Howard's Asus G60VX-RBBX05 REVIEW

T9900 would be your pest bet @ 3.06GHz, next up are the T9600 and P9700 @ 2.8GHz each.

 

T9900

 

Mine has Q9000 directly from the box.

 

if it is quad capable then the fastest you can get would be the QX9300 @ 2.53GHz. Forge on this forum has one for sale.

 

Still has to arrive at my place, but yeah, send me a PM.

 

Dont think this lappy is quad capable.

 

What laptop do you own? a bestbuy G60? or a G51 A1?

 

G60vx. It's the first, white one. I think mine is Europe oriented. All specs are the same except Q9000 and 2x320 HDD's.

 

What's the difference between the G60's EAX Advanced HD 4.0 vs the G51's Dolby. Is it an actual hardware difference or just software?

 

Ya, thats not hte same one we have. THis is the RBBX05... just like the thread stated.

WE cannot use a quad core.

 

It's $899.99 at BestBuy now!

 

. A few upgrades and I will be happy. Anything anyone is doing for memory or just leaving it?

 

The only (significant) option for memory is to upgrade to 8gb. You can get CAS 7 sticks, but they're almost $200 per stick. That would be a $400 upgrade on a $900 laptop.

At some point, the upgrades get ridiculous. If we break it down, we can afford a second laptop with the upgrades most people are considering for their current one. That's just bad business, because taking the money available and sitting on it will yield you, in the medium-run (i.e. 6-10mo), enough to purchase a better laptop JUST with the money you have saved.

Replacement screen to 1920x1200 = $230
Processor Upgrade to p8700, p9700, t9900 = 200, 350, 400
Additional HDD = 120
6/8gb RAM upgrade = 200/400

Etc, etc. Even at the lowest upgrades listed, you'd be at 750 in upgrades to a $900 laptop. Rather ridiculous, don't you think? For the selfsame total of 1650, you could have yourself one HELL of a Clevo. Or, if the Clevo's don't suit, you could have the quad-core ASUS laptop with 200 to spend on accesories.

It's just like with cars, except that cars tend to last you longer. If you want the sportscar, either buy it outright or start with a sports-chassis and build your way up. But a Civic will never be anything more than a FWD, open-differential econobox, no matter how many CAIs and 4-2-1 Headers you bolt on it. Will it be faster? Sure. But for the same money you could have had a VERY nice 944 or FC Rx-7.

Same thing with laptops. To continue the analogy, We've an Audi A4. Comfortable, speedy enough for 90% of what we want, but there's a few things missing that we want. So be it. Drop the cash, fix 'em, but by the time a few of us are done, we'll have gotten to the price of an S4 without breaking a sweat, but still not have the equivalent performance.

Obviously, I'm not advocating we all return our laptops or that we leave them as stock. I think it's fairly evident that I won't be doing that, so standing on a high horse is only going to get me knocked down, and with good reason. All I'm saying is that some upgrades, methinks, just aren't worth it. And one that gets you to -/+ 50% of the original value of the item? Little ridiculous.

Duckies

DISCLAIMER: Duckies has now gotten off his soapbox. Any attempt to find his soapbox will result in a phone call to your mobile from a man with a particular set of skills. Don't make that man angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry. But he does like cake! Just don't lie about the cake. That tends to resonate in an irritating cascade. Duckies may have mixed his medicines today, your reality may vary.

 

wow... wish i had a soapbox now!

Very tru. But some of us now have this laptop, and want to slowly upgrade as we can.

I take it someone has found a 1920 screen??? where cna i get it!

 

so would anyone still recommend this laptop as a good buy?

at $900, it seems like a good deal. but are they just going to drop this model quick and release something much better?

 

Well no one really knows, the G51 was released around June and got replaced with G60 around october with the release of win7, Arrandale is about to be relased and CES is also some days away so......., but it seems like a good deal for $900.

 

Does anyone know what firewire chipset is in this laptop?

 

Put it this way.
Today this has just about the 2nd best mobile GPU you can get right now, yeah the stock CPU is nothing to brag about but it's still not bad and can be OC'd pretty easily.Or you can upgrade the CPU yourself and make it that much better, believe me A T9900 is a perfect match with this laptop.
For some people screen res is not good enough but for a gaming rig it's very good, you can almost max out every game out or still get very good FPS on very demanding games.
$900 is a great deal for this laptop, OK we all know it's not exactly cutting edge tech but still what more do you expect for a "cheap" gaming laptop.
I'm sure at some point we will see new G series laptop models with much better specs than this but at a price.
More money.Hardware is constantly evolving into smaller,faster, more powerful but then the questions is , When do I jump in?
You can wait some time,month or 2 maybe longer ( who really knows?) for a laptop with better hardware but 6 months later you get another laptop with better hardware than the last, so the cycle begins again.
For a 16" gaming laptop your not find a better deal anywhere.
Just my two cents.

 

I would make a serious argument for:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220639&Tpk=g51vx

At about $200 over the price of the g60vx-rbbx05, with a 1920x1080 screen and a P8700, that's an easy 4-500 worth of upgrades to the G60vx. I honestly believe that that one is the best purchase for the money.

