Howard's Asus G60VX-RBBX05 REVIEW

what speed did you get?

2.85 is the most for me. any higher and my computer will say "No"

edit:
well i actually managed to get it to 2.9ghz which put me over 12000 in 3dmark06

 

First of all thanks to all that have gone before me and documented their experiences. I picked this up over the weekend and was wondering if anybody has found a Lightscribe dvd burner that will fit and work in this laptop? Is the current optical a SATA or IDE drive ?

One more question....apart from the current 320GB drive installed how many other free bays are their for expansion? I have read 1 and the cage can be bought from asus store website. But I thought I read somewhere else soe thought 2 bays available or did that include the existing 320gb drive?

thx in advance

 

What SetFsb code works with the G60VX?
I want to give it a go

 

Man, I'm still looking forward to the G60j replacements! I'm figuring Best Buy will have them, but still nothing...

 

TEERADEJ- I had the same problem with bioshock on my G60. The solution, if you still need it, is to go right click on the speaker icon in your tray and go to playback devices, then disable everything but the speakers. Should work after that.

 

Hi guys. This is an amazing laptop but i have this problem:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5434474&posted=1#post5434474

if someone know how to solve it, please help me.

Thanks

 

That doesnt seem like a problem if its only misrepresenting that the gpus not 65nm nothing we can do about that As far as I know nothing you have to worry about.

 

ICS9LPR604AGLF I believe is what I used when I had it.

 

May need to give an over clock a try here it lasted me amoust 4 months with out problems it should be able to handle an overclock.

 

I have a problem with my laptop. ASUS G60VX. I cannot connect to net via WiiFi. I turned the slider button for WiiFi to "ON" state, also i used the function key to turn on the wireless.... even though there are networks around , my notebook dosen't show me any active connections..... also when i run the diagnostics it shows an error that my wireless capability is turned off. I tried moving the slider again and also the function key+wiifi.... with no results.... i even checked the driver for the same...... it says that the device is running properly.... (i am using stock drivers for Intel wiifiilink 5100 AGN)... Please give inputs on this issue.... did any of u guys have such a problem... if so how did u guys get it solved?????? Thanks in advance.

 

Do you have wifi enabled in the BIOS? I explicitly disabled mine in the BIOS, but that would cause that behavior.

 

i haven't even been to bios..... the stock bios must have kept it enabled right......

 

i'd like experienced oblivion players to confirm performance on this system

getting generally low fps in oblivion (teens in cities/wilderness, good fps indoors) as well as sudden FPS drops that are remedied strangely by entering and exiting inventory, normal?

things i've tried:
toggle vsync in nvidia control panel and in-game
multi thread ini hack
streamline
tree fade
shadows
turning off forced aa in nvidia control panel
turning off aa in-game
lower textures
quiet steps
operation optimization
toggle distant LOD

i want to point out that some of the usual culprits (vsync, aa, LOD, quiet steps) made an almost negligible difference. even with aa completely off and textures down, i'm getting the same FPS behavior, cities/wilderness in particular

it was noted that turning down tree fade did increase wildnerness fps, but there are still slowdowns

there will be moments where i think everything is good then fps drops, this happens particularly in wilderness and running debug in the console reveals that calculations are happening, probably of others npcs, but does that constitute a drop from 35 to 9? sometimes, these slowdowns seem unjustified because i can negate them by entering inventory and exiting, and it'll go back up and stay there for a while... what's the deal?

i optimistically want to be told to use 186.82 and all will be better, i've tried pretty much everything else

----

edit: it seems that lots of people are experiencing this problem, and it has nothing to do with their systems
edit: figured it out - i had huge uncompressed texture pack mods rendering the game world and it was hogging video memory. this is why performance degraded over time and why opening the inventory (which temporarily cleared the video memory) "fixed" the problem for a time. installing a fresh copy of oblivion yielded 45-60 in nearly all areas of the game world.

 

Hello fellow g60 owners,

I've had this laptop for a few days now and I've been more than happy with it .

Though, I've been having some problems with my temperature; in specific, the gpu. When i boot my asus into normal OS and do absolutely NOTHING but turn on HWmonitor, my gpu will keep heating up untill the fan kicks in at 86 degrees. When the fan kicks in it will bring the temp down to approx 69 degrees, from where it starts going up again.

As far as i remember this has been going on since i've installed windows update this afternoon - it hasn't always been like this. For example, when i ran 3dmark06 a few days ago the GPU peaked at 78 degrees, which is even lower than the 86 degrees it's reaching now when the computer is idle!

My gpu drivers are at stock.

