M50Sv: Review & Owners' Lounge

I'm sure there probably is a hack out there that will fix this issue, but I haven't found one for Vista yet. There are apperently a lot of notebook hard drives with the same issue to, and this quite surprising as this bug was first discovered two years ago. You shouldn't worry to much as your hard drive will likely last way beyond 600,000 cycles. If you want to see how many cycles you have used already, download smartmontools:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=64297

 

Am I looking at the load cycle count?

If so, it's at 1799 and the utility also says that my drive has been powered on for 121 hours, at that rate, I'll hit 600,000 in a little over 4 and a half years...

 

Yes, it's not too bad. Your hard drive will probably survive 2 million load cycle counts. Keep in mind that if this bug didn't exist, your load cycle count would be like 100.

 

In the seagate data sheet for this drive it says ">600,000" are you sure it could hit 2 million? that's over 3 times the amount...

 

I'm just glad that I got a better drive on the way no matter what. I'll just use the Seagate as a goof around drive with my new external eSATA case.

 

Thanks, but the reseller I am looking at doesnt let me customize. Can I just get any 9 cell battery or does it have to be from asus?

Also does asus only use the seagate drive for m50sv? or is it random?

 

Hey Guys,

I need your HELP/OPINION/ADVICE. As some people are doing now, I am looking to use this laptop as both my desktop and portable. I need to know what size monitor, more specifically what resolution, I can use with this laptop for gaming and regular browsing, etc.

I am looking for something along the lines of "medium to medium-high" settings for gaming. Yes, I know this is a HUGE generalization as it will depend primarily which game is being refered to.

I was thinking of a 24" widescreen @ 1920x1200. If not, then 22" widescreen @ 1680x1050.

If any of you can share your experiences and thoughts with hooking up the M50 to a monitor that would be great.

 

I think the problem is the CSS and Windows Vista:

http://www.evga.com/forums/printable.asp?m=285368

 

My m50sv-a1 just shipped today (XP pro) and I am very excited with my decision and in my anticipation i have a few questions to make my laptop as good as possible when it arrives:

I was wondering did any of you do the soft mod from the 9500m gs to quadro fx1700 on XP, and if you did what kind of performance increase gaming wise did you notice. I'm not really concerned with other 3d apps and I know that is what the quadro is for. I noticed the post about running cod4 maxed out with the softmod and realized it was vista. But even so maxed out on cod4 (impressive) with decent 30+ fps i'm assuming is for real? Ken if you don't mind me asking what do you think about the soft mod on the graphics card?

Also have any of you done extra for cooling when overclocking?
Thanks!

 

Yeah Ken, I'm thinking so too. I've heard that CSS works really good on Linux, so I'm going to ditch this crappy Vista OS and give Linux a go. I'll report back and let you know if and how well it works out for me.

 

How about XP? do you experience the same problem with XP?

 

Good point Ken. I'll load up XP again tomorrow and see. I'll report back and let you know.

 

Plz can someone answer to these questions?
What driver siries have you put?
What are the best?
Have anyone tested Bioshock on the m50sv?
How many fps do you get?

Cause I've tested the Bioshock demo, and my framerate sux...
As I wrote, this seems very strange to me cause the asus gs2 can run it with an incredible resolution and with all the settings on high... and with a deecent framerate!
Mine instead is absloultly anplayable: i got 20 fps and with a resolution of 1280x800, that's my max resolution anyway.
but how is it possible when the gs2 use a lowe cpu and the 8600m gt wich is the same exact of the 9500m gs?

440

 

maybe your 8600gt uses ddr3, although truth be told it shouldn't be as much of a difference as you described, but then again maybe bioshock is memory bandwidth bottlenecked, maybe others here who know the game can tell you...

 

Just keep in mind that higher resolutions will require a lot of processing power that the 9500 doesn't necessarily have. Old games will run fine at those resolutions, but new ones will most likely stutter.

 

That little trick should work in XP also, as it is centered around RivaTuner. In XP you should get great frame rates in COD4...

 

I guess I can always run the games in windowed mode.

 

Hey everybody, this driver is working really good for me in Vista.
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18049

 

Is there a way to have the mail LED flash on and off continuously when there's new mail? (It would attract my attention faster...)

