Asus M50VM Montevina, NV 9600M GS Review

oh ya i made a mistake.
the thing i want to run both OS vista n XP so i need the SATA drivers.

 

I want to update the drive with the WDUPD020 but I'm unsuccessful in doing this off of the dvd... is it possible to run this off the USB? I tried but was unable to.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc...F9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1ub2lzZQ**&p_li=&p_topview=1

EDIT: Okay so I got it to boot off a USB stick... but now I have a problem. The .txt file with it says that if no commands are given when wdupd020.exe is run, then it'll automatically scan for devices. So I let it run and after a while it says that no devices (hard drives) are found! It says controller might not be compatible. Can anyone get this update to work?! (If the version on the hard drive is newer, it'll still show the device and state it after you choose that drive to update... so that's not the problem here)

 

i was wondering if i can get the screen any brighter. compared to my lcd moniter for my computer its not as bright. ive tried using Fn+F6 to max but its still not amazingly bright as i want.

 

did you turn off the ambient light sensor? fn-a.

after i did that, it's much brighter.

 

Has anyone seen the difference between the B-1 and B-2? Ken? The B-1 seems like the better deal, however I've always had 1680 resolution on a 15 inch notebook. Opinions?

 

I saw your email, here is the driver:

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/16759/eng/f6flpy32_85.zip

iaStor.inf

 

I asked before but didn't get an answer. So, does anyone know max operating temperature of the 9600M GS?

 

oh, don't expect your laptop LCD to be comparable to a desktop LCD. I've seen the higher rated laptop screens and yet they all lack the vividness and brightness of a middle range external monitor... well, maybe macs are close to desktop screen quality, but still a little faded if you put them side by side and compare

 

hey, so i recently bought my m50vm-a1 and it came with a warranty card.

i was wondering if there is any other way we could register for our warranty (ie. the internet) rather than mailing in the card?

 

You might be able to call Asus customer service/tech support.

They don't have online warranty registration.

 

thx a lot i will try these drivers n let u know if any problems

 

So just wondering if anyone has tried this update? No one responded to my post

 

Hey everyone, apologies if this is misposted, but anyway.

A friend of mine bought this laptop off of Newegg about 3 weeks ago. We have been having huge performance issues with most games.

World in Conflict will run at around 5-10 FPS in both 1440x??? and 1280x??? on very low settings, on both DX 9 and 10.

The newest Dawn of War runs excellent for 5 minutes and then will run at 5 FPS for 5 minutes, and goes back to smooth sailing after that. Strangely, this slowdown doesn't seem to be affected by the graphics load; it will slow down when nothing is happening, and then will speed up during a large battle.

Call of Duty 4 does the same.

We also ran a 3dmark06 benchmark and scored a 1500 in 1440x???, half of what most of these seem to be running.


We have tried this in Vista 32 bit, XP, the original video drivers, the laptopvideo2go drivers, etc. Me and another friend have tried everything we can think of; I like to think I know what I'm doing, and he works IT professionally, so I believe we are installing all the software correctly.


The worst part is that Asus and Newegg have been giving us the runaround. Newegg has told us that the laptop is working fine, as gaming is not the primary use for the PC, and told us to call Asus about performance issues. We called Asus and they said that the GFX card slows down when the laptop is overheating, and told us to call Newegg after that. This was surprising, as it seems like this laptop in particular runs very cool.

Any help you all can provide would be much appreciated; we've been tearing our hair out over this silly thing.

 

Make sure you have updated drivers, and you are running at power4gear HIGH PERFORMANCE.

 

I know this has been covered manytimes but I' getting a text box that pops up during Crysis when I press ` and sometimes its in Japanese or something and sometimes it just types letters. Caps lock messes it up too I think. Whats the Fn combo to fix that?

I think it was something to do with Fn

 

Hey I just got my Asus and it seems fine... just the screen goes black sometimes, but the computer keeps running. I noticed this happening only when I'm using it or resting on the keyboard so is there some darkening feature I'm hitting... is there a way to undo it or such? Still skimming through the new manual.

Edit:
No idea what's causing it. The computer is completely locked up and I can't toggle between caps locks when it happens. The indicator bulb light is on and stays solid while it happens... I have no idea what's happening. I've had to force shut down the comp to get it to boot up again normally. Help appreciated.

I'm running Vista Business 64 bit if that's helpful. Through Xotic pc. And I think that they installed all the drivers.

