* Asus N61JQ Owners Lounge *

guys is there any room for overclocking graphics card?

 

Realtemp works pretty well for me.

 

Isn't it pretty common now to get different manufacturers for things like memory depending on what they have in stock? I don't think they quote you brand names for everything in the specs.

 

Thanks for that, been trying to find a temp app

 

Ok I did a little temp testing on my A1 from Amazon.com (no special thermal compound). I did two cases: one with and without my notebook cooler (Zalman ZM-NC2000, maximum fan speed, legs down). To load the CPU, I ran a Prime95 Torture Test for 30 minutes "In-place large FFTs (maximum heat, power consumption, some RAM tested)": 64-bit download here. In both cases, it took Prime95 about 5 minutes to heat the CPU to its maximum temperature, so the remaining 25 were more or less redundant. Temps were monitored using HWMonitor from CPUID ( 64-bit download). Results:

Minimum temps with the laptop idling were:

THRM: 50
Core #0: 50
Core #1: 48
Core #2: 51
Core #3: 48
Assembly: 33
Air Flow: 33

These minima don't reduce with the cooler on (I think the internal fan just shuts off when it gets very cool, so the temps rise a little). Here are the temps under load:

Maximum temps (deg C), 30 mins torture test, NO COOLER:

THRM: 82
Core #0: 79
Core #1: 77
Core #2: 82
Core #3: 79
Assembly: 34
Air Flow: 34

Maximum temps (deg C), 30 mins torture test, COOLER ON:

THRM: 80
Core #0: 77
Core #1: 76
Core #2: 80
Core #3: 77
Assembly: 34
Air Flow: 34

It's surprising how little difference the notebook cooler makes, as far as CPU temps go. Only 1-2 degrees reduction. But the overall temps on stock thermal compound are not bad at all (the i7 chip can operate up to 100 C).

Edit: For clarification, the tests with the cooler off were performed with the cooler physically removed (laptop sitting flat on the table). Minimum temps were recorded in this configuration.

 

As far as I can tell, with the memory it's a crap shoot. I'm guessing due to demand ASUS is putting what they have available in the different machines. Mine came with DDR3 1333 even though is was suppose to come with 1066. So far as I can tell that is the only difference so far between the different batches. Obviously the motherboards are the same as well as the CPU (unless someone upgraded it).

 

I'd never recommend overclocking on a laptop but I've read some people have gotten some pretty incredible results from their attempts.

 

Every dell that we order for work will have a different hard drive, we order 10 pc's with the same harddrive size, but half have hatatchi, half have seagate. Its completely normal to us to see.

I don't think their is anything wrong with mixing and matching parts. Although when you buy an ASUS from a reseller, isn't it the reseller whom installs the ram? (This is the case for some manufactures/resellers)

 

Yeah that's what I was using, I played WoW for an hour and fourteen minutes with all setting on ultra and had a few programs running in background and the highest it got was 75c. My wife also has the heater blasting in here I think room temp is around 73f. That's hot to me. Idle temps are all in the low 50's. Max temp under 100% load was 78c. These are all taken tonight and i have stock thermal compound.

 

Someone needs to write a review for the N61JQ! lol

 

For those of us crazy enough they have read all 96 pages of this thread.... unfortunately my laptop is still not here (and I have a feeling its going to be awhile until amazon gets it in stock)

 

Mine suppose to be coming at the end of the month

 

I ordered my A1 from someone on Amazon, not actually Amazon. It shipped out the 17th and should be here by Tomorrow!!! I super excited. It will be a my first laptop.

 

I also was expecting 2 1/2 to 3 hours with quiet office.

Lets see how the others go then.

 

Not a review but here's a new video of someone playing Counter Strike: Source and watching a movie on their N61JQ.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUrAtJ5WzwU

 

Is it really the best thing to do a clean OS install on a A1? I haven't gotten mine yet and I don't think that mine comes with an actual install disk just the recovery disk so I'm kind of like O_O as to what to do about it.

 

I'm planning to use it as it is sent to me. I'm tired of modifying and overclocking and essentially friggin up a system.

 

Whats going on guys...my N61JQ-A1 has been running great. It has a little keyboard flex...and I had a slight ding on the back of the screen. It must of happened at the factory because the paint was placed over it. You can barely c it unless you really look for it..I was able to overclock the video card and get very close to 9k in 3dmark06. I can prob. push it a littler higher.

 

nevermind...found answer 2 my own question.

 

Same I like my desktop now but it was so much work to get it just working right.

With laptops I find you can never seem to get them working exactly like they came from the factory again, its always some firmware, or hot key driver your missing, or some power saving tool that you can't find. Although asus does seem to be good at listing all the drivers on it's site. I am considering just leaving this thing as it comes, removed the worst of the bloat ware, and call it good.

 

I didn't uninstall much and am even using the Trend Micro AV software for now. With a system this fast, I am not sure you can call this bloatware anymore. I would like to move to the Microsoft Security Essentials eventually but, I think someone was getting lockups with it on their system.

