Asus G50VT-X5 review + pics + game performance

Dspr_02's Asus G50VT-X5 Review
The pictures below are all thumbnails, click on them for the full sized image!
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To those wondering how to get the FPS counter at the top right corner in Source Engine games you type : CL_Showfps 1
To get the one in the bottom right corner you type : Net_Graph 1

For CoD4 you type : cg_drawfps 1

Receving

When I ordered my laptop, I also ordered a Logitech MX Revolution wireless mouse.



The package with my G50VT-X5 and my Logitech MX Revolution arrived Tuesday at around 3 PM PST. The box that it came in had a dent in the top right corner on the left side. Inside was my Asus G50VT-X5 in a brown refurbished box and the Logitech MX Revolution in its original box. The two boxes were surrounded by brown paper packaging, no foam, no air pockets or bubble wrap. Just paper.

The laptop came with all that was expected and the mouse did too.

Inside Box

Inside the laptop's box was the G50VT-X5, the 9 Cell battery and the software/manuals. The laptop came on the foam bag packaging.



I was a bit dissappointed when I looked at the laptop for the first time since it had dirt, scratches and crap splattered all over it. When I bought REFURBISHED I was expecting REFURBISHED not SCRATCH AND DENT. Though I guess the difference between Dell and Asus Scratch and Dent and Refurbished may be bigger than I thought. I could just send this current one in for an exchange for another G50VT-X5 though.


Software/Bloatware

Upon starting it up and attempting to set up Vista 4 times in a row I found that if you have a Wireless USB Mouse reciever, it will cause the laptop to restart when it gets to "Checking System Performance" stage of the install.

I spent a good hour uninstalling all the BestBuy/Asus/Microsoft bloat ware. Some of the things included were:

Random Best Buy Games
Microsoft Office 2007 Student 60Day Trial
Cyberlink Power DVD
Lightscribe DVD Software
A bunch of Asus apps that are not needed/unnecessary to run windows and get 100% out of this laptop

Not the worst bloatware infestation I have seen, but definatley more than what I would like to see.

Specs

Intel Core2Duo P7450 @ 2.13GHz 1066MHz 3MB L2 Cache
2x2GB DDR2 PC-6400 800MHz SODIMM
1x320GB Seagate 320GB SATA2 7200.00 RPM HDD
15.6" WXGA Color-Shine (Glare-type) 720p @ 1366x768
Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit + CoA
Dual Layer DVD±RW with LightScribe
NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS
Intel® Wi-Fi Link 5100AGN
Full Size 109Key Keyboard w/ Number Pad
Synaptics Touchpad
9 Cell Battery



Looks/Weight

I am all for the looks and I think it looks great with the fire lighting bolt, but could do without the LED strips around the sides and the LED strip near the Hinges on the top of the LCD.

Tiger Direct claims that this laptop weight 6.2 lb's and I will see how heavy it is when it arrives in 3 days or so.

--UPDATE--
The thing is not too heavy but not too light either. I personally could handle lugging it to and from school/friends places every day.
--/UPDATE--

I have to say that the lid may look bad in the pictures online but when you see it in person it does actually look nice and a nice touch is that when the laptop is off, the led strips look like a chrome accent to the lid. The interior of the laptop seems to have some form of honeycomb texturing on the palm rest area and around the camera. The orange/bronze paint scheme is carried from where the LCD meets the base down to about the Shift key on the Left Side and to about the 3 key of the number pad on the right side.

This laptop is much bigger than I was expecting in terms of the bezel but the size makes the palm rests very good and comfortable to use. The LED lit touchpad is a nice touch and helps to show where you want your fingers to be during a night-long-frag-fest and since the LED strip is slightly raised you will not have the problem of your fingers going off of the touchpad. The Touch Sensitive controls look very nice and perfectly lit up in the dark, the OLED display is also nicely lit up with even brightness all the way across.