 

Yes, I did a soft mod and installed quadro drivers on XP, but found that it performed slightly worse than gefroce drivers in terms of gaming, hence I went back geforce drivers. There are probably 1 or 2 games that may perform better with quadro drivers, but in all honesty, unless you're going to be using CAD, Maya or other similar application, it's best to stick with geforce drivers.
In terms of cooling, non is necessary even with overclocking. The heat sink and fan in the M50Sv is very efficient. I have my CPU overclocked all the time and GPU overclocked when gaming, and never had an issue with overheating

The 8600m GT in the G2S (which has GDDR3 VRAM) performs slightly better than the 9500m GS (w/ GDDR2) in the M50Sv. However, performance wise, they should be fairly similar and not as far off as you observed. To imporve performance, try use a different driver from laptopvideo2go, set your power4gear to superperformance, overclock your CPU (w/ SetFSB) and GPU (w/ Rivatuner)

As far as I know, I don't you can do that

 

Hey guys,
Is there anyone who has the same problem as mine. Namely, the media buttons on my touchpad don't work under XP. I tried to install driver from CD but it didn't work (touchpad was installed as simple ps2 mouse ) Later, i've downloaded from synaptics website latest driver for XP and Vista, for XP installation was succesfull but in touchpad options there wasn't "Dual Mode" (Tap Zones Enabled),for Vista ->touchpad was installed as simple ps2.Anyone has the same problem?Emporiumboutique, any idea? Anyone can help me?

 

Emporiumboutique, what overclock settings do you use and it's stable?

 

The touchpad driver in the drivers cd will work perfectly on xp.

Mine is stable at 2.7ghz. Any higher than that my system will show a bsod and/or crash.

 

Under XP with SP3?Unfortunately,at mine, the driver from CD don't install my touchpad properly I don't know what else can i do?? That is the last thing in my m50sv-a1 which don't works as under Vista

And GPU settings?

Thx for your reply

 

I have sp3 on mine too and it works smoothly. Did u uninstall the current driver first before reinstalling the driver from the cd? You'll need to do that in order for the new driver to work properly. Go to your device manager and uninstall it first. If that still doesn't work, go back to sp2 and install the mousepad driver... Then install sp3 again.

As for GPU clock speeds, I dont quite remember off the top of my head (I'm currently at the airport and typing from my iPhone) I'll check later tonight or tomorrow when I get back home

 

Yeah, i've tried all configurations, first of all, i uninstalled the touchpad in device manager, then driver from cd. other "configurations" also tested.

Thx for any advice.

 

do u get an exclaimation mark in you device manager for the touchpad?
that's weird it doesn't work. After double clicking on the setup file, did your computer prompt any errors?
Have you tried the drivers from the asus website?

 

The touchpad works (without media buttons) after installation of WINXP dedicated driver. When i try to install driver from cd, xp founds it as a synaptics mouse and in device manager it's called Microsoft Mouse ps/2. The installation is strangely short and without blue-black screen. After all don't work at all. I tried also driver from asus website

 

OK, I'm installing XP again, and I'm making up my own drivers CD. Is VGA the only driver I need to worry about being an XP specific driver, or are there others that have to be.

In other words can I just use most of the drivers from my drivers CD for XP. If some cannot, which ones? eSATA, camera, or any others?

 

XP will automatically install camera driver, what you need to install from the drivers CD are:

-ATK Hotkey
-ATK0100
-ATK OSD
-ATK Media
-ASDM (Fingerprint, run SETUPIAM.EXE)
-Touchpad (run setup.exe)
-Modem (run SSETUP.EXE, install this before install Audio driver)
-WConsole (Wireless Console, install this before install the Bluetooth)
-ESATA


These are the drivers that you need to download for XP:
Chipset
http://downloadmirror.intel.com/12769/a08/infinst_autol.zip

VGA:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17739

Realtek HD Audio Driver:
ftp://202.65.194.211/pc/audio/WDM_R189.exe
Note: For XP with SP3 it's required to download KB835221 hotfix otherwise the Audio will not work, thanks to thadeej for the information.

Wireless Lan:
http://downloadmirror.intel.com/13000/eng/11.5.0.0_xDrivers.zip

Lan:
http://www.marvell.com/drivers/files/yk51x86_v10.61.2.3.zip

Bluetooth (thanks to Konohasaint) :
Asus Server: http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/W7S/Bluetooth_XP32_Vista32_070912.zip
Intel Server: http://downloadmirror.intel.com/12052/eng/V4.00.30a_XP.zip

Power4Gear:
http://downloadmirror.intel.com/10891/eng/P4G_V1.16_Generic.zip

 

Thanks again Ken!

 

Can I use the camera drivers off of the Asus Drivers CD if I want to or not? Won't they be better than the generic MS drivers?

 

You can try but I don't think the camera drivers from the CD works for XP, I never have to install the camera driver since XP always install it for me, unless some other models the camera shows upside down image then I'll have to go find a driver for it.

 

OK, I'll try it out and see if it works, if not, no big deal I'll just remove it. I'll report back to let everyone know one way or the other.