 

There are a ton of them in this thread alone. I think we should gather them all together and post our own Review Summary. ;-)

 

What are your clocks?

 

750MHZ clock / 900mhz memory I believe.

 

That's a good idea. It might cut down on the duplicate questions in this thread. Once a thread goes over 5 pages its very difficult for a new user to catch up.

 

How much did that change your temps?

 

the cpu temps never got over 73c...I did not have the gpu temps up and running. I may overclock it again later today and let yall know about the GPU temps.

 

what was your 3dmark scores?

 

right under 9k...if I tweak the settings I can prob get close 2 9500.

stock was right around 8k...I will run more test later tonite and see what kind of temps I am getting with it overclocked.

 

The only drivers missing from the ASUS website are the USB 3.0 driver and the Wireless Console 3 application. I installed these 2 from the driver CD. The only relevant firmware is the BIOS, and my A1 came pre-loaded with the most recent BIOS, so I didn't even have to flash it.

 

If anyone cares I installed the leaked catalyst 10.3 drivers and it uped my score in 3dmark 06 by about 100 points. Not a huge gain but they are leaked none finished drivers.

I did try overclocking my card but if I try to push it any higher then 875 on the memory I get artifacts. Pretty sure that has something to do with me using stock termal paste though

 

I will be doing a complete reinstall, and shifting to Win7 Ultimate 64bit.

I did already installation of Win7 on ASUS M50Vm, which came with Vista so I know all the ASUS tools needed to make all the stuff working like it was from factory.
Besides all the drivers should be on the CD which came with the laptop.

 

I tried this but now my video card is reporting it has 0mb of memory with GPU-Z

 

I cannot see why installing windows should affect your VGA if all the drivers are installed correctly.

I will let you know, about my experience when I receive my notebook.
Now it is very close. Hopefully, I will get by Thursday.

I will be installing windows then most probably over the next weekend.

 

Woohoo! Just got my N61 in and unboxing it now!

 

Yeah I'm not sure. The catalyst drivers see it correctly and all other apps with the exception of the new STALKER game and GPU-Z they both see it as having 0 mb of Ram.

 

Was the GPU-Z reading your GPU RAM correctly before you intalled Windows freshly?

 

I do not know as I didn't use before hand. But do know that STALKER reported no problems with my hardware before doing the new install. So I would have to assume it would have read the correct amount of memory.

 

This may be the obvious...but did you install all of the drivers, including the VGA driver, from the driver CD?

 

About darn time! Let us know what you think.

 

Those were the first ones I installed. Then I installed the ati drivers from the asus website, then I installed the new leaked catalyst 10.3 drivers all with the same results.

I'm almost tempted to restore from the restore disc provided to see if it has the same problem then upgrading if not.

 

It's really strange.
Maybe something got messed up with the installation of windows.

I remember from my Desktop system; some time ago when I installed Vista on it. Just after I finished installing windows, the internet connection was on and Vista downloaded and installed automatically drivers for the system before I installed my own. The Vista's downloaded driver for my Sapphire ATI 4870 was called ASUS EAH4870. After that I don't know why it did not want to update to the latest Catalyst driver anymore.
Then I reformated the system and installed windows again.
I did not allow it do download drivers itself, but rather I used my own and after that the problem was gone.
Microsoft operating system can sometimes do strange things.

 

Oh I know I use to work on the support desk for windows xp. Been a while though. They changed so much stuff with the update to vista/windows 7 that I don't know where to find most stuff anymore and don't care to learn it.

The only time I do sit down and learn it is when it breaks and I have to fix it.

 

Lucky you. I gotta wait til March

Oh well, that'll give me enough time to get all the positive reviews from you guys and decide if this laptop is for me.

 

Lucky you.. you know when yours is comming! Amazon has no date avalible to me yet other people have gotten theres fast with amazon though, Im crossing my fingers.

 

haha hopefully i can help you out a bit with that.

Pretty good so far! just got done burning the recovery disks and uninstalling the crap now. first impressions are that the laptop itself is really nice looking. much sturdier than my old HP too, i didn't really realize what i was missing in terms of sturdiness until i picked this up.

 

^--^
Time to change your signature

 

I think I have bad news

I was playing Red Alert 3 on my desk with the ac adapter plugged in and everything was fine. Then my wife came nagging that she needed the desk so I paused the game, unplugged the power and went to the living room.

When I started playing again, I noticed that the game was considerably slower. So I went back to my desk and plugged in again and everything went back to normal speed! I unplugged and it slowed again.

Is this Throttling? Is this normal?

the power setting was Asus High Performance.

 

I was VERY happy to do that.

 

Ok so I downloaded RealTemp to see if my proc was overheating but it wasn't. However, I did notice that the processor is idling at 997.5 Mhz (7.5 multiplier).

Is this normal??