the mail right now. Quick question though, does it come with the vista 64bit? If it comes with Vista 32bit can I upgrade to 64 bit for free?

 

Hi and congrats on your purchase! The F8VA comes with Vista home 32bit. If you want to upgrade to 64bit, you'll have to purchase it separately.

 

M$ use to have an alternate media program. Not sure if it was free or if you have to pay shipping. It allows you to trade your 32bit Vista for 64bit. Check out the link and see if they still offer it.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/1033/ordermedia/default.mspx

Best of luck

 

32 bit Vista can utilize 3GB only. (Although in the hardware tab, it shows 4GB)

The VRAM does not eat up any space at all.

 

Yes it does. All memory adresses take away from how much system ram is usaeble.

A 32Bit OS only has 4GB of addressable memory addresses. How much RAM you can use is determined after every other device has addrese a memory space. Even wifi-cards and whatnot. That's why you say that a 32bit can't use more than aroub 3GB.

Now, I don't know how much memory addresses are taken by 1GB VRAM, and losing 1 GB ram just like that does sound ludicrous. But that's how I've been told it works.

 

Ken can you tell us what the battery life is for the F8VA-C1 because I think it will be worse and I just want to know how much worse? Also could you do a 3dmark06 test on the F8VA-C1 if it scores different than the B1 I would like to know. Thanks.

 

So my question is still lingering... Does 1Gb of VRAM translate to 1Gb of address space?

And can someone who actually has a F8VA please have a look and let us know how much it is using (not just that it knows 4Gb is there). Is it 3Gb exactly? OR is it 3.2-3.5Gb?

Is there any advantage in getting a similar lappy but with 512Mb DDR3 VRAM instead of the 1Gb DDR2 VRAM?

Thanks heaps...

 

That is an interesting question, I don't know the answer but I'd also be interested in finding out.

 

I do know that Jalf addressed this question some time back. That's partly what I'm basing my info on.

 

I have downgraded to 32bit WinXP Pro and here is what it says on the Task Manager:

Physical Memory(K)
Total: 3144748
Available: 2673953
System Cache: 2747100

Total Memory shows that WinXP perceives it as 3.0GB.

 

Sorry to be difficult... But would a 512Mb video card use less address space than a 1Gb card? Is there any correlation between VRAM and address space?

(Thanks for the feedback thus far...)

 

That's an interesting question and I do not have a clear answer to that.

 

This might answer it

Here's the original thread

 

Hi,

I'm thinking of purchasing this laptop but my only concern is the battery life! When you got two hours out of it, what type of test was this? Was it a passive run down or were you actually doing stuff, like surfing or word processing?

Can a bigger battery be purchased and if so how much weight would this add to it?

Also, is it upgradeable with a HDSPA card?

Thanks in advance!

 

The only battery available for the F8 is a 6 cell, which you can get a spare.

Asus' notebooks are known for battery life below their competitors, consistently over the past 2 years. Between 2-2.5 hours is the max expected.

Whether the internal components have the available slot and wiring for the HDSPA card, you might have to directly contact one of the resellers here (Gentech, BTOTech, Excaliberpc). In any event, this has the potential to void the Asus warranty as usually the only things you can upgrade on Asus' ensemble units is RAM and HDD.

 

Thanks,

I would be happy with 2 - 2.5 hours if this was during light use eg. surfing web, word processing etc so I just need some clarification on that.

 

Well the original poster should answer the question, but I expect the figure was obtained under light use.

But I will bet that by tweaking Vista a little bit (turn off Aero and the sidebar on battery, for instance) you'll be able to get to 2:30. So if that's your target, then I think the F8 will satisfy you.

But again, for a definitive answer, wait for Ken (GenTechPC).

 

You can always turn off unused hardware. That tends to up the batterylife.

 

How is the audio on the F8Va-C1? Last ASUS I got, had the worst sound ever, at max volume you could barely hear it. I need it at least good enough that I can sit it on my desk at work and still hear it.

 

Worse than my 3-yr old Z70V. For sure.

However it is not the worst. I have seen many other brands that are much worse than F8VA-C1. If you maximize the controls in the equalizer, you can get a decent amount of sound. Of course do not expect to have high-quality bass since those speakers are still tiny...

If you want a sound that will shake your home's windows, you should buy an external speaker. FYI: This machine also supports SPDIF out...

 

The speakers aro better than the old A8. Boy, those sucked.

 

If I wanted to upgrade the hard drive on an F8VA to a 320Gb 7200rpm drive would it void my warranty?

Would any notebook SATA 320Gb 7200rpm drive work?

Like this one... Western Digital Scorpio

And would I see a performance increase that would justify the cost?

