* Asus N61JQ Owners Lounge *

Thanks so much for that

I don't think 8x AA would differ too much in terms of eye candy?

Anyway, is there the ability to OC the video card, like some other Asus laptops? As in, an official OC software from Asus?

 

I just got an email from UPS giving me a tracking number from XoticPC. My N61JQ-A1 has shipped! Finally!

I should receive it by the end of the week based on how long it takes to reach the Miami office.

 

Yes, some users have reported being able over-clocked the 5730, if you search the forums you'll find more details. From what I gather, it can be over-clocked quite well.

 

MSI has just released a gaming laptop with core i5 and ati 5730. So you might ask what's the big deal about it...we have core i7 and 5730 lets move on. Well, it has SWITCHABLE GRAPHICS!

check out the link http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=newsdesc&news_no=982

Edit: I really don't need switchable graphics, but I know some folks in here want better battery life when not gaming.

 

Yes MSI offers good value for their products but I think the Asus wins for better build quality and design Not too fussed about switchable graphics since now the N61 has Optimus Technology.

 

Darn it, looked through many many pages but yet to find the information on OC-ing. I must look harder!

 

Better stuff always comes out. But its a 17 inch though so its a no go for me.

I'm just happy I will finally be getting my n61 soon with my ATI graphics (I can't trust Nvidia for my next system)

 

I know...I'm never buying nvidia again (at least for laptops). So far I'm extremely satisfied with the N61 and the 5730. I know you will too once you get it.

 

found it: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=457517

 

I was able to overclock my card but very limited on the memory. Can get to 875-880 before I start seeing artifacts. The core on the other hand was able to get to around 780 before it started locking up. I had to use the amd gpu clock tool version v0.9.26.0 to get it to overclock. Tried msi afterburner but the clocks would reset upon hitting apply.

With my gpu at 760 and memory at 875 it bumped the 3dmark score from around 8000 to close to 8800.

 

i don't understand... the card SHOULD be supporting 5ghz according to asus and google... i was able to get the latest version from another site. asus support driver downloads site lists only intel cards...

 

I would rather get the N71. I do like MSI but, that looks like the N71 with a subwoofer.

 

Thank you so much, I thought it was in this thread

This guy upped it to 800MHz core and 1000MHz memory (see above link). Wow!

That's pretty good, I can't believe 5730 can perform this well! Now that I know NBA 2k10 works on this, I would love to know if FSX would work too. Then I can cancel my desktop PC I ordered.

 

Apparently they also have a 16" version, the GE600 that has a 1080p 16" LCD and an available 9 cell battery. It comes with a Core i5 and the ATI 5730 but it looks ugly IMO. You gotta envy that screen though

There is no mention of switchable graphics on this one though. It probably has it as well.

http://www.coated.com/msi-reveals-new-gaming-notebook-ge600/

 

This card just does not support 5ghz. You can find the specs on this link.
http://www.atheros.com/pt/AR9285.htm
The stuff on google you were looking at is for another combo card that has the AR9285 as part of it but that is not our card. And the driver updates that list 5ghz for that card is dated 9/6/09. Our cards driver is 10/5/09. Initialy I was stressing over this too since my router supports 5ghz. But I got over it since it is pretty cheap to upgrade this card and you could easily install it yourself.
In summary you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out if this card supports 5ghz if you want. But we have checked this out in this lounge and it just does not. This was also backed up by Donald at PowerNotebooks.
Some have suggested that you probobaly wouldn't notice much difference anyway. And I have not bothered to update this card yet because it is working so well in my laptop.

 

Superjojo, Whats up with the fixation on the MSI's ? Are you getting tired of your N61 already? Just joking with you but its hard to compare these with ours without a price. And with technology you can drive yourself nuts looking at the new laptop every month.
P.S- Switchable graphics? We don't need no stinking switchable graphics!

 

If you are talking about the N61JQ manual. It gives a very general description and states on select models. They are not talking about this specific wireless card.

