Asus G72GX RBBX05 Laptop (Best Buy model)

Wow...

Just today they put it up for sale at $1099!

 

hi guys, can anybody send a link to any UK shop where to get it?(ASUS G)

 

I can't figure out what the two top buttons do , the one with a circle whit a lightning symbol on it and the one left of it. Can someone tell me what they do please, I pressed them but nothing happened.

And who here got a warranty with bestbuy? or did yall just stay with the standard warranty that comes with it?

 

lightning symbol or running man symbol? lol. it looks kinda like lightning oO it changes Power4Gear plans if the ATK drivers are all installed properly. the one to the left changes the SPlendid utility settings

 

No not that one, the one to the left of it. The circle with a lightning symbol in it

 

mind taking a pic of it? lol.

 

Sweet laptop, after a lot of searching I decided to buy this same laptop from BB. I cant wait for it

 

I can't the picture is just a blue blur, but the other button I am talking about is the asus gamer logo.

 

the asus gaming logo changes the Splendid utility settings. the button next to it SHOULD change power4gear settings I believe (does on every other g series)

 

When I press it nothing happens though, Like when I press the other buttons something pops up but not with the other two. Oh and to those that have the G72GX what cooler did you buy? I'm looking to buy one and just wanted to know which one yall bought.

 

do you have the splendid utility installed?

 

This is my first laptop so I have no idea.

 

Thanks for the review!
I have added it to the Info Booth and to the Reviews and Owners' Lounges Index.

E.B.E.

 

Does the G72GX come with a product key for Microsoft Office?

 

Price drop: this model is $999.99 now

 

Doh! Dang it, I'd jump on that if they sold spare AC adapters for it

Otherwise seems to be the same hardware as the 16" version, but $140 less!

 

The price drop to $999 sounds good. I am thinking seriously about buying one. Did they ever resolve the video card downclocking problem?

 

Can you eventually upgrade the CPU to a Quad? Anyone know?

 

Is there a way to tell which screen you have, AU, Samsung, etc. by looking in the device manager
or system info on the display model in the store. I don't think you would let me install Everest on
the display model. Which screen is the best?
Can a second hard drive be installed and if so, can I set up a Raid 0?
How annoying is the mirror finish on the screen if used in a lighted room? In the store the mirror
finish reflected everything, I could almost use to shave.

 

As far as the screen, I believe in Device Manager, under Monitors, and finally under the Details tab it will display LGXXXX or AOXXXX depending on if you have the LG or AO panel.

I bought a G72GX yesterday with the LG screen and it looks pretty good, a little too bright, but manageable. It looks better than the P-7905U I had. DX10 runs much better on the GTX-260M versus the Gateway's 9800M-GTS. DX9 is about the same. I ran Far Cry 2 Benchmarks and running DX10 at Ultra High, averaged about 32fps with minimum framerate at 24fps and maximum at 51fps. Not bad at all.

I don't think there is an option for Raid configurations in the BIOS, I didn't see it. Yes, the 5400rpm hdd is the weak link on the G72GX Best Buy model.

In the Windows Performance Accessment (WEI) I get a 5.5 for my hdd, a Seagate 500gb 5400rpm disk. It seems everyone else is scoring higher, any ides why? I don't see an option in the BIOS to disable hdd quiet mode and I have write-cache turned on (checked) in Device Manager and buffer flushing turned on (unchecked).
Any ideas why the rating is so low?

 

Does anyone know where to buy spare AC adapters (power supplies) for these G72 models? Newegg only has a 90 or 120 watt PSU, which I guess isn't big enough.

 

To answer my own question about the low hdd performance: I had the buffer flushing enabled when it should have been off. For optimum disk performance you want write-caching enabled and buffer flushing disabled. Basically both boxes checked in Device Manager under Disk Drives. It gets a 5.8 now in WEI for hdd performance.

FWIW: 3DMark06 score with cpu oc'd to 2.889ghz and gpu at stock nVidia clocks (550/950/1375) is 11587. My Gateway P-7805U got 9350 and my Asus G50VT-X1 got 9116. Again, DX10 gaming is a marked improvement over the laptops with the 9800 cards, but DX9 gaming is only slightly better, probably taking into account the higher resolution LCD panel on the G72GX.

