Asus M50VM Montevina, NV 9600M GS Review

Is it worth the extra $200 from the M50VM - B1 to the G50VM - A1 for the GPU?

 

It sure is if you plan on doing quite a bit of gaming. Also the screen resolution is higher on the G50V + an additional hard drive. However, if you don't game much, and prefer portability, then the M50VM would be the better choice.

 

thanks for the reply boutique

 

How much tax does xoticpc charge for someone like me living in Massachusetts?

 

no tax unless you live in Nebraska

 

Can somebody please inform me about the build quality of ASUS M50 series.

I am really disappointed with ASUS F3JP notebook.
Look here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=276384

I am planning to buy a new one.
The M50Vm looks very interseting, but I would not buy another ASUS notebook, until I am not sure that it is not suffering from many build quality issues.
As the new one is very similar to old M50 series, than maybe some people here can tell me about the expected quality of this notebook.
Price wise, it is having similar price in Germany like the F3jp had when it was released about two years ago, but I hope it does not have similar quality problems.

 

xoticpc is located in Nebraska, so unless you live in that state, you don't have to pay tax.
I'm also from Mass and actually, there's no Asus reseller in MA, so you can buy from any of the Asus resellers and not have to pay tax. I ended up going with Gentech

The M50 series are built well and definately doesn't suffer the problems seen in the F3. I'm not sure what the prices are in Germany though.

 

Thanks for the reply that is reassuring and gives me some confidence.
The notebook is not yet available in Germany. It will be release around 8th of August as many of the preordering shops are saying.
The price would be around 1400€.

The model being sold here is: M50VM-AK014C.

Here are the specs:
15.4" WSXGA+ TFT (1680x1050)
Core 2 Duo T9400
RAM: 4GB DDR2 @ 800MHz
HDD: 320GB (5400rpm)
Optical drive: Blu-ray and DVD+/-RW DL
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS 512MB
Intel WiFi Link 5100agn
Windows Vista Home Premium

 

I just got my M50VM-A1 today. It's a beautiful machine. And fast!

 

Congrats! I'm sure you'll have tons of fun with it
Hey, just found out that you're from Utah! That's one of the most beautiful states in the US IMO

1400 Euros?? wow.. that's expensive! It seems like the M50VM-AK014C is the same as the M50VM-B1 which costs $1400 USD in the US (so about 900 Euros)

 

that's a true centrino 2, it has a 5xxx series wireless card, and a montevina chipset and proc...

 

Well, the difference is there is BluRay, also resolution is different, as well as wireless card, maybe there are some other goodies to justify the price premium

 

btw anyone knows why M50 has older wireless card? 5100/5300 is supposed to be for Centrino 2

 

Hi Turbogear, I remember you and it's been a long time.
The grininess issue was cause by ATI card and it's all fixed by BIOS update:

http://www.notebookforums.com/thread173555.html

M50 series is a brand new design and it's not similar to any of the older Asus notebooks.

 

Yes, it seems things are more expensive in EU these days. In Germany we have to pay 19% tax. I have seen also some small online shops which are selling it for around 1250€, but with DDR2 @667MHz. I am confident the price would be around 1300€ once the notebook gets released to the market.
It's not yet available until second week of August.

There seems to be four main differences between German model and M50VM-B1:
1-Intel WIFI Link 5100agn
2- Higher resulution screen WSXGA+
3-NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS only with 512MB
4- Blu-Ray drive

 

Hi Ken,

Good to know that you still remember me from the last year.
Yes, I agree that graininess screen issue was due to ATI, but it was one of the many disappointments I had with F3jp.

Now I am strongly considering buying a new ASUS notebook.
I was impressed by the review that you gave here for M50VM. It looks like a nice featureful machine.
Now I am getting more confident to buy this M50VM as soon as it gets released to the market in Germany.

 

interesting to know that screen grainiesness could be resolved via firmware... I had Sony SZ110 when it first came out and it had horrible grainy screen.

 

see: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-centrino-2,1969-6.html

 

Mine has been shipped. I hope it gets here on Saturday...


