Asus G55VW - user review and owners lounge

I will keep the same layout as I did with http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-inspiron-dell-studio/675037-dell-17r-n7720-se-user-review.html and maybe compare them a little.

First is first, this unit seems to have a defective something. I hear strange noise coming from upper right side. It feels like in Transformers.

Case

Looks like a very well build case. Lid and palmrest are covered with some sort of rubber, very pleasant to touch and anti fingerprints. Bottom is hard plastic. Hinges feel very solid.

It is a heavy laptop, topping around 4.6 kg in total (laptop itself has 3.8 kg). It is heavier than the 17" Dell and I can really feel that extra weight even if it's not that much over.


Keyboard

Well built full backlit keyboard, very precise and well placed. A little better than Dell's.

Touchpad

Very good and buttons are one class above those in Dell.

Speakers

Terrible. Just terrible and not even compared to those Skullcandy Dell's has. Sound has no precision, no volume, it's messy. At this price level it should have amazing speakers.
The control of the subwoofer from Windows was fixed, but there still is one little issue. With headphones plugged in, the subwoofer starts for no reason. Only the subwoofer. To turn it off you need to re-plug the headphones. A solution for this might be turning the system from 2.1 to 2.0 when headphones are used. Did not tested that much.

There is no profile for headphones. Someone at Asus should ask for something like this. Sound quality on Dell is miles away.

Display

I find FHD resolution a bit too much on a 15" but I keep telling myself it is more like a 16" Still, I might use my glasses on this.

Image quality is good (the panel in Dell is better). It uses this:



It's an almost sRGB panel, it could have been better. For photo editing comes a bit short for working in good conditions.

Processor

G55 packs some serious power.

3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3610QM processor (6M Cache, up to 3.30 GHz)

Turbo frequency:

3300 MHz (1 core)
3200 MHz (2 cores)
3100 MHz (3 or 4 cores)

Memory

It has 2 x 4 Gb Hynix modules, 1600Mhz.

Let's see some numbers:



To compare use AIDA64 2.50.2000



























PCMark Vantage NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3610QM Processor,ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. G55VW score: 11495 PCMarks



Graphics

Nvidia GTX 660M:



Cinebench 11.5



3DMark Vantage NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3610QM Processor,ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. G55VW score: P11418 3DMarks



3DMark 11 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3610QM Processor,ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. G55VW score: P2545 3DMarks



Battlefield 3™ on Ultra. Don't ask about frames, it's smooth for playing. Absolutely no hangs.



Drives

Seagate 750 Gb SSH drive. It's useless to compare this to a SSD. I will give you some numbers, but they mean nothing really, everything works fast enough.







In Windows, it's normal to have a low score due to the hard drive.


ODD is an LG HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GT51N, decent unit.

Card Reader SD/MS/MMC.

Conectivity

- Atheros AR8151 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (NDIS 6.20) - I'm not sure how good it is, I can't test Gigabit.

- Atheros AR9485WB-EG Wireless Network Adapter - I can't test it, I have no wireless at home. It should be a normal single-band 802.11 b/g/n.

- 4 USB 3.0, one with a form of PowerShare.

- 1 VGA, 1 HDMI, 1 DisplayPort that some say it's Thunderbolt. Since I can not check this myself, I'll say it's a DisplayPort.

Noise

I have to really make this laptop work in order to hear the fans. To hear them at full speed it's almost impossible.

Temperature

Room temp was 32°C.

Let's see some Prime95 numbers with some Furmark sessions during the 1 hour run. For me it looks very well. Laptop never gets hot. Palmrest is always cold.



Normal temps are MIN. The SSH never gets hot, a top 44°C is very good.

The most important thing is that this laptop does not throttle at all under heavy load. I can do a 1080p high quality video encoding and still play BF3, while listening to some music.
With the test above, Dell would downclock CPU to 1.2 Ghz and GPU to 745 Mhz.

I found the G75 not to be much different, I'm afraid, but I also know there is a big quality spread, some might work just fine.

