Asus N80Vn-GP011C: First Impressions/Review

Don't worry about battery charge reading errors of up to 5%. But in any case, you could run a battery calibration from the BIOS and maybe the discrepancy will disappear.

 

thanks for all your help guys. im loving the c1 blazing quick thus far. havent been gaming on it though.

 

To any of you guys using N80Vn-XXX laptop and running the good old XP system on it, did anyone make the CIR port work under XP. I found this:

http://support.asus.com.cn/download...roduct=3&type=map&mapindex=14&SLanguage=en-us

and I will give it try today, even if I do not have any remote. By the way, remote is quite tricky to find, isn't it? I went the semi-risky way, ordered the "Original Asus DH remote" on eBay, hope it will work with integrated port, if not, it is still coming with USB receiver, so I hope I can make it work anyhow. Any hint?

Btw. there is nice Asus N80Vn XP driver overview posted here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4548668

by Ken. All worked fine.

 

No one's installed a blu ray drive in one of these yet? (Or used an external one?)

 

does anyone else with this laptop notice high drive activity on this laptop. it seems like even if all im doing is sitting there idle my hd light is still flickering away. I dont get this in windows 7 laptop i have. just with vista.

 

yeah I get this too. Every few seconds there is drive activity. I gave up on trying to figure out what it was.

 

Now that you mention it, my lappy does the same thing.

 

With Vista, yes. With XP, no.

 

I'd assume you're seeing optimization that's going on, or Vista pre-loading stuff when the drive's not in use. I see random disc activity, but it's normal, and a good thing.

 

Doh. Nobody's tried replacing the drive with a Blu Ray drive yet? Sad Wolfpup

I forgot to mention-I have yet more proof this sucker has awesome cooling! my x5 under full load runs at most around 50c for the CPU...a Toshiba with a 2GHz Athlon x2 (Turon or however that's spelled), idling, with the CPU actually running at 1GHz, was around 50-55c! Of course that's a 65nm chip, but still, it was running at less than half the clock speed, and doing nothing to get those temperatures (and with far fewer transistors), versus this Asus. I really do think it has excellent cooling! Asus obviously has engineers who know what they're going (and are apparently allowed to do their job).

I'm starting to see why there are so few complaints about Asus laptops...

 

i overclocked my gpu to 650 and i'm running gta 4 and the max the temp goes up to is 72c before the fans kick in to bring it back to 60c...thats pretty sweet. the one thing annoying is that everything i press the volume up/down buttons or anything, that annoying graphic comes up and if its in the middle of a game it can really mess up the game. how do i disable that u know?

 

Hi, just mentioning that I'm one of you guys now.

Bought squads' after he decided to sell it.

 

Ok so I'm an idiot. I own a N80vn-gp011c and stupidly I updated the chipset driver and a couple of other drivers with drivers from the site without making restore point. Now every time start up the computer at the login screen I have two administrator icons and two fingerprint icons (only need one of each) and now a asus face login icon too (which I want).
Also and more importantly now when I log into windows after the start up I get a message that the ICH9M LPC Interface Controller - 2919 needs a driver. Ive tried to roll back chipset driver no go and no driver for the interface controller to roll back to and can't find one on-line anywhere.
any help? pulling my hair out.
peace

 

Sounds like maybe uninstalling the affected drivers (and rebooting) and reinstalling might help?

I wish I could get mine to save passwords to network resources, and to quit asking me if it's okay to run the touchpad drivers

 

well there is no driver for the controller and even if i uninstall the device when I reboot it appears like some how it was found in plug and play. not really sure wot drivers are causing this anyhow.

 

Sounds like that may be the TPM module? If that helps :-/

 

how do I uninstall the TPM module? and thanks for the really quick help wolfpup.
edit: found it

 

weird side note: under the system devices the LPC Interface Controller - 2919 shows up fine and with up-to-date driver (stupid windows). No thoughts on the login stuff? anyone?
+ when I try to update TPM the message returns as: Trusted Platform Module could not be found?
cant find it in system devices either

 

I just received my new N80Vn-C1 and I am having an issue with the fingerprint reader. Is there a trick to doing it?