 

I am considering jumping ship from the G73JH-A1 train and getting on board over here considering this computer is much cheaper....I could get a netbook also, and still be under that price.

Current owners, would you have bought your machine considering what you know now?

 

I have a question, do you suggest buying a SSD or just buy another 500GB HDD?

Also, if I buy a normal HDD, does it has to be 5.4K RPMs HDD or can it be a 7.2K RPMs HDD?

And last question, do they give you a copy of windows just in case something happens? Thanks in advance.

 

Priced went down again, Now its $1000 so If you bought it within a month you should go compare prices and get some cash back.

 

SSD is much faster. 5.4K and 7.2K is pretty near, but 7.2k gives alot more heat than 5.4K. You wount see difference in gaming apps between 5.4k and 7.2k.
The factory image of Windows 7 located at hidden partition of your laptop. And there is recovery DVD with it.

 

If you not planning to connect your laptop to HD panel and play all games on that at everything high, G72GX will be great for you. G72 can handle everythig by now. Every game I installed on mine runs smooth on mine, even at stock frequencies. But, anyway if you will wait for couple months after G73J stars selling, I am sure you can buy G73 for lower price.

 

http://estore.asus.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=4674&catid=652


is listed as out of stock but lots of people have had luck with calling the center directly to see what they had in stock =]

 

Cool, thanks EIement! Hmm...this puts these G72s back in play for me. (Wish the identically configed G60 from Best Buy was the same price, or I'd realized that while the quad core was in stock...)

 

Well, I had to replace my original 500 GB 5400 RPM Seagate due to bad sectors with a 500GB 7200 RPM Hitachi. The heat difference is ~2C. As for performance, in tests the Seagate achieved ~62 MB/s read speed and the Hitachi ~86MB/s . For me the real-time difference is noticeable - the boot time is shorter, most games also load faster. The only disadvantage in my opinion is the slightly shorter battery life.

 

Went out and purchased the G72 to hold me over while I wait for the G73. It will eventually become my wife's system but for now I'm having a good time with it!

 

Ok, thank you very much.

I have another question, Do you think this laptop can play Mass Effect 2? It doesnt matter if its not at max setting since Im used to play in lower setting due to having just crappy laptops.

 

Should have no problem at all with Mass Effect 2-I mean it's designed around the Xbox's capabilities. My Geforce 9650GT seems fine with it, and it has less than 1/3 the hardware (I mean less than a third of the GPU hardware you have).

 

Got it, thank you very much. Steam, here I go!

 

For sure!!!It could handle it with no problem. Maybe not on full high setting, but shadows turned on medium should solve it. Have a nice play!

 

Being honest... this is a very good system but the screen has very washed out colors. If you are buying this to enjoy the "true colors", don't. You'll have to plug this bad boy to an external monitor to get true blacks, yellows, etc...

 

I think the display is great (I have the LG). Better than my old P7805-u and a lot better than my HP dv7. I'm sure there are better displays, especially external ones, but for a laptop is pretty nice to me.

 

Fair enough. I played a little bit with the Color settings in the NVidia control panel and improved it just a tad.

I'm thinking of upgrading the 5400rpm drive to a 7200rpm... Anyone know of a good drive for this system? I was eyeballing the Seagate but I've read it's unreliable.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Seagate...8085426687&skuId=9326428&st=laptop hard drive

 

I bought mine last Saturday $1099 They put it on sale Sunday for $999 Will they refund the difference with reciept?

 

I wouldn't get a Seagate drive. For the last 10 years I had 3 Seagates - 2 of them failed. For my G71GX I got a 7200 RPM 500 GB Hitachi to replace my failing Seagate. Very fast and reliable drive.

 

Thanks! I assume you purchased it online?