 

As thiggy said it is the rubber coating on the edge of the bottom half. There is some speculation that rubbing on laptop bags might be contributing to this.
We have had a total of 3 reports of this here including Thiggy. You can find these reports on the first page of this lounge including pictures.

 

A Google search will turn up drivers for most devices. There's a driver posted here that might work for you http://www.opendrivers.com/driver/2...-diver-8.0.0.239-windows-7-free-download.html

I think a lot of the confusion surrounding this card stems from that fact that it is fully compliant with 802.11n spec but des not have a 5ghz radio antennae.

 

ah thats alot... im a bit disappointed that it doesnt support it. i didn't have a choice to upgrade since i bought it off amazon, and even if i did i wouldn't have because i thought it supported anyways.

 

I second your disappointment. I ordered thru Newegg and I wouldn't have known to upgrade the card either. Seems like Asus just they missed the boat when they selected this card.

 

The weird part is that if you look at the model number on the wireless card itself it will not be AR9285. I'm not sure why the driver registers it as such.

 

I wouldn't stress it. You can upgrade the wifi really easily. You should be able to pick up and Intel card for around $30 - $60. I had the opposite issue. I opted for the upgrade to the Intel 5100 not knowing there is an issue between that card and my DLink-655. Luckily Donald at PowerNotebooks was kind enough to send me the original card.

 

So there is something weird about my laptop. On my optical drive, it shows two drives, blue ray and the regular.
I did not upgrade to blue ray.

Also this occured recently.

 

I upgraded my WLAN card myself. I bought an Intel Advanced-N 6200 from an eBay shop in UK. It works perfectly.

This seller ships free of charge to USA also.

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/laptopmonkeyworldwide/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

The above mentioned shop is the new one from this seller. He has also another one here:

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/laptopmonkey/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

 

My A1 is supposed to finally be delivered today! Yes!!!

Just curious, has anyone yet determined a proper hard drive caddy to replace the optical drive with?

 

So you aren't getting any drops in connection, streaming at full ability of the connection and your ping times have been excellent?

If so, there should be no need for me to change this card to the Intel 5300 from my m860tu as every computer in my house is comfortable at the 2.4ghz range.

 

would you mind posting again some pictures of the peeling part?

 

Well. I ordered mine.... The Beginning of February... Havent seen it yet. Starting to get annoyed. Almost to the point of cancelling my order and having them send my money back.

 

I have an N71 and I can confirm this as well on mine. While I love the rubberized feeling, every time I put it into my backpack, I notice a little more comes off just on the corners all the way around. It's driving me a little nuts, to tell you the truth.

 

I have not had one drop in connection. I'm not watching movies on this thing so I'm not to sure about the streaming except that I have tried watching TV shows in HD and that streams fine. I've seen anywhere from 10 to 46 on ping times. I will eventually upgrade this as my router supports 5ghz but this card seems to work fine. Let me know of anything you want me to check on it. Click these pictures to enlarge them.

 

Go to the first page of this lounge. Scroll down to protective coat peeling and check out the links with pictures below it.

 

Adamal, I can't remember what you came up with on this. Is it a AR9285 with a different label or is it a completly different card. If is is different what card do you have?

 

Shipments have been scarce... the latest shipment was 3/12, of which there were apparently a small number of laptops being sent to resellers.

The next shipment, which is supposed to be 3/31, is apparently a bigger shipment. I was in your boat, I ordered on 2/6, and just received mine today (surprisingly, since I was told by the reseller that I was likely in the March 31st shipment).

Hang in there... the lack of laptops is an ASUS thing, not a reseller thing.

 

In windows under device management it shows up as AR9285. However when I installed the wireless card I took a look at the model number listed on the card. It does not say AR9285, it is listed as AR5B95.

It's hard to get any concrete info on the AR5B95 part number but it does seem that it supports 5 Ghz. This might just be a driver issue, but I'm not sure.