Edit: Wait.. This isn't Centrino 2? It's only Montevina?
So when it says Centrino 2-based.. It means it partly Centrino 2?
Too late for money back.

 

Thus far, I'm really enjoying it. It is a very well-built machine. I'm in the process of installing Vista x64 on it at the moment.

And thanks, I also think Utah is beautiful. I do enjoy the mountains and all the nat'l parks. Lots of outdoor fun here.

 

Yea... i actually stayed at Park City and Provo and it was amazing. Did a 2 month field camp out there 2 summers ago, hiking almost everyday from 8am-5pm. It's darn right gorgeous!

Sorry for being off-topic guys

 

Quick question: i installed the Realtek High Definition Audio Driver for XP on my XP drive and it works but how do u boost the microphone? the mic is barely picking anything up i have to clap loudly to barely get a sound out of it.

also the link for the audio driver is down now.

 

Should be under the windows control panel under sound properties, under the recording tab, possibly under an advanced tab.

 

i went to control panel -> Sounds and audio devices -> voice tab -> device= Realtek HD Audio input, the advanced tab was grayed out.

i did Test Hardware and tried to adjust there but to no avail.

 

Are all the drivers out for 64-bit vista? I was browsing the Asus website for the M50 and some of them only had 32-bit (like the Wireless ones)

 

Most 32-bit drivers from the asus page or driver disks have a dual installer and install the 64 bit version or the 32 bit driver works for both.

For me using Vista its Control Panel --> Sound --> Recording Tab --> Select my recording hardware (microphone) --> Properties Tab --> Levels Tab and its in there.

 

Hi, I just received my Asus M50VM-B1 today and I have to say I am impressed. I ran a game called Second Life which is notoriously hard on PCs to render. I set all the graphical setting to match my desktop PC and was getting virtually the same framerates. It's clear this machine is a more than capable gaming machine. I cannot wait to see how my other games fair on it.

I do recommend going to classic settings to turn off the special effects Vista has. I found that resulted in a 10% rendering boost. My desktop has an AMD Athlon X2 6000+(3.0ghz X2), 2 GB DDR2 800mhz memory, and Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS. Only minor issues was not having much control over the top volume level for the built in speaker. It seemed quiet for some applications. I recommend turning off the auto LCD display brightness light sensor as its very aggressive to the point of making it difficult to view the screen comfortably. Also seems to have a light bleed issue at the bottom of the screen resulting in needing to tilt it slightly beyond the perpendicular to the users eyes to eliminate.

 

Congrats on your new purchase miniskunk! Nice insights and observations with your new M50VM-B1 could you confirm if your screen is an AUO or Chunghwa?

 

Only thing I can find is under properties/device manager that seems to describe the model is CPT1465. Looking back into the forums I guess that makes it Chungwa.

 

I really want some input on the wxga+ screen on the m50vm. I've tried looking at some Toshiba's, Gateways, and HP's at Office Depot and the screens had poor contrast and brightness. The viewing angles were also horrendous. I was looking at a 14.1" HP dv29xx laptop which had the best contrast among the screens on display. I couldn't even look at it dead center without seeing this gradient of milky light starting from a little below the center of the screen and increasing all the way to the bottom. I was looking at the HardOCP site and had to push the display 30 degrees back to get the gradient to disappear and show me the black background, but the screen became much darker.

And the 1280x800 screen on the s96j is just horrible. Worst screen I have ever seen in my entire life.

God awful screens everywhere. I need something to replace my aging v6va, but nothing is fitting the bill.

How does this screen compare to the Sony SZ or the Macbook Pro? I've seen those and they were all right.

 

I posted this in the GPU FAQ page but I realized it would probably be better here:

How long would A 9600 GS (GDDR2) that is found in the Asus M50VM-A1 last?

For the record, I really want to play: SC2, Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2. Those are definite purchases. Also, I don't have much preference on graphics settings. I'm still running my desktop with an ATI Radeon 9200, so I have no problem playing games at medium to low settings, as long as it runs smoothly.

So, approx how many years could this card meet my gaming needs?