 

Yes - I purchased it from newegg.com. They had a very good offer around Thanksgiving. The drive was only $79. Now I think you can find it for around $100. I'm very pleased with it, before I had a Hitachi in another laptop and it worked flawlessly. There are many reviews that also point for the moment Hitachi is the Mercedes for the mobile HDDs.

 

I am think about getting ssd for my laptop. Will it improve the speeds at all. I always here that this Laptop doesn't have raid. What is that and does that mean a SSD will not work very well with the g72gx. If SSD will work what is the best SSD to getting. I was think about an 80gb drive. How much improvement would a 7200 rpm drive be over the 5200 rpm drive?

 

A good SSD is really expensive. For a 160GB-256GB drive you're talking $400-800 range.

Yes they speed up loading a lot, but of course don't improve processing power.

RAID has nothing at all to do with an SSD. I mean you could put SSD drives in RAID, but that would be even more expensive.

I guess with two drive bays you could get a small 80GB SSD like you mentioned, and then have a larger mechanical drive in the second bay for media and stuff. But still, that's going to be around $300 for a good drive. Bad SSD drives have much WORSE performance than a mechanical drive, despite whatever meaningless claims they make in the specs.

Personally I would only consider something with an Intel controller, but Indulix is supposed to have a good controller too (I've just heard too many horror stories, and I'm conservative when it comes to my data...)

 

Here's my experiences so far with the G72GX. I reinstalled the OS, drivers, and utilities using the 2 supplied DVDs. Asus makes the process very easy and best of all no bloatware is included when reinstalling using the supplied DVD method. None of the Best Buy games or the Office 2007 trial or the other extra software (movie download app) that I don't need. Very easy and clean re-installation.

About the SSDs:
I was thinking about getting one of the inexpensive SSDs from Kingston but decided against it when I read the following articles below. For me, I would need at least 160GB and after reading the articles, the Intel X25M G2 would be the one to get, but at $492, it's just too much money.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=1
http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631

For what it's worth, my WEI after reinstalling using the supplied DVDs is 5.8 for the stock HDD (5400 RPM Seagate 500GB Momentus 5400.6 HDD). After researching, I'm guessing that a 7200RPM WD Scorpio Black would help load times by around 10-20% and the WEI would probably be around 5.9. I'm going to leave the stock Seagate 5400.6 in there and be happy with it. Setting up two HDDs in Raid 0 isn't an option in the BIOS. Too bad, as this would be helpful for the digital audio work I do.

By the way, someone earlier in this thread asked about a BIOS setting, specifically an option to "Downgrade DRAM Timing." On my G72GX, Asus has enabled this option in the BIOS, and during POST, it shows the Ram as 667MHz, instead of 800MHz. It seems Asus did this to enable more stable overclocking when using the Turbo Gear Extreme utility, as the experienced overclocking guys will tell you that increasing the memory clocks usually won't give you a noticeable performance increase, but it will decrease system stability.

In a nutshell, when overclocking using the Asus Turbo Gear Extreme utility, it's speeding up the bus speed which in turn overclocks the CPU (Core Speed=Bus Speed multiplied by the Multiplier value) AND the system ram's speed. I disabled the setting for "Downgrade DRAM Timing" in the BIOS and my WEI, Super-Pi Mod, and 3DMark06 scores were exactly the same as when the setting was enabled. Of course, during POST, it shows the Ram running at 800MHz, but again, the computer doesn't seem any faster and the benchmarks seem to verify that. I've left the setting disabled for the time being.

There's another option in the BIOS to set the CPU Multiplier value, up to x9.5. The default setting is Auto, which I left it at. CPU-Z shows the value at x9.5 all of the time anyway, so I didn't change the BIOS setting.

My G72GX is running the latest BIOS, version 602.

It can get slightly higher 3DMark06 scores when overclocking the GTX 260M Core Clock and Shader Clock by using nVidia Sytem Tools 6.05 (which you can download from the nVidia website). If I try doing an extreme overclock of the Memory Clock on the GTX 260M along with the Core and Shader Clocks, 3DMark06 crashes, showing a driver error. It runs stable for me at 600/900/1500 when benchmarking. Stock is 500/800/1250. Stock nVida for the GTX 260M is 550/950/1375 which stable as well.