 

SCREEN TURNING OFF UNEXPECTEDLY:

The screen turns off when the battery is low. Check to make sure you are still plugged into the power bar it may be loosely plugged in.

MAX GPU TEMP:

Not sure what the max temp for the GPU but I can tell you that when I monitored it, the GPU will throttle up when the temp is below 70c to some preset clock speed and throttle down when it reaches 70c

 

ShepTR: From what I've experienced and read, you have to make sure the drivers are installed in a particular order or else weird problems seem to pop up. I just ran 3dmark06 tonight and got 43xx - I forget the exact number - but that was around what I expected using DEFAULT resolution, not the native resolution for this PC. Check out this post on the ASUS forums: http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20070926211002015&board_id=3&model=A1B&page=1&SLanguage=en-us . It might sound simple, but seriously, I had a ton of problems until I followed this order. Also make sure the settings in the BIOS are right and as someone else said, make sure you are not running on some sort of power-saving scheme...

 

NOW SOMETHING RANDOM WENT BAD AND IT ONLY TYPES IN CAPS WHEN THE CAPS KEY IS OFF AND NOT TINI NCAPS WHEN ITNTIS ON. and the shift keys are actingngwierd. gahhnnot sure whatnttonqdo.

edit: Ok random keys start to appear when I tap a letter. Does Asus support any 64 bit drivers

 

hey guys, im looking at the expressgate and memory card readers of the m50vmb1 and they seem to be already occupied with..."dummys" right out of the box. how do i insert my own memory card into the memory card reader/ expressgate device into expressgate?

should i try to pull them out first?

thanks for your help.

 

flipped thru instruction manual for this... and found nothing...

this is my first notebook so in a sense im a noob.

 

Yeah, we had the updated drivers, and once I reinstall Vista on it I'll try that as well. Thanks mate!

Awesome man, I'll try this out ASAP. Thanks!

 

Running 64-bit vista. Drivers such factory installed.

Hey. Posting from adiffernt comp now. My new out of the box Asus m50vm has a few big problems. I ran windows update and then problems were evident so I restored to when I just got it with just the drivers and installs that Xotic pc did.

Major problems:
1. The keyboard is totally funked. I can't type anymore because when I press the keys random letters show up in the place of them. Also for some reason my backspace key =s 5 for some reason.

2. the bottom indicator light for the battery does not light up. I mean the one inbetween the bulb and the wireless indicator. Vista shows that it is plugged in and that it is charging so I'm not sure what to do.
Help really really aprecaited.

 

It sounds like the reinstall probably missed a driver during the process, which it appears you did from the OS dvd?

Since you haven't done much since you tried the reinstall, try using the recovery partition to do the reinstall again - this will bypass the driver cd install part and should get you back up and running normally. Post back if it doesn't work.

 

Okay inserting Vista cd to reinstall.

edit: Very very grateful for the help.

edit2: Okay after install disc doing fine until the restart. Screen went black. It's been 3 or 4 min. Might manual shut off at 11:55 pst

 

The button to turn off the screen is Fn+F7. But if the computer is non-responsive after the screen darkens, it's more that that.

I think the first thing to try, as ClearSkies suggested, is a clean install. Post back if that doesn't solve the problems.

You may have faulty hardware, unfortunately. Let's see if the reinstall fixes the problems.

Push the dummies in a bit, they will click and pop out. Remove, and push the cards in until they click.

 

No, I said *do not* use the CD - use the HDD recovery partition to do the reinstall.

I believe you hold F9 during boot to access this protocol.

 

I everyone, I recently purchased a brand new M50VM-B1 and I am very impressed with this new notebook. I remember that the specs included a 5400 rpm 350GB hard drive. How does the lower rpm compare to a comparably or larger sized drive running at 7200rpm?

Edit: I meant 320GB, I just woke up lol.

 

It will run a little cooler....I don't think you'll notice any performance difference in a large 5400 rpm

 

Is there an affordable 350GB or larger 7200 RPM HDD at this point?

I think the price/perf sweetspot for 7200RPMs is 200GB right now.

I believe the situation is as follows:
A typical last-gen 350GB 5400 will be slower than a typical last-gen 200GB 7200RPM, but not significantly so; the 5400RPM makes up due to higher data density.

 

Hey guys,
Is that true that M50VM has a capability to handle up DDR 3 memory without any problems? I read some time ago that Patriot and OCZ is about to issue so-dimm ddr3- any1 know when they will be available? ... and, yea, i know that the price will be much, much higher than ddr2 ;/ but i think not so expensive- 2GB shouldn't cost more than 200$- i hope so...