 

I'm going to try these XP VGA drivers and see if they work good, people seem to be liking them, so I'll give them a shot. I'll post back with the results.
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18207

 

Just got mine delivered today, and have been working a while to get everything perfect in XP but I love how it looks

I installed touch pad and it seemed to work right and had options for tap zones but the mode was not working so I assume i'll just uninstall the one I have and use the one from the cd and It will work.

^ edit: that just worked for me XP with SP3

I have a few questions about things:
1. Is there any xp supported asus software for the video camera (so fn+c and fn+v work ?
2.any asus media/dvd/other utilities and applications that i'm missing out on because of xp
3.Not real important to me but did anyone get the IR receiver working?

 

1: You can try download the XP version of Splendid software for FN+C:
http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/A7F/Splendid_XP_060906.zip

and the XP version for FN+C:
http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/A7F/LifeFrame2_XP_060906.zip

2: Yes, the Smart Logon does not work on XP.

3: Some people said they got it to work but I can't find the driver for it.

 

Taking my AC adapter back to the shop tomorrow, it suddenly stopped working.

 

does anyone know if the m50 can read sdhc memory cards? I'm getting an LG dare with an 8gb sdhc card to go with it. I know i would need a micro to regular SD adapter at the least but would it read the card? Not all devices with SD read SDHC so i'm wondering if my beautiful m50 is one of them

 

Hey Ken,
Can u help me with my touchpad under Xp SP3?
Here's a description:

The media buttons on my touchpad don't work under XP. I tried to install driver from CD but it didn't work (touchpad was installed as simple ps2 mouse ) Later, i've downloaded from synaptics website latest driver for XP and Vista, for XP installation was succesfull but in touchpad options there wasn't "Dual Mode" (Tap Zones Enabled),for Vista ->touchpad was installed as simple ps2.

 

Has anybody seen this: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-notebook-chips-overheating,5815.html ?

I sure hope it doesn't affect the 9500m-gs... anybody with info on this please post!!!

 

I just checked 3 different laptops:
the first one is the asus m50sv-a1 with the 5400.4 and it has 147 power on hours and 1898 load cycles or 12.9 load cycles per hour

the second one is a gateway 7426gx, it has a 100GB Fujitsu, it's a few years old and it has 8188 power on hours and 103,967 load cycles or 12.7 load cycles per hour

and the last one is a 6 year old HP ze5270 it has a 40GB Hitachi and it has 3414 power on hours and 97007 load cycles or 28.4 load cycles per hour

which leads me to believe that the 5400.4 is fine...

(I also posted these results in this thread...)

 

If you download the drivers from Synaptics it will not work, the only driver works is from the CD, maybe you need to try uninstall all the previous version and reinstall from the CD, make sure go to touchpad folder of the driver CD and run setup.exe, works for me every time.

 

Gizmodo is reporting that it might be exclusive to the 8M series. http://gizmodo.com/5021713/lots-of-nvidia-laptop-graphics-cards-are-overheating-dying

 

Here is a question that is just bugging me a little bit. What is the deal with the lack of tv tuner on the US models of the M50, and now the almost instant discontinuation of the tv tuner model on the M70? Is it strange that it is the most touted option on this laptop, but not available on the most common configuration?

 

dude man, how did you manage to overclock your T9300?
i have the m50sv-a1, i've got the vid card up pretty high,
from 475 to 686core, and 400 to 522mem.
but i can't seem to figure out how to OC the cpu on a laptop. would love to! please give me a hand

 

yeah, i have an A-DATA 8gb SDHC card, reads fine.

 

if you go to asus download site and type in 'touchpad' it will come up, click the first link.
then in the top right, it will say OS, choose XP
then find the latest driver and install it.
that is what i did, just now, and in xp sp3 it all works perfectly, the media functions and all.
btw, thaworks for just about all the drivers for this system, along with the asus specific software.
i just typed them all in and downloaded the latest versions, and everything works.

now to figure out how to overclock this cpu!!!

 

anybody gettin glitchy issues with the keyboard? it seems that its really slow or there is some system software running in the background in vista that makes me miss letters all the time.
i just refomated to xp sp3, and it seems to be much better, but not entirely gone? am i alone on this one?

 

Have anyone put on the 3M clear paint protect skin on this lappy ?? i juz did and it looks good so far but it seems very sticky...i am afraid that it will remove the paint beneath if i decide to remove the skin later....anyone else tried it ??

and.....can anyone help me find the language bar on vista ???i juz totally lost my lanugage bar from my toolbar ( i have looked at the control panel language options, the toolbars option ) i think i lost the language bar right after installing vista SP1 or installing xp in dual boot ... for some reason..i couldn't get into the task scheduler either : ( it says reading data failed...

any help will be very much appreciated : )