Asus G53SW Owners' Lounge

I have this one, and it fits the laptop perfectly.

Amazon.com: 17" Widescreen Laptop Notebook Sleeve Carrying Flip Case Bag for Fujitsu, Samsung, Dell, Acer, ASUS Eee PC, Gateway, HP, Sony, Compaq, IBM, Mac, Sharp, Toshiba models: Electronics

It's as if it was made for it.

 

My asus g53sw xn1 cam in from Amazon! I love it and I'm mind blown. What bloatware should I delete? I remember a thread about it

Seems like the wifi is going slow. How can I get better download speeds on it. On my iphone I'm getting 25mbps and on this .6 and downloads are taking forever?

 

Im getting this laptop, however im not sure if it is relatively easy to setup? Oh, and also, is it a reliable laptop? Will it last me up to 3 years?

 

firstly i'd read that linked thread in my last post on any kind of lag and atheros wifi card lol.

the stock wireless bluetooth combo card is that device. if that doesn't recify it for you then solutions would get increasingly complicated from replacing the wireless card with a different model, or goofing with network settings( using dual band 2.5ghz/5ghz router/ap? the stock adapter doesn't play so nice with that, but drop to single band and it works merrily or so i've observed).

 

Thanks and I read that, but I don't know how to work drivers lol. I installed it but don't know how to do it. Also what graphic driver should I get?

 

Installed 9.2.1.432 and, knock on wood, it seems a lot better!

 

Chepsy, I can't answer the reliability question for you as I've only owned my G53SW-XN1 for a a short amount of time and I've actually haven't used it much as I have a desktop that's far more power than this laptop. But in regards to the price you may want to wait till black friday as there's a good chance it'll be on sale on Newegg since it's been pulled from their normal search and it was deactivated last month but brought back about a week ago. That or you can have the open box search filter saved on your browser and keep checking it like I did. I bought mine as a open box unit for $580 from Newegg, a friend of mine got a G73 for $780 last week. There's been a mix of G53's, G73's, and G74's up for open box on Newegg recently. Both mine and my friend's G73 had nothing wrong with them and everything we needed came with it.

 

It is super easy to set up (took me 2 mins), but I am not sure about reliability. Mine was having wifi problems, but I fixed it with a driver update. But this laptop is beast, I was looking for a QUIET powerful laptop, and I got one =]

 

well if your "will it last me 3 years" was purely a function of the odds of it dying, the a1 versions have 2 years of warranty with 1 year adw, the other variants have only 1 year adw +1 year standard warranty. so for a NEW machine you have 1-2 years you are assuredly covered for assuming you can manage if it needs repair for a bit. beyond that the answer is the same as with any electronics of decent make- it depends on how you treat it and the roll of the dice.

i had a first gen ipod touch 32gig simply stop responding to touch input within 3 months, and i have an 8 gb ipod touch 2g that is still working after three years(although the non user serviceable without voiding everything battery is getting mighty weak). dice.

technically there are better machines out there with generally the same named components. the alienware m17 r3 is a 2630qm cpu paired with a 460m gtx gpu that according to one formal review sits at a much lower thermal temp than this unit, and also has a dual fan and exhaust design. of course thats a 17" more comparable to the g73/g74 and costs about 1000$ more for pretty much the same hardware, not to mention its dell support and warranty.

or the msi gt680r which also boasts the same components in a 15" form factor and sagely uses a right angle power connector and places ports on the back, but uses a slightly weaker joint cooling system.

nominally the g73/g74 is the more reliable hardware for the price as its temp tolerance is better, just an unavoidable fact brought about by the extra chassis space of the 17" vs 15" form factor. downside is its also averaging 400$ more. you can offset that by keeping the ac on at a slightly lower ambient through the year and probably still wind up spending less than 400$ to do so, and you'll be more comfortable too

if thats not an option however well..