Battery life

Without wireless, screen brightness to minimum and doing some light stuff, the battery will last for about 4 hours.

A more normal working scenario means about 3 hours. That is not very bad for a non-Optimus system. N7720 is not that far away with HD4000+GT650M on a 6 cell battery. Asus has a 8 cell 72800mWh.

Software problems

No OS. I have done a clean install, so I have no idea how severe the bloatware is. I always do this.

There seems to be a bug after playing BF3, the screen brightness will not return to the value it had before starting the game. Then again, maybe it's not normal to go to max when I start the game in the first place. It's something rather unimportant anyway.

That's about it.

Now, I love the screen and the sound of Dell with the pad and cooling system of Asus.

PS. There are some options for OC in BIOS for CPU and RAM, but I have not tested them. All works well as it is now.
Since temps on GPU are rather low, some OC might be possible. I did not tested this either, since the game worked well under stock and I don't care about big numbers in benchmarks.

 

Nice write up!

Can you expand on the CPU/RAM OC options in BIOS?

 

Thank you!

I already had those for today

BIOS options are:

CPU



RAM



I can say much more since I have not tested them. I wonder in case something goes wrong, how do you reset a BIOS on a laptop?

 

OK, just for testing.



Compare result with first post.



I think this is as low as I will go. System stable 100%.

Original 11-11-11-28 » Memory latency 49,7ns.

Performance 9-9-9-26 » Memory latency 46ns.

These are just for show, it really does not matter that much in real life use.

 

Did you figure out what to do to reset the BIOS in-case the OC goes bad?

 

It must have a failsafe trigger of it's own. I have seen something after the BIOS update, it does not let you modify anything until you do a second restart for the system to see that everything works well. This means the BIOS itself should be available in worse case scenarios so you can do F2 (access) - F7 (restore defaults) - F10 (save and exit).

It's strange there is no info on this in User manual. But then again, the user manual is very poor, no good info in it at all.

I want to say something about battery life. If I do some browsing for example, I get a good 4 hours out of it (no WI-FI, LAN active, screen brightness to minimum, no backlight keyboard). Not bad at all for a non-Optimus machine.

BUT, as always, I was looking at the usage of GPU. Every time I move around the working area and access random stuff, there is a spike of power. That spike eats battery for no real reason. And the more I "move" the more spikes I see, the faster battery drops. I wonder, since the card can run at very low clocks, why isn't there a mode for very low performance and maximum battery power. I do not want Performance on demand. And this would make stuff like Optimus quite useless as well.

 

What about using a low power setting via windows for the CPU and MSI Afterburner for the video card. You should be able to clock it extremely low and it should stay there. Not sure if there is voltage adjustment for the 660 but if there is it would be even better.

 

Wow, how come you have so many options in your BIOS? My G55VW doesn't have all those setting and it says "Asus setup utility" instead of "Aptio setup utility". Did you upgrade the BIOS by any chance?

 

@ c man

Where did you buy your G55VW?

Is this the ES71 or RS71 or DS71 or what?

 

Should be the RS71...

ES71 - 500GB HDD 8GB RAM
RS71 - 750GB HDD 8GB RAM
DS71 - 750GB HDD 12GB RAM

Looking at his screens above I see a 750GB HDD and 8GB of RAM

 

I had no idea there are completely different versions of BIOS on the market.

I had a 06 version on it that had the same options and now I have the latest from Asus.

Both had these options, it's original BIOS.

The laptop itself is eastern Europe spec (???), but I don't think they really make them that different though.

Are you guys sure you are in the Performance part of the BIOS? I can't believe some allow OC and some don't.

 

I see on the ASUS site they have drivers for both Atheros and Intel drivers for Wifi/BT. Which card does the DS71 come with? Is it the Atheros like yours?

 

Most Asus default laptops comes with atheros wifi cards and yours is probably a Atheros AR9285

 

You should check before buying since it's hard to change. In the near future I'll hope to be able to test the WI-FI. LAN works very well.