 

Not really the technology still kinda sucks in this regard

 

I never even bothered installing the drivers for it

I kind of figured at best I'd have extra stuff running all the time and somehow lock myself out of the system, and at worse the first person who comes along will swipe their finger on it and it'll unlock

 

hey.. have any one of u got this problem where suddenly all the desktop icons are missing?? And u know at the right side of the desktop, there is usually this some kinds of msnbc news, the clock, and norton antivirus?? they are also gone.. however, those things on the right of the screen appeared after i minimize any other windows..

I did not know what happen but this happened yesterday.. I did not know why n now all my desktop icons are missing.. N somehow, i felt my laptop is running kinda slow.. any suggestion??

 

Those are part of Windows Sidebar. I would imagine someone has disabled your Windows Sidebar. Just go to Search and type in Windows Sidebar.

Your computer should actually work faster without it running.

Does anyone else think the HDD causes the machine to vibrate extremely strongly?

 

For anyone that cares:
I was able to find and fix the double windows login icons they were caused by the asus camera login function. All I had to do was dissable (uncheck the box) the enforce asus login, it was under the settings of that program.
the asus site forum admin suggests that I do a system restore from the partition for the little yellow exclamaition mark on the device manager for the LPC controller (seems a bit extreme and haven't had any problems with out the driver so far.) any info to fix without a severe restore would be much appreciated.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about the Windows Sidebar though. At least with just the clock, calendar, and weather widget running, it uses 0% CPU time for me, and only uses around 13.5MB, which...well 15 years ago would have been staggering, but is nothing anymore. Though I'd close it I guess before I launched a high end game.

What model hard drive do you have? I bought a 320GB Seagate 7200RPM drive, which happened to be the same model mine shipped with. I don't notice any vibration from it. I guess if I stick my hand right over it I can sort of feel it through the case (maybe...it could be a fan too, I'm not sure).

In a quiet room I can hear it thunking about, but I don't feel it.

 

I've got the Hitachi 320GB 5400. The HDD isn't usually an issue, but if I'm installing something, the HDD's vibration reverberates through the whole laptop.

I have two spare Hitachi 7k320s lying around, might put those in.

 

Are you sure it's from the hard drive? I'd think it would be from the optical drive, if anything. I've got a Panasonic optical drive in there, which runs fine, but they're always noiser and rougher than hard drives are.

My 7200RPM Seagate doesn't vibrate anything though, so you'd think a 5400RPM drive it would be even less so.

 

I thought it was the optical drive at first, but the vibrations seemed to come most strongly from the HDD.

At any rate, I'm not that bothered by it. Just surprised.

 

If anyone is interested in power tweaking I have modded the nVidia BIOS to downclock and undervolt.

Defaults:
Performance level 0: 169 mhz gpu, 328 mhz shader, 100 mhz memory
Voltage: 0.89

Changed to:
Performance level 0: 150 mhz gpu, 300 mhz shader, 100 mhz memory
Voltage: 0.80

It does not seem to have any major significant difference in temps but every little bit helps. nVidia GPUs are power hungry and good winter heaters.

I used the instructions in the "Modding NVIDIA VGA BIOS" thread to change it.

 

Uh...power hungry compared to what? They use less than the equivalent ATi part, and Intel has no equivalent part, so...

At any rate, I had no idea they ran them so slow when not in use! The processors run at 1350mhz when under load.

 

nope its not the windows sidebar.. I'm having trouble with the desktop icons.. everytime i turn on my computer, all the icons will be gone.. I need to uncheck n recheck "show desktop icons" by right clicking on the screen.. I didn't know why, but sumtimes it just irritates me to keep on doing that everytime I turn on my computer..