buy the asus warranty extension and pick up the a1 series. 3 years warranty total that way through asus, which means they pay to ship both ways. you also get a backpack case thats extremely proficient at sheltering this thing so long as you set it down vs drop it.

but back to the land of failure focus and worry neuroses':

no backlight inverter to die on you.

cpu has hardware on chip thermal protection and an independent fan and venting system from the gpu which aids longevity of the cpu and gpu.

ram in the last few years is prone to going bad for a lot of people, after a few years. luckily its extremely cheap and almost never takes out other hardware when it starts to go, although it does make for wonky system behaviour until its replaced. even so that's working out to about a 1in3 to 1 in 5 chance to have 1 ram stick go bad after 1-2 years. stock this machine has 2 ram sticks out of four for the a1(2x4gb) and (2x3gb)for the others. a common upgrade is 12gb for 2x4+2x2 which technically ups odds of seeing this by upping the number of sticks. still marginal.

displays are a real odds game universally, but you get a 30 day pixel funk up warranty on new units from asus. so in spite of having 1,920x1080 chances for a problem here you are covered for the first 30 days at least. and typically its either a manufacturing problem or shipping damage causing bad pixel issues so if it doesn't show in that time it likely won't come up unless you do something ungentle to the machine.

hdd's and optical drives. absolutely noone can tell you exactly what the odds are on these failing. apparently google did a study on the hundred some thousand hdd's they've used over a few year period, and the end answer was that failure rates are a total toss up across brands models and manufacturers. just assume it will die and keep backups, and the warm fuzzy knowledge its under warranty for at least a year even if you drop the machine while trying to use the webcam to take photos off the top of the eiffel tower( assuming you can find the pieces of course, and you actually signed up the adw properly).

batteries die proportional to charge level, temperature, recharge cycles, and time so that pretty universal.

display hinge used int his chassis design is very solid, and an improvement over the old rotational single axis hinge designs.

other odd failures like the power button or touchpad issue mostly depend on if there's yellow tack tape under the touchpad in contact with its metallic underside. apparently the glue builds up a charge if in contact with the metal that causes things to go awry. that's an easy fix if you get that issue either for you or for them. the other version of this issue involves shippiiing damage or the hall effect(magnetic) lid close sensor going bad, and thats another discrete component failure rate toss up that can occur in any of the models i noted above.

probably the single most likely failures within 3 years would be either breaking the power connector center pin, or having the nvidia gpu chip start showing latent issues over time.

dirty little secret that spending time googling shows is that the nvidia "bad packaging leading to early failure" recall/class action bit of a few years ago is kind of a joke, as the binning process they use on the gpus from both companies lead to all kinds of early death syndromes, especially in their mobile chip area which always experiences higher operating temperatures.
sadly intel gpu's just aren't even a quarter of the way to competing with ati or nvidia in the gpu department so its a needful calculated risk.

so power connector and gpu are the most likely to die within 3 years, and neither one would be easy to replace as an end user. soldering a new power connector to the mainboard is doable but not pleasant. replacing the gtx460m reverse mxm III daughtercard asus uses would likely be the bigger pain in the ... something.. mainly due to needing to find one.

but again, pretty much all of this is true for pretty much every machine.

so in closing i suppose i'd say the better question is " is this machine a cheap money grab prone to failing rapidly?" to which the answer would be no.

that said there is a good chance of getting it with issues direct to your door, especially with newegg(they like to use very thin outer boxes with little/poor padding, and a shared personal view persists their warehouse must have a shipping company full of a-hats as the closest location due to the frequency of damage to boxes containing these units.).

if it comes with problems get em fixed or swap it asap. if nothing appears after testing within the first 30ish days then you are probably good for a few years.