So far my only real problem is that sound coming most likely from something loose near the heatsink. But due to warranty and return policy, I can't open it to fix this so I'll have to return it.

 

So why the Intel drivers on the site? Is it an option from ASUS but just one that retailers don't go for?

 

I guess so. Most go with stock config. It can be replaced, but it's no easy task. The way G55 is built is just crazy. You have to take apart a lot of stuff.

If you buy from a company that does custom builds of G55, you can order other card.

 

Just got my DS71 and to my shock it came with a Backpack and a Mouse....not bad for under $1350 shipped....GO B&H! haha

 

Well, I gave this computer a quick run and so far I'm in love

The 660M isn't breaking a sweat, staying under 70-75*C while gaming and the CPU stays around the 70*C mark as well. The laptop is silent which is awesome. I slapped the SSD in and it's getting 500MB/s write and 525MB/s read. My current boot time is sub 12 seconds on cold boot without fast boot enabled (and the DVD drive is still set to primary, I'll have to fix it).

I checked BIOS and I have the same screens as c man, so I can do slight tweaking to the OC/RAM stuff as well. Current BIOS is 206 but I'm not seeing any issues so no need to update.

 

How's the wireless performance? I've read a couple of posts that mention the stock wireless card has trouble getting a strong signal from a moderate distance. Do you mind testing that out for me?

Thanks.

 

As of right now it's performing better than my ASUS Netbook (1015) and my wifes MacBook Pro.

 

Just ran a 15 min Furmark bench. 1100 points and a max GPU temp of only 73*C in an 80*F room...WOOT! Got a good one

 

Is this the stock atheros card? Are the wireless signal excellent and consistent for hours?

 

Yes it is the stock Atheros card, I haven't had any issues with signal dropping after any extended use.

 

I forgot to write about Wi-Fi. It's well constant in time, but signal is under my other Dell XPS (I can't remember what's in that one right now).

 

B&H just put these on a small sale. Now $1330 shipped for the 12GB model with the backpack/mouse combo...really hard to beat.

 

I saw this as well, Asus has a batch on sale. It's about 1-200$ less in some parts of Europe. This could be due to Thunderbolt release that might make old stock obsolete, so they need to sell them now. Or a new model, but it's very unlikely since it's too soon. Maybe next year. Nvidia has no new cards that I know as a replacement for 670M. There are still new laptops with 670/675 on board.

I don't care about Thunderbolt, I don't even have a USB 3 external HDD. All my USB 2 are still working and I'm not going to replace stuff that is not broken just to have the latest tech. Any G55/G75 with 660/670 should be good for the next two years. After that they will be so cheap that an upgrade is pointless and new hardware will have better performance for the same price or less.

 

I agree, now is a very good time to buy. The one positive for Thunderbolt is the ability to add an external video card for more grunt, but if you look at my sig I have desktops for that lol. For being on the go this G55 is perfect.

 

Wow, that's a good deal. Now I can't decide whether to buy this model from B&H or go with the G55-RS71 model from xoticpc.
If I buy from B&H, $1330 gets me 12GB, Backpack, Mouse and 2-year warranty.
If I buy the RS71 from xoticpc, $1344 gets me 12GB as well (summer sale), CPU+GPU thermal repaste, no backpack, no mouse and 1-year warranty.
From all the forum posts I've read the past couple of months, it seems as if buying from a retailer like amazon, newegg, b&h, etc is hit or miss. You can end up with a perfect laptop or a dud.
But buying from a reseller like xotic or gentech can give you more piece of mind. Any problems the laptop may have will be handled by them and I wouldn't have to go through the hassle (if any) of dealing with Asus.

 

True, but if you get a good one like me you're covered for 2 years. If you get a bad one, it's a hassle that you have to return it but you can try again. Or you can get it right on the first shot and just run with a 1 year. Not sure what the mouse is worth on ebay if you don't need it. I sold the backpack to a co-worker for a couple bucks and actually needed second gaming mouse so I kept this one because it's actually pretty nice, DPI changing on the fly and it's pretty comfy. I still prefer my G9x but it's a solid mouse for sure.