Now, that said, I'm going the same route as everyone else, but I didn't have the option of purchasing from Newegg, so I've got my G60vx and will work up from here, but really only for the screen. I need the real estate more than anything else.

Duckies

 

Unfortunately, the g60 is back to $1000. Best Buy........ grrr

 

whats with best buy...... reducing by 50 then again increasing by 50 then reducing by 100 then again back to 1000....... thats silly...

 

Yeah tell me about it!
Good thing I got mine at $899.99.
BestBuy is in spaz mode with the up and down pricing, give it a couple of days and you will see the price drop....again I'm sure of it.

 

After a good amount of research I bought the RBBX05 at BB last Thursday (24th) for $999. Going through this thread before I pulled the trigger helped solidify my decision- thanks to Howard and all for the good info.

At this time for the price you can't beat it. I uninstalled the bloatware and have been putting it through its paces with Dragon Age on high settings/AAx4 and its been great.

Yeah OK the G51x at the Egg ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220639) has a better proc and 1920x1080... but I didn't have the extra cash and the way I look at it the GTX 260m doesn't have to work as hard at 1366x768 and I doubt the difference would be very noticeable (except for the extra real estate for multitasking).

The day after Xmas (yesterday) I logged into BB and noticed they had dropped the price down by $100 to $899, so I went back and had them match the price change and walked out with a Benjamin for my troubles. Yesterday AM their site said that the markdown was part of a sale that would last 2 days; however as of this AM they are back up to $999... glad I caught it when I did as $899 is even more of a steal for this lappy.

So is there only a 1 year Asus warranty when purchased at BB? The salesperson tried to tel me there was absolutely no warranty that came with it unless I bought the BB extended warranty, and I never buy extended warranties.

 

I got a g60vx yesterday, and I love it.. but I tried installing this Intel Wifi Link 5100 driver, and now my wifi doesn't work at at all. It's like it's turned off, it doesn't see any networks. I've rolled back the driver, re-installed different drivers, did a system restore twice. Pretty much everything except use the restore discs. Anyone have an idea what the problem is? Google isn't helping very much either. I should have just left it alone

 

So I broke down and restored from the dvds... back to bone stock and still no wifi. During the first time use set up, it did see networks though. Then Windows logs in, and no networks can be found. I guess I'm taking it back to Best Buy..

Doing a search for Intel Wifi Link 5100 AGN brings up a lot of people having problems with it, from XP on up. Has anyone else had similar problems?

 

i had problems with it when i used windows update to update the wifi drivers...a note to ppl using the g60 series "do not use the update from windows update for this device as it will not let you use your wifi unless you do a complete system recovery" as i have had this problem twice already but when i didnt install the driver update it was fine

 

I got my wifi adapter working again.. but now if drops connection randomly. Any ideas? I'm kinda scared to update the driver, because of what happened last time.

 

Heyas,

So i just got one of these badboys (the 09 instead of the 05 though), in a large part due to this here thread. It has been working fantastically until just this morning.

Booted her up, browsed the web, clicked to start up torchlight, left the room a sec and then blank... the monitor showed nothing.... tried a ctl alt delete, tried reseting (power goes off and then on) but i can't get the monitor to show anything, not even the first Republic of Gamer's logo. Is there some hotkey i might have pressed to shut down the monitor? I really don't want to have to trudge back to BB, get a new unit and do the whole reinstall joy again (and lose my torchlight saves already!!!)

If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it
-Coatze

 

Coatze, if power is on try pressing Fn-F7 (Fn button on lower left + function key F7 on top). Or if you have an external monitor attached try pressing Fn+F8 to cycle back... hope that's all it is. But if you power down completely with the power button, power back on and still nothing, then could be hw.

 

hmm it isn't even booting back up all the way now (i think).. guess it must be hardware... so damn stupid it could just go kerplunk like that... would have felt better about it had it been dropped or knocked around in a backpack before this happened...

thanks for the tip, but I guess it is tech support time!

 

First:


turn it off, unplug the battery, hold the power for 30 seconds and try again


second: if you bought your torchlight via steam, then you won't lose your gamesaves, they are tied to your steam account.

 

Gah, so bestbuy took my baby away. Turns out the backlight blew out. They were willing to do an exchange...but didn't have a g60vx of any variety to offer me in exchange so i just took the refund.

Now I am laptop shopping, thinking about just picking up another G60, but then
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220639
G51Vx-X3A

caught my eye. Is this the same chasis? Can i expect similar things as far as cooling, heft etc etc goes? Will running at reduced res when gaming really be that noticeable? I know this might not be the right place to post this Q but i figured might as well try

 

It is the same chassis with a .4inch smaller screen. I have an X1A @1080p (same PC, different OS) and I barely notice any changes at lower res, mostly because with AA on, even at 2x it looks perfectly clear, and settings can be bumped up higher at the lower res.