 

That is weird. Mine doesn't do that, but for some reason it won't save passwords for network resources :-/ (and today randomly it was displaying contextual menus after they shouldn't be ther anymore...that was SUPER annoying...locking/unlocking fixed it temporarily, but it would come back---seems back to normal after a reboot. Hopefully Service Pack 2 will iron out the rest of the bugs.

 

so have you ever tried to restore its original data?? Im thinking of doing that but I dont think restoring to its original data is necessary.. I've tried to find whats wrong with my comp for the past few days but did not find any.. - -"

 

for those of you running planning to run pro tools (the music production prog) do not update the chipset or any of the tpm modules. I did end up having to to a entire system restore to resolve the problem. Also pro tools 8 refuses to work but 7.4 works jus fine.

 

Anyone having problems playing any of the latest 3d shooters? For some reason, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, and Crysis will play fine for about 5-10 minutes then crash. I have the latest Nvidia drivers (Feb 2009).

Also I've seen a ton of bios, chipset, memory, etc bios from Jan 2009 on Asus's site, should I be updating this?

 

I haven't gamed a whole lot on mine yet (finishing some games on another platform) but I know I've run Crysis longer than that, and I've run Folding at Home on both the CPU and GPU for days, which probably hits it harder than anything.

I did a fresh install, and kept drivers to a minimum. I've got Nvidia's newest drivers on there.

 

Hi there

Just a quick question since here I can see some really die hard fans of Asus N80 series.

Guys from US must have seen a particular laptop in BestBuy by Asus model: X83Vm-X2 (the first model was X83Vm-X1).

I have been told that its a very identical to N80, in fact few say that Asus only changed the color n lowered the specs in few areas for Bestbuy and in the end of the day its the same N80.

First question - is X83Vm-X2 / X1 really N80?
Second question - is X83Vm-X2 a good purchase (currently $800)?
Third question - can I use the same drivers of N80 with X83Vm-X2?

Thanks.

 

Yeah, I think it's the same basic thing, and the X2 has a MUCH nicer color than that X1 did (kind of a dark blue instead of a garish gold), and other than that has I guess a slightly better CPU (same clock speed, but there must be something better about it...can't remember the model numbers).

At $800 I think it's a terrible purchase though...I guess it depends on what you need it for. Besides the considerably slower (though not terrible) CPU, it's GPU is basically 1/4 the performance of the n80's GPU.

That laptop was at one point down to $630ish, which seemed a lot more tempting.

I guess it depends on what you need it for though. If you want to play games at all, or use the GPU for anything else, go for the n80, since it should be at least 4x the performance (not to mention the faster clocked + Penryn CPU). On the other hand, I'm really impressed with the n80's engineering-it's cooling system and things like that, and that n83 probably isn't a bad deal compared to other laptops in that price range, and at least it still has an Nvidia GPU, even if it's a low end one.

As far drivers, as far as I know they should be identical. You might want to check if that GPU is supported by Nvidia's official drivers though. (Even if it's not, you should still be able to force install the regular reference drivers, but I like having official support.)

 

Thanks Wolfpup.

Being honest I am really confused, it took me more then a month to finally decide about X83Vm-X2 though deep down from the start I am regularly checking this discussion for over a month now and I also feel that N80 is better then X2.

But I got a tight budget of $1000 but I do not want to go low on things like Cache Memory 3MB, System Bus 1066MHz and LED (BB claims that X2 got LED) etc. I saw 1 or 2 cheaper Asus of N80 in excaliberpc but spec wise those were lower then X2.

I really hate myself for missing that MSN Live discount offer for Asus laptops.

Tell you the truth I really want N80 but cant afford it

 

I have a partial solution for you.

MSN Cashback @ 8% + Ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com/ASUS-N80Vn-GP011C-14-1-2-4GHz-4GB-320GB-DVD-RW-Laptop_W0QQitemZ270348287471QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLaptops_Nov05?hash=item270348287471&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1240|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

Or try to pick up a used N80.

 

Thanks for replying. I told that before that I am not in US so someone is getting the laptop for me and that person isnt any fond of mail orders and home delivery, will go to BB and get that

Though I am trying to convince him for this, by the way I saw another model of N80 in newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220488

specs are good, reviews are good, any suggestions?

