First impressions with Asus N10J-A1

***Just disabled all the power mizer settings and bingo 3d performance is 100 times better, complete benchmarks to follow, unless I fall asleep ***


*** 3D Benchmarks below.***
(originally posted in another thread: N10J 3D Benchmarks)


First impressions review

Just got my N10J today and thought i'd share my experience with the rest of you.





First off its a very nice looking notebook, since I have an MSI Wind i'll be comparing the two.

The Asus looks very stylish, more so than the wind although styling isn't a huge issue in my books. Constuction is very solid no flex or weak points at all. it does weigh more than my Wind but thats probably because I have the 3 cell version of the wind (Asus is 6 cell).

Performance wise, in windows the 2 notebooks are the same, which is to be expected because they have the same cpu.

The 160gb hard drive included is a seagate 5400.5 Not a bad drive but I yanked it right away and put in my WD 500GB drive (no benches yet)

Came with Vista, seemed a bit sluggish but I don't use vista so i "planned" on using the downgrade to xp option however unless i'm stupid and missed it, there is only a vista 32bit recovery dvd.

I threw a copy of XP on but had to download all the drivers off Asus' website, by selecting the Asus N10e (comes with xp preinstalled).

The speakers are alright apparently altec lansing, sound better than the speakers on my wind.

Now for the info that everyone has been waiting for, gaming and 3d performance. I'll tell you right now i'm disappointed in the performance. It has nothing to do with the 9300M GS, its entirely capable but the Atom cpu is seriously holding back the performance in the notebook. Although I guess that is to be expected, what the 9300 does enable the notebook to do is make games that were not playable on the gma 950+atom somewhat playable, however don't buy this laptop for the sole intention of playing games.


Screen brightness at minimum (which is quite usable) bluetooth+wifi on,using the 9300m graphics the power draw using Notebook hardware Control was 11-13w/h estimated 4 hours of battery, I got just over 4 hours browsing the web watching youtube ect....

Screen brightness at minimum Wifi on bluetooth off,using the intel graphics the power draw using Notebook hardware Control was 8-9.5w/h estimated 6.5hours of battery, same use as above and I got just about 5.5 hours of use.

Battery life on this notebook is very good, and on the wrapping the battery came in it said "only use on U3xx" and some other models I can't remember, which leads me to believe that the batteries for the U3S should work on the N10 meaning 9 cell batteries!!!


3D Benchmarks

In my original post above, I complained about poor 3D performance and blamed it on the cpu. Well I should have been a little more watchful about the nvidia Power-Mizer settings. I had assumed that while the laptop was plugged in everything would be running at full speed. That wasn’t the case; I disabled Power-Mizer and noticed a large increase in performance. Settings for all the benchmarks are as follows.




3D Mark 2001 1024x600x32 Default Settings = 7887

3D Mark 2003 1024x600x32 Default Settings = 4919

3D Mark 2005 1024x600x32 Default Settings = 2745

3D Mark 2006 1024x600x32 Default Setting = 1592







Above screen shot taken at 800x600 that framerate is about as low as it got when there was intense fighting on the screen.

Now i'm much more impressed with the 3D performance of this little netbook/notebook, but as i mentioned before the atom is limiting performance, but this will satisfy some people's craving for gaming on the go.

 

Just ran 3dmark 2003 and got a score of 1132, something might be wrong with the drivers because that score is way too low, i'm starting to think maybe the cpu is locked at 800mhz instead of 1.6ghz hopefully I can figure out whats wrong.

 

CPU-Z will help you determine if the CPU speed is locked.

 

Curios how do switch between graphics card on it? do have reboot or just software ?

 

@ ndyasselin Physical switch on the side and then reboot.

It looks nice but I sort of knew the performance was not going to be that great, I saw some low 3dmark scores posted on some review sites, not sure if they match yours or not.