I did notice that on black screens I can see the "Spots" of light that people were complaning about (the ones around the LED Strip areas). It does not really bother me since the only time I see them is when the laptop is in semi sleep mode where it shuts off the screen but keeps the LED's on and when I hit Fn+F7.

Ports

Left - VGA, Air Vent, USB, WiFi Antenna, 1394 Firewire, eSata, HDMI, Expresscard 54 and Card Reader.



Right - Microphone, Line In, Headphones, DVD Drive (not pictured, sorry)



Front - Indicator lights - theres only 4 of them : Power, Battery Charging, Bluetooth and WiFi


Back - USB, Modem - blocked off, Gigabit Ethernet Lan, AC Power



Screen/Brightness/Color/Contrast/Viewing Angles

Screen Front



Screen Right



Screen Left



Screen Bottom



Screen Top



Features

- Asus Overclocking Utility



- OLED screen below LCD



- Touchpad Border lit up w/ Blue LED



Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard on this laptop is one of the loudest that I have ever used and the number pad is quite cramped. The touchpad is very, very good and among one of the best I have ever used.

I did notice flex in the keyboard when applying moderate pressure to the keyboard in the corners and most of the center of the keyboard. The touchpad seems to have a slight, but noticable height difference from the Left side to the Right side (about 3/4 of the way from left to right).

I also noticed that the keys have some sort of sparkley compoud put in them when they were made so in direct sunlight the keys will literaly be sparkling. It is just noticable, not distracting.

Number Pad Cramped-ness



Other

The camera is a 1.3MP camera and seems to have relativley low resolution and a grainy image. The flash is just the screen turning white at full brightness when the camera takes the picture.



The fan is this laptop is not really noticable though it does move A LOT of air and it does a great job cooling.

The DVD drive is near silent when playing a DVD and could not be heard while benchmarking the battery life with Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers. And this was in a silent room, with the sound going through headphones which were on the table.

Problems

Upon recieveing the laptop, I ran into a problem where the battery stayed at 0% for about 25 minutes. After resetting the laptop, turning it on, unplugging the AC adapater and doing the same when I got into windows, the problem fixed its self.

The wireless card did not want to start after about a day of use and it took about 2 hours of fiddling with the Switch, windows mobility center and the Fn+F2 keys to get it to work, it has been working flawlessly since. I am still going to upgrade to a WiFi Link 5300 AGN card.

When tiger direct sent me this laptop, they must has sent one that was to go to the Asus refurbishing center since it was scratched up and really dirty when I got it, I am still debating with my self on whether I should send this one back and get another "Refurbished" one or if I should just keep this one.

Some big, big, big problems are that the Warranty sticker inside the laptop was missing when I got it, the CoA Sticker appears to have been lifted up at one corner (by the previous owner trying to score a cheap copy of Windows Vista) and the sticker that has all the warranty info such as the Serial No., the Product name and model and all that stuff is faded. The Vista key is also fading.

Not so sure if it is a problem or not, but when having this laptop on your lap and using it, you can feel the HDD's vibration on the palm rest and touchpad. It is very noticable to me.

Initial Impression

Upon receving the laptop it looked like someone spilt all sorts of crap on it and had fingerprints, smudges and several cuts. Not was I was expecting from a Refurb. The laptop came with 0 battery charge so I had to run if from the AC. It runs very well and very fast, even will all the crapware. I am glad that I purchased this laptop.

1 Week Use Impressions

Not quite a week yet, but I am still lovin' it!

Gaming Performance

Call Of Duty 4





All settings maxed with 2x AA I get around 58 FPS with occasional drops to 39 FPS. On 4xAA framerates are between 31 and 38, never dropping below 31. - Overclocked on TurboExtreme and Stock does not make much of a difference (+/- 3 frames).

Mirrors Edge





Mirrors Edge plays at around 35 FPS on stock CPU (forgot to OC before playing ). With PhysX enabled it plays at around 34 FPS but when you get near anything that uses PhysX, your frame rate will drop to 6-12 FPS for a few moments.

