M50Sv: Review & Owners' Lounge

Did you set your hard drive to "compatibility" mode in the bios?

 

Sweet, thanks emporiumboutique that fixed it. Just one question. I have three partitions, one has vista, the other is my data, and the third is 8 gb of data that i don't know what it is. when i go to manage my computer and click on disk management under storage, it lists all three partitions but the 8 gb has no info...is this the vista recovery? and i doubt i'll ever want to reinstall vista but how do i burn a copy of this just in case? thanks again

 

Yup, that third partition is the recovery partition.
I think the answer to your last questions lies in this thread.

 

awesome thanks for the info EB!

 

if anything, its likely just drivers, the preloaded asus drivers are really crappy. head over to www.laptopvideo2go.com
and download the latest drivers, they have a custom 'inf' that allows you to retrofit the latest releases of the desktop drivers to work with notebook gpu's.

i've been using the latest release now for a week or more and its been issue free.

 

Hey guys. I've just looked at xotic pc's website and now they're offering an M50VM-a1 unit. There is no M50sv-a1 anymore. It now features a Montevina P8400 Core 2 Duo 2.26 CPU as a default CPU and a 9600m gs GPU. Would there be any significant performance boost with this new model? Could you compare the 2 models Ken? I'm quite sad because i still have my m50sv-a1 in Michigan since i just asked my cousin to purchase it for me. I will be receiving it this august and so i will be very disappointed if the VM model would outperform the SV by a significant margin =(

 

the way the vista dvds' work is that they have every version of vista on it, and according to your license key is what designates which features are loaded upon install.

the one that asus preloads in this notebook is vista home premium 32bit edition.
any of the drivers for other 32 bit versions of vista will work with this notebook.

all of the drivers necessary are available at asus download center website.

 

good luck on the fan control,

i was hoping to be able to unlock some of those features by investigating the vga bios but i can't get NIBITOR to work for me at all.

the fan speeds and temperature settings are all designated by the bios, and well you can't change the system bios, at least not in any easy way.

most people use a program called 'speedfan' google it, its technical and hard to learn how to use, but you can create profiles i'm told to manage the fan speeds etc etc. that is, if speedfan supports this notebook....worth a try.

 

if you look in the system bios, you can adjust the harddrive settings, to 'compatible' for the SATA controller, that will fix the install issue for you

 

I think the CPU in the M50Sv-A1 (t9300) will most likely still be faster than the one in the M50Vm-A1 (P8400) mainly due to the T9300's faster clock speed and larger cache. However, the CPU in the M50Vm-B1 would be perform slightly better than the Sv-A1 model due to the faster FSB, but you probably won't notice it in any real life applications.

GPU wise, the 9600m GS in the M50 refresh units would be faster than 9500m GS in the first generation M50 due to the 65nm architecture, and although it's still DDR2, the 9600m GS should perform equal, if not better than the 8600m GT w/ GDDR3.

One thing great about the M50 refresh is that everything that is user-upgradeable is pretty much already maxed out. ie RAM and HDD.

 

now if i could ask a couple more questions

anyone out there be willing to try nibitor for me? this will be the 3rd time i've asked with no response.
i can't get it to run in vista or xp, and would like to see if its only me that has this problem.


the other thing i was wondering, whoevers listening, i see that some sager notebooks have 9800m series cards in them, any chance someone in here can look to see if they would fit in this chassis?

and or if there are any places where i can purchase specific vid cards for notebooks?
ideally the 9600/9700/9800m series
please any thoughts?

and one more sorta whine for those considering, the keyboard on this notebook sucks, i really hate it. i fix notebooks regularly and i can type like a mad man on all of them, but when i use my own notebook its the worst thing ever. its noticably better with XP, but still really horrible. yes, even after trying the apparent 'fixes'

thanks for everyones awesome help and support, ESPECIALLY, GENTECH PC and EMPORIUM BOUTIQUE you guys rock

 

And its cheaper, plus it gives us free shipping with most sites.
I will hopefully be ordering mine tomorrow (really much later today), unless I see some amazing deal for a different computer.

I would be 99.9% sure the gpu is not upgradeable.
Check EB's sig for a link to fixing the vista keyboard lag issue, I assume this is the problem you are having.