 

Considering I ordered mine before you. Im a little more pissed now

 

I've been talking with BTO tech about a hard drive caddy and they told me the optical drive is a 12mm SATA model. Should be the OBHD-SATA12-SATA-B http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=244

Let me know how it works for you, I'll be ordering an optical caddy of my own as soon as BTO confirms my order. I'll try to post some benchmarks when I receive the laptop and caddy. I'm thinking 3 benchmarks: the 500gb drive in the HDD bay, the 500gb drive in the ODD caddy and 80gb Kingston SSD in the HDD bay. Never benched a disk drive before so it would be good to hear some recommendations.

 

Hah. Well supplies, for the most part, ran out well before I ordered mine in Feb, but with my particular reseller I was #2 in the backorder line, so I was able to get my order filled from last week's shipment.

At this rate, if you're 2 weeks away from the next shipment, might as well hang in there since you've waited this long already. I was prepared to wait until the 3/31 shipment, and if I didn't get mine by the first week of April, I was going to start looking into alternatives...

 

Can you do a ping test as well at pingtest.net? and also how do these results compare to if you were connected via ethernet to the router as opposed to wireless. Thanks very much.

 

I stream from my stock X1 to my PS3 all the time and haven't had a single hiccup. I really have nothing to complain about in this machine.

 

It is an AzureWave AR5B95 which uses the Atheros AR9285 chip. It is only 2.4Ghz. The vendor/device ids are 168c:002b. Sorry. I wanted more from it also.

I really haven't had any issues and it is smooth as can be for all my downloading, p2p and streaming. I have no complaints (and you know how I love to cause trouble). ;-)

 

Here is the ping test. Since we are testing the wireless card why would we want to compare it to the ethernet connection?

 

anyone try this driver ? does it turn on the 5 ghz range ?

http://www.opendrivers.com/driver/2...-diver-8.0.0.239-windows-7-free-download.html

 

Talk about confusing. So many model numbers on this card. Here is the best info I've been able to drum up:
http://cgi.ebay.com/AzureWave-AW-NE...ItemQQimsxZ20100315?IMSfp=TL100315134002r8650

Summary:
Supports up to 150 Mbps
Highly integrated single chip PCI Express CMOS solution with MAC/baseband processor 2.4Ghz radio
Backward-compatible to 802.11g; forward-compatible to 802.11n
Supports all mandatory IEEE 802.11n draft 7.0 features
- incuding several IEEE 802.11n draft 7.0 optional features, such as HT40, half-guard interal in HT40 and Rx Space Time Block Coding
COmpliant with IEEE 802.11b, 802.11d, 802.11e, 802.11g and 802.11i standards and draft specification.

 

This card does not support 5GHZ!! Randomly trying drivers is not going to change that and might screw up an otherwise good working card.

 

Look at what you guys are doing to Greg! I think he is the only one left who hasn't exploded. HA!

Anyway, the AzureWave AR5891 only supportes 2.4Ghz.

 

Thank's Adamal & David. I added your post to the first page under questions about wireless conection. Now can we all please let it go! It's just like the low resolution screen only this is so easy to fix with a wireless card upgrade. It is what it is and wishing it so won't make it connect in 5ghz. Just upgrade the dam thing!

 

I can confirm that the N71JQ-A1 also comes with the same AzureWave card as the N61JQ-A1.

I need some time to time 5GHz so I upgraded to Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 on my own.

@Allyw123

You got +1 rep from me.

 

Essentially to see how much 'loss' if any, there is to the internet connection.

But seeing from your test, there is none. So I'm happy with the stock wireless card then

 

Deathwinger, If you can live with the screen resolution you are going to love this laptop! Don't worry about the problems we have posted here odds are you won't have any of them. I would be carefull with the peeling edges though. I have not put mine in a bag yet so I have not had that problem. It might be better to put in it a sleeve only or sleeve in a bag if you need a bag.
So did the EDGE have a long healthy productive life?