 

Problem 1. The subwoofer is not linked to mute when headphones are plugged in. This includes both normal heaphones and iPhone headphones with mic. I can produce it over and over on queue and is NOT intermittent like people say it is on the forums. They are just not reproducing the same situation. "At least this is my experience." ( From a technical aspect I can reproduce it enough to call it not intermittent). All new (headphones already plugged in) webpages and programs that produce audio will initially still allow sound to come from the software unless you mute or alter the volume by 1 level up or down. (Drive problem? Defiantly yes!) Since it does not matter what software you use.

Problem 2. Intermittent keyboard lights they will not turn back on and the fn + up or down will not work for them to get them back. I know how to reproduce it but it does not always respond but it does happen enough that it is very aggravating. Anytime a screen or battery saving function initializes the keyboard lights have a chance of going out. This happens even when you switch uses modes with the on the fly performance button next to power and it also happens when the screen is closed and reopened, when you sleep or hibernate the computer and when you screen saver initializes and wakes back up. I have reproduced ever one of these situations and it is intermittent. (Driver problem? Defiantly yes!) Since it does not matter if you reinstall drivers or what you change in windows. You can still reproduce it.


Is this a problem on the G75 only or both G55 and G75?

Do you have this subwoofer problem not shutting off when headphones are inserted on your g55 c_man? Do you also have the keyboard light not turning back on problem?

This question is also for you almost Tactful.

 

I have had the audio issue but only if I plug in headphones and then boot my machine. I haven't had audio issues if the machine is running and then I plug in headphones.

I haven't had any issues at all with the keyboard or the rest of the computer, it's been a spot on beast and has been running flawlessly *knocks on wood*

 

Audio on both. Keyboard only on G55, you know the scenario.

 

New Proud owner of G55VW here.

Contrast ratio and black lvls are pretty good. There are 10 lvls of brightness with the FN+ key and even at the lowest brightness level, this thing is bright at 10% and that 10% is brighter than previous laptops i had.

Max temps using furmark 1920x1080 burn in benchmark between 72c-75c so i know i got a good cooling compared to few others that reported g55 hitting late 80s or 90ish centigrade. One thing I hate about gaming laptops or any common laptops in general is loud fans paired with an annoying jet engine or hair dryer tone to it. This one at max load with furmark and prime95 running or when i tried gaming with it for 2 hours, the right fan doesn't have that annoying jet engine sound and you can barely hear it. It's like a subtle kool breeze whooshing sound lol.

No issue on the via subwoofer thing, only sometimes when you plug in the headphones, there is still some sound comin out and i think it is coming from the sub but i solve that problem by turning its lvl via VIA HD Deck to 0 and that fixes the problem. I don't have the keyboard backlit issue not turning on problem after resuming from sleep or restart so that's probably a hardware issue on some g55 users.

The only negative thing I can say about this laptop is the touchpad to move the cursor or arrow on the screen. Don't get me wrong the touchpad left/right buttons are perfect and they are easy to press and are separated. My main issue is the tracking on the touchpad, sometimes it skips and sometimes it dances around and this might have somethin to do with the ELAN drivers but since I use a mouse i don't really mind it that much.

Battery life at 30-40% brightness (40% brightness on this baby is even brighter than 80%-100% on other laptops i own in the past) using balanced mode can get me around 2h 30 min with wifi turned on while continously web surfing and playing occasional mp3s and videos. You could probably squeeze in 3 hours doing ms word no doubt.


Again this laptop has an amazing stock matte screen compared to matte screens i had in the past like thinkpad x120e/T420 and the recent Sony Vaio SVS13A Premium. I have the LG Philips LP156WF1 screen and I believe the reviewed contrast ratio is 792:1 which is pretty great and has great vivid colors and real deep blacks.