I do not think the N10 justifies its price tag, the 1000H is the better deal being nearly identical. I think the only real gain is hdmi, and to a smaller degree the finger print reader and a very small amount of gpu power.

This could be a nice on the go movie station, since it has a dedicated nvidia card it should support hardware rendering for 720p and 1080p files, 720 barly being possible on the 1000H should be easy with the GPU helping on the N10, 1080p, not so sure even with the gpu help if a single 1.6ghz atom will handle it.

Still tho toss all your movies on a 500gb drive like you have and then hook it up to your big screen via hdmi

Thats the only unique thing I could think of doing with the N10.

The new S101 is a failure in my book too, slim down the 1000H, cut away one of the better parts of it (the long battery life, and large HDD) and make it look pretty then increase the price by nearly double.

 

I agree with you vicious on the portable moviebox, Something is wrong with the windows xp vga driver (the nvidia one anyways) because everything is very sluggish (game wise) i'll have to investigate this when I have some more time, i'll download some wmv hd files in 1080p and see what the results are, Might throw vista on the stock hdd to see if the 3d performance is any better.

Cpu-z confirms that the spu speed is working correctly. Too bad i couldn't disable speedstep in the bios and run the notebook at 1.6ghz all the time, its such an effcient cpu it doesn't use much power even at 1.6ghz

One other thing, i noticed this on my wind as well, while on battery the cpu stays @ 800mhz and doesn't throttle up to 1.6ghz on the battery, anyone have any ideas

 

On the other hand, there's negligible performance loss by speedstepping.

 

I know there isn't a huge difference in performance however, with the cpu locked @ 800mhz it makes for example browsing youtube almost painfully slow with very high cpu usage, if the cpu would go up to 1.6ghz that problem would be solved. *** Seems i should actually goto bed, way too tired, just remembered I have the power setting at "max battery" hence no throttling up on battery power***

As for 1080p vids from the WMV-HD showcase its a no go, the 720P videos play just fine. I suspect maybe a dualcore atom might have a chance at the 1080p videos.

Either way i'm very impressed with the battery life on this notebook and I"m thinking about ordering a U3s battery to see if it does infact fit, or maybe one of the retailers here can confirm that???

 

still thinking that atom with 1.60 Ghz is in testing level, if mini pc becomes more popular, intel will throw some money in, and develop a better processor, dual or 2Ghz or above, then it will be a good time to get one of these mini style notebook, cant wait~~ hurry intel~~ i am waiting~~

 

Dual-core Atoms are already supposed to be on the Intel roadmap for '09.

 

being supposed to be available and actually hitting the shelves with many products using ones is quite a different thing, as you might know. i wonder when will we see some better and more widely used athlons/turions with puma platform as i read it is kind of better then intel's gma950 and even x4500 (or however that's called) offering better power draw at better performance. should the platform reach more apparent push from the manufacturers and their clientele, if via works out a better nano, dual core atoms with ht would easily find their way to the boxes as a decisive intel's answer hope it all happens soon, and we'll get new gen n10

 

that actually sound like the right score to me
the 9300 in a "real" notebook like the u6v will score about 1800 points
1200 points with an atom on half a notebook is about what i would expect.

 

Yeap, Gentech PC also got something like 1250 3DMarks out of the N10J, so I'd say that seems right. Even with the slower CPU, thats almost as good as my W7S...Sad.

 

Could you possible take a pic of the carrying case? I'm curious to see what it looks like

 

It comes with a mouse too right?

 

No, only a carrying case.

 

I guess I'm joining the N10J club. My 1000H has a red pixel line running from the top of the screen to the bottom and since I'm within costco's return period, I decided to do just that and buy an N10J through ebay using live.com cashback (seller was excaliberpc.com, where I bought my G1S). Cant wait to see if there really is bigger improvement in 720p playback using the discrete graphics.

