Asus N80Vn-GP011C: First Impressions/Review

Yeah, I discovered I can just use those. When I reboot, it defaults to whatever is in that profile. It's a little weird though that it doesn't just default to whatever you used last (I mean that seems to be a Windows thing, I gues).

 

wolfpup, you mean if i plan to upgrade my RAM to a 1066 ddr3 the n80 wont read it?

 

No, unless I'm completely screwed up about this, you'd probably damage the system if you tried to force that in there.

But as I said, it's a moot point-they have the same performance. We're better off right now with DDR2 since it's cheaper (though who knows in a couple of years that could reverse or something).

 

Engadget's report on the N81Vg, for your enjoyment

Looks like it's sporting an nVidia GT 120M, which is kind of an unknown quantity, but the 130M is reportedly the same as the current GT 9650m in the N80Vn-GP011C, so the 120m should be comparable to the 9600m. It is reportedly coming with a blu-ray burner, which is nice for those who've been trying to figure out a bootleg/external option for the notebook. Should probably be able to just order the drive and drop it in.

 

zmatin, is the performance of this card really comparable to the 9650 despite the site reporting that the 120m has 3dMarks scores of 5,431? i don't think we can hit the 5k mark with our n80's even with the latest drivers.

 

Interesting I guess I will wait. You know what is really crazy about it is that it will come with "DirecX 10". I think that it will be pretty crazy and the first laptop with it.

"The newfangled 120M GPU features NVIDIA CUDA technology, 32 processing
cores, DirecX 10 support, 1080p video playback" Lol haha

Do you think it'll come standard with bluray?

 

Quick question:

I recall that when the laptop (p8600) is plugged in and fully charged it actually STOPS charging right? sorry for the stupid question but i just rmember that when it's fully charged it states that it's plugged in but right next to that statement it used to say "not charging." Now it doesn't

 

I'm getting really frustrated with my X5 I don't know if it's 64-bit Vista (I really wanted 32-bit) or Vista in general, or what, but I just have so much weirdness. Random updates that I never told it to install. Right now it's shutting down, with the hard drive thrashing for no apparent reason (been at it for minutes-not crashed, but it's still doing something).

The included Power2Go is either incompatible or a buggy mess. (I'm switching it out for Roxio...hopefully.) I've several times had my start menu items appear as a folder on my *desktop*. Switching back to the default Vista start menu gets rid of it, and it stays gone when I switch back to classic, but then has come back twice so far.

On top of that, the screen's really terrible. Even if it is LED backlit (as it seems to be), the actual screen used is just atrocious. Horrible, horrible viewing angles that...well, if you adjust it for the top of the screen, the bottom is off, and vice versa-it's that bad. (Though to be fair, I've mostly only seen high quality notebook screens like on Sony's AW, Apple's stuff, Dell's 1640, etc., plus my desktop and Sony HDTV, which don't use TN panels).

(Okay, there after a good 10 minutes it just got done thrashing and shutting down.)

I've had the same thing happen with Word 2007-and again, I don't know, is it Vista? Vista 64-bit in combination with Office 2007? Something weird with the laptop?

But I mean I've had MULTIPLE crashes in Word 2007, and I haven't even done much with it. Like a typed a few paragraphs, and it hung when I clicked some menu. Hung again doing something else-nothing fancy or complicated.

When was the last time I've had Office crash? I mean I can't remember (though I've never used 2007 for any length of time until now).

This is all just really frustrating. At least the thermals on this laptop seem to be really good!

 

I highly recommend just doing a clean install of the 32-bit Vista OS and going from there. "Bloatware" is a non-issue on this computer, aside from Norton Trial and MS Office Trial, which are non-integral, so I don't suggest removing programs that are included in the install package. Included ASUS utilities do not interfere or have any quirks that I am aware of. For me, this machine has been nothing but rock solid for most everything I use it for. Have you tried doing a clean reinstall from the restore discs/partition?

 

Oh sorry, this actually is a clean install (of the included 64-bit Vista...unfortunatly the biggeset difference between the GP011C and the X5 is the switch from 32 to 64-bit Vista). I don't really know that 32-bit Vista would be better, but if nothing else I'd like to chalk the problems up to 64-bit.

EDIT: I'm letting Memtest run on it overnight (well...lost a good hour since I couldn't get Power2Go to actually burn a disc...switched to Roxio and it burned it, but then the program wouldn't quit...)

But anyway, 44% done with it's first pass, and no errors so far.

 

Are you still triple folding on your laptop?