Hope there's an easy solution as I live in the Netherlands and i'd rather not have to return it to bestbuy

 

@ yanssen: You should install the 186.82 drivers. After doing that mine idles between 50 - 60 degrees... usually 51 - 54. There must be an issue with these new drivers that keep the GPU from clocking down to 200 MHz. I bet if you install and run CPUID CPU-Z and go to Graphics it will say 500 MHz all the time. I think you should try the 186.82 drivers before returning it.

@ ProteusX2: I will check my FPS in Oblivion if you want. Just let me know what program you are using or how you are displaying the FPS and I will do it the same way to be sure.

 

@ExSoldier

thanks for your reply and participation

in the console (~) type "tdt" without quotes to view fps and amount of processes in queue i also had fraps fps running simultaneously to confirm in realtime since the console fps only updates once every few seconds

i partially fixed the problem by reinstalling streamline and more .ini edit, etc. i went from 5-9 in cities to 45 and 12-19 in wilderness to 25-35. the fps-drop-thing-that-fixes-itself-when-i-open-and-close inventory still happens but is substantially less annoying

i'd also like to point out that i'm running over 100 mods but they were carefully installed and PLEASE don't tell me that is the problem because i know it isn't!!! (i think)

edit: it was my mods. see post #813 for the solution to this problem

 

I second this, here a link for you to try before returning it, NVIDIA GeForce v186.82 WHQL Drivers

 

Thanks for the quick response.

Still at stock gpu drivers, i've installed cpuid cpu-z. You were right that the graphics are at 500 MHz while doing nothing but browsing the internet.

Does this mean that if I install 186.82 (or any other driver) it in theory would have to solve the issue by turning the MHz down when not intensively using gpu? - Trying to understand the core of the problem

Anyway, I will go for the other drivers now and see what it does for me.

 

Thanks for the response. Will try.

 

Ok, first test results are looking good. Gpu core clock is down to 200MHz (and fluctuating, as when I first looked I saw 275MHz and a minute later it was at 200; on which it is stable now).

Temperature ranged from 46-63 degrees, still fluctuating on idle but I guess that is normal. Been testing for like 15 minutes now, which is shorter than the time span in which it previously went to 86 and down (which was about 10 minutes), so it seems the drivers did the trick.

I'll update within a day even if it stays good, might help other peoples with the same problem in the future.

 

Yes, seems the stock driver that came with G60 didnt like powermizer or didnt activate it correctly not allowing to go down in cloaks when you are in 2d (120/200/400).

Im glad it worked for you, it has for many others (although not all), but the only problem is i havent found anyother drivers that downcloak correctly, the good news is this drivers also perform better in most benchmarks and they feel great in image quality. But im a little worried for the future, when new games get optimized driver and we need to move on, but you can always also go the route PowerMizer Switch, i havent tried it because i like the drivers to handle it, but others have had success with 19X.XX drivers with it, so its an option.

 

Gosh darn it...is this just this model, or all GTX 260s? Why does every single notebook I'm looking at have some issue or another? :-/

 

No perfect notebook out there. not even uber $4500 ones
Otherwise we wouldn't have this place would we

My 260m is doing great!
Only downclocks if i overclock past 600/950/1450 during benchmarks.

 

Here's an update on the heat problem I posted earlier.

I'm still not quite satisfied - peaked at 76ish degrees browsing the internet. One of the 'problems' it seems is that the fan doesnt always blow air. For example, before it reached the 76 degrees (with the new drivers) the fan wasn't blowing AT ALL; zero air was coming out from the left side of the body. Is it normal that it's not showing ANY activity before a certain point/temperature?

It does blow air effectively when the computer thinks its getting too hot, though i can't determine at which point that is. I've experienced it to start blowing air at 61, 69 and 76 degrees (by touch and by sound I experienced NO vent activity before these temperatures).

So my point being is that it seems quite random to me at what point the vent kicks in. On top of that I experienced that the vent is not active before these certain 'points'. Is this all normal and am I being too suspiscious or is this a problem that any of you has experienced as well? Moreover, can I solve this?

 

I have had a similar problem. When disabling my Intel AGN, I struggle to get it to pickup a network after I re-enabled it. It is turned on and even when I run thru help it takes a couple of times before it finds a network.

 

I took the plunge and upgraded my CPU from P7450 to T9600. I also took opportunity to clean off the poor excuse of a thermal paste they used on cpu and chipset. Thermal Paste on cpu was very dry and the paste on chipset was almost a blu-tak kind of thing...odd. After scraping off the dry paste and cleaning out with 91% alcohol, I applied a very thin sliver of Artic Silver to cpu and chipset. Moved the heatsink a little here and there to get some even spread and put everything back in place.

My cpu idle temps dropped immediately from between 45-50C all the way down to around 32C. My gpu core sadly still hovers between 65 and 75C. I did think about cleaning out the video thermal paste but decided one change at a time was in order. I'll do the video thermal next time I go back in next week when I add 2x4GB SO-DIMMS.