 

You know, I've seen some benchmarks of Netbooks with Atom N270 @ 1.6 GHz running SuperPiMod to 1M digits, and they all take about 1 minute 35 seconds. Well, that's comparable to my old 12" laptop with a Pentium4m 1.8 GHz.

In other words, 1.6 GHz Atom ~= 1.8 GHz Pentium4m in terms of speed. I'm sure the power usage and heat are quite different...

But in any case, why don't they use something like Pentium-M, you know those old mobile cpus that started the whole Core 2 Duo revolution? How bad is a Pentium-M in terms of power usage/heat produced and compared to Atom?

Cuz a 1.6 GHz Pentium-M would do SuperPiMod to 2M(!, not 1) in under 2 minutes... 1M in like 45 seconds?

 

That's where the answer lies. The Atom is much, much more power efficient than the Pentium Ms. I don't have numbers, but you can form an impression by reading this, for instance:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=597


Power consumption test:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=597&type=expert&pid=8

 

• Added to Info Booth and Reviews & Owners' Lounges Index.
• Moved to ASUS Reviews & Owners' Lounges.
• I have also taken the liberty of copying the 3D benchmarks into the main review above, in order to have all the information in one place. If you believe this change is inappropriate for some reason, please, feel free to revert it.

Thanks.

 

I got the N10 a few days ago and overall am pleased. Vista was a bit too sluggish for me. I even tried readyboost, for the first time, using a spare SD Card but it didn't seem to make a different. Maybe the slow performance was due to the crapware (not a tremendous amount, but still).

I tried testing the 3d capabilities, but didn't really have much to work with. The Quake 4 beta demo ran rather poorly, yet the Unreal Tournament 3 Demo was very playable. The opening of Spore stuttered, yet the game itself ran okay with mostly low settings. Will have to properly test again latter.

Regardless, two days ago I installed a fresh copy of XP. Got all the drivers, useful utilities, etc. off the ASUS website. Lost count of the number of times I had to reboot. But everything seems to be working and much spiffier than in Vista.

A few questions though : Is it possible to get Enhanced SATA mode working ? I enabled it in BIOS but then got a blue screen each time XP loaded until I changed the setting back.

Back in vista I tried installing the sata driver found on lenovo's website: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-62909.html using the "If you do not have a diskette drive..." directions. That worked, but haven't tried it in XP yet as I'm not sure whether the lenovo driver is actually an appropriate driver for the N10. Is there even any benefit to enabling Enchaned sata mode?

Haven't opened the bottom hatch yet, but from what I've read the hard drive is easily replacable. I'm assuming putting in a 7200rpm 2.5" hard drive would be a bad idea?

I also tried using the modded Synaptics drivers found in Acer forum & another recent version found on laptopvideo2go. While I got Chiralmotion & Momentum, I couldn't find any options for the 2 finger scrolling & pinching? Is this simply a hardware and/or firmware limitation?

 

In order.

Enabling SATA Enhanced after WinXP install is a difficult job in my experience. There are many guides posted around the internet, many people say it has worked for them -- but I have tried several possibilities and none worked for me. I ended up installing anew for different reasons, with the SATA driver slipstreamed.

As to the advantages, opinions differ. I haven't seen any noticeable difference, but the SATA computer is not my main computer so I don't know for sure.

If you don't absolutely need the fastest harddrive, you may want to compromise for the larger capacity of a 5400RPM hard drive, without a very large performance hit. Sometimes performance can be quite similar for 7200 and 5400.

 

I never got it working even after trying every method I could google

Ultimately more than one person told me not to worry about it as the advantages of it are NIL, its mostly for servers.

 

N10J Owners... can you do me a favor?

First, can you please verify that the turbo mode under High Performance in Power4gear remains on "Turbo" even after a reboot? Somehow, my n10j will only maintain the turbo setting for the current window session.

Also, can you post your WEI score with the discrete graphics on?

Thanks!

 

Got my N10J-A1 yesterday and "went for the jugular". I can confirm PureVideo HD works great on the GeForce 9300M GS.