 

Not for a while, though I should see about getting the SMP client going. The weird thing is THAT works just fine. Totally stable. It also passed about 8 passes of Memtest fine (didn't have time for longer, but it's probably just fine).

So...I'm leaning towards compatibility issues with 64-bit? Bizarre that Office 2007 of all things would be flaky with it. Not much choice anymore. The GP011C was one of the last systems I've seen that still shipped with 32-bit, and now it's replacement...

 

DOH! On top of everything else, my Lite On external Blu Ray drive keeps thinking it doesn't have a disc in it part way through a movie. I don't think it's the computer, because it still 'sees' the drive, but the drive doesn't see the disc.

 

Hey Y'all... I just purchased F.E.A.R. 2 for this computer and currently installing it. I'll give you guys an update on the performance of this game once i have it up and running...

 

Ugh. Okay, now I unlocked my computer, and every time I hit 'u' it would bring up some accessibility thing. Thankfully locking and unlocking it again fixed that, but geez is 64-bit Vista buggy.

 

Could someone please tell me the clock speeds of this DDR2 9650M GT? All of the info I find on the web is for the DDR3 version.

Cheers

 

clock speeds are 550 core / 1025 shader (I think) / 400 memory

 

Here's the update on FEAR 2. I overclock the 9650 to 650/500 when i play my games and so FEAR runs incredibly smooth at those settings. I'm playing with everything set at maximum, AAx2 and Anisotrophic x2. Great game so far...

 

The 'core' clock is 550Mhz, the RAM is 400Mhz (ie 800Mhz)...but the actual processors are at 1350Mhz! Officially they're supposed to be at 1325 I guess, but Asus apparently has them at 1350Mhz, which is virtually the same as the GT 130! It's actually getting to be a nice jump up from the Geforce 8600, even though the actual execution hardware is the same.

 

I'm very interrested by this notebook.
But in FRANCE, only the N80Vn-GP022E is available.

Does anyone knows the differences with the N80Vn-GP011C ?
Does N80Vn-GP022E comes with a Trusted Platform Module ?

Regards

 

Has anyone swapped the DVD drive for a Blu Ray drive like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118027

or:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118010

Note that I don't actually even know if those are for notebooks, if they'd fit (they're slot loading), for sure how easy it is to swap, etc.

I've looked on the bottom, and it looks like there may be two screws you undo to be able to slide out the optical drive-they have a little picture of a disc by them.

And even then I don't know if there are issues. The review for that 5500 says new movies won't work without a non-existent firmware update, but the second drive has a higher model number-maybe its replacement?

Any thoughts or anything? My external Lite On is 'forgetting' it has a disc. I *THINK*/hope it's the drive and not my computer (I think so, as my computer can still see the drive even when the drive thinks it has no disc).

I thought maybe I'd send it back for an internal drive instead of an external...oh, but then I wouldn't have a hardware eject button..oh I don't know

 

Those drives should work. Any 12.7mm drive with SATA interface should connect and install fine. It won't be streamlined into the side of the notebook like the original drive though. It might stick out or be recessed. I was thinking about getting a slot-loading DVD burner because I hate the crappy tray versions so much.

 

Thanks! Well, I'm renting one more Blu Ray, and if this external drive is flaky with it too, I think I'll return it for the newer internal one. It's kind of "square" looking while the existing drive is sort of tapered down, but hopefully it'll be okay.

I had one of those Sony Opteric drives on the Dell 1640 I returned recently, and it was pretty great. Really quiet in operation, and just didn't seem flakey ike these "Matsitsu" whatever drives that cost the OEMs $5 less or whatever

 

Be careful with slot loaded one! Unlike the tray versions, you can hardly change the face panel of the slot loaded drive. Friend of mine tried on gateway, he ended up cutting the original panel to fit (warranty void). I know the slot loading is so sexy looking, but I've never had an issue (functional) with tray drive. Well, I had, once my HP Pavilion drive started to eject on it's own, but that was a quirk of specific bare drive (know also on Gateway and Asus machines).

I went for LG SATA 4x (GBW-T10N) burner from ebay with external envelope and I wil decide I will swap drives or keep it external/flexible. The drive itself has pretty good feedback. The bad is that I paid 400 bucks for it

 

I'm not seeing any try loading drives though on Newegg, unfortunatly.

I don't know how that would fit, as...I guess I'm assuming it would be more recessed than it is now, but sort of 'jagged' instead of tappered. Like the face plate on there is just square and flat and not curved like the one that comes with it...but if it basically fit solidly I wouldn't care.