personally if i had a choice i think i'd pick up the g74sx looking at them all now. its 17" but more importantly the keyboard area is flush with alimunim plate backing the keys not plastic, and the chassis has more breathing room and a slightly revamped cooling design. otherwise for all intents and measurable purposes they're all pretty much the same, and who knows what twitchy bits will show up for the g74sx? i know the keyboard on my g53sw likes to display inputs containing "spacebar-t-h-e-spacebar" as "t-spacebar-h-e-spacebar" if i don't type it really slowly, and has weird throttling requiring a third party app to fix, and no bios support for the encryption instruction set the cpu includes. the jh series with the ati gpus have colored gpu screen of death failure issues that present commonly. the 73's have two different touchpad versions and some persistent issues with them even beyond the yellow tape bit.

the g53sx has the handicapped 560m bus.

call them errata. heck intel makes cpus, and posts the errata sheets of defects for each revision of manufacturing the same cpu. same kind of thing really. just gotta take an eyeball to whats specific see if you can live with it then give it a go knowing where those pitfalls are.


and remember kids- never buy the lifetime warranty on anything expensive, if it breaks the company may decide its cheaper to end your lifetime than fix the product.

 

Hello fellow G53SW owners,

I have some questions to ask.

I own a G53SW-A1 and i wish to connect my Astro Mixamp 5.8 to the laptop. Unfortunately, G53Sw does not have any Optical Output. Any suggestion what should I do to get the MixAmp 5.8 to connect to my laptop without compromising any sound quailty?

Thanks in advance! Your help will be greatly appreciated.

 

Ignore me1

 

Hello everyone as u can see i am new at this forum

I bought GS53SW like a week ago

But now i have a problem my atheros ar9002wg wireless adapter gave me a warning that "not plugged" and when i go to device manager it has a yellow sign on it said "this device cant be started" i uninstall it and update the driver still same (gave the same warning "not plugged")

i uninstall the wireless console 3 still the same

i did not fell the laptop

now i have a laptop and cant connect to wireless

anybody have an idea about that?

by the way i scan my computer

OS: W7 ultimate 64

 

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone here!

I just contributed to the Black Friday madness by purchasing the Intel 320 Series 120GB SSD for my G53SW-XN1. I plan to install it into the open HDD bay and use it as my Win7 boot drive. I read a few posts recently talking about SSD issues with this laptop, but when I tried to "Search this Thread" for "ssd", I didn't get any results. Would somebody be able to tell me what problems I should be aware of? Also, any advice on the optimal way to install and set up my SSD would be appreciated.

(Or advice on the most effective way to search this thread or the Asus forum would be most appreciated. Teach a man to fish and whatnot.)

Thanks!

 

Nobody has an answer for this?

by the way i am getting code 10 error

i did update driver, roll over driver, registry cleaner, microsoft fix

no solution.

i am thinking i is because of w7 ultimate instead of w7 home pre

that can be?

 

Here is a link concerning Code 10:

Description of Code 10-related errors that Device Manager generates in Windows-based computers

I really don't believe it's due to win 7 ultimate. I ran Ultimate before I upgraded from my Atheros and after when I updated to my intel and had no problems. If you haven't yet, I might suggest to just do a full re-install of the OS and all drivers. There may have been a conflict when you updated to ultimate or something went wrong. Hope this helps some.

 

Hi guys!
I recently bought my G53Sw. My model is Asus G53Sw-SZ230. So I have no bluetooth module or hybrid HDD. So my question is what's the best bluetooth module or Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module to buy on eBay?

 

Intel 6230 seems to be the most popular card. Wireless-n Bluetooth combo card. I got it on amazon for $25. Been a good card for me and seems most are buying that card as a replacement over the Atheros card.

 

People have reported problems with that card due to both functionalities being integrated. Check the networking sections if you want to see some examples of problems encountered. If you need bluetooth absolutely, either that or a dongle would do though, just be aware of the potential for issues with the 6230.