Loaded up MPC-HC, Haali Media Splitter (for MKV's) and PowerDVD 8 Deluxe and created a custom external EVR filter to off-load H264/x264 to the PowerDVD 8 H264/AVC codec and I'm able to play 720P and 1080P H264/x264 encoded files perfectly with no stutter. 720P runs the Intel Atom 1.6 GHz at about 25-32% while 1080P runs the Intel Atom 1.6 GHz at about 50-61%. I'm sure part of the CPU utilization is due to me streaming the MKV's over 802.11n.

Using 179.13 ForceWare drivers for Vista 32-bit off Laptop2Go with modified INF and the latest version of PowerDVD 8 Deluxe.

I then tested it via HDMI out to an 1920x1080p/24 display with audio pass-through... Worked like a charm. No stutter. No jitter. Just gorgeous 1080P video and AC3/DTS passthrough!

Cheers,
Kermee

EDIT: P.S. Anyone have an Intel 4965AGN working in their N10J-A1? Mine isn't detected when swapped out and I know it's a good because when I put it back into my ASUS 1000H, it works fine. Did anyone else noticed there's a 3rd "grey" antenna available in the N10J-A1 for 3x3 MIMO miniPCIe WiFi cards?

 

Hi All,

Finally got a chance to test COD4 myself on the ASUS N10J-A1. It's actually quite playable with the "big 3" turned off (shadows, specular, soften smoke edges) and 4xAA, 16xAF turned up all the way and at native 1024x600 resolution.

I uploaded a video of it to YouTube, but since I'm below 15 posts, I can't post a link to it yet. But you should be able to find it by searching.

Cheers,
Kermee

 

Hi one newbie question, how can you offload the decoding thing to powerdvd 8 dx? Is it possible for you to be more specific?

P.S. Mine N10J-A1 is coming in tomorrow and can't wait to play with it!

 

You need to have powerdvd 8 installed on your computer, and tell MPC to use the powerdvd 8 codec. The powerdvd 8 codec uses hardware acceleration through the GPU to offload work from the CPU. That's pretty much the gist of things. The only problem is, powerdvd 8 is not freeware.

 

Great to hear about the gpu working for videos, now I have a question.


I download MPC-HC via the link you provided, and fired up a 1080P video (downloaded from the net)which before was unplayable on my N10J, the cpu usage went WAYYYY down and the video played smooth but every second or so it had a jitter and the image was tearing to the point where the quality of the video is crap, any ideas to fix the image quality?

 

Follow this guide:

h t t p://blogo.biz/?p=20

 

Purrrrfect, that seems to fix the problem for some videos, although according to the instructions, I couldn't enable the "evr custom preset"

Either way with the proper codec the Atom can play 1080P back just fine, like others have mentioned, now I just have to get an external Blu-Ray Drive and I've got my HTPC

 

I finally got to play 1080p movie smoothly but the sound come out like "chopped into pieces". Is there anyway to offload the decoding of sound to somewhere or something else?

 

Afternoon all,
Need a bit of help with this N10J, if you could lend me your expertise!

Just got an N10J, and I have to say that it's quicker than I thought it'd be. I'll echo everyone's sentiment that the weak link seems to be the CPU, while the rest seems to be performing quite well despite Vista being pre-loaded.

I'd love to scrap Vista and load up XP, but it's been a week and I still can't get the setup to run from a USB key - the BIOS simply won't recognize the key as a bootable device. I've been told a USB CD/DVD-ROM would work great, but I can't say I have one at my disposal. Does anyone know of another way around this? Cheers!

-Vog

 

What if you press ESC at the ASUS splashscreen? Don't you see the USB key then?

I think I also remember the following but I am not sure:
Be aware that in the BIOS, the USB key is has to be setup under "HDDs" (yeah, weird). So, with the key inserted, you need to make your HDD the first boot option, and then in the HDD ordering option (or whatever name it has), you need to select the USB as the 1st "HDD".