I sort of think I'd rather try a new drive than get a replacement for the Lite On external that seems to not work. Now if Sony had an external I guess I'd go for that (though I'd prefer internal!)

 

I forgot to ask-I'm still having the volume really quiet with DVDs when it's through the external speaker. It's on the verdge of being to quiet at home, and anywhere else it would be worthless (though I'd have to use headphones anywhere else, so...

I tried installing the Realtek drivers Asus lists, but I don't think it helped, and MAYBE it made the sound pop/hiss a bit when sounds start and stop.

Is there any reason not to just switch back to the Microsoft default drivers, since I don't care about the extra features?

 

On friend's Gateway the drive is ~13mm recessed with it's flat panel. He had to cut away border of panel (using kitchen knife!!! OMG!!!) to flush with drive bay. Not sure which drive it is, but panel was sligtly larger, maybe to fit the original machine (Dell I think).

Btw. he was getting the new drive to replace a non-working Optiarc drive ... I have 7 years old CDRW Lite-on, no issue.

My brand new n80vn-c1 is coming tomorrow from US and drive also. I will post sdome news whe I have it.

 

Well...maybe a replacement Lite On would work? Or maybe it's the system's fault somehow?

 

I think I'm the only poster now

Don't know what I'm going to do with the BLu Ray issue (are we even sure this is a SATA and not PATA optical drive?)

But does anyone have a solution for how quiet it is when playing DVDs through the internal speakers? I"ve tried with Microsoft and Realtek drivers, and it's the same. Not unusable, but I'd like 2x the volume. (It sounds fine though-sound quality on this laptop is pretty solid.

Another thing for anyone who tried to remove the Realtek drivers-at least on 64-bit. It won't work. Installer fails. But I discovered that rerunning the original installer will tell you it has tofirst uninstall the existing drivers, and then to rerun the installer...which works. It removes them, reboots, and then Microsoft's drivers reinstall just fine (and unless you reran that installer, the Realtek drivers won't reinstall).

 

Just waiting for the ati card to come out.. Who needs an n81 =D

 

I just bought Crysis. My backlog's huge, but I figured what the heck, it was just $20 and I could always save it for my next system.

Anyway I tried it out, because I figure if it can run this... It actually defaults to all high settings when you run its autoscanner thing.

How's the performance? Well...I think it would be playable.

I ended up choosing the default 1024x768, and as expected the native 1280x800 drops the performance a bit.

At High, it was running 10-15 in the opening section, and looked pretty amazing. (Believe it or not, that frame rate looked more playable than it would suggest...which really makes me wonder what some of these console games run at...)
I decided to drop everything down to medium. Still looks nice, although there's noticeable draw in of like rocks and things in the environment, and it's...well it still looks as good as pretty much anything on medium.

That only raises the frame rate to 16-30ish. Seemed to be at its lowest during the brief fire fight at the beginning, though again, it stil seemed playable (I wonder if they're slowing down some instead of skipping frames...or something).

It could be that with a mixture of low and high settings, you could get it to look better than all medium, and perform better too. If I ever do end up playing it on this system, I'll have to play around with all the settings. (And this on 'medium' is still pretty crazy-tons of foliage, real time lights, real time shadows cast by trees, fancy water, etc...it's probably true that this game's 'medium' is like other games super high).

So...logically speaking i was expecting this to be able to play Crysis, but not well without lowering settings...and that's exactly what appears to be the case.

But given that it should still be enjoyable, the good thing is it should run everything else out there. I'm expecting it to tear through most everything else okay. (A Macbook Pro from a few years back outshone the consoles with Bioshock on a Geforce 8600GT, which had 1/4 the video RAM and slower GPU cores, but faster video RAM than this does...so I *think* Unreal 3.0, Idtech 4 and probably 5, and Source should all run just fine on here pretty well maxed out even (if you stick to 'medium' resolutions (which are actually high by any but today's standards)).

 

A few posts waay back i commented on the performance of Crysis Warhead and it played amazingly well. I didn't bother playing this game on DX10 mode but rather DX9 and it was awesome. You're correct at stating that this particular laptop will play anything else. I'm currently playing F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin on this laptop and it plays SMOOOOTH. You should try it out. Nice write up BTW

 

If you are into overclocking, you can net a ~15% fps gain and stay well within the cards limits. The cooling is also so good on this laptop that the GPU still only hits ~70C. I run 650/500 on a regular basis up from 550/400. It can make the difference between medium and high settings in some games (not Crysis though).

