Asus G50V 9700M GT Review, Benchmark and games

I am betting that it messures 15.4" viewable. The physical dimmension probably is 15.6" so that is how it is advertized, to sound like it is bigger. My LCD monitor is sold as a 20" but the viwable area is 20.125", my 36" TV is actually 35.6" viewable.

I just don't see ASUS spending the extra cash to make 2 different die molds for 2 different size screens for the same case, It's just not cost effective.

edit
It's a sad resolution anyways only 1366 x 768, not even 1440 like most, just sad.
That is just an all around stripped down machine, not worth the saveings to me.

 

well the one i ordered is only 15.4 never the less i am still excited...it was shipped out from the shop today. have to love ncix's extremely fast shipping. i almost owned a m1530 from dell...i waited 1 month and 2 weeks until i decided to cancel the order...i hate dell so much

and to go with jaspers post, i agree if your getting a laptop like this, might as well spend the bit more and get the better resolution, and better processor well worth it

 

That resolution, 1366 x 768 (BestBuy version) is a 16:9 resolution ("true" widescreen), so the screen is less tall.

The A1 and A2 screens are 16:10 (the widescreen ratio typical in computer screens), so the screen is taller relative to its height.

Hence the difference in the diagonals (15.6 versus 15.4).

 

That may be true, as I haven't gotten to BB yet to measure. However the difference between 15.6 and 15.4 is less than a 1/4". My point is that the screen is not what makes this Laptop wider, it is the Keyboard. Because it has the numeric keypad, the keyboard is ~1.5" wider than a standard Keyboard on other laptops, give or take.

 

You get faster FSB, and the second HD as well, the BB version has only one HD. Not to mention you loose the ASUS warrenty and must return it to BB for repairs, that alone is worth the extra IMO. If you have ever had to deal with BB warrenty, you will know what I mean.

 

Let's not forget the faster ram and all the asus freebies like the mouse and the gaming-themed backpack.

 

also other stuff i forgot to mention. all around im not a huge fan of best buy, yeah they have have good prices, but really you get what you pay for and when it comes to best buy, its not much, unless your going mac, but mac basically has guidelines best buy needs to sell by when it comes to that.

 

Just to add to this:

1.) Try and install a few 64bit prgms- they will automatically be installed in the main Programs directory. All other 32bit files in the x86 directory. I use Avast anti-virus (which has the 32 and 64 bit prgm in the same file.) It automatically detected the 64bit OS and installed into the main C:/programs directory- it was pretty neat to see this happen for the first time.

2.) I have an A2 and the setup for C: and D: on the main drive is the same (except smaller partitions since it is a 200G drive and not a 250G like the A1 G50V.) The second 200G HD has two other partitions- the drive letter designation escapes me at the moment. I suspect they would be the same as what you describe though.

3.) Personally I always install the main and trusted prgms I will use on the C: partition. That way I know exactly where they are - some programs might not work well if they are installed on another partition.

For games and other prgms that I am testing, I usually install those on any other partition besides C:

This way if the prgm messes up, I can just wipe that partition and re-install without having to bother about it too much.

 

quick question, just got the lovely red ring of death on my 360 today. so i was curious to know if the HDMI port on this laptop does video and sound? or just strictly a video out?

i should be receiving my g50 soon, and i was wondering if i can substitute the laptop as a media player while the 360 is being repaired.

 

HDMI transmits both video and audio. A handful of people on the forum have had trouble getting the sound to play properly through HDMI when playing back on their HD TV's. Hopefully you will not have that same problem, but if you do there are a couple of different solutions scattered around the forum.

 

Yes the HDMI does both Video and Audio, but if you connect HDMI to your TV on the first time you will need go to: Control Panel>Sound> and select nVidia HDMI Output and then click "set default", you only need to do it once.

 

thanks gentech and avid, reassures me i can handle for a bit without my 360.

 

I have been playing The witcher and World of Warcraft on my A2 and i am having a bit of a annoying problem. On both games there is a occasional stutter in gameplay and hic up if you will. I also have a G2s-A2 that i bought about a year ago and World of Warcraft plays flawlessly. Is there anything i can do to help this? Its really annoying during both games especially WoW since it is not a very graphics intense game. Please any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

are you running the drivers that came with the laptop? or have you downloaded the latest off of http://laptopvideo2go.com/???

if you run msconfig, turn off anything in the start menu you don't think you need.

could just be a small process.

also i know that in vista there are a few dumb things they did that rattle gaming performance.

1. defraging is automatically scheduled to run everyday at 1am. this however doesn't matter as it just always seems to run. disable defraging automatically by going to scheduled tasks under administrative tools.