 

Can i go out of the office and shout right now? WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! I'm so sad. I f i had just waited .. huhu!!! i was really fearing for this day to come... huhu!! i have a laptop that is discontinued even though a haven't used it yet oh no huhu!!! and i can see that the ram is ddr2 800 rather than ddr2 667 . I am really sad right now.. could ken make a comparison for these two? Especially in gaming. i really wanted this laptop for programming and gaming coz i am always out of our house. I even emailed the retailer (redbarncomputer) in desperation..... This was my email:

"Hello. I feel kinda stupid for asking this but… is there any chance that I could return a laptop for a refund? I bought a laptop on june and I haven’t used it yet.. Sorry for this question . Thanks"...


hope ken could enlighten "or darken" my worries.....

 

I wish Ken would do so too! But it has 4GB of RAM and the OS is still 32 bit. Will all 4GB be available or something? I thought 32 bit OS could only use 3.2GB or something? Ken we look forward to what you have to say Oh and also I'd like to ask if the M50sv looks exactly the same as the M50vm. Also Ken, there seems to be a typo. The processor on the GenTech page says P8400, shouldn't this be T?

 

I love my SV, but I'm so angry the Montevina model came out. Ken please do not do a comparison, because then I will cry myself to sleep. Thanks in advance...

 

P is correct. I believe the difference between P and T prefix is that p uses only 25w while T uses 35w.
I'd guess that there is only 4gb ram offered is because it is not worth making a 1g card, so instead of having a 1gb and 2gb sticks, they can manufacture 2x2gb for almost the same.

 

When I use my laptop with ambient light (daylight, no overhead lights) in the background the light sensor apparently doesn't see that light and darkens the laptop screen to the point where I have to squint to see what's on the screen. FN+A disables that feature and then I just manually adjust the brightness, but I was wondering if it is possible to adjust how much the light sensor affects the screen.

Anyone else having this issue? Any ideas, other than to just leave this "feature" off?

 

I don't have an M50 (Yet, placed my order today) but I do have a Z71V which I believe was the first laptop with the sensor. On my Z71V you can use FN + F5 or F6 to adjust the light sensors brightness/darkness. If the Ambient sensor is turned off on the Z71V, the FN + F5 and F6 keys just work as normal light/dark keys. I'd assume there's something similar for the M50. Is there anything in the owners manual about it?

 

I don't have the laptop with me currently, but If FN+F5/F6 do the same thing as the touchpad's brightness up/down then it doesn't do anything. As long as the light sensor is enabled, those don't do anything other than show you a pretty picture that *says* the brightness is going up/down. I'll have to check it out when I get home, though, but I suspect they do (or don't) the same thing.

I've only owned mine since yesterday... I ordered it from Newegg and they dropped it off at the back door of my apartment (!!!! when no one was home! ) yesterday, so I'm still trying to learn its ropes. Haven't decided whether to keep Vista though...

 

I would like to take a moment to say thank God for Driverheaven.net's mobility modder!!!

http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php

For anyone who wants to download the latest and greatest Radeon drivers for their laptop, and the laptop vendor's site (ehem Asus) doesn't have the latest drivers!

DH's ModTool is free, and it works with XP and Vista video drivers for ATI Video Cards, so I know that you M50Sv owners won't be helped too much by this (NVidia video drivers are addressed in earlier posts), but the M50Sa (so similar that they're almost the same!!! ) has an ATI Radeon HD 3650, and I actually couldn't get my games to run without downloading the latest driver and using this ModTool.

Just thought I'd put that out there for anyone who might be interested.

 

Yes also P has 3MB cache and T has 6 MB cache but they both 1066 FSB.

 

I thought cache size was more related to if it was x8xxx with 3mb and x9xxx with 6mb, regardless of if was T or P.

 

The P9500 does in fact have 6mb of Cache. Look for the differences between the CPUs here:

http://download.intel.com/design/mobile/specupdt/32012101.pdf

I guess some of the T series have 1066MHz FSBs too...

 

The P8xxx series has 3MB Cache while the P9xxx series has 6MB Cache. Otherwise all P series use 25w and have a 1066MHz FSB.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_future_Intel_Core_2_microprocessors#Dual-Core_Mobile_processors

 

Just curious, why would you want to edit your GPU bios? I just tried nibitor and the program doesn't have support for the 9500m GS GPU. . If you're trying to overclock the GPU, RivaTuner works perfectly and a much safer option.