 

That's exactly what i do when i play any game. My question is, how do i set it where it automatically overclocks when i start a game? I know other people here on this forum have done it but I can't figure out how.

 

Okay, dumb question, but how do you turn off Direct X 10 in Crysis? I should have checked with it off, but I totally forgot that it would have been using SM 4.0 (well, in defense it was well after midnight when I was playing with this )

I ought to see how SM 3.0 does (assuming I wasn't accidentally using it), 'cause it actually seemed playable with DX 10!
Glad I didn't uninstall it yet, 'cause I want to play around with this.

 

WOw, me again! Are we sure the: Mata DVD-RAM UJ870BJ is a SATA device?

I'm still wondering if I should take a risk on that internal Sony slot loading drive, or take a risk on a different brand of external drive (since my Light On Blu Ray drive seems flaky).

 

Okay, crazy idea #379. I guess there's a person from...maybe Gentech? That posts here? And I guess maybe they upgrade N80s to have Blu Ray (I mean the systems they sell themselves)? SO...I wonder if they'd be willing to sell me one of those drives, or at least say what fits?

 

You have to use nTune, adjust the overclock to whatever you want and save it as a profile. Then go under performance > Adjust custom rules. Check "Load this Profile," then select "Game is loaded" and arrow it over into the conditions area. Click on the underlined profile word and select the overclocked profile. Then click on the underlined game word and select any games you would like this rule to apply to (probably all of them). You might have to manually go and list some of your game executables. Click "accept" and the rule is made.

Then just create a rule to load the default profile when games are stopped. Wham Bam Thank you Ma'am.

To delete a rule, select it in the rules box and hit the delete key.

 

So has anyone got the x5 yet? Any 3dmark's on it?

 

The X5 has the same CPU, GPU and Ram as the N80Vn-GP011C, hence 3dmark scores will be identical.

 

Yep, a bunch of us have it. That's what I was talking about with my Crysis results, though I still need to find out how to turn off SM 4.0 and switch down to3.0. Anyone know?

 

Shouldn't the HD speed give at least a little better of a score? I know its not a massive difference, but yeah. Just excited.

 

Yeah at stock it should net around 4600-4700. Overclocking can push that up about a 1000 points.

 

In order to play in DX9 mode "right click" on the Crysis Icon and you'll see "Play in DX9"

 

Thanks! Yeah I hadn't realized that last night.

Well, played around with it some more just now. SM 3.0 mode does raise performance quite a bit, and it still looks good.

Basically 'high' was getting maybe 15fps most of the time, which surprisingly actually looked playable. Medium boosted that to maybe 25-35 most of the time, with lows around 16. Seemed totally playable. Low surprisingly still looked good, and boosted it into the 40s.

That's all kind of just going by memory-but at any rate, this DOES appear to be able to play Crysis. You'd have to play around to get he best combination of features, and I think you'd probably want to stick to SM 3.0 mode as it adds quite a bit of performance, but...well even on 'low' this looks as good as the typical console game, and this laptop can definitely run it higher than that (and it does keep defaulting to 'high', which may well be useable with a bit of tweaking).

So...I'm pretty happy. It's about what I was expecting from it, and will easily keep me gaming for quite a long time, given it should run anything out there right now, and I have a huge backlog of older games to play through anyway. I mean if it gets something almost resembling a frame rate in Crysis in SM 4.0 Very High settings, then it's going to run most everything else fine I'd expect (not that I wouldn't rather have a 48 or 64+ processor GPU, but still!)

From the looks of it, it seems like the Crytek 2.0 engine scales really well, which you wouldn't get from all the bad press about it.

 

hi guys, i just got my c1 today and i've noticed something with the battery packed with it. it doesnt seem to charge until 100%, just stops at 99%. anyone else with this issue? or must be my battery memory. thanks.

 

My guess is Windows doesn't charge it until it hits a certain percent, then goes to 100%. Maybe...

Mine's at 98% right now and I haven't used it unplugged this week, and have never seen it charging. Probably will start charging at some point when it gets low enough.

 

I ran my battery down after a couple of hours and it charged back to 100%. I think it's currently sitting at 98% and not charging. I think it has to get down further (to what level?) before it'll charge.

 

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Probably protects the battery a bit.

Remember though that with lithium batteries, they last longest if you DON'T discharge them deeply-ie plug it in whenever you can.

So far I've only used mine on battery for a couple of minutes at a time though!

 

Yeah mine is always sitting around 98-99% Sometimes it is at 100% but many laptops don't let it sit there at 100% so it's not biggie.