2. turn off indexing on your hard drives. i just find this useless and it really doesn't increase productivity in anyway as your hard drives are constantly spinning.

try those to see if they help at all, there is a few more things you can try, but i have a feeling its the defrag.

hope that helps

 

Courious, What is indexing exactly, is it soly for when I search for a file or does it speed up load times when accessing a file from within a program?

What is it supposed to do?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Desktop_Search#Windows_Search ?

 

So inshort, If i don't really use it that much, haveing the drives indexed isn't really doing me any good and I should stop the indexing for longer battery life and to stop my HD from falshing all the time?

 

Use what that much? If you don't search for files (or you only search occasionally), then probably that service doesn't do you much good, indeed.

 

if you don't use the search everyday, or every week turn it off. i search maybe once a month, so it doesn't do me any good.

i don't knoe if it will save much battery power.

but i do know it helps when games are loading.

 

Ok i am using the stock driver that came with the laptop and have defragged my drive. No difference, still the game stutter. I read in another thread about jumpers on the hard drives possibly causing the issues. But seeing as how it should be only accessing from the drive Wow is installed in i dont see how this should be a problem, could it be that i just need new drivers and if so which are the best? I still watch alot of blu ray and want to make sure that it still works ill look into the indexing but i dont have much faith, Argh i may just try calling gentech and see what they say i really dont want to open my machine but this issue is bugging the hell out of me. I play mostly WoW and this machine runs it awesomely except the stutter. It also happens on The Witcher. Asus is notorious for not coming out with new driver in a timely manner. Once again please help any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

I have seen this caused by Security software, try shutting it down before you play if you have any.
ALso try different video settings in the games setup, turn Shadows down or off if possible and other things like shinny/reflective water. If there is a clip plane setting, try setting it low as possible. The game could hickup while redrawing the far away terrain.

 

did you turn off auto defraging? that's a main thing, as it does try to defrag while you play.

as far as the drivers, your best bet is to go to the website i gave in my previous post, they seem to be the only place that has updated drivers for notebooks.

jasper is right, if you turn off windows defender (i do on all my machines runing vista). it could help as well.

and just incase, try to keep the internet **** down to a minimum

 

I want to integrate this driver into Srv2003 installation, but don't know which one to select for making SATA RAID0 It's ICH9 but which one?
thx

 

Ok I think i have turned of auto defrag buy disabling the task scheduler for a scheduled time? If that is not the way how do i do this? Also there is a couple more things i can try for WoW atleast i see on the forums. I really want to prevent taking out the hard drives and/or a fresh vista install. I wont be able to log on and see if anything i have dont so far has helped till the 17th or so till then its a waiting game. I can check on the witcher though and see if it helped any there. And once again ill try the indexing thing as well if the auto defrag deal doesnt work, i have turned of windows defender but still have norton anti virus/internet security could it be doing it as well? Well thanks for your assistance i will try this so far just run me through turning of the auto defrag so i can make sure i did it correctly.....thanks

 

when you are in the task scheduler under administrative tools

go through the folders until you find defrag (not sure right now off the top of my head as i am on my blackberry typing this)

then just right click the task and then disable

 

Can someone post the Direct Console version 2 driver / software or a link to it? I wanna try and see if I can get it working on my G1Sn to overclock the CPU. I already checked the ASUS member downloads, but didn't see it.

So did ASUS enable fan cooling correlation with the GPU heat this time, or still no?

 

you can download the direct console software off the asus website under the g50v notebook in the downloads section

i believe its under utilities.

 

I'm running WinXP on my G50V.
And when i'm runing remote desktop connection (RDP) agains my windows 2003 server everything is going very slow... realy to slow.
When using Vista on the same G50V the RDP connection is quick and there is no problems... Other computers in my network that is running WinXP has no problem connecting to the Windows 2003 server.

This is very annoying!!

Any one that has experiened it? Any solutions?

//Micke

 

Has anyone tried Spore on the G50-A2 yet?
I tried to install the creature creater just t ocheck it out and it tells me that I need DirectX 9, So I take it that DirectX 10 isn't backwords comapatable. Can I install dx9 without effecting dx10?

 

No Eddie, like I said, it's not there - I even just checked again, and went through not only the utilities section, but checked every G50 model download there is for both Vista 32 and 64 and it's not there...

 

thats odd as i am there right now and i see the driver for it?

 

hi.
i've a question, i'm not a well user of notebook and i don't speak english...
when i go to the bios, to have the 2 hard disk set as they are one with double storage and rpm, what i have to do? enhanced, raid or compatible?
anyone could explain me step by step?
thanks

 

do you want to take both hard drives, and basically make them one big hard drive? 500GB total space, showing as only 1 hard drive?

 

yes, it is what i'd like to do.
Doing so, also the rpm will be double, for example, if i've 2 HD at 5400 each one, the rpm will be 10000?

 

Raid 0 - See my review for how to set it up.