 

Yeah, that's the one I ordered a month ago! It's kind of the replacement for the GP011C (except no bag and mouse, a faster hard drive, and 64-bit instead of 32-bit Windows, which actually to me is sort of a bad thing, but...)

Darn, Best Buy's site is down or I'd go check out that x83 to get a better idea what it has.

It's really probably not a bad deal compared to what a lot of other companies sell for around $800, but I think for the extra $200 it's well worth getting the n80-5. I mean you get a 4x more powerful GPU (probably a bit more than that), and at least a 400Mhz faster CPU (and probably the other specs on the CPU are better too, though I can't check right now ). I'd say especially if you care about games at all go for the n80, as it's like 32 processors on the GPU versus 8, and I think 2-4x the memory bandwidth, if I'm remembering right.

The 9650GT will at least run all of today's games. It can't max out Crysis of course, but it runs and appears to be quite playable with the right settings (I've got such a huge backlog of games though it'll probably be years before I actually get to it-I just wanted to see if it ran okay so I installed it!)

 

Anyone else playing L4D? What settings have you got your n80vn at?

 

Thanks Wolfpup.

I just checked and the Bestbuy website is working now, yesterday it wasnt.

I think basic spec are quite similar of both X83Vm-X2 and N80Vn-X5 though X5 got more stuff and X2 is just basic.

I do want to get the N80Vn-X5 but sadly those are hard to find in high street store, my cousin in US called the Asus helpline and after 45 minutes of waiting the operater told him that search the net for the dealers

Anyway I have emailed newegg for some discount because being honest X5 is still out of my range though I am not so sure if newegg will give me that.

Wolfpup thanks for your reply and if you get the chance to go to bestbuy then please do check the X83Vm-X2 because I am sure your reviews and comments will be really helpful for me.

Thanks.

 

Ooooh cool, I'm glad I Best Buy's site is working now, because I didn't know that model you found existed.

I guess it's:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9172879&type=product&id=1218044029788

When I thought it was:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9172851&type=product&id=1218044029604

Which explains why I thought they had raised the price!

That $800 model doesn't look bad at all! In fact, I kind of doubt there's anything else out there like it for that price-I know plenty of other companies are selling systems with integrated graphics for MORE than that.

Looks like the only differences between the n80-X5 and it are the X5 has:

-CPU-Roughly 276MHz fasterCPU (about 13%)
-GPU-both have the same number of processors, but the core is 430MHz versus 550, and the processors are 1075MHz versus 1350... so about 28% faster and 26% faster.

So...that's not bad for roughly $200 less. That $800 model should be just fine for just about anything. In terms of its game performance...well, the 9650GT in mine already would have to play Crysis in SM 3.0 mode with mostly medium details, but that 9600GS should still be useable for anything out there right now.

 

The 7450 has a smaller cache and uses more power in addition to being slower. The x83 also has a 5400 rpm drive vs 7200 in the N80

 

Check those links-it turns out the x83 in question uses the same type of Penryn as the x80-X5, just slower. Same cache, etc. It also has a 7200RPM drive (though that's easy and cheap to upgrade anyway).

 

Thanks Wolfpup, I appreciate your taking time and checking that model online.

Yeh due to price issue I am also going for Bestbuy's Asus X83Vm-X2, I know its a little compromising decision but at the same time being a married guy with a 4 month old son gaming wont be possible on 24/7 basis, though my wife already thinks that for me computers and internet are no less then any hot chick hahahahahaha

Honestly if I was in US then I would had checked bestbuy and other stores loads of times before making the final decision but I am not so X83Vm-X2 will hopefully be a good and reliable purchase for me.

Thanks.

 

Anyone ?

 

Oops, you're right. A little slower cpu but it's a P series... 25w, 3mb L2 cache. I thought it had a 5400 rpm drive but it does say 7200. Other than the brown color it's not bad.