Asus G1Sn Review, video and benchmark

Thanks GenTechPC,

Thats awesome news. It makes me want the G1Sn-B1 even more. Time to talk to the wife into letting me rush out in a buying frenzie

Appreciate it,

Brian / ChevyNovaLn

 

Excellent and outstanding review ...

I've just received my ASUS G1Sn-AK023C (here in Denmark) ...

Now I have some problems overclocking the NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS - 512 MB in RivaTuner 2.08... ???

How can I get RivaTuner to control the fan-speed on my 9500M GS ??? ...

I can't get RivaTuner 2.08 to show the "FAN" tab in the "System tweaks" window (main > Driver settings > System settings) ...

I've tried to simply fill-in GenTechPC's clock-numbers (521/1238/472) - but wouldt like to hear if anyone knows about the fan-speed ????

I'll have a hard time telling my wife that I blow our new laptop because I've burned up the GPU ...

 

a) I'm not sure you can control fan speeds easily in new laptops. Fan control software has not been updated for the latest developments in hardware and software.

b) Does the G1Sn have a separate GPU fan? Many ASUS laptops don't, including G1 models.

c) Don't just 'fill in' overclocking numbers that worked for other people!!! Every GPU is different and what worked for them may burn yours. (well I'm exaggerating a little but it serves to deliver the point)

I suggest don't overclock at all if you don't have experience with this overclocking business. Or at the very least, read some good guides (I'm sure some are available on the Guides forum)

 

5354 3DMarks

G1Sn-B1 (7.15.11.7563) - 1024x768 (521-1238-472) - Vista x64 HP SP1


How can I monitor my temps? NVIDIA Monitor makes my notebook crash (Blue screen and says something about dumping memory). I can't find the temperature gauges in RivaTuner or nTune. Am I just slow, or does it not show for all systems?

 

Yes it happen to me too, you can use RivaTuner and at Main tab of 128Bit GeForce DDR2 section click Customize and Hardware Monitoring it'll show you the temperature:

 

Hi Guys,

I'm a newbie here and think this site is absolutely awesome when it comes to offering help to all laptop users with an inclination to tinker/modify .

I was particularly looking at this thread with interest as i'm in the process of attempting to get XP onto the G1SN-B1 and was wondering if i could ask Ken (Gen Tech) for some advice. After numerous installs of XP PRO (Sp2 and Sp2c) the video driver consistently fails to detect. Device manager doesn't even have a listing for a "Standard VGA Adapter", its completely missing. All other XP Drivers seem to install fine, just the video card which doesnt detect in the first place.

Any possible advice into the problem would be superb!

 

Did you try laptopvideo2go drivers with the modified INF? The standard nVidia drivers won't work, they will not detect the mobile GPU.

 

Thanks so much for your prompt reply E.B.E.

Yeh, unfortunatley that was one of the first things i tried. I've downloaded 174.74 with the modded inf from laptopvideo2go which sadly still gave me the message of doom when i ran the setup exy, "The NVIDIA Setup program could locate any drivers that are compatible with your current hardware. Setup will no exit."

I believe its due to the fact that XP doesnt appear to pickup the video card in the first place, for some really bizarre reason there's simply no listing for a video card in device manager. Its as though one doesn't exist.

Any further help would be greatly appreciated

P.S. For those looking to purchase the G1SN, my personal opionion is that it is worth purchasing if you are drawn to the flashing fluro/techno-futurist type aesthetic of a laptop, which the G1SN conveys quite well. Structurally the laptop is very sound as is the case with all ASUS products. However, if a minimalist yet classy design is preferred and specs is what your mainly after the M50SV would definitely be the more desirable option.

 

That's weird. Are you sure the card is not listed elsewhere (not under Display Adapters); if the drivers are not installed sometimes the category where hardware is filed is not so intuitive. Do you have any device with a yellow question mark in Device Manager? If so could you list it here?

I think the modded inf needs to be for your particular type of GPU; are you sure you downloaded the correct INF and following the instructions on LaptopVideo2Go? (I've never done this so I can't give more detailed instructions)

Also, did you ever have Vista installed? Did it have problems with the GPU?

 

Again, thanks for the response E.B.E.

Yeh, unfortunatley nothing comes up. I've attached a screenshot of device manager, which lists all devices aside from the VGA adapter. The unknown device is an ACPI device, so this rules out the possibility of it being the VGA adapter.