 

Guys, silly me, in taskbar properties>noti. area, the network tab was disabled thats where my network icon went..

EDIT: also, are the servers at LV2G slow are is it my net connection... im downloading 177.92 x64..

Wont it be a different pin configuration? and $200 for just 2GB i say it aint worth it and most probably it wont work. i think GenTech themselves said it wasnt possible

 

The Montevina processor supports DDR3, but the memory slots on the M50VM will only fit DDR2 memory. That means that you will not be able to add DDR3 memory to the M50VM.

 

just got my A1...great computer so far...having to get use to the offset keyboard, but quality is top notch!

question???
what is the suggest crap programs that need to be removed/moved off startup?

thanks guys...

 

See my Vista optimization guide for suggestions on what to remove, and other steps to optimize your OS.

 

Hey everybody,

Just got my M50vm-b1 last week and I've been trying put vista 64 ultimate on it. I removed the recovery partition, formatted the hard drive into one partition and the installation went smoothly. I tried using the DVD that came with it to install the drivers but haven't had any luck getting all the drivers to fully work. I noticed that everytime I tried to vga drivers from the dvd it would reboot and then come up with blue screen.

Anybody else come across this issue or have any suggestions on what to do?

Thanks

John

 

Why did you remove the recovery partition- it is important!
Why did you format the hard drive and did one partition- you should something like that:
system partition- 20GB- the HDD have less data to read than in 250GB partition, and it works faster
music- xxGB
movies- xxGB

BTW my question is to GenTechPC, could you post links to XP drivers where from you download it? I will have M50VM in a month and these drivers can be not up-to-date

 

To me the recovery partition isn't really necessary since i can always restore with the recovery cd and i can always use the extra space that its taking up. I don't like restoring to factory defaults anyway since it comes with all the useless stuff that I don't want. I plan to repartition it later anyways once i get Vista 64 working, whenever that may be.

 

If the GPU drivers from the drivers CD don't work, you can always try modded drivers from LaptopVideo2Go.com Make sure you overwrite with the modded inf before you try to install them.

 

Is the Express Gate thing still there if you downgrade to XP?

 

ethereals0ul, bro, did you stick in the CD marked M50VM on it? or the recovery DVD? i used the CD and installed the drivers in the order they gave and it worked sweet! plus im using 177.92 forceware drivers (installed yesterday) and no probs

should be, once you install the ExpressGate system after you do the clean install.

Remember it is a stand-alone OS.

 

I'm using my vista ultimate 64 cd to install, then used the drivers from the cd but had no luck there, I still got the blue screen. Tried using the nforce drivers yesterday (177.92) for vista 64, but right after I installed it i still got the same bluescreen.

 

Do M50Vm-A1 got a Lightscribe recorder? In specifications I cannot find info about that, but in a opinions on newegg i read that there is a Lightscribe...

 

The review on Newegg you are referring to was entered by someone for the B2 revision of the M50VM.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220344

Asus has been shipping a lot of their notebooks with generic software programs across multiple system, so many people who have systems with out Lightscribe still have CD's with the Lightscribe software on it.

For a drive to support Lightscribe (hardware wise) it has to have the lightscribe logo on it.

http://www.lightscribe.com/gettingstarted/index.aspx?id=87

The A1's (like the one reviewed by David Li) do not have that logo, and do not support Lightscribe.
http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/32716.jpg
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4365

The B2 pictures from Newegg also shows a drive that is not Lightscribe.
http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/34-220-344-14.jpg
http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/34-220-344-04.jpg

If you look at the preview videos done by Ken Lee of GenTechPC and Eddie of BTOTech you will see that the drives in those notebooks do not contain the lightscribe logo either.
Ken's demo:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=273404 (video at top of review)
Eddies demo:
http://btoforums.com/showthread.php?t=850

XoticPC's image of the optical drive shows a third logo (but its too small to conclude what its a symbol for (the top of the symbol look like a Lightscribe symbol, but the bottom does not).
http://www.xoticpc.com/laptop/M50VM/M50VM11.jpg

I recommend you contact a few of the M50VM resellers, and try to confirm with them, but based on the evidence it seems the M50VM system (like many current Asus notebooks) do not include Lightscribe drives (even if the software for it comes with the system).

 

Alright, update on my problem; still awful FPS.