Crysis Warhead





On the first level I was getting roughly 28 - 35 FPS with the above settings, VSYNC and Full Screen and DX 10.

Counter Strike Source





Steady 60FPS on all maps with 32/32 and 44/44 players.

Half Life 2





Using the above settings, I get 60FPS steady with VSYNC.

Half Life 2 EP 1





Using the above settings, I get 60FPS with VSYNC, occasional drops to 49FPS.

Half Life 2 EP 2





With the above settings I get 50FPS with VSYNC, occassional drops to the low 40's and rare drops to mid 30's.

Half Life 2 Lost Coast





With the above settings I get 50FPS with occasional drops to 45FPS and rare drops to 36FPS, twice during the stress test it dropped to 28FPS.

Portal





Portal Maxed gets me a solid 59/60 FPS with VSYNC on. Plays very, very well!

Team Fortress 2





Maxed out I get 48-60 fps with an average of 59.5 FPS.

Battery and Battery Life

Charging Time

To charge from 1% to 100% on my 9 cell battery while using the notebook for regular web browsing and some gaming it took 3:11:36 (Three hours, Eleven minutes and Thrity-six seconds).

Full Out Gaming

Playing TeamFortress 2 on "Normal" setting for the overclocking, max brightness, the LED strips being flashy (hehehe get it?) and with WiFi on, the battery (9 cell) lasted me 1 hour and 17 minutes. You lose 8 minutes off of that if you overclock this notebook to TurboExtreme. I was hoping to get a little more battery life on "Normal".

Full Out Gaming OVERCLOCKED to MAX

Playing TeamFortress 2 on TurboExtreme, with WiFi, full brightness and all power eating options enabled. This 9 cell battery lasted me exactly 1 hour and 9 minutes. - I was also using a Wireless USB mouse.

Normal Browsing - Regular Use

Doing regular web browsing (NBR ONLY ) watching some videos and messing around with LCDHype (still have to get it working properly ) I managed about 2 hours and 53 minutes.

Minimal Use - No WiFi - Screen 3rd Lowest Brightness - Word pad open in Background

Doing absolutley nothing the battery lasted 4 hours and 45 minutes which is pretty friggin impressive!

Windows 7



LCDHype Battery Plugin



DVD Movie off of DVD

No WiFi, Brightness to 5/15, QuietOffice setting from Direct2Console, Battery Saver windows profile and a 9 cell battery @ 100% charge:

To get from 100% to 10% it took 2hr and 40 min while watching a movie off of the DVD, nearly enough to get through Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers (which is my benchmark movie for the laptop). Though for 140 minutes, it should be easily enough to watch a regular length movie on a short flight or road trip.

Movie off of HDD

To get from 100% to 10% it took 2hrs and 57 minutes. Almost enough to finish Watchmen 1080p Directors Cut.

Benchmarks

3D Mark06

Normal Setting in Direct Console - 8597 3D



Turbo Setting in Direct Console - 8772 3D M



TurboExtreme Setting in Direct Console - 8975 3D M



3D Mark Vantage

Would not start claiming "The minimum display resolution 1280x1024 is not supported" =/

wPrime32

Stock - 38.873 s



Turbo - 36.754 s



TurboExtreme - 35.239 s



SuperPI

Normal CPU Setting : 56 seconds to 2M



Turbo CPU Setting : 54 seconds to 2M



TurboExtreme CPU Setting : 51 seconds to 2M



Operating System Performance and W.E.I.

Windows Vista Home Premium X64

When I recieved this laptop it had Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit installed on it and full of BestBuy's "greasy fingerprints" (literaly ). It had all their crapware installed and tons of apps that limited the true potential of this laptop. I used it for about 3 hours at work (where I recieved it) and as soon as I got home I installed my own OEM copy of Windows Vista Home Premium x64 using the licence on the the laptop and activating it online (who the heck says it doesn't work?). This reinstall made the laptop far snappier and operate better.