 

This part was not covered in the address you gave. Is this necessary? How can this be done?

 

If you wanna update your driver with modded inf, go to the webpage that you downloaded the driver and right next to driver you should be able to see a green "Modded Inf" link. Download it and put it into the driver folder after you extracted the driver. Replace the inf in that folder and then you are good to go!

 

Can anyone confirm if this laptop is capable of running Red Alert 3, UT 2007, GTA 4 on lowest settings and resolution at playable fps.

 

Don't have one of these myself, but had been thinking about it and stumbled across this the other day:
http://www.n10user.com/viewtopic.php?id=22
which might help some of you out. Uses SetFSB to clock the Atom at c. 2.1GHz, supposedly GREATLY increases gaming AND Vista experience...

 

For Red Alert 3:

Red Alert 3 Settings for ASUS N10J

Enjoy my short video clip of RA3 on the ASUS N10J...

<object width='480' height='397'><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/K-tFIuOW5XQ&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18 "></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/K-tFIuOW5XQ&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18 " type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width='480' height='397'></embed></object>

YouTube: ASUS N10J - Red Alert 3 Playback @ 2.1 GHz Intel Atom OC

Screenshots and videos of RA3 on the N10J are there. Note that the CPU is OC'ed to 2.1 GHz and the GPU OC'ed to 605/515 under Vista 32-bit using Forceware 180.43 drivers.



Cheers,
Kermee

 

Did someone test a 30 inch monitor (2560x1600)?

 

Hi all,

I got an Asus n10 from newegg today ^_^ (to replace my DV2500t....thats another story). I got a 7200RPM Hard drive (250 GB) to replace the factory one from. So before I do anything...a couple of questions...

1. The Thumb drive thing. Can someone provide a link to that so I can install an OS from one?

2. Vista or XP? I am not a Vista hater at all. Actually, somethings work better in it compared to XP in my experience, or at least after the service pack 1.

3. I do plan to watch HD files on this. So I will need PowerDVD (which I have) and MPC?

 

2. I would suggest give Vista a try, and only if you are having problems with it, go back to XP. You could have a look at my Vista optimization guide, too (link in sig).

 

I have some N10 questions ... 99% about to buy this:

http://www.ow.com.au/ASUS-N10JC-HV006-N270-1-6-160-1G-10-XPH-Notebook-PC#

I have looked at the EEE1000H which has the 1.6Ghz Atom and it appears to be dual thread (in task manager).

1. Is the N10 dual thread as well (looks like 2 cores in task manager)?

2. When you switch between 9300 video to integrated video is their a bit of hoo-ha in the OS like lots of prompts and stuff...this is going to be used by my wife as well so just want to get an idea of the amount of "stuffing around" in going from dedicated to integrated...

Hoping it's a seamless transition - doesn't require reboots or anything.

3. Does it have TPM as well as fingerprint reader? So I could test out bitlocker on it from Vista Ultimate?

4. Can it run 64 bit OS?

5. Going to 2GB - do I need 1 stick of 2GB or another 1 stick of 1GB (ie are their 2 RAM slots or 1)

6. Express Gate is one of the big selling factors for me...as web(email), skype and messaging will be awesome to have at "8 secs" boot....do you guys use Express Gate? Is it good? Is battery life very good if you just run in Express Gate?

Thanks!!!!!

 

Some answers, not all.

1. Is the N10 dual thread as well (looks like 2 cores in task manager)?

Atom is not dual-core. Not sure if it supports hyper-threading, which would also make it "seem dual thread" in Task Manager.

2. When you switch between 9300 video to integrated video is their a bit of hoo-ha in the OS like lots of prompts and stuff...this is going to be used by my wife as well so just want to get an idea of the amount of "stuffing around" in going from dedicated to integrated...

IDK.