Pertaining to your question about purchasing a GPU and upgrading it yourself, the short answer is you can't. GPUs are made differently (mainly the size factor) with each company and even model of the notebook. eg a 8600m GT MXMII GPU for a C90S will only work for the C90S and won't fit in any other notebook even when they are MXMII format, including other Asus notebooks.
As of now, the best 9xxx series GPU Asus offers is the 9600m GS and the best 8xxx series is the 8700m GT. The 8700m GT will remain as the best 8 series Asus offers, but in the near future, there will be better 9 series cards available.

As for your keyboard issue, are you experiencing lag? I'll look into the problem a bit further and see if I find any more/other possible solutions

In all honesty, I think the ambient light sensor is very bad. Like you said, even in broad daylight, the sensor control still dims the screen. It's definately not as effective as the ambient light sensor in the iphone. I don't think there's any programs to change the settings of the sensor (at least none that I can find). I would just disable it and leave it at that (that's what i did )

 

You may find the answer in the link below
http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/24356-task-scheduler-service-not-running.html[/QUOTE]

thanks 4 da link
but does the recovery disk has the repair feature ? what is it capable of doing other than install a clear copy of vista ?? thxx

 

Ken you could just send the comparison exclusively to me (please ...) Anyway. rebarncomputers sent me an email telling me that they could give me a refund but there will be a 15% restocking fee and i would shoulder the shipping cost. I feel like i am trapped in a place where i can never get out =(

 

Hi guys. I am going to order my M50SV but I wanted to ask a few questions before I do.

I considered buying from an American site but they ask for over 200 bucks in shipping and also I'd have to figure out where to buy and how to insert a keyboard with cyrillic alphabet. So not worth it, even though there is a price difference.

But the only local site that has the M50 lists it as having T8300,2400 Mhz and Penryn, not Montevina. What does this mean for me in the long run in terms of performance and how quickly this becomes outdated?

I am not planning on doing very intensive gaming on this laptop (like Crysis), but I would like to do video editing and also play MMOs/DOTA without it freezing on me.

Thanks in advance, and thank you to Ken et al for making this forum so informative.

 

thanks 4 da link
but does the recovery disk has the repair feature ? what is it capable of doing other than install a clear copy of vista ?? thxx [/QUOTE]

No problem
The recovery disks can help you restore your notebook back to factory settings and repair any corrupt data. so yea, it does have copy of vista in it.

I think it would be better if you PM Ken directly first.
As for the 15% restocking fee, that figure is pretty standard in the notebook industry. The majority of companies (especially larger companies) do that nowadays simply because a notebook looses value immediately once it's been brought out of the store. Only a small number of companies will offer less than 15% restocking fee.

 

If gaming is your main reason for buying this laptop, then i suggest that you get the m50VM-a1 model coz it has the 9600m gs rather than the 9500m gs. Also, with the newer montevina platform, we could safely say that it is a better deal ie: 320 gigs HD instead of 250 gb, 4 Gigs ddr2 800 Ram instead of 3gigs ddr2 667 and a newer processor that has a 1066 FSB(don't really know if there is any significant performance boost with this).

Could someone confirm if the m50vm-a1 supports ddr3 ram? Sorry to talk to much about the VM model guys. And yes. I am more sad right now ansering his questions haha!!!!

 

hey guys this sounds great. thankfully im buying a laptop next month so i didnt get the old model but could gentech do a review on this model? and does anyone know when this model will generally be in all online stores? thanks

CrispyMango

 

Thanks emporium.. ayayay. my cousin would pull out the "i told you so" line on me again... sorry for this kind of attitude. i'm just the type of person that really studies a thing or matter first before purchasing(like when i chose to buy the lakland bass over every other bass there is). but it seems that i missed a very important detail (the montevina and the immidiate release of laptops with this platform) i know that the m50sv-a1 is a very capable and powerful machine. it's just that this kind of purchase is really hard on me since i am from the philippines and of course buying a thing with that price tag is really a once every four years for me/us.

 

GenTechPC has them for sale since early this morning Not sure what you mean by "all online stores", but most Asus resellers already have them on their website. I believe Ken is currently working on the review so hopefully it should be up anytime soon.