What it does? - Splits data between two hard drives according to "strip size" It will make it look like one big hard drive in windows (500gb = about 470gb) but it does not "double the rpm"

 

when i read about raid0 i've found that 2 hd in raid0 when process a file , everyone process an half simultaneously with the other one, so the speed in processing is double.
for example, 1GB is processed 500mb by the first hd and, at the same time, the second hd processes the other 500 mb.
so, this is wrong

in your review you write: -So raid 0 for "speed/performance"-
so there is an increase of speed, that is what interested to me.

 

Hi
i have a G50V, i installed xp with the drivers mentioned in this thread.

Everything but de nvidia display driver works fine

every now and then, it goes back to a resolution of 640 x480 and gives an error "this driver is for an older os version and is no longer valid"
if i re-install the driver (with the eddited .inf) it works fine again...but only for so long and it all starts over again...

any ideas ?

 

Help me!

Where I find those drivers that he says:

D:\DRIVER\ATK0100\VISTA32\2KSETUP.EXE
D:\DRIVER\KB_FILTER\Vista32\2KSETUP.EXE

D:\SOFTWARE\ATKHOTKEY\SETUP.EXE
D:\SOFTWARE\ATKMEDIA\SETUP.EXE
D:\SOFTWARE\ATKOSD2\SETUP.EXE

D:\SOFTWARE\RICOH\SETUP.EXE (Card Reader)
D:\Software\BLUETOOTH\WIN32\BRCM\DPINST.EXE
D:\SOFTWARE\EXPRESSGATE\SETUP.EXE
D:\SOFTWARE\TOUCHPAD\Setup.exe
D:\SOFTWARE\WCONSOLE\SETUP.EXE

In Recovery DVD it doesn't have! I already formatted HDs!

Thanks

 

No it's not in the recovery DVD, it's in drivers DVD.

 

Thank you,

I didn't know that it has a drivers DVD!

 

So Direct Console 2 does not work on Windows XP. This means that I can't configure the LED lights and the OLED display. What is their status when running Windows XP, are the lights and display on or off? And what do they do during boot-up?

Also: What features of this notebook work with Linux? Can all the Hardware be used properly? (Ethernet, Bluetooth, Wireless LAN, Sound playback and recording (btw: what codec chip is it?), card reader, camera, RAID, HDMI output, also LEDs and OLED but I suspect those won't work)

 

Hello everyone. I have the G50V X-1 from Newegg.

The Vista works great and I ordered another harddrive for the spare slot.
I intend to install XP on this other harddrive.

However when I run XP setup after it finishes the intialing loading on the bottom of the screen it goes to a blue screen saying it shutdown to prevent damage to the computer.

I've tried multiple disks and with and without the new HD. The BIOS recognizes the new HD so I don't think that is the issue.

Do I have to load a SATA driver to install XP since all HDs are SATA? If so where would I get that driver?

 

Yes, you either need to slipstream (load) the SATA driver onto the XP CD, or to put the HDD(s) in ATA Compatible mode from the BIOS.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=282803

 

Hey guys....have been lurking here and reading. Love that Asus G50. I am thinking of buying, but I am not really a gamer. I play "Need For Speed" once in a while. The reason I'm looking at this is: It seems to have the best performance for a laptop and good multimedia with blueray, and I especially like the dual hard drives-only 15 inch lappy that has them to my knowledge. I look at this as desktop replacement while traveling, and will use for photo and video editing. The RAID feature is a big plus for me. Also looked at HP & Gateway, but they are not as fully equipped at this price point. Also looked at other Asus models, but each one is lacking in one area or another. Is this a mistake on my part, and what other alternatives would you recommend?

 

I'm going to buy a G50V-A2 but....

This upgrade should give you better hard drive performance, wich is often times the slowest part of a laptop system and allow you to watch Blu-Ray/DVD movies or burn DVD/CD disks.

Does it means that I just can watch but NOT burn Blu-Ray discs, but watch and burn DVD/CD's?
If so, do you know if it's possible to get the G50V with a Blu-Ray that also can burn Blu-Ray discs?

Do you know if it's possible to get the G50V with a 9-cell battery?

// Tejar

 

Asus doesn't offer bluray burners, but you can easily find one online and just replace it yourself.
9 cell batteries are available for the G50V. It uses the same batteries as the M50, and can be found on ebay or the Asus estore.

 

crysis seemed to lag on those videos

 

Hi. I just bought a G71v.
I am new to this forum and I can´t seem to send private messages, so I am going to be rude and ask here.

GENTECH: can you please tell me where I can find G71v beta BIOS or BETA Direct Console?

I have posted a thread about G71v issues.
I hope you can help me out.

Thanks in advance.

 

It's less likely people will answer here about the G71v, because this is a G 50 review thread. You could ask the BIOS question on the same thread you created.

 

ok. Thankx for the help Will do