N56vz review and owners lounge - Techno Art

A few things before the review: Building a laptop means making compromises. Even if you disregarded cost, and picked the most expensive materials and components, that in itself would not give you a "perfect" laptop. Instead it's a tool to perform a specific task. What that task is depends on how successful the laptop is.

One laptop that lasts you 10 hours as a typewriter is better than a laptop lasting 4 - if you wanted a typewriter. While another laptop that lasts you two hours of excellent portable gaming performance is still better than the typewriter - for a gaming laptop. Another gaming laptop that has better performance while married to the wall-socket - then it has better gaming performance, if you wanted that.

So like every other laptop, the n56vz doesn't do everything. And it's placed in a category between a multimedia top and a gaming laptop. By having average (4h) battery-life, normal/lesser 15 inch type notebook-size. And above average 3d/multimedia and gaming performance. But without being a specialised gaming platform with 3d capable screen, extended input and output options, being "ready for overclock", etc.



Aesthetics & Design
It's pretty.

Notebook measures 38cm x 25.5cm across the aluminium lid. Slightly less area than on an HP Envy. The edge where you open the lid has a 1 cm wide rubber strip - possibly similar purpose as the wifi "antenna strip" on Asus' transformer Prime pads? It's not obviously visible, though.

The i7 version of the n56 is 2.73cm to 3.40cm thick, measured from lid to rubber supports on the underside. The upcoming i5 version will be slightly thinner, because of the power-supply. The i5 version also will have a smaller power-brick.

Unlike most (working) laptops with high-end components like this, the bottom of the laptop is made in hard plastic, melted to fit across the components, along with a soft curve up towards the sides. Therefore the relatively slimmer size compared to other laptops, with parts of the underside panels coming out half a cm or so from the rest (such as the cover over the hdd well). Since the bottom isn't flat, the notebook doesn't keel over if you put it on top of a notebook or a pencil. Also doesn't squish your fingers under the edges, even if you put it down as gently as you possibly can, etc.

When you open the lid it draws backward on the hinges (rather than sticking up), setting the screen a bit lower than the chassis when open. The hinges sit inside the chassis, so it's lowered without creating any large empty spaces. The screen bezel is black, with the matte screen lowered 2mm into the lid. This means dust will gather in the edges, and it's a possibility that the plastic cover frame might be unevenly pressed to the side of the lcd. *budget* *cough*

On the surface, however, it looks solid. It's also snapped together with tight seams, like everything else on the laptop, which makes the overall feel very exclusive.



Screen itself is matte, with the amount of screen to bezel ratio appearing very high. I measured it and it's nothing special - but the dominating feature is the screen itself, rather than the bezel or the frame.

Further down the chassis top is aluminium finished, with a chiclet keyboard coming through the panel (the expensive version, not the embedded plate found in some of the Asus models).

Key-wander is slightly lower than most keyboards like this. And together with the large trackpad, it might have been designed for slightly Taiwanese hands rather than for people with sea-lion flippers for hands.

The circular laser-perforated pattern that hides the speakers end up in a small angle upwards towards the edges. The holes are actually less pronounced in reality than they look on the pictures - the circular pattern is more of a texture than anything else.



Put together with the slight angle towards the edge, it effectively masks the sharp edges on the square top of the chassis. The same for the black border on the main screen. This design thought is also what has the edge on the notebook with the cable connections and ports be very slim, before it curves inwards to the bottom of the chassis.

In other words, the design masks the sharp edges, while keeping the physical size as small as possible. Rather than simply make everything rounded off when seen from above, while actually increasing the chassis size, while leaving the sides and chassis-edges as sharp and straight-angled as before.

Conclusion: It's pretty. The few cheap parts are visible if you look closely. But they don't obviously threaten to create any loose edges or problems either visually or practically in terms of wear later on.

The only less fantastic solutions is the sharp angle on the back of the hinges, along with the slight distance you can press down the surface of the lid into the back of the plate that the screen is embedded into. Neither are technical concerns. Specially since the lid seems glued to the chassis when the laptop is closed, and the hinges apparently are the most solid part on the notebook.

The design on the inside is still the most interesting. The cooling solution draws in air through an intake at the underside towards the front, as well as through the small laser-perforation on the front, and through the keyboard surface. Meanwhile, none of the internal components lead heat into either the plastic chassis bottom, or the aluminium top (or the underside of the keyboard well, as is unfortunately very common). The heat is instead going through an isolated plastic channel towards the exhaust, not completely unlike on Asus' ROG gaming laptops.

So even on heavy load, after the heatsinks reach high temps (where they transfer heat most effectively), the temperature in the keyboard and the bottom chassis is more or less completely unchanged, in spite of both aluminium and plastic (in relatively cheap manufacture) having very low heat-capacity. This is good planning and excellent design that has escaped most if not all laptop-makers so far, that enables more powerful components to be placed in "entry-level" laptops.