 

Noted! What about bluray drive? I want to pimp my G53Sw

 

Any news about a bios release for the G53SW?(newer than 203)

 

Look up on Amazon. There are some decent ones, I ended up pulling my blue-ray drive from my msi that wasn't a gaming rig. And just doing a swap. It's a TSSTcorp model and has been running great. So just about anything you find on Amazon will probably be just as good if not better. Search for "Blue-ray slim drive" and that should help. Then read reviews and go from there.

 

Thanks I hope I will get that stuff in Europe

 

Make sure you check shipping and all that or, Amazon may have a European version of their site, like tigerdirect has a canadian version. (I think it's Tigerdirect.) Which would be best. Good luck in your search.

 

My girlfriend and I each purchased an ASUS G53SW-XN1 laptop, and I'm thinking about upgrading the RAM. I understand that the laptop has 4 slots, two of which are currently being used (slot #1 has a 4GB stick, and slot #2 has a 2GB stick).

If I take out both the sticks in my laptop, can I throw them both into my girlfriend's laptop, which should give it 12GB of RAM? If so, I'll probably purchase 2 8GB RAM sticks or 4 4GB RAM sticks for my own laptop. Just to be certain, I can only buy RAM sticks that are PC3-10700 (667 MHz), right? I haven't bought RAM for laptops in nearly half a decade and do not want to purchase the wrong ones.

Can someone verify that this will work? Thanks!

 

Your idea should work, provided that Asus or Newegg didn't decide to go the route of 3x 2GB. I got mine from Microcenter, and that's how it was set up. From what others are saying, yours is probably the way you already stated as probably right in which case, yes the idea will work. As for speed, the i7 supports Memory Types DDR3-1066/1333 ( Intel® Core? i7-2630QM Processor (6M Cache, 2.00 GHz)) so either/or, or a mix, but with mixes it'll go the slowest of the 2. Hope that helps.

 

I used Speccy - a system information tool from Speccy.com - to find out that my laptop has two of the four slots used, and that one has a 4GB stick of RAM and the other a 2GB stick. I'll run the program on my girlfriend's laptop, just to be safe. Thanks for the word of advice.

For the RAM, do I have to worry about the number of pins? Thanks.

 

Nice to see, yeah I was about to suggest speccy, it's a nice program. I used it to discover my ram setup.


Anyhow, you shouldn't have to worry about pins, I think there is only one pinset for what we have, honestly if there is another, I hadn't heard of it. I just made sure it was the right speed when I ordered mine and didn't even pay attention to the pin count. I may have gotten lucky, but honestly to my knowledge I don't know of any other pin counts. If I'm wrong though someone please correct me. As i'd rather be corrected and learn than steer someone the wrong way and find out i was wrong the hard way at someone else's expense or even my own.

 

Thanks again for the help; I've given you reputation points.

 

Thanks, glad to help, wish I could help out more often, but between classes and such, can't help everyone. Maybe someday I will be able to.

 

Stop going to class then . All DDR3 SODIMMs (DDR3 laptop RAM) have the same pin layout.

@Mastavic: You want to make certain you have RAM running at the same frequency and with the same latencies too. For example, the RAM in my laptop is DDR3 1333MHz 9-9-9-24, if i wanted to add more RAM, i'd get some with 1333MHz and 9-9-9-24 latencies. The brand doesn't matter so get whichever one is cheaper. I replace two 2GB SODIMMS with kingston 4GB ones, for a total of 12GB, and they have been working flawlessly aside from the fact that i still run out of memory sometimes.

 

Mastavic, the XN1 only comes in the 4GB X 2GB configuration. It uses Hynix 10600 ram. You should note that the 4GB stick in slot 0 is under a metal plate that is directly under the keyboard, you have to remove the lid before you can remove the upper housing from the base of the laptop which the metal plate is part of. But installing it in your GF's laptop is easy as you just have to take your 4GB stick and put it in Slot 2 and then put the two 2GB sticks in slot 1 and 3. Those three slots are accessible after removing the keyboard and the bottom panel.

