Asus N80Vn-GP011C: First Impressions/Review

I never had the game when it was on the T5800 so I don't know about performance on that chip (I'm tempted to put it back in just to test out performance, but I don't wanna deal with the trouble of disassembling the laptop to gain access to the CPU again), however considering my friend plays the game fine on his measly T5470, I'd bet the performance difference is primarily from my overclocking the GPU (700 MHz core, 530 MHz memory on drivers 180.70).

 

What GPU does it have?

 

G50Vt has a geforce 9800GS 512

 

Do you use Dox's drivers or something else? I read a thread saying there are only 1 or 2 old drivers that prevent the 9650m GT from having horrible performance in left 4 dead.

 

Update on the Car Power Inverters.

I purchased the 200watt (continuous power) inverter from Wal-Mart, and it worked fine in my personal and work car. Unfortionately it's Wal-Mart no name brand, and a little bigger than the slick Best Buy brands.

 

So what if its walmart brand, its cheaper and better than the offerings at best buy were.

 

Is there a huge difference in performance between the 9650gt @ 1280x800 (N80vn-G) and the 9800gs 1680x1050 (G50vt-x6) That's really what i'm wondering.

 

There apparently is no option in the N80's BIOS for TPM. It's not a big deal really, but I am using Vista Ultimate and was hoping for an easier method of using Bitlocker than USB drives.

 

@ Naris - I know there was an option for TPM in the generic stats for the N80Vn on Asus's global site, but the GP011C doesn't have a TPM.

@ Gaming Nurse - the 9800 GS in the G50 is definitely going to give you some serious performance and will probably last you longer than the 9650 in the N80. However, the screen size of the G50 and overall weight/portability will definitely be a factor. Obviously higher resolution on the G50's 15.4", but if any sort of portability is an issue, I'd vote for the N80.

 

Another strange little quirk I've found is the fact that this notebook apparently hates anything that contains SecuROM DRM. After doing a basic reset and adding Dox 180.84 drivers and a few of the more useful Asus applications I tried installing a couple of games containing the DRM (KOTR and Spore). Both of them seem to find an emulator program that I for the life of me cannot find.

I'm debating whether or not to just reinstall the Asus factory drivers to see if those work, or just locate a cracked copy of those games to be able to play them since my legally bought copy doesn't work.

 

@Gaming Nurse - Well here are a few things to throw out there. N80 is a 14" with a lower res meaning that it can game at a native resolution at a decent level for a longer time. And of course it is more mobile cuz it weighs less. The N50 does have a better vid card but it is also a 15" and has a larger res which kinda makes it equal to the N80 more less cuz you'll be gaming at different resolutions. I'd go for the cheap and save the money for the next upgrade but that's just me.

 

@ Gaming Nurse - the 9800 GS in the G50 is definitely going to give you some serious performance and will probably last you longer than the 9650 in the N80. However, the screen size of the G50 and overall weight/portability will definitely be a factor. Obviously higher resolution on the G50's 15.4", but if any sort of portability is an issue, I'd vote for the N80.[/QUOTE]

Zmatin:

Yeah, the size of the N80 is definitely a plus. I've read multiple reviews on newegg regarding the G50 about how large it is for a 15". I'm looking for more mobility as i will be taking this thing to school and at work. I think i'm pretty much set on purchasing the N80 over the G50 just because of it's cheaper price (I'll be saving around $300), similar CPU to the G50, mid/high GPU. What i'm wondering is how will the performance of COD World At War & Fallout 3 be on the N80 assuming i try to put it at FULL SETTINGS on each game.

 

I totally agree. I was thinking since the native res is only 1280x800 with 1gig ram of VRAm it would pretty much be equal to the G50 in terms of performance. I've pretty much decided on purchasing the N80 but now i'm looking for the best price. On newegg they're currently selling it for 1199. Anyone know any other place where it's cheaper?

 

I'm not sure about Fallout 3. I played that on my desktop with a 9800GTX at full everything and it wouldn't run well....same with Crysis. Personally I think that every game has to be customized to the vid card/res you're using and just turn on what is important to you to see if you're satisfied with the performance. For me the N80 can pull off what I need now and in the near future. As long as it can play EVE, WAR, and later Diablo3 and SC2 then I'm all good.