One thing some may find is a problem is the more subjective feel of the palm-rest. The aluminium layer is thin (it's a kind of aluminum composite with a core that has no flexibility, and a thin surface layer), so if you typically type with the hands on the palm-rest, the surface will start to feel warm. This is also a concern with the large track-pad - if you prefer the narrower design from Lenovo, for example, you will not instantly become a fan of this part of the n56 design.

But if you become a fan, it is likely because of the better precision the larger pad gives you, along with the quick and easy keypresses on the keyboard. I have a tendency to miss keys and hit a second unwanted key, for example. But thanks to the low but noticeable wander, and good spacing on this keyboard, that is suddenly not a problem. The impression would have been even better, had the adjustable backlight not been bleeding a bit under the side of the keys.

Hard-drive, ram and wifi-modules are easily accessable by removing a snap-on panel attached with one screw. The disc-drive caddy is accessible without removing the chassis as well.

(edit: But because of Asus unintelligent bios-tweaking, locked/overriden settings, refer to this thread when choosing ram-upgrades. I was expecting Asus to simply tweak the bios-settings to standard spd-timing instantly after release, since locking the memory timing can be the source of a lot of stability issues, but no such luck yet. Therefore, refer to the linked thread when shopping ram-upgrades.)

Access to the insides otherwise, along with the fan and the heatsink requires a complete disassembly. I can forgive Asus this part, because it's not done to keep people out, but rather to keep the components as compact as possible - the typical components are easily accessible (also goes for the optical drive-bay - one phillips screw on the underside).

The battery on the n-series now has become a pack with hinges on the back that snaps in place inwards. This is a good choice, since replacement batteries can be easily put in without putting the screen in a particular position, and it also protects the battery well from dust.

Outside that, what catches my attention with this laptop is that it has no grooves and tracks that will gather dust or make the edges eventually lose the tight seams. For example like the seam between the screen and the back cover on an Asus EeePC. There are no corners that will dent, or sharp edges that stick out. And it results in the laptop - save for the backside of the aggressive-looking hinges - giving off a very sleek visual impression, whether you focus on looks or practical functionality.

Hardware

i7 quad-core and Ivy bridge with the new hd4000 internal graphics module. Mainboard with pci2.0 at 16x for external devices. The nvidia gt 650m card runs at 5Gbps speeds. Lack of broader bus-speeds on this motherboard class (i.e., less than a desktop setup/latest intel motherboards) would be one explanation for why gddr5 versions of the 650m card do not have higher performance than the n56's ddr3 card.

For context, the 650m card uses the same chip and configuration as the gtx660m cards, but run at lower default timing. Tests show these have comparable performance in practice on mobile platforms. This is caused by two things - relatively low bandwidth compared to a desktop motherboard, along with the dynamic overclocking on Nvidia's Kepler card line. So presumably good cooling and stable current is more important than clock-speed.

Sata connector supports Sata 3, in case you want to shop the fastest Solid State Drives to replace the one shipped with the notebook (transfer speeds easily peaked out on 500Mb/s read&write on my Corsair ForceGT). The laptop defaults the two sata ports to autodetect, so no worries with time-outs or lower speeds with an upgrade later on.

Notebook has all usb 3.0 connectors - but no worries since the usb-drivers and the bios actually works with usb 2.0 devices (but be aware that some Windows install disc versions will croak if you install via usb stick, since it will detect usb 3, but don't actually have the usb 3 driver on the installation's driver repository...). The multi-card reader is hidden underneath the edge on the left.

Combined stereo out/coaxial or digital spdif (...if anyone has a device accepting a connection like that ). Hdmi 1.4 - graphics card supports 3d output for a 3dtv. Also works flawlessly with an extended display running either fullscreen resized or usual desktop contexts.

Hdmi out quality overall is perfect, as usual with Nvidia, either in mirror or extended mode. Bears to be mentioned that the Nvidia card creates a noticeably less distorted and scaled image when compared to ATI's Radeon cards in general.

(Have not tested bitstreaming yet, but it seems the audio output device supports it after the 2.04 bios update.)

Internal audio on the laptop is, like mentioned, two speakers masked underneath the laser-drilled holes in the chassis. I don't know if the Bang&Olufsen label extends to anything beyond the instruction set on the "dsp" element. But the speakers are actually quite good for laptop speakers. I'm not about to debase myself to the point where I actually plug in the bundled "subwoofer". There are some things a man just cannot do.

But the sound range and precision is actually good. Most laptop speakers, computer speakers in general - rely on some dynamic range compression that makes the speakers muddle (or just cut out) anything that happens outside the range of normal human speech. And while this notebook is not hifi either, these speakers are at least precise not just on single tones up and down, but clear on a fairly broad range in a complex sound-context.

So they are comfortable to play games, listen to music on, or watch movies with.

The bundled blu-ray/dvd-burner drives is standard Matsushida (great automatic swear-filter *thumbs*)/Panasonic OEM fare, but it does the job well enough. If you can't have a Sony slot-in player, this is better than most options. Reasonably silent, no shaking, and doesn't constantly rev up and down, etc.