The 174.74 driver i downloaded has the 9500GS listed, so i can only assume it's the right one unless someone got trigger happy with the keyboard when writing out the descriptions at laptopvideo2go

I also tried to force the drive in through add new hardware, but as expected windows doesnt like the inf.

I did a re-install with vista just to be sure the video card was still functioning and sure enough it was working perfectly in vista. So i know its definitely some form of a software conflict

I noticed xoticPC were selling the G1SN with XP PRO, so i assume they must have gotten it working at some stage.

I'm guessing a new driver could be the saviour? What do you reckon?

 

it has been conformed that the G1sn is packing 9500gs 512mb DDr2 also in the scandinavian countries

 

That's the BIOS issue, there is a memory conflict with the VGA port, try remove one stick of RAM and it'll find the video card, or there is work around for this by disable the Express Root port 1 or 5 under system devices.

 

Thanks for the incredibly awesome advice Ken!

I must take off my hat to you and say that you are truly enlightened!

The memory conflict is definitely the cause, which i must say is one of the most wacked out problems i've ever experienced! However, if i have the 4GB installed, oddly when i disable the express root port 1/5 there is no effect

Do you think i might have to live with running 2GB's on XP for the rest of mankind's existence?

By the way, thanks again, i may have to address you as mr. supreme being from now on

 

Great

No amount of heuristic thinking on my side can beat a simple piece (well; not so simple) of personal experience

 

Hello. I have been reading your guys' posts because I have the SAME exact problem Yan is having. How might I go about "disabling express root ports"? I have tried searching for this on google with no luck.

I have been troubleshooting this issue for 8 hours straight and am extremely tired. I completely despise Vista and Asus for making this such a task to UPGRADE to XP.

Also...just like the image posted I am having issues with my PCI Device, Network Controller, and Base System Device. Basically my video card and my ethernet card are having issues. When I perform the above task, will all of this be resolved?

Thank you very much in advance!

Edit: Also I don't want to/can't tamper with the physical hardware in-case of voiding my warranty, which I shelled out a lot of money for...thanks.

 

While I am waiting for a response, I am going to try installing Windows XP 64-bit edition as opposed to 32-bit, and see if that'll fix the issue.

 

Try disable 2 Express Root Port at a time, probably port 1 and 5, if that doesn't work try the other ports. also you can read Irathi's G1S resource thread here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=146088&highlight=G1S+resource

 

(Hey Syrax) Got your PM man, honestly i gave up a little and stopped playing around with the lappy yesterday, needed to re-ignite my motivation to check it out again, which i did today. Thanks to Ken, i persevered with disabling all the express root ports and eventually discovered that express root port #3 is the culprit! The video card is now detecting! YIPPY KAY YAY!!
Disable that, and only that (all other express root ports can be enabled) and you can finally retain your 4GB's! All other drivers should be a breeze as you can apply the ones from the G1S-A1. If you need anything else feel free to ask.

Only question now is, will disabling express root port#3 cause us any grief? Maybe one for Ken?

Again, thanks for your help Ken, without your persistence i dont think i would have had the patience to continue down the express root path. There were a tonne of reboots required until actually finding the cultprit and damn was that mind numbing!

 

1 dead pixel on my LCD and 5-6 reformats later, I gave up and put Vista back on.

However, with some new information from you guys I am again going to give it a shot. I'm creating a partition now, which I will be attempting to get XP up and running on. I'll post back here later with the results or any problems encountered.

Also to max_yan: have you considered installing Windows XP 64-bit edition to get the most out of your hardware? If and once I get 32-bit working, I'll see if I can get 64-bit to work as well, because as far as I know it'd be the better choice performance-wise, not so much compatibility-wise though.

 

I've located the port that needs to be disabled in Everest, now I am trying to figure out how to actually disable it.

 

Okay here are 2 prntscrns I took of my "working" computer and the one I'm troubleshooting.

This is the computer I'm on, the fully functional one. This one displays the items that I need to be tampering with on my laptop, however the other doesn't.



And the laptop I'm troubleshooting:


As you can see, I don't see the item that I need to be disabling. Any ideas?

 

Disabling the THIRD listing of "PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge" solved the problems. After a reboot, my computer was able to detect my video card and my network card. YAY!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you very much for all the help from GenTech aka Ken and max_yan!!

Now that I know how to solve that issue, I will be loading XP Pro 64-bit to get the most out of my hardware (4gb memory).