We are running Vista 64 bit, I've installed the newest drivers from the Asus website, in the order described above, I've set Power4Gear for High Performance, and even changed inside the Nvidia control panel for performance.

We are still getting terrible FPS in World in Conflict in all resolutions, in all graphics settings, DX9 and 10.

Any other options left on our end?

I might try installing a fresh copy of the included OS and reinstalling the drivers again, just to make sure that we've done everything right.

 

wel.. try re-imnstalling OS, load vista cd on boot, etc and do a fresh clean install..

then, when youir finish, stick in the drivers cd, install everything, cept norton and ASUS live update. if that doesnt work... well contact ASUS Support yes! It takes long though so have patience

sorry to hear about your BSODs bro that suck

 

Thanks for very exhausting reply
Pity that it doesn't have the lightscribe- it will be very nice and usefull gadget

 

Thanks to Ken for an excellent review and follow-up posts. I also thank everyone else for their very informative posts. Because of you all, I've decided to buy an Asus M50VM but I haven't decided yet whether to buy an A1 or B1. My only reservation is the keyboard lag issue mentioned by a few posters.

In addition to the usual web browsing and office applications I plan to convert my analogue 8mm and digital mini-DV tapes to DVD format fed through the IEEE-1394 port, would there be any significant difference between the A1 and B1 when doing this and rendering to DVD format?

Eventually, I would like to run 64-bit Vista and install more RAM but I'm hesitant to go to 64-bit because one of my main tools is a Palm TX and I can only see support for a 32-bit Palm application with no plans for a 64-bit version. Maybe I should install both the 32-bit and 64-bit Vista, is that possible?

My current research indicates that a larger L2 cache will not improve video encoding speed but a faster disk drive and faster CPU will. Since the A1 and B1 CPU clock speeds differ by about 10% and assuming a linear relationship to encoding speed (I don't know if that is true) will result in a maximum video-encoding improvement of around +10%; now I need to decide if a +10% improvement in video-encoding performance is worth an extra $100 with a decrease of around -7% in battery performance.

In addition, I would assume that because of CPU power consumption differences (P8400-25W and T9400-35W) that the P8400-based M50VM-A1 has to dissipate about 28% less heat than the T-9400-based M50VM-B1 and should therefore, assuming the same heat-dissipation setup, run quite a bit cooler; I'm assuming that cooler will result in better reliability over the long term.

I'm also left wondering if applications can be programmed to utilize the L2 cache and if future application updates might improve performance. If so, the extra $100 would be worth while since I plan on keeping the laptop for 5 years. I've noticed that video-encoding software (for example, TMpegEnc) has already been updated to make use of the new instructions added to the Penryn CPUs to significantly improve video-encoding performance (around a 37% reduction in encoding time) but this improvement applies to both the P8400 and T9400.

I also notice a difference in the specs between the P8400 and T9400 CPUs but I don't know what their significance is; however, I suspect the features are the same for both and the T9400 spec just doesn't list all the features:

P8400 features:

• Dual Core
• Enhanced Intel Speedstep Technology
• Intel® EM64T
• Intel® Virtualization Technology
• Execute Disable Bit 2

T9400 features:

• Dual Core
• Enhanced Intel Speedstep Technology

In conclusion, I'm still trying to decide between the A1 (lower price, better battery performance and reliability) and the B1 (better performance, both current and future).

 

What do you mean install more RAM?!?
Both the A1 and B1 come standard with 4GBs of RAM (which is the maximum supported by the M50VM, and many other notebooks), so you couldn't add any more RAM (aside from Intel Turbo Memory).

Vista 64-bit is able to run 32-bit programs, so there is no reason to be running both.

 

Since 64-bit Vista can address more RAM, why couldn't more be installed? However, I just reread the M50VM spec and it does state up to 4GB! Why would Asus limit it to only 4GB but support a 64-bit OS? I know there are only 2 slots, but eventually there will be 4GB chips that will fit; when they are available will the M50VM still only be able to address up to 4GB of RAM? For example, the HP dv5 comes with 3 or 4GB of RAM but up to 8GB can be installed; which makes the HP dv5 a better choice for programs that can use more physical RAM.

I know that 32-bit programs can be run on 64-bit Vista, the issue is 64-bit drivers for the Palm TX to allow it to sync with Vista via a USB port. I'm investigating synching via Bluetooth or WiFi instead, then I can use the 32-bit program when running 64-bit Vista (then don't need 32-bit Vista).