 

You should be fine for the tiem frame of those games, D3 is the only sketchy release date.. probably being mid-late 2009. The GPU will definitely last double that time.

 

I am totally with you on that. Screen quality is #1 selling point these days in a laptop for me. I preordered Sony FW (w/ HiColor screen), but after seeing it in person I decided it's too big for me, so cancelled order in favor of M50MV because of the review I read for older model, only to find later that Asus switched to lower 200 cd/m2. Anyway, I decided to give it a shot anyway and it will be arriving shortly today. I will post my impressions. Oh and GenTech was a great place to buy it from!

Btw, if you don't care about the specs I would also recommend looking at Fujitsu 15", they have beautiful screens that are rated at 450 cd/m2, but that one uses integrated graphics 4500MHD

 

I ran a benchmark using 3dmark06. It scored 3823. Not a great number but certainly respectable for a portable platform.

 

Well, the 9600 in there has DDR2. A GDDR3 one would score arround 4.2k

 

Does the driver disk have drivers for EVERYTHING? I want to reformat with Vista 64bit. So I won't have to worry about missing drivers right? (Including video card)

 

According to Ken, the Vista drivers are 32 and 64 bit, so you shouldn't miss anything.

 

I read that. Thanks. I was worried about it not having video card drivers.

Edit: Anyone knows if this laptop supports BitLocker from Vista Ultimate?

 

Video drivers are easy, laptopvideo2go.com.

 

EBE are you bored, posted pretty much in every single thread?

anyway, I noticed you have M6BNe, I had one long long time ago (4-5 years)... does it still work for you?

 

http://laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/vista64
So I download the newest one there?
Driver disk doesn't have video drivers?

Edit: I checked the driver disk. It has video drivers. Answered my own question.

 

Well, I just purchased mine via newegg. And it looks like newegg also offers the 9-cell battery for the m50 series.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834998726

 

My M50VM-B1 just arrived from Gentech. I must say this thing is very nice looking and works very well. The Express Gate is a pretty neat feature and seems to work seemlessly. Definately money well spent. Thanks Ken for your support, your service rocks =)

 

177.72's are out if you want to snag em...get the modded inf and u should be good.

 

The driver disk has everything for both Vista 32/64, however, you might want to download newer drivers from laptopvideo2go.com for better performance.

 

Audio Device on High Definition Audio Bus problem solved under XP:

On my review, the Audio Device can not be install and it'll listed as "other devices" under Device Manager, however, the audio still works:




After some searching, I found out it's the nVidia HDMI Audio Device, after install the driver everything now works under XP except the IR Driver still listed as unknown device:



Here is where to download the nVidia HDMI Audio Driver for XP:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/158097

 

So is the keyboard lag issue has been already confirmed with M50VM?

Please give me some feedback. I am planning to order M50VM-AK014C in the next weeks.
It has not been released in Germany so far.
It is expected to be available around mid of August.

 

Some people have solved the keyboard lag issue with the solutions provided in my sig.

 

I've had my M50VM-B1 for a couple days now (from GenTech) and haven't noticed any missed keystrokes or lag. Then again, the first thing I did when it arrived was delete the recovery partition and reinstall Vista without the bloatware.

My expectations were quite high because ~$1500 is still quite a bit of money for a laptop (and a spare battery), especially for me as a student, and so far the experience has been very positive. In fact, all of it has been running so smoothly, the only real thing that seemed kinda jarring was the single orange battery charging light amongst all of the bright white ones and the (sometimes) loud optical drive when it first boots.

I noticed some people were worried about the screen. Although I might not be the most qualified to judge the quality, to me it looks very bright and clear. At first it seemed a little dim, but turned out much brighter after disabling the ambient light sensor (Fn+A) and using the manual controls.

And after tweaking some of the Power4Gear min/max processor state and brightness options, I can get almost 3 hours out of the 6-cell battery without switching to Vista's "Basic" theme or activating the "battery saving desktop". I'll keep doing some testing through the next few days to see how much life I can squeeze out of it without compromising performance.

 

If you don't mind, can you let us know what preferences you have set for maximum battery time?