The 9600M GS in the M50VM-A1 has ddr2 video ram. It does provide a better gaming experience from the 9500M GS mainly due to the 65nm architecture. The 1gb video memory also may help a tiny bit too

Oh yea, I completely understand the frustration! I mean, it's really hard to keep up with technology. Don't feel too bad though, like you said, the M50Sv-A1 is still a VERY capable notebook for gaming, programming and other office related tasks, and I absolutely agree Given your situation, I honestly think you should keep the A1 for now. Returning your notebook will cost you about $350 and IMO not worth doing so unless you absolutely have to have a montevina CPU and/or the 9600m GS GPU.

 

Not sure about the M50VM-A1 but on techreport.com..."Centrino 2 also brings the GM45 and PM45 Express chipsets. Both models support two channels of DDR3 and DDR2 memory..."

Also, on techreport.com "For users who purchase Centrino 2 laptops with discrete graphics processor, Intel offers an optional "switchable graphics" feature that lets you switch between integrated and discrete GPUs to save battery life. AMD offers something similar in its Puma notebook platform." Is this feature available in the M50SV? Would become another reason to get it if it did.

And another question, what brand/model is the 320GB HDD in the M50VM?

 

what i meant by generally all online stores is theres this one store online/brick and mortar right by my house and it hasnt updated. im just anxious because il be buying this lil sucked in a month or less

edit: its called memory express

 

I am also wondering why the vm model is cheaper with that specification(320gb hd,4gb ram 800 etc) I was expecting that laptops under the newer platform has a steeper price(for obvious reasons) even the hp dv5t is cheap (with the 9600m gt)

 

And another question, what brand/model is the 320GB HDD in the M50VM?[/QUOTE]

it's the m50VM-A1
http://1toppc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=M50VM-A1&Category_Code=

there are only two models now. the m50vm-a1 and the m50vm-b1

 

I'm pretty sure the notebook can't take DDR3 system ram, but I'd also like to know the answers to your other questions!
Hopefully Ken might be able to help answer them

Ahh.. I see what you mean. Well, I guess it depends on the the store. You could just stop by and ask them However, I'd probably still suggest you buying the notebook from GenTech since it will save you on tax and you get a free 8gb ssd express card. I've been purchasing notebooks on a yearly basis (sometimes several notebooks a year) and found GenTech to have the best service in my experience

I think the new components used are more expensive, but not by a significant margin. It's probably in the range of tens of dollars more. The most costly component in a notebook, i believe, is still the screen and system board.

 

You misunderstood the question. He meant if it was a Hitachi, seagate, or WD HDD in them.

I don't think gentech is offering the 8gb ssd with the a1 version, only the b1 version. This makes me sad, as excaliber has the a1 with a 250gb backup external hdd.

 

Oh sorry my bad. I don't know. it doesn't say on gentechpc and xotic pc.

 

well im in canada (edmonton. alberta) and we have like environmental taxes anyway. plus i would like to have it before i go on a little bit of a road trip and i might only get the money i need right before i leave so its a little easier if i go to a real store. plus plus: i dont need an additional hard drive or a flash stick. im just waiting to see when theyl pick it up and start selling it. anyone know of game performance difference between the new models and the old ones? thanks

CrispyMango

 

Ken would be doing a review and he willpost it tomorrow. i just don't know if he'll make it public (since somebody asked ken not to review it because he might cry himself to sleep. i might do that too but i would really want to know =] ) i asked him to do a review with emphasis on gaming and stuff

 

lol...I'm over it now...I havent any complaints about the SV...this computer does a great Job at almost everything...

 

ok that's good to know haha =) so ken should post the review/comparison tomorrow. i do hope that there are no significant performance increase. please understand my selfishness

 

the gpu can be removed, and i'm abou 99.9% certain it conforms to a standard just like the desktop gpus do.

there are different standards for size of cpu in correlation to chassis lcd size, 15.4/17/19 etc

i'm certain this gpu could be upgraded, its just a matter of someone having the ability to try it with other gpu;s/ and where to buy them

 

Laptop gpus are a whole lot different for each individual model.
There are a no good ways to upgrade laptop gpus, but some can if they are MXM or something like that. The m50 and m70s are not that type, so the gpu is not upgradeable. Very few are actually the upgradeable type.

 

im so excited waiting for this review. i want this lappy so bad

 

Ken has already posted a review on the m70vm-B1

it has the 9600m gs gpu and judging by the 3dmark score, it will have a significant increase (when comparing to the 3dmark scores of the m50sv-a1)

 

Just put my order in for the m50vm-a1. I can't wait for this to come, since I haven't even had a desktop come close to the power in this.