Next, the track-pad. The track-pad is a stroke of genius, in my opinion, even though it requires you to use it in a particular way. The larger space means it's easy to be more precise. And if you use taps for button-presses, and dislike the "shove the cursor" exercises on for example Lenovo laptops, this will suit you well. The area where you have the laptop "buttons" is still part of the track-pad, extending the reach.

A new entry in the Elantech software makes the trackpad less sensitive out towards the edges as well (edit: you can control the size and placement of the area, tilt it slightly to the right, left, make the radius the size you want, etc) - so there are no "small, unforseen problems" with this design. But it might not make sense for all users, since you will need to actually move your hand to point where you want, etc. (Meaning that it's not difficult to get used to, but it is different from most other designs).

The buttons on the track-pad are interesting as well. Instead of having the pressure point placed towards the sides, like on every track-pad ever made, the pressure point is near the middle. So you press a right or a left click by clicking slightly to the left or right of the middle of the bottom of the pad (edit: you can actually push down on the middle of the pad if you want to get a left-click - essentially you can push the entire pad down for a left-click from the middle and down, while the sector on the right is for a right-click. You can use a one-finger tap for left-click, and a two-finger tap for right click as well..).

I think this is much more natural, and easier, than pressing on the sides - since your fingers will be closer, for one. So it's nice that the tech is sensitive enough to pick up the left and right click on what basically feels like one single button under the middle of the pad. While the software cancels out small movement while you're pushing the button.

It's even nicer that someone thought of doing it this way.

Performance

As you would expect, an i7 3rd gen. quad-core at 2.2Ghz standard, and 3.1-3.3Ghz boost means high performance for office tasks and specially single-threaded tasks compared to most laptops. Still, the distance back to a quad-core AMD is not far for non-synthetic runs. For example, a typical 720p video to a mobile format conversion I do often runs at 1m50s on this setup. The same configuration on a significantly lower clocked AMD A6 completed at 2m10s. So you could have some legitimately informed thoughts about how much this much dearer processor really was worth.

Meanwhile, actually finding a program or a game that is cpu-bound even on the non-boosted states on this chip is usually difficult. In other words, while the increased power gives you instant response in every possible context involving processor speed - outside the synthetic benchmarks, the actual performance increase isn't the greatest for a laptop system (that isn't overclocked until it crackles because of the heat).

Some 3dmark11 results:
N56vz vs. N53tk

Solid score at p2356. Note how the score from a significantly weaker AMD setup is trailing a bit closer than it probably should.

(edit: But note that practically, this means the difference between The Witcher 2 running 20-24fps in 1024x768 on the amd setup.. after some tweaking and unlocking v-sync. And between the 650m comfortably running 28-32fps in 1280x720 on the nvidia card. See post further down in the thread for fraps-cap and temp-readings. This means that in this particular class of graphics cards, at this power-consumption level, it performs more than just "well", statistically speaking).

editer: also see Supranium's OC/standard clock results here.

With the 2.04 bios, performance improves slightly. Presumably because the affinity for the boost-states has been increased. Any game or program you run on this setup, and one of the cores on the processor is going to stay firmly in the 3.2Ghz range, which helps with single-thread response.

Some testing shows that the actual effect-draw is not very different from 2.2Ghz to 3.2Ghz, and the heat levels as well are identical. So I am not entirely certain why the initial bios had softer timing than the update. It's possible that the cores were simply timed to switch to higher states if all the cores came over a certain amount of load, something that typically doesn't happen in games. Instead some of the cores will have full load, with tasks that can't be distributed on other cores.

So that my guess would be the cores have been configured to give you boost-performance on some of the cores, rather than having all cores switch states together. And this will give us the single-threaded peak performance that is so important in games.

In any case, this means the 2.04 update brings the general performance of this laptop from good - to great gaming performance, having increased the boost-state affinity until the laptop quickly runs at 3.2Ghz. While still keeping the low states (1.2Ghz) selected when smaller tasks are running, specially on battery saving.

edit: (this was completely wrong, really: see LulzChicken's and jxulo's posts here. Most likely the first bios didn't allow scaling over the base state at 2.2Ghz, while the second bios did. The other observations seem to hold true, though - that the processor has the same power-draw and heat overall when having one core at boost, compared to running all cores at base.)

(p.s. Graphics card is a bit of a mystery right now. It seems to do some automatic overclocking, while then idling towards something else during light load - but I can't figure out exactly how it's done. Meanwhile, in the tests it seems that everyone has identical (and extremely good) performance. 640, 650, 660 - same chip, different standard timing, but similar results. Something is going on here.. but what..?)

edit, 1st of September: Overclocking in general - like many people have pointed out already, the kepler cards are extremely good overclockers. Owing to different reasons: good construction, and basically because the different 640-650-660 models are really the same chip with different timing and bioses. Meaning the lower clocked that card is, the higher the overclock potential is over the stock clock.