Windows System Information



Windows Experience Index



Final Thoughts

As it probably has been said a few times over the course of the review, this is the best laptop that I have ever owned and will probably own.....for the next 8 months anyways. I am really happy with this purchase and would reccomend this notebook to all my friends and family. For 799.97 CAD it really cannot be beat by anything else that is out there in this price range, even though it is refurbished.

 

Cool, good luck to you man.

 

Thanks!

UPS keeps delaying and telling me different dates so I am a little frustrated with that, but Tuesday at the absolute latest I get it.

They phoned yesterday to tell me that they were going to deliver it today, but after talking to a UPS rep they said it would be there on Tuesday. The page with the tracking number has not been updated in about 40 hrs....

 

Ahaha thats what happen to me! Vive UPS.

Oh and BTW! Be sure to be home, UPS leave your 1000$ laptop in a box outside in front of your door.

 

My brother just got one of these, runs like a top!

 

Yea, these Refurb lokks like new ones but with a 3months warranty vs Asus 360.

 

Nope its being shipped to my Stepdad's office which is funny enough since the airport is literally an 8 min drive from his office and they could have easily delivered it on Friday. though tiger direct is smart enough to ship with a mandatory signature on receipt. So no probs there =) I hope....

Hell I'll bus and skytrain down there to get it a half hour sooner

 

What you mean? I bought mine from Tigerdirect too. The refurb one.

 

wait so yours came with a 9 cell from T.D. refurb?

 

Umm i'm pretty sure. It's not written on it but i get almost 3hre on battsaving or ExpressGate. Also, I think the serial # of the batt is A33-M50. Type this in google and you'll see that they are 9cells.

 

Yep its a 9 cell.

 

Did you receive it?

 

Today I will receive it or what my siggy says will happen.

Btw M249's are Heavy machine guns. High capacity belt fed and high rate of fire/shredding

 

M249s are actually fairly light weapons. You want heavier, try a Mark 48.

 

lololololololol

 

Did it come yet?
And BTW...That mark 48 is nothing....
http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/a10gatlinggunss_1.htm

 

yea I got it....review coming up asap.

 

Well, you can't exactly carry an Avenger.

 

No! My bandwidth! Curse your non-thumbnailed pics, Dspr_02!

 

I could have sworn i read somewhere the asus g50 refurbs were supposed to look brand new and be factory sealed. I would complain or maybe even return it depending on how bad it is.

 

It has several scratches on the inner bezel of the screen,the touchpad buttons have scratches on them, the lid has quite a few scratches and cuts all over the place and small discolorations.

To all who bought this laptop from tigerdirect, shoud it have come in the ORIGINAL laptop box? because mine came in a plain brown box with tape around it.

---UPDATE---

Called Tiger Direct and they told me that it should have come like new, but not in the original packaging so I have two options now:
f
1) Get them to ship me another one but charge me 799.97 CAD and then refund it when they get my current one
or
2) Get stuck another 2 weeks without a laptop, ship mine out to them and get another one shipped from them to me

the thing that sucks about the second option is that they won't ship with express overnight, expidited or anything, just regular shipping.

This is kind of a efff you from Tiger Direct to the customer. Oh well...I may just end up keeping this one since I don't want another 2 weeks to be laptop less, since the "Dell Hell" this is the first time in about 3 MONTHS that I have a working laptop .

 

Mine came in a brown box but it's like new. No scratch, no dent.

 

Hmmm.....I really oughta give em hell for this.

So your notebooks did not have the "Republic of Gamers" logo on the lid look like someone took sandpaper to it?

You guys think that I could them into giving me express shipping for the return?

 

I received mine in the brown refurbished box too. I inspected it very closely, and the unit is like new. I was a little scared when I received it because it was not double boxed, but I am very happy with the condition. I did not buy it from the Tigerdirect though.