The only reason why I went for a T9600 was that I got a good deal for it on ebay and the T9900 were scarce and expensive.

 

Can anyone do tell if it's possible to upgrade the CPU of this laptop to the higher QX9300 model?

 

@ ProteusX2:

I installed Oblivion and FRAPS. I ran them (along with the “tdt” command in the console) with the following settings:
Resolution – 1024 x 768
Texture – Small
Tree Fade, Actor Fade, Item Fade, Object Fade, Grass Distance, and View Distance set all the way up.
Distant Land, Distant Buildings, and Distant Trees set to on.
Water Detail – High
Water Reflections – On
Water Ripples – On

I had the shadow settings (self shadows, grass shadows, etc… turned off.
Anti-aliasing was set to off.

In Imperial City I got a constant 59 to 62 fps.
In the wilderness I got the same fps. I tried to lag the game by running around shooting fireballs at deer on the hillsides and doing the same by the waterfront but it pretty much stayed constant. I tried it during the day and at night in the rain and in the fog. For a split second when I was standing by a fire at night I saw it go down to 55 then it jumped back up to 60. The hottest temp my GPU reached during all of this was 78 degrees C.

Some things to take in account: It was a fresh installation, no mods, updates, or expansions such as Shivering Isles. I have the 186.82 drivers installed. I am running on High Performance Mode in Power4Gear Hybrid.

Hopefully this helps

 

it does, thank you very much

 

Well its not only asus, but others work with other drivers also, like 186.81 from nvidia did work fine on sagers n alienware gtx260m but with asus it didnt downcloak, etc. I tested a lot of drivers overtime, and 186.82 were the best i found, specially with the 2d downclock, but since i found those, i have not tested much specially 19x.xx series.

 

If you're using HWMonitor to check your temperatures, make sure the tjmax is set to the correct value.

As for your GPU have GPU-Z running in the background to see if the increases in temperature are because of upclocking.

 

I played the game "Pure" today on a 22" lcd monitor @1920x1080 res via hdmi, one thing I noticed is that powermizer doesn't work when I'm hooked up to a display when I'm on the ac, if I'm running on batteries, powermizer would still downlock even when I'm running an external display.

Anyways, set Pure to 1920x1080 all high settings then played a map while monitoring the temps on the G60's screen(running dual monitor mode with the external monitor set as the main display), I had setup HW, Gpuz and everest to monitor the temps.

The GTX 260M maxed at around 95C, well no surprise there I guess...

Then I went on to OC(if you could call it that) the gpu via nvdia tools to its spec speeds of: CC=550/MC=950/SC=1375 from the Asus factory default values of 500/799/1250 respectivley.

Ran Pure again to see how much diff the temps would be if i ran it at its "spec speed", loaded up the same map/course again and played through it.

Surprisingly there wasnt much difference in the temperatures, I maxed out at around 97C. Sure enuff the fans were roaring, but its practically identical to when the clocks were at the stock G60 speeds.

It sits at an idle of 67-70C(at the desktop) which is the same idle temp I have on it running when its at stock speed. It also downclocks with powermizer to 200/120/400 after I removed the hdmi cable and right now it's sitting at 55C idle.

Now I wonder if I should just leave the settings this way since I dont see much of a temperature gap, or should I revert them back to stock clocks just to be safe? I'm thinking maybe Pure is an old game to test the GTX 260M with, maybe with a newer game these clocks would prove to run hotter.. dunno... anybody there got inputs on the temps with other games with the clocks set to 550/950/1375 vs the temps playing it on stock 500/799/1250?

 

Did not know I had to do that, but I changed it to reflect 105C and not the default 100. Temps still the same. This only affects throllting of cpu when it hits this temp right?

GPU-Z reflects same video card temp as CPUID HWMON. I noticed my temps for video would be at one temp and then suddenly just jump to the other extreme and quickly come back down. Is that what yiou referring to?

thx for this info.

 

Gaddy,
I had the exact problem. It happened after I had it plugged into a wired internet connection and tried to go back to wireless.

I found one of the devices was either deleted or turned off.
Specifically, in device manager/network adapters: Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport adapter was missing.
I think I turned it back on by disabling the Intel Wifi Link 5100 AGN, then right clicking and looking for it again. It then found the Microsoft virtual adapter as well. Sorry I can't recall exactly.
But it had me up and running...I was about to wear out the slider switch on the front!

DD

 

for anyone having the issue with PowerMizer and thier GPU not throttling correctly or not a all, there is a simple fix. Follow the guide here :

http://aspiregemstone.blogspot.com/2009/01/nvidia-powermizer.html

Basicaly you need to add a registry entry to enable it. I am using the latest nvidia drivers direct from the nvidia website currently 195.62 for 200m cards and all problems solved

 

I had a similar problem in Windows and posted about it back on post #770.