3. Does it have TPM as well as fingerprint reader? So I could test out bitlocker on it from Vista Ultimate?

IDK. I strongly recommend truecrypt instead of BitLocker. It's more reliable (encryption key generated from a password and not stored anywhere; which means encrypted volumes can be used after Windows dies, even if you forgot to backup the encryption key). Additionally, backing up the encryption key is in itself a security liability.

4. Can it run 64 bit OS?

IDK. Why would you need this on this laptop which is almost a netbook, though?

5. Going to 2GB - do I need 1 stick of 2GB or another 1 stick of 1GB (ie are their 2 RAM slots or 1)

1 slot: http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=5&l2=75&l3=792&l4=0&model=2515&modelmenu=2

6. Express Gate is one of the big selling factors for me...as web(email), skype and messaging will be awesome to have at "8 secs" boot....do you guys use Express Gate? Is it good? Is battery life very good if you just run in Express Gate?

Battery life is reportedly much worse than in Windows, because ExpressGate does not put components (CPU and GPU mainly) in powersaving modes.

I could recommend as an alternative a live distro of Linux that can be installed on a USB key, e.g., SLAX, and will at least support CPU speedstepping.

 

1. Is the N10 dual thread as well (looks like 2 cores in task manager)?

It is, it supports hyper threading. I was confused when I first saw this, but it is a single core.

4. Can it run 64 bit OS?
No. The single core atom can only run 32 bit applications. The dual core atom however...

6. Express Gate is one of the big selling factors for me...as web(email), skype and messaging will be awesome to have at "8 secs" boot....do you guys use Express Gate? Is it good? Is battery life very good if you just run in Express Gate?

Same as E.B.E It is neat, I used it today. It is good for on the go, but not for extended use.

 

Thanks! Well I bought one anyway. I have a spare copy of 64 bit Vista Ultimate I could have used on it which is why I asked about the 64 bit. I got the N10JC-HV006. Only bought it yesterday so have barely touched it. Stuck the 2GB RAM stick in it and set up my account and fingerprint reader and that's about it.

It has XP Home on it which I am not a fan of. I have plenty of XP Pro copies but would prefer to go to Vista Ult.

So far I am really impressed with it. It's slightly thicker than I thought and the battery sticks out a bit and the screen could be slightly larger I reckon (bezel is pretty wide - could have been an 11 inch LCD IMHO without any problem).

I think it will serve our needs as a power point presentation uber portable laptop very very well.

How can I tell if I got the 6 cell battery. I looked all over the battery itself but couldn't tell.

It came with a mouse and little tiny bag/sleeve as well.

All in all it's truly impressive. A lot easier to carry around than my 17 inch or my 15.4 inch or even our old Dell 14 inch!

 

I just purchased my N10J-A1 and have followed the instructions from Kermee to get Forceware 179.13 installed and play HD files through my HDMI connected projector. It will show ripped Blu-Ray discs, but not without a lot of tearing, stuttering, and pops and scratches in the digital audio. Playing Blu-Ray through PowerDVD 8 on a USB-connected Blu-Ray player does not work at all because the driver is not able to support playback.

I wonder if anyone has had any luck attaching a Blu-Ray player or getting playback without significant video and audio quality loss. I'd love to be able to use this thing as a mini Media Center.

Thanks!

 

There is a little switch on the left hand side - on or off - you need to reboot to enable either or. Easy and works well.

If you flick the switch while you are running the OS it pops up with a message telling you that you have changed graphics cards blah blah do you wish to do so blah blah and you need to restart blah blah.

 

I got a mouse with mine - and a little sleeve/carrying case.

 

This might have been really great for portable gaming if the processor wasn't such a major bottleneck. It is a shame the NJ didn't have some kind of Dual Core option like the Everun Note.

I have found so far that there is really no substitute for a full sized or at least a 15'' gaming Laptop but it will be interesting to see what the future holds.