So overall, I'm happy with the G72GX from Best Buy. It was an excellent price and the performance meets my expectations. Dual GTX 280M in SLI would be nice, as well as Core i7 and SSD, but I don't have $4000 to drop on that.

 

I went by my local Best Buy yesterday. They had 4 in stock. All had been opened. I asked if they were all returns. I was told they were new, but had been optimized in advance by the geek squad. He said they did this because everyone wanted it done and it saved time. The salesperson said this included the removal of the trial ware and other junk, and the setup of the antivirus software. He also said this was a 39.95 service. I asked of they would discount the laptop since it had been opened and was now used. He insisted they were all brand new and offered to drop the 39.95 geek squad service. I was suspicious of the whole deal, and offered to buy one if he reduced the price $100. He said that wasn't possible so I left without buying one. What do you guys think, is this normal for Best Buy with their laptops? I did look at other models and they were unopened and new in the box, like I expected the G72's to be.

 

They can go as low as $959.99 as employees, without getting mgr approval. I wouldn't buy it opened. (A friend works at one here in CA.)

 

That "optimization" stuff is BS. I totally agree that if they're going to do that, they'd better drop the price a lot. It's hilarious they try to CHARGE for it when they should give a few hundred dollar DISCOUNT minimum.

 

Yeah, the optimize crap is dumb. They uninstall SOME of the bloatware, and change a few windows settings. Big deal.

I've heard many stories of people talking the price down to discount the exact cost of the optimization. Just go straight to a manager... don't bother dealing with the sales people. You might get lucky!

Or buy it online....

 

Well, I guess I couldn't leave well enough alone.

I went to Best Buy and bought the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB HDD they had on sale for $120, got them to match Newegg's price of $105.

Reinstalled again using the Asus's supplied DVDs.

Windows boots in 37 seconds versus 55 with the stock 5400RPM HDD.
The system feels a bit snappier overall, apps load quicker, and the new drive is very quiet, I don't hear any of the clicking or vibration the Macbook guys complain of. It's quieter than the WD Scorpio Blue in my Dell XPS M1530.

After the fresh OS install, defraging the HDD and rebooting several times, my latest 3DMark06 score with CPU OC'd to 2.89GHz (15%) and GPU at 550/950/1375 is 11625 (1280x720). SM 2.0 Score=5405, SM 3.0 Score=5342, CPU Score=2638. The new HDD doesn't make a difference in the score, though loading times between levels is about 20% faster.

More Benchmarks comparing this G72GX (Windows 7 64-bit, P8700, GTX 260M, 1600x900) to the G50VT-X1 (Vista 64-bit, P8400, 9800M GS, 1366x768) Both laptops running nVidia drivers 195.62:
G72GX - Far Cry 2 Benchmark running Small Ranch 1, with 3 loops, in DX10 in Ultra High (No AA) at 1600x900 - Average FPS=37, Max FPS=58, Min FPS=27.
G50VT-X1 - Far Cry 2 Benchmark running Small Ranch 1, with 3 loops, in DX10 in Ultra High (No AA) at 1366x768 - Average FPS=19, Max FPS=31, Min FPS=13.
G72GX - Far Cry 2 Far Cry 2 Benchmark running Small Ranch 1, with 3 loops, in DX9 in Ultra High (No AA) at 1600x900 - Average FPS=31, Max FPS=46, Min FPS=24.
G50VT-X1 - Far Cry 2 Far Cry 2 Benchmark running Small Ranch 1, with 3 loops, in DX9 in Ultra High (No AA) at 1366x768 - Average FPS=24, Max FPS=36, Min FPS=19.

G72GX - (Windows 7 64-bit, P8700, GTX 260M, 1600x900) 3DMark06 (1280x720)=11625.
G50VT-X1 (Vista 64-bit, P8400, 9800M GS, 1366x768) - 3DMark06 (1280x720)=9116.
P-7905U - (Vista 64-bit, P8400, 9800M GTS, 1440x900) - 3DMark06 (1280x720)=9350.