 

Oh, my bad bro, i forgot to tell you that you needed to install the 965 Chipset drivers before windows will properly indentify the express root ports. At that point you can easily identify which one is #3. You will have install the chipset drivers on 64BIT XP anyway, so hopefully this advice will help

Good luck!

 

This laptop sucks. I can't believe I would ever say this, but get the dell xps, or something similar. I got one with a bad screen, went through the biggest hassle ever to get ASUS to replace it, and now finally I got a "new" machine, but the glossy finnish on it was all scratched, and the keyboard is warped. I'm just gonna keep this one, because I know I won't get anything better, since the build quality on these suck. You cannot avoid the scratches either, I got a microfiber lcd cloth and it still scatched the glossy lid. Also, this has specs on many websites saying it has lightscribe, and also has all the lightscribe software came preinstalled: There's no ****in' lightscribe capabilities with the drive (MAT****A UJ-120)

 

Where are you located?

 

The memory address conflict issue happened on all Asus models with Santa Rosa platform including G1S, the issue was solved with BIOS update, I am surprise the newer G1Sn still has the same issue, the future BIOS update will fix it without disable the PCI express root port.

 

Anyone have lightscribe on their G1Sn-B1? Do you think my warranty will be voided if I open it up and try to see if there is anything causing the warping. It looks like there might be something not fitting underneath the right windows button - causing the keyboard and palm rest to lift up or something. I will not send it in for repair, because I've had bad experiences with that. The way I see it, Nobody is going to take as good of care of my machine as me.

 

You can remove the Optical Drive and the keyboard itself without worrying about the warranty. As long as you don't touch the heatsink, the warranty is fine.

 

Ken: You got lightscribe on that?

 

Awesome work Ken, I wish someone did this kind of full review for the NP5793.

 

Does the processor in the G1Sn-A1 (2.1GHz) bottleneck its performance when compared to say a M50Sv-A1 that has a 2.5GHz processor, or does it really matter?

 

The gaming performance should be about the same but when it comes to overclocking I found the faster processor gives you better overlcoking performance for GPU, you can checkout my review on M51Sn using 1.66 GHz processor, I can't overclock too much vs 2.5GHz:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=222056

 

Thanks, that was the only thing that I was wondering about between buying a G1sn-A1 or a M50Sv-A1. They're both great laptops, but I think I'm gonna go with the G1. Thanks again for responding so quickly.

 

Hey Ken, is ASUS releasing the DDR3 (700MHz Memory Clock) models yet, since I've already gotten mine w/ the 400MHz dud? I called and asked ASUS 4 times to confirm the G1Sn had DDRIII before I even bought the thing, and they said 4x's that nVIDIA would not be shipping DDRII, since it's old technology. How nice of them to send me two machines w/ DDRII, huh.

 

I looking to purchase a new laptop no sure which asus to get, M50, M51, G1Sn1A or G1S-1B. I really like the G1 design but no sure which one to get...

 

They never plan to release any 9500M GS with GDDR3, Is Asus North America told you this?

 

Yeah, it was.

 

Well I guess it depends on who you talk to, anyway we won't see any 9500M GS with GDDR3.

I was hoping the same that Asus should have GDDR3 on all of their new GPUs but I guess the heat issue should be concern.
This is mobile platform not desktop, you just don't and can't put whatever is the fastest out there in the notebook, bad things gonna happen later.

 

I've seen the video of the G1Sn and all the pictures I could find, but I can't find the speakers.

Where are they located?

 

If anyone gets fan control on these badboys, I desperately need to know how they achieved it. I got temps. reaching low 90's at max OC or w/ intense gaming, and the fan still just idling along.

I will admit, this is a nice laptop, just got 5906 w/ last benchmark (1024x768).

If I can't get fan control shortly, my next step is to flash the gpu/vga bios and see if I can get NiBitor to enable it. Right now Nvidia Control Panel fan control slider is grayed-out and the tab is not available in RivaTuner. Anyone advise against this idea? I really want the fan up, because I'm sure it will make a huge difference in my temps... Also, if there isn't any problem with flashing when you got stable OC's to reference, should I even look into doing any slight voltage increase? Would there be any significant performance boost to adding a little voltage, over just adjusting frequency? I know there would be even more heat, and I'm hessitant because there really isn't any way to test different voltages repeatedly to reach a comfort zone.

KEN: YOU WOULD KNOW - IS THERE NOT 4 WIRES CONNECTING TO THE FAN, OR THE REQUIRED AMOUNT TO KNOW IF FAN CONTROL IS POSSIBLE (I HEARD 2=NO 4=YES)? PLEASE LET US KNOW.