Overall pretty happy and impressed with the laptop, screen is great, keyboard is perfect with every keystroke being smooth, no flex, silent with adequate spacing and the rubberized finish on the palm rest makes it very comfortable. This is a great laptop even for non gamers that just want a solid semi portable desktop replacement computer that has enough cpu power and the ability to game if one desires.

 

Just got my new G55VW ( after I sent my G51JX to the lab... and they offered me completely free, new G55VW .... )

I knew from my time with G51JX that there's an mod for the keyboard that you can add and edit "FN+somekey" to run some commands/application as you wish.
It is called AsusNbKeys...
short story, I got it working on our G55VW ( on Win7 x64 of course... )
Look at my post about HOW TO INSTALL IT, HERE

 

Is the old power pin issue (for G53,73 series) now fixed on G55 models? Has Asus learnt the lesson?

 

Hi Almost Tactful,
i have same configuration of G55vw with yours,
i want to ask you,how about your Mushkin 120GB SSD, can you used it by full speed,i means Read/Write speed up to 530MB/520MB
My can not, I only can used it got to 430MB/167MB

Do you know why ?

 

Few questions if someone could answer them please.

Is the GPU exchangeable on the G55?
How easy is it to take out the ODD to put a hdd caddy?
Does it have an msata slot?

 

hmm i saw the G46vw just hit the shelf, any reviews on it yet? Isit more recommended for me to get the G55 or G46? Thanks!

 

So I've had a G53Jw since December 2010, and in those two years the AC pin has snapped off four times, so the wonderful, wonderful people at Asus Australia are offering me a G55VW to replace it.

I just wanted to check before I sign anything whether the G55VW has any known issues. This thread seems blissfully free of any reports of broken power pins (whereas the G53Jw thread had multiple reports in the first few months) so I'm taking that as a good sign!

 

Proud owner of a new Asus G55VW, i7 3610M, 16GB ram, 750GB hd GTX 660M. I've had a G60JX and a G51VX so I'm familiar with ASUS laptops so thats why I choose this instead of a Sager. I got the backpack and mouse too, I'm very happy with it so far. I love the 1920x1080 screen on a 15" screen, it looks great, and the cooling is monumentally better then the G60 and G50 series with just one fan. I'd love to pop it open and re-paste and put in a mSATA but I don't want to loose my warranty.

 

What are your temperatures like out of the box? There's not much point in doing that these days if they are good and you are not pushing the machine with overclocking, most higher end companies use paste that wont age too quickly.

 

While running Prime95 and Furmark the temps after 10 minutes the CPU is maxing at 80c and the CPU is hitting 71c.

I love this laptop, an SSD sure woke it up too.

 

I have one question about warranty. Does Asus allow users without voiding warranty to replace hdd and optical drive? I couldnt find warranty terms on asus webpage.

 

The hard drive is user servicable and the Optical drive would be considered user servicable. If you're worried about it just keep the old parts and put them in if you ever need warranty service.

 

Yep i know about that. But this is Croatia, and if i dont have it in writing or i'm pretty much screwed. When i did that on my HP i had brutal drama to force retailer to keep my warranty. He said "screwes are damaged, your warranty is void", altho service manual said what you are saying now. I couldn't pick up my notebook without paying untill i got a mail from hp europe customer support where they actually threatened that retailer with revoking his licence. Gonna look at asus global site for a bit longer if there are Global warranty terms or something.

Problem is i didnt get any service manuals and no warranty terms without my g55vw and since Croatia is burocratic hell-hole i'm just gonna leave my ssd and caddy sit on a desk for a while.

 

Well then, yeah, I'd send a message to their support or give them a call and see what the international support is.

 

So I'm really eager in purchasing one of these models as I absolutely adore them. One thing that bugs me is the graphics card. Is there any possible way of taking out the GTX660M and putting in something more powerful? Like a 670M/770M etc.

 

No it is not possible, if you look up a picture of the G55VW motherboard you will see that the CPU is socketed so it can be replaced but the graphics card is actually non replacable and actually soldered dicrectly to the board itself.

 

Yes no way of changing it, most asus machines can't even if it's card either.