 

Just about same everything except for lid design,screen res, side flashing lights and CPU.
I like that lid design better than the BestBuy model.
Hardware wise it's the same, same MOBO same GPU.

 

might want to wait until after ces, jan 7-10, asus is supposedly releasing updated models with the i5

 

Has anyone checked the warranty with Asus yet? Is it the standard 1 year as with most Asus Best Buy models? Or did anyone get the 2 year upgrade.

 

BestBuy has a 1 year warranty on parts and labor.

 

That's too bad. I was hoping the G60 lucked out like some of the G50vt's.

 

I just got the $999 from bestbuy and have a 14day price warranty... i saw the laptop at $899 not to long ago, but i thought i was mistaking because when I finally decided to go in it was at 999 again and i even checked on my g1 to see if the online price was the same... and it was...


anyways, the processor is what kinda bumbs me out, i knew to all this but how would i be able to overclock the processor to 2.5 or 2.6 from 2.12...?

and I don't know how to get this powermizer tab for the video card...


sorry for my ignorance I am just gatting into all this and am very interested!



thank you guys!

PS iv read all the pages and am still confused about all this, so im not just dropping in and asking without reading or doing any own research!

 

are you running on high performance settings? would this even make a difference?

 

Hmm. My g60vx is fine, however when playing cod 4 or cod modern warfare 2 or some other games, my laptop gpu has gotten to 92c. it has also gotten as low as 48c. Im confused as to why alot of people on here barely have theirs go past 80c. its really bothering me. Im really tempted to take the back off and apply some much better thermal paste. but i dont know how much of a tempreture drop that will give me. 5c, 10 at the most maybe.

Any suggestions as to why my gpu gets so hot? Is that bad or is it normal and will the laptop be fine.

(i would also like to point out "this laptop GTX 260M card is roughly equivalent to desktop version of Nvidia 9800GT card " is incorrect. notebookcheck and other websites have shown that the card is actually equivilant to a desktop 9800gtx, and the gtx280m is equal to the 9800gtx+ which has more shades and a very very very small OC)

 

The 260 GTX in this laptop is downcloocked and not the full version you might find in a AW or CLEVO laptop

 

Just wanted to say hello to everyone, as I am a brand new member to this forum. Here I sit, typing this on my brand new G60VX-RBBX05, and I couldn't be more thrilled with my purchase. This is my first gaming laptop, and I wouldn't have taken the plunge if it wasn't for the 60+ pages of discussion on this thread. Thank you all for your insight and input, and I look forward to becoming part of this forum...

 

Same thing is happening for me. My normal temp goes to around 45 and i was playing COD 4 for 2 hours the temp went up to 92 ....... is it safe ....???? should i continue using the laptop at this temperature or i should take some measures to cool down the laptop ?????????? Also 2 hours of Batman AA takes my temp to 90....... Note: Both COD4 and Batman Played on EXTREME TURBO mode. And i own a ASUS G60VX-RBBx05.Also i am using 186.86 drivers

 

Ok, so I'm already wondering about a few things on this laptop. I'm using the stock video card drivers, and I've done all the Windows updates, but now my GPU fluctuates wildly in its temperature. Doing nothing but browsing the web, right now, it's fluctuating continually between 60's and about 85 degrees... It will steadily climb until the fan kicks in, and drops it back down.

I read someone's post earlier about how their temp was fluctuating upon start up as well, but I couldn't find the post again, and I don't believe the high-end of their range went up in the mid-80's...

So is this normal? Is this a bad sign? Is there something I should try doing? I am even using the Power4Gear settings of quiet office at the moment to help control power usage...

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=273276 download this, make sure powermizer is on both battery and AC, if it is you're having issues with powermizer fluctuating with windows aero and you should try updating to 186.81 and trying the powermizer switch again. If that doesn't work your only real choice is to set the system to Windows 7 Basic them

 

on the upside i overclocked my gpu from

500/800/1250

to

600/1000/1475

and the temp still doesnt go above 93

so im guessin that 93 is the threshhold.

i've clocked it faster than my current oc, but at that point i lose points in 3dmark06. the clocks i have it at now net me the best increase of performance.

went from 9650 in 3dmark06 to 10213

(does anyone know of any unlocked bios for the g60vx? i'd very much like to OC the processor via the bios.)

 

I think Asus laptops in general have high GPU temps. My brother's M51SN which he's had for about 1.5 years has the 9500m gs which has gone up to 92C since he first got it. He hasn't had any problems though and it hasn't gotten any worse, unlike the 8600m would for example.

 

I got this Asus model a little over a week ago. It was working great, without one hitch. Then when I was playing Day of Defeat earlier, it started like freezing up for a few seconds at a time. Then it completely froze so I turned it off. Now the OS won't boot up. I can get express gate to show up, but when I turn it on for the OS it says "Windows is loading files" and with a bar underneath. The bar loads and it proceeds to a screen that says "Microsoft Cooperation" with a small loading bar. Sometimes this screen stays and although the bar shows activity, it never loads. Other times it simply goes to black screen and does not do anything. Can someone help?