 

Changing voltages while keeping the frequency the same will not change performance. At least AFAIK. It only affects heat output, and stability when voltage is too low.

 

Yes there are 4 wires connecting to the fan.

 

COULD SOMEONE PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF THERE IS A MODIFIED/UPDATED BIOS or VIDEO BIOS THAT HAS THE FAN CORRELATED TO THE GPU TEMPERATURES AS WELL AS THE CPU TEMPERATURES FOR THIS NOTEBOOK (G1Sn-B1) - INSTEAD OF JUST THE CPU TEMPERATURES?

I have asked ASUS repeatedly to enable this hardware option with a new BIOS release, but they spend all their time talking around the problem instead of just fixing it. Wouldn't everyone agree that ASUS' graphics powered/gaming notebooks would be much safer/dependable if they just enabled the instruction to have GPU temp thresholds affixed to fan control, just like the CPU? No-one would be overheating anymore and I'm sure there'd be less RMA's.

My dilemma is that the hardcoded throttling threshold for my GPU is at about 96C; however this is right when the fan kicks up to 100%, and sometimes the fan will beat the downclock and cool the GPU right down to around 88C, but other times it will be too late, and the card throttles and my game crashes. If I could just lower the heat threshold for the fan by two degrees, I'd be good to go. I don't know if the fan is kickin' in when the GPU is at 96C, or if it's just heating up the CPU at that point? This is not related to Powermizer, because I already tried disabling that all together to no avail. I think its the GPU's video BIOS itself, which I wanna change, but Nibitor doesn't really support my card yet.

I'm sure noone's got an answer on this, but I just wanted to keep everyone on the same page about the issue, so that maybe we can get someone at ASUS to do something. If you own an ASUS G1 rig; please post a comment, or even better: Email ASUS with a BIOS update request. Can't hurt.

I found a video BIOS for the 9500M GS online, that says 100% fan control for all 2D, low 3D, whatever - But I'm hesitant because it's for an Acer, and I don't really want to flash with anything other than something I modified myself. Ken: I heard I could change the throttling clocks to equal the performance 3D clock with Nibitor, and I can see that it's possible with my BIOS, but Nibitor doesn't really fully support my card, so not every option is populated - If I tried this, could there be unseen problems by it changing something that's not supported - or putting in generic values where it didn't read the current values?

 

Here's ASUS's latest response:


Hello,

The BIOS was written base on Intel and Nvidia thermal policy specification therefore, we cannot alter this. The thermal diode integrated on the CPU and GPU takes care of the thermal policy. If the diode senses an increase in temperature it sends out signal to the fan to to increase speed to dissipate heat efficiently.

To help us better assist you, please provide feedback at:

http://sip.asus.com/Survey/Questionnaire/Survey_2008030463833.aspx

Regards,

RL
ASUS Notebook Technical Support



Can someone please run ATI Tool's Artifact test and see if their fan increases with the heat of the GPU, or ir it does nothing like mine? I wanna make sure it isn't just me noticing the fan does not correlate with the gpu temps. I really don't want to RMA either.

C'mon MVKTech - Please update your software!

 

Ken:

Do you know the model number for the mobo in this machine? Please let me know. Also, I was thinking about doing a copper cooling mod, by replacing the thermal pads and manufacturers thermal compound with copper spacers and some artic silver 5. Do you think it will be worth voiding the warranty?

 

So there is no lightscribe in G1sn-b1?
When i was buying it says should be lighscribe on it and i have pre installed software.

 

No lightscribe on the Mat$hita Blu-Ray Combo drive.

 

Thank you very much for the info about the conflict between the ram and the VGA. I removed 1 2GB sodimm and it found my video card immediately upon reboot and I was finally able to install the drivers for my 9500m gs on my Asus G1sn. You cannot imagine how long i have been looking for an answer to this problem ever since I sent my laptop in to asus for repair and they changed my motherboard from G1S to G1Sn and I was stuck with Vista. As I write these words my video drivers have installed and I AM once again a happy man to be running XP


Thank You ever so much

 

hi are there any more G1Sn Reviews online because i cant find any.plus my g1sn has the T8300 not the T9300.thanks

 

I want to buy the Asus G1SN a lot, but I can't find it anywhere in the UK!!
It shows as out of stock or discontinued everywhere. Any ideas if it's really discontinued??