 

Okay then, tomorrow I will yell at them and try to get one with express shipping.

This one is not too bad but I just hate the fact that I spent 800$ pre tax just to get one scratched up and dirty.

 

Lol no.

I inspected it very closely also and I was scared because usually you put paper + laptop box + paper inside the big one. Thats not what they did: Laptop box + paper. But at least it is in perfect condition.

 

I ordered mine this morning i shall tell u what it looks like when i recieve it early next week so you have more ammunition lol.

 

lol the scratches are not too bad, they are noticable and there..when they shouldn't be....but I am wondering if it is indeed worth it to lose a laptop for 2 weeks over a bunch of scratches..

 

Probably not unless your ocd like me lol

 

lol not ocd, just pissed

 

Wait you payed 800 plus tax for one?...lol!

Ebay+Bing cashback: $650 for the X1...^_^
...Infact..This link will make you cry....
Ebay is a pain-filled place

 

The hard drive vibration i believe is normal because my netbook does the same thing with its 5400 rpm drive.

Eh i only payed 700 for mine although im still not sure whether its coming with the 9 cell or not it seems to be a game of chance lol.

 

Problem with that link is "eBay" it can get "lost in the mail" or "seized by customs" with tigerdirect, I knew it was on its way and had the ability to refuse shipment/refund near instantly. Also the X1 I belive has the 9700M which is worse than the 9800M.

my 0.02. Oh and Customs tax & import tax would end up being far more than 850...for us Beaver lovers up north (talking out of previous experiences).

 

Nope the X1 gets the same GPU with a 130mhz upgrade in the CPU dept.

 

really? my X5 has a 2.138 ghz cpu...p7450.

 

The X1 comes with a p8400 and a 6 cell. The X5 comes with a p7450 and a 9 cell. I wanted more battery life so I went with the X5. That's basically the difference between the two units other than the color scheme of course.

 

You´re not going to be laptop-lees for a bunch of scratches, i think that the important thing here is that you get a laptop whose apparent destination was asus refurbishing center.

But as you say, if you gave it a closer look and the only problem is the scratches on the lid, then i thing that you´ve nothing to worry about.

Sorry for my awful english and congratulations on your purchase, this machine is a BEAST!

 

Now the CoA sticker and the Asus sticker with the S/N, P/N and Product Model have faded (though I can still see my CD Key for windows). Do the refurbs come with the yellow "Warranty void if removed" sticker on the cpu? Because mine does not have that sticker.

Would Microsoft or asus replace the CoA and would asus send me another sticker with the PN and SN?

 

man i don´t know...at this time i believe that the most important thing here is that your notebook runs great...if microsoft/asus have to send you a sticker with the PN and serial number tigerdirect must take the responsibility and do all the work to send you these numbers, but they´re only going to be useful for 3 months (the refurbished guarantee time)

 

yep ill call em up.....update in like 10 min.

 

Yo,dspr_02,I just got my Referb G50VT-X1,I love this thing!
Maybe I will do a review.

 

neato!

Well after chatting up tiger direct they told me that what I could do would be to do an exchange which would involve me losing my laptop for 2 weeks (or more).

I also called Asus and they told me that they would escalate my case to the supervisors since the product key and warranty information sticker is not supposed to fade.

Sonicjet, does your G50VT have the "warranty void if removed" sticker on the CPU heatsink? Cuz mine doesn't.....

 

Give me five minutes...


EDIT:
....Kinda....it was stuck to the side of the heat sink in a way that would not impede movement except for one thing..it was cut in half....I guess its a referb thing sorry.
-Sonicjet(Drinking the (Amazingly good)express gate Kool-Aid)

 

Damn it. This means that I will have to obtain one off of eBay in case of Warranty Return.

 

Thanks for the review, it was added to the ASUS Info Booth and to the ASUS Reviews and Owners' Lounges Index!