As far as using the RAM in another Asus model or in this case the same model, I gave my ram to a friend of mine that had a Asus G73JH from Best Buy which had a 2GBX3 configuration and it worked in his laptop.

Even though the RAM that came with the laptop was 10600, you can actually put 10666 like I did. It bumped the Windows Experience Index up by a whole 0.1, so not exactly worth it if you don't want to dismantle the entire laptop to get at that last chip.

 

Hi all!
I've now read 154 pages of this thread, and now I feel like I know some of you personally. After about 50 pages I pulled the trigger on a 'black friday' deal from MemoryExpress (in Canada) - grabbed a G53sw-xa1 (500g/8g/dvdr) for $899. It arrived today, along with a 120m ocz vertex3 SSD which I plan to install soon.
I'm very pleased to be able to report that my machine appears flawless so far (an hour or so of checking)
))

I'd like to thank all of you for your input, and as time permits I'll add my impressions and experiences to this thread.
Can anyone recommend a handy suite of test utilities so I can give the machine a good workout tomorrow? (before I open it up to install the ssd)

I don't plan to do any gaming on this machine... Last time I had time for gaming was when WOW and Diablo1 were new products, before that I spent a few hours on DOOM (1) ... going back further there was Ultima7, police quest, and the like. (yep, I'm ancient )


Anyway, I needed a QUIET workstation for developing crossplatform c++ graphics apps, and Gseries fit my budget nicely. I've been buying ASUS nearly exclusively for the last 20 years or so, and they've been very reliable. So I have high hopes for getting a couple solid years out of this one!

I'm going to dual boot this machine as a hackintosh... All indications are that G53 makes a fine 'mac'!!

 

Just sent my Asus G53SW-XN1 to get repaired here in Poland where I am currently studying. Hopefully they do a good job! I cannot wait to get it back and play some Skyrim (my comp crashed 2 days before the release of that epic game!). Following along this line, how does Skyrim fare on the G53? I am sure many of you guys have played the game quite a bit! Well, thats all really, nothing interesting other than I hope my computer gets back to me soon with everything running smoothly!

 

Skyrim does a test on the gpu for best results and defaulted on "high" everything and at 1080. Looks awesome! I didn't bother trying any higher settings as I was awed by the current settings. Plays great and looks great on default settings.

 

Danggg! I'm super excited, I am really glad I chose this laptop, this model came out almost a year ago (not 100% sure) and it still runs most everything on High settings at 1080p. Cannot wait for it to get back to me! Batman, Deus Ex, Skyrim HERE I COME!!!

 

Thanks for the information; I've given you reputation points.

Out of curiosity, what do you do that uses up 12GB of RAM?

 

So far, so good - COOL AND QUIET. After one day, machine has surprised me with its comfortable keyboard and trackpad. I dislike trackpads generally, but this one is the most comfortable i have ever encountered. My wireless trackball will soon be migrating to it, though... as i'm typing this (on our tiny compaq netbook) I'm doing a clean windows install onto the OCZ vertex 3 (87%...)

bit of a PITA opening the machine up, but popped the SSD in - sadly NO SECOND DRIVE FRAME PROVIDED - ( its mounted with some paper now)... biggest difficulty was plugging the keyboard ribbon cable back in!

As advised, I removed and set aside the original 500G Seagate momentus, plugged the SSD into port 0 ( where the original drive came out of) plugged in my FAT32-formatted flash drive with windows7 image expanded, booted into BIOS, checked that AHCI was on ( it was already) and set the boot mode to UEFI... then booted from the EFI flash option in the last page of the BIOS.

BTW, the SSD drive was detected perfectly, right off the bat.

** interruption - FIVE MINUTES IN and I am already being prompted for the Windows key!!

Note To Self: write down the windows key before starting ( have to look under the machine now....)