 

The only thing that voids your warranty is to disassembling the CPU and GPU. There are no stickers saying "warranty void if removed" on the RAMs and the HDD.

As long as your new harddrive has the SATA interface (regardless of the rotation speed) it works just fine...

Yes, you will see a performance increase, for sure. However I am not sure if it is worth to pay that much money. Previously when the largest HDDs were around 60-80GB, the performance gap between 5400 and 7200 rpms were large. However today (because of the data density) a 320 GB 5400RPM will easily outperform a 100GB 7200RPM. I think a 320GB 5400RPM will definitely satisfy you in terms of its performance.

 

Actually, there are no stickers on the GPU either.

 

Are there any 9 cell batteries compatible with the F8VA ?

 

No, I'm afraid not.

 

It wouldn't be too hard for them, or a 3rd party to make one right? As long as it fit and just add on 3 more cells!

Hope they bring out one soon as i'm going to get this next week!

 

Hmm... Who could explain why Vista WEI graphics score on my friend's LG R500 with 15,4" 1680x1050 and nVidia 8600 GS is higher? Perf. fo Aero is 5.9 and Gaming graphics 5.5 (while here 4.7 and 5.0).

 

Easy. WEI is a horrbile benchmark. The one that has a waaaay too high score there is the 8600m GS.

 

Can anyone with one of these give me a report of the fan noise/heat it generates? At idle, at full load? How often does it cycle on and off?

I need a nearly silent notebook, and all the other specs of the F8VA seem really nice to me.

Any info greatly appreciated.

 

I have opened a new thread exactly on this issue... You can find the idle/load temperatures there...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=283454


If you are used to the Fahrenheit scale, you can convert the Celsius to it with the below formula:

F = (C*1.8) + 32

for example 10C is equivalent to 40F (10*1.8+32)

 

I just got my F8VA-C1 and I could not figure out how to overclock the gpu. Rivatuner did not give me the option to oc it. Also is cpu overclocking just out of the question or is there some app that will do the job?

 

If you put it on battery saving mode the heat is significantly reduced. There is a constant whine but it is not very loud.

 

ATITool worked just fine for me. However it shows the half GPU speed and a quarter of the actual VRAM speed.

The normal GPU-VRAM speeds are 600-800MHz whereas ATITool reports them as 300-200MHz. So when you set VRAM speed to 225MHz on ATITool, it actually sets your VRAM speed to 900MHz.

 

I tired atitool but it just hangs at loading. Does anyone know why that might happen?

**update**
I tryed the newest version that was in beta which actually booted but when I up the speed it does the opposite and drops the speed by 100mhz on both the core and the mem. Any idea what is wrong?

thanks

 

If you want to set the VRAM to 1GHz, for example, you need to set the slider in ATITool to 1Ghz. And than it will drop down to 250MHz when you click the Apply button. That way you will be able to set the VRAM to 1GHz.

 

I just bought the Asus F8VA-4S011C (in Germany), which should equal the F8VA-C1.

I have five questions:

1. Does the Card-reader read XD-picture cards?

The manual does not say, as it is a manual for several models. It is not written next to the reader (there is only: MMC, SD, MS/Pro). However, most websites state that it is an 8-in-1-card-reader.

I called the German Asus hotline, yet these guys don't have a ****** clue - according to their database, it carries an nvidia graphics card, wtf?


2. What is supposed to be included in the package?

Should it come with a mouse or a notebook case? Mine does not have either.


I only have:

- an antenna-connector-cable (although the f8va does NOT even have this connection!)
- power cable
- lcd cleaning cloth
- one brown asus cloth (3. WHAT IS THIS??????? And what do I use it for?) in a black squared envelope
- Win Vista Home Premium Recovery
- Power2Go 5.5
- Drivers' DVD


4. Should there have been more in the package????????

5. Is it possible to buy the IR-Remote that fits into the express card slot?
If yes, where?


Thanks a lot in advance .

 

Answers to some of your questions:

1- I have no idea. I will probably never use the Card Reader.
2- Yes, mine had all you wrote + a tiny optical laptop mouse (Logitech branded) + notebook carrying bag. Both are very useful for me...
3- I have no idea what that brown cloth is about.
4- I cannot say there should have been more in the package for you. Companies have different packages for different countries... (i.e. special keyboard, special AC plugs etc. )
5- No idea...

 

Well was the package sealed when you got it? ASUS Ensembles should come in a sealed box, with a blue seal saying "Please check contents if seal broken".

In the Netherlands, all the ASUS laptops I bought came with bag and mouse. But I know a friend who bought one in France, without the addons. I don't know how it is in Germany.

Make sure you also check the bottom sticker, it should say 2years warranty (24m).

I don't know about the rest... but I do have an xD Picture Card controller in my Device Manager so I suppose the XD will work.