 

Mide:

How about COD 4 & 5? I'm assuming since those games are highly optimized that they will perform to near max or max settings on the N80. Can't wait to play online with this laptop! Other reviews on newegg explain that they're running Far Cry 2, Crysis and Fallout on max settings. What settings are you guys running these games on your N80? I'm sure i'll be able to run a mix of medium and high settings for crysis, same with fallout right?

 

Humm well the lower resolution will definitely help but Crysis is still pretty demanding. The only games I currently have now are EVE and WAR and they can both be played maxed out. Sorry I already sold most other FPSs that I've played. Perhaps another owner can fill in the blanks.

 

Uh for fallout its more of all medium settings and still choppy for me, COD4 will probably run pretty well(not max I would guess) forget COD5, there is no optimization in COD5 and even my ATi HD4870 chuggs in it( but maxes L4D, Fallout 3, COD4, ect)

 

FYI Newegg has the N80VN-X1 for $749.99 after $100 rebate and $50 coupon code EMCABAHAC.

 

I just got the laptop yesterday, but I noticed annoying noise coming from the fan. It's kind of like rattling and air flow noise? It's hard to describe. I pulled the fan out, and it seems like when it's out, it doesn't make that noise(I pulled the fan out while it was spinning. lol), but whenever I put it back in the slot, it makes the noise. Anyone has the same problem like this??
Also,is the wheel of the mouse that came with the laptop supposed to be this hard to turn? There's no way to spin it with one finger. Wonder I got a defected one? lol

 

yeah for reference I was playing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and I can either use high settings with static lighting (which looks pretty poor) or medium settings with object dynamic lighting (which nets me ~30 fps). I can't even touch the full dynamic lighting setting. Point is, you can play just about any game on this GPU, but you are sorely mistaken to think you can max out a lot of modern games.

The 9650m gt is basically the same as an 8600gt desktop card. You can can check out toms hardware for reference benchmarks.

 

I don't agree with this thing about these cards being equivalent because of the screen's resolution. I seriously doubt that's the case even if you're running at the native resolution, but you absolutely DON'T need to run at the native resolution. No, it won't look quite as good, but games look fine running at lower resolutions in my experience, even on monitors from 4 or 5 years ago. But there's just no way an 8600 class GPU is going to compete with something with at least twice as much execution hardware.

 

I think Stalker is a bad example though, it's a Russian (or Ukraine or something) made game and is still kinda glitchy and really demanding for what your getting. I played it (and loved playing it) on my desktop, but I do know that where Crysis ran flawlessly on my PC, Stalker had some problems. Good game though, the new one is even more buggy.

 

Yeah Stalker seems oddly demanding for the somewhat dated graphics. I can also point to Medieval II as a game that the 9650 struggles with. Many of the detail and shadow settings have to be cranked down to allow frame rates over 20.

Don't get me wrong, it works quite well overall, but I'm just trying to illustrate some of the limitations of the card. I've been quite happy with it, but people should know that its not in the same league as a 9800 (as Wolfpup was saying a couple posts ago).

 

Does anyone know of a good way to fix the keyboard flex issue on the left side? The clacking noise of the keys to the left of 'S' gets annoying when gaming, so I was just wondering how I could remedy this besides sending it to Asus. Thanks.

 

Hi

I know that Asus N80Vn-GP011C comes with Vista 32 Bit though I have been told that Vista 64 Bit is more suitable for the gaming as compare to 32 Bit.

So can you guys please suggest any other model from Asus that got similar or better specs but same price range but comes with Vista 64 Bit?

Also which online store (trust worthy and reliable) is selling this laptop for lowest price?

Thanks guys.

 

Also I have been told that I can upgrade the Vista 32 bit by purchasing Vista 64 bit directly from Microsoft for just $10 (hard to believe), is it true?

If yes then how?