I guess I could have skipped that, but hanging the edge of the machine over the desk allowed me to read it. The machine is not assembled yet ( all screws are out still) i just have everything loosely in place since i'll be putting the original HD back in AFTER the windows install ( as recommended....)

** WINDOWS DESKTOP IS HERE... total time about ten minutes!

Time to install the ASUS drivers...

One thing I noticed yesterday is how COOL the machine ran. Running stress tests to "max CPU" ( 100% all 4 cores for ten minutes) couldn't push core temps past 80. And the fan wasn't particularly LOUD then either. I only noticed it barely at 60, then at 70 it kicked up a notch...

 

I'm sad to report my poor G53SW-XN1 has fallen to the bad hall sensor/magnet combo of Asus' design. Since I bought mine as a open box and Newegg doesn't guarantee the warranty being honored, I decided to take the matters to my own hands. The way I look at it is, I bought mine for less than $600 bucks and I could always sell it on eBay if I utterly fail, that and I'm pretty sure I voided the warranty when I totally dismantled the laptop to remove the original RAM in the computer(damn slot0 being under a metal plate).

Since I wanted to keep the functionality of the touchpad I ended up cutting the hall sensor and removing the magnet from the lid. From what I can tell, the magnet seems to have magnetized the metal plate that the hall sensor rests on. So when I first removed the magnet, it didn't fix the problem. After some more testing with plugging and unplugging the touchpad ribbon, I decided to just cut the hall sensor out as it's embedded into the ribbon cable and not on a circuit board. Once the hall sensor was removed, no more problem.

I don't necessarily recommend doing something this extreme as you can always call upon the warranty if your computer is still within it, but for those that live in other countries or just doesn't want to deal with Asus warranty support, you might want to remove your magnet before it magnetizes the metal plate like mind did. Not to mention, the magnet rests right above where the hard drive for SATA0 is. Magnet and mechnical hard drives is never a good idea, and as much as I love to believe that small piece of foil they put in between will protect it, I rather just not have a magnet there.

I know the hall sensor controls the function to turn off the screen when the lid is closed or for the advanced lid options in Windows for sleep and hibernate, but to be honest, I never used those functions myself personally and I like that the ASUS logo stays lit when the lid is closed when its on so that it lets me know I left it on. If the LCD was a regular back lit screen, I might have more reservations on doing this as well, but since it's LED, meh.

 

argh.... 1st GLITCH: everything happy after ASUS drivers install - except the sound card is disabled ( one of two identical entries in the device manager had a problem) various attempts to uninstall, update, delete (etc) have been fruitless.

So, everything is working great now (original HD removed, Win7 clean installed on SSD) - EXCEPT no sound... Anyone have any hints?

argh (2)

decided to forge ahead and sort the sound driver problem later.

installed the 2nd hard drive ( original 500G) in bay 1

set all the boots in the BIOS correctly (so I thought) to boot from SSD.

instead, machine insists on booting from old drive - and BADLY (says it needs repair, etc)

new 'windows boot manager' appears in the BIOS

tried disabling the 500G drive completely, now the windows booting FAILS foro the SSD. Also my FLASH drive has mysteriously become un-bootable ( the one i installed Win7 to the SSD from just yesterday)

Booted from DVD, and deleted all partitions on BOTH drives. Asked windows nicely to please install to the SSD.

VERY SLOW... hung at 0% expanding files for about ten minutes! (this took about 2 minutes total when i did it yesterday from Flash) - but I got past that scary part, and hung in there patiently.

RIGHT NOW it's "preparing Windows for first use". So I guess I am back at square One for my clean install....

(more later)

 

Hmm, strange. Make certain that your SSD is in the drive bay where your HDD originally was. For the sound issue, i'd try to get the latest drivers directly from Realtek.

 

Yep, SSD is sitting in bay "0" ( where the 500G was ) - and now 500G is living in the bay "1" ( which was empty). I had to remove the drive frame from the drive (4 screws) and flip it around...