"But after several reboots (with only Windows on the drive at this point) the radio was still showing as OFF in the Intel utility. Called Asus support at about 9:00pm and they answered the phone! The guy showed me a trick I wanted to post here. He had me do a Fn F2 to get the antenna tower on the (Windows) screen. Then mouse over the antenna icon and left click. The radio came on. Not too smooth but that did work."

Worth a shot.

 

Well, now I'm beginning to wonder if my copy of the G60 simply came with a defective or shorted speaker system. It sounded cheap and bad from the beginning and now the speakers have completely stopped working. I still have audio through the headphone jack but nothing through the speakers in either Windows or Ubuntu (so it's not an O/S problem).

I remember reading of someone else with a similar problem, where they thought the speaker cutout in the headphone jack was stuck or something, so time to search the boards again.

I really do want to love this laptop...

Btw, has anyone upgraded the display panel on their G60vx? Any feedback on that? I read something about a good Samsung upgrade somewhere.

 

It is not a speaker issue. I bet that when you turn on your G60 you still get sound when the Asus flame logo comes up (if not the sound may be to 0 in your bios). That will prove your speakers are fine. It is not a driver issue because you are still getting sound from your headphones. I had this exact same problem with mine. The problem is in the headphone jack. There is a sensor that breaks causing the computer to always think headphones are in thus always re-routing the sound to the headphone jack. When I called Asus support they had me reinstall the drivers twice and recommended I take it to Bestbuy to get it repaired. Bestbuy informed me that they cannot repair hardware issues in their store and told me it would have to be sent in for a repair (this would have taken anywhere between 2 to 6 weeks they said). I had the laptop for only 16 days (2 days outside of the 14 day exchange period) however, they allowed me to exchange it. I also would bet if you went to your Realtek HD Audio Manager and clicked on the Speakers tab, you would see on the right under Analog it will have the green jack (the headphone jack) highlighted or not faded like the other 2 jacks showing that it thinks there are headphones plugged in as well. If you end up getting this issue fixed with drivers or whatever please let me know.

Here are some links about this issue you may find useful:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic130842.html
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...board_id=3&model=G60Vx&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

 

Thanks, ExSoldier85. I'm sure you're right about the jack. I had read about that somewhere in passing. Will also check the links you posted. But no, I do not get the sound on the Asus flame logo like I did prior to this headphone jack issue. I'll boot into Windows sometime soon and check that Realtek tool. I seldom use the speakers anyway (mostly earbuds) but it's frustrating that something like a headphone jack might break them, although I gather it's a pretty fancy combination SPDIF jack.

 

OK PEOPLE I NEED HELP!

I just need some of you to try something for me. I just noticed the other day (call me paranoid) that I felt a tiny amount of vibration on my G60VX. I am worried that something is wrong with it and I may need to take it back to the store. So if someone could do me a favor and try a test for me. Lay your hand flat on the laptop on the right side of the sensor pad(right above where the harddrive is) and see if you can feel a small vibration.

I am sorry if this is a little odd of a request but it would put my mind at ease if I knew this was a normal thing. I spent a lot of money on it and want to make sure that nothing is wrong.

Thanks,
Max

 

I'm sure that's normal. There's a little vibration on my N80 if I stick my hand over the hard drive.

 

I can also feel a small vibration on mine. It is very very small but I can feel it.

 

Thanks guys!

 

Try entering the bios and reload user default settings, save and exit. Usually this fixes when i dont have sound on the speakers because i used the headphone jack (the night before), idk why it happen but it gets fixed every time in bios in my case.

 

Can anyone confirm that the G60 lid will fit the old G50?
(Of course I would be using an G51 bezel to fit my 15.6inch screen.)

 

Could anyone take a picture of the bottom of the G60VX-RBBX05 for me? Don't have mine yet, but wanted to shop around for stuff like coolers until I actually get it. Would prefer to use my old laptop messenger bag which is 15.5"x11" which sadly rules out the NC1000 or 2000 if I want to take my fan with me. Just need a picture to post in the Cooler Recommendation thread.

 

It should be the same as the G50 or G51.

 

NO!
No Quads for this baby, best you can that will work is a T9900 or X9100.
I would suggest going with a T9900 it uses less power=less heat generated, but both will kick tail in this laptop.
No vibration what so ever in mine.

 

I still can't understand, why you guys can't upgrade to quad core because mine has Q9000 and it's the same laptop except the color. I don't think there is any difference in motherboards.

 

Hi i recently bought this laptop and i play wow... ive read great reviews everywhere about this laptop yet i have all my settings turned all the way down, not in windows mode, and turn a lot of my add ons off. Yet in 25man raids its a slide show, 1fpd for a whole fight... can anyone tell me whats wrong and possibly help me?