 

I haven't seen any 64-bit Vistas getting released with any Asus laptops but I don't know for sure. Vista 64 sucks in my opinion...when I ran it on the N80 a ton of the sourceforge software I ran did not work. Same went for commercial programs like Nokia's syncing software. I didn't notice any gaming advances in going to the 64-bit and having it fully utilize the 4GB of memory either. Just be aware that there can be a bunch of incompatibilities with Vista 64....experiences may differ of course.

@Pvt Ryan No idea. I hate the keyboard with a passion. I even removed it from the chassis to see if anything could be done. I guess you could try to put "something" between the keyboard and the chassis but I don't know what would be thin enough to fit and hard enough to make the keyboard seem less like something from Fisher Price.

 

Mide, from taking a look behind the keyboard how much play would you say there is; aka how thick of a shim would i need to use to get rid of the flexing?

 

I wouldn't say 64bit is more suitable for gaming but if you want to unlock nearly an extra gig of ram by all means install 64bit, Mide has had a lot of problems because it looks like hes using unsupported and developed software that probably doesn't have 64bit compatible drivers.

As far as software alone goes 64bit can run any 32bit flawlessly, but if there are certain programs that require specialized drivers and only support 32bit operating systems they wont work(I have never come across a program like this, but that doesn't mean you won't.)

Only drawback to 64bit to me is the lack of ability to run 16bit programs(which I only needed to do once, can be remedied by making a DOS boot disc)

 

Thanks guys for reply, can any body please please please help by telling me how i can get a new Asus N80Vn-GP011C for under $1000????

By the way I really hope that the existing Vista users will be offered to pay a small amount for upgrading to Windows 7 - HOPEFULLY

 

You were told wrong. If anything I'd say it's the other way around. 64-bit Vista won't be super useful for gaming until we need more than 3 or 4GB.

 

@ SMSabir - No discounts at this time that I'm aware of. The live.com discounts, etc. are over.

 

thanks Wolfpup and zmatin for replying to my post, thanks.

i really really really want this laptop but cant afford the $1100 price tag, maybe future i will get it when the prices are down though at that time some more hot super tempting machine will be out lusting me to get it.

thanks

 

Got a question: can this model really be upgraded to 8GB RAM max?
It seems 4GB should be plenty, but I said that about 512mb once.

 

Hey guys, I actually just received this laptop yesterday morning and have been running a couple tests to see what kind of performance I could squeeze out of this thing. When I first received it, it was running kind of sluggish due to all the bloatware I guess but after following E.B.E's guide on optimizing Vista on Asus notebook this thing started really running. Now for the good part...I actually wanted to see what kind of benefit I was getting from all these tweaks so I ran 3DMark06 once after the guide, I then updated the 9650MGT driver to 179.28 and ran it again after using ScuderiaConchiglia's defrag/optimizer and ran it a third and last time after using Vista's own defrag and overclocking slowly but surely at 10 mHz intervals to find that the most stable speed for the core and mem speed were, respectively, 651Mhz and 547Mhz. At this point the temp readings reach a max of ~72~74C which was very surprising.

My results in 3DMark06 were actually pretty awesome:
First run (stock driver + E.B.E's guide) = 4667
Second Run (Updated driver + defrag/optimizer= 4729
Final Run (Vista Defrag + OC) = 5838

I would like to know what you all think of these numbers...I was actually pretty impressed!
Oh and I used snipping tool to save the scores after each test so if any of you doubt just tell me and I'll post them up.

 

4 GB is currently the max according to Asus. If you're using 32 bit you don't even get to use the whole amount. The new W90 that's coming out is using 3 RAM slots for a max of 6 GB of RAM.

However, I'm not sure if a 4 GB max is a hard limit or a limit like Palm's 2 GB limit that isn't really a limit. In either case the only 8 GB set I can find is almost half the cost of the notebook itself.

 

Quick question for you XP downgraders... have any of you tried the HDMI output after switching to XP? Does anyone know if it stays functional after the downgrade?

 

I got XP x86 and I'm using it on my External 19" LCD HDMI to DVI and it works great, no problems. The Nvidia drivers handle everything for you.

 

Hey guys who wants to try the new Windows 7 beta in this lappy and give some impressions about compatibility and performance???