Anyway, this time around i started with the latest Intel AHCI driver, installed it first as its much ahead of the one on the ASUS Driver CD. I also checked the OCZ firmware, its the latest revision. last time around i got WEI 7.9 for the drive... will soon see if it stays the same with the 'latest' clean install.

At this moment I'm installing network, wireless drivers from the ASUS CD. As soon as the machine is on Internet I'm going to download the VGA drivers ( newer) and also sound drivers (still not sure what i should be doing with those!) Sound worked "out of the box" when i first got the machine ( before installing the SSD...)

 

Well, major disappointment.. it seems that UEFI simply "kills" the audio driver, not just on this machine, but on others as well ( did some digging on google - example).

All else installs and plays nicely, got both drives in the machine, and WEI index still the same under UEFI. I didn't bother formatting the 500G drive, since I'm gonna have to WIPE AND REINSTALL WIN7 on the SSD ( converting back to standard "MBR" BIOS will apparently render it unbootable).

SO a whole day lost - but now i understand why these machines ship with UEFI DISABLED BY DEFAULT

 

Well, thats confirmed - DISABLE UEFI in the BIOS, and then re-install Windows7, and the sound card starts working again. Right from the first boot, with the native Windows driver - it chimes right in. Works fine upgraded to the latest realtek drivers as well.

I conclude that UEFI is (currently) a SOUND CARD KILLER. ( at least til somebody makes a new driver fix for it)

 

Weird, I saw your post and turned on UEFI on mine to try it out, my sound card works fine after the feature is enabled.

Quick question, did you install the two Asus programs that control the function buttons on the keyboard and toggle button on the upper left? The function keys for enabling and disabling sound requires a program, just like the on and off buttons for the back lit keyboard. Unlike other laptops I've owned, those keys are not hardware based.

 

I would like to note, when you have 2 or more hard drives in a computer, windows sometimes likes to create the little 100MB partition on another hard drive and when you pull either drive out it'll fail boot. (The main os one is obvious.) But it's the "empty" drive that can mess things up. It's done that to me multiple times. The most recent time being the last time I re-installed windows. Keep this in mind. I usually try to have only one hard drive (Main OS drive) hooked up when installing windows. Then I will hook any others up. Had no problems when I do it that way. Just something to keep in mind.

 

yes, all the stock key-control programs were installed.

Just enabling UEFI in BIOS (after the OS install as a normal MBR) doesn't apparently affect much. But having it on when you install windows creates a different kind of (non-MBR) boot disk - and it seems this has a profound effect on something in the sound driver. Literally, it disables it in Windows7, even the default Microsoft driver becomes non-functional - speculation is its not hooking to the BIOS properly in this mode... does seem like it could be related to the function key hardware, but the problem simply doesnt happen on a fresh "non-UEFI" win install (even before any ASUS drivers are installed, the sound card is enabled and working when windows is installed with the machine in plain old BIOS mode)

 

Yes, its new to me (with the except of Win7 via 'boot camp' on a mac, I havent installed an new MS OS in about 3 years) - but I've finally learned that the hidden 100M "system" partition contains the "windows boot loader", and that won't play nice. (I was able to install nicely after wiping all partitions on the old drive)

 

update: three days of heavy use later, and Machine still runs smokin' fast. Perfect performance from the OCZ Vertex3, windows still gives highest possible disk score (7.9)

so far, so good

 

Just got news that my Asus g53sw is coming back to me from the Service Center here in Poland. It was lightning fast, I sent it on Tuesday Nov 29th, and UPS tracking says it should be at my doorstep tomorrow! Talked to the tech, he said the graphics card was replaced. Going to run some tests on it tomorrow, but cannot "game" on it until Dec 22nd, after my Step 1 exam

Anyways, have no computer nerd friends here so I share on this forum

Thanks for listening,

Bert

 

Yay! Hope everything really works out for you.