This is the link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx

 

It seems to work for most things. The only two drivers I can't seem to install are the IR drivers and the fingerprint reader driver. Windows 7 has built in biometric options so I'm not sure why it doesn't work. I've been looking for the authentec drivers online but have had less luck than I'd like.

Unfortunately I mistakenly changed my active partition and am now in the process of fixing it (typing this from my immortal Z70V).

I had some issues with the Fn key drivers as well, but I could turn the LCD on and off (but couldn't dim or brighten it). I'm using the 64 bit version of it.

RAM and processor usage tend to be in the middle of what I got in XP and Vista. It uses more than XP so many things started up quicker but doesn't keep popping up with warnings that I'm running out of memory like it did with Vista. Most of the drivers installed automatically when you use the driver disk, and there is no annoying UAC popups for the most part. I haven't tried most of the Asus applications but I've read here and there on the forums here that they aren't all working.

Overall I like it. I'll probably buy an upgrade version when it finally comes out. It hasn't crashed, runs quickly, adds about half an hour of battery life, and aside from messing up my bootmgr it was a pleasure to use.

EDIT: Oh and the laptopvideo2go drivers work fine.

 

No one is answering to my question. =[

Well hope this time someone answers for me. I have this annoying fan noise. It's kind of like rattling noise. Also, it sounds kind of like hard drive, but I know it's not the hard drive since I pulled the fan out while it's spinning, and when I did, the noise went away. Whenever the fan is in the slot(place), it makes this annoying noise. It's not fan either since when I pulled it out, it didn't make any noise. It has to be something with wind the fan makes rattles something in my laptop? Is anyone experiencing same thing? Should I take it back and get a new one or something? Thanks

 

I am not experiencing your fan noise. If possible I'd just exchange it, but sometimes that's harder depending on who you purchased it from.

 

By any chance can any body please tell me if Asus N80Vn-GP011C laptop is available in any retail store in BELMONT,MA???

Since I reside out of USA so a friend who lives in Belmont, MA is coming to visit me after 3 days so he can get that laptop for me if available in the area.

Help me guys.

 

Hello people, Do you know that Asus launch a new model called n81 with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4600 series (4650 or 4670). As far as I know is the main difference between the n80 that has nVidia GPU, the lap looks exactly like the n80???

So what do you think about this upgrade... good or bad??? I dont have any experience with nVidia or ATI products son I dont know which is better, also I consider that apart of the graphics capabilities, the heat emmisions is also very important, dont wanna fry my lap for playing a game.

I want some recommendations because I am planning to buy the n80 but I dont know if is better to wait and see the price of n81

 

I hadn't heard about that...I'd be more excited if it had a higher end Nvidia GPU.

In terms of performance, AFAIK those ATi GPUs are closer to ATi's high end, whereas the n80's GPU is Nvidia's mid or low end...but of course you're stuck with ATi drivers, no official driver updates, etc.

 

Hey guys I read that all the 4000 models will have GDDR5, I suppouse that, it will bring a huge impact in the games performance or am I wrong???

link: http://www.islabit.com/2623/amd-presenta-nuevas-gpus-moviles-en-ces-09.html

 

@ Wolfpup

So you think that going with ATI is a bad choice even if the GPU seems huge better than the 9650m GT DDR2???

 

Well no, not necessarily, it's just if given a choice between similarly priced, similarly performing parts, the Nvidia choice makes more sense, mainly because of drivers.

 

I would wait and see what kind of performance these new chips provide before making any decisions about what to buy. Speculatively, the 4600 series could be significantly faster than a 9650 GPU. You need to have patience on this, becuase its all a moot point until there are some benchmarks and tests to go on.

As an aside, the 4600 is not a high end GPU. It runs a 128-bit memory bus like most mid-range mobile graphics chips. The 4800 series is the high end set of GPU's.

 

The 4600 series is for mid range laptop just like the 9600 series from nVidia. I look for the new model of nVidia GPU and look exactly like the 9650m GT, I refer to the best of the new ones: the GeForce GT 130M.

According with notebookcheck GPU comparison the 9650 and 130m are above the 4670, the one that I expect it has the n81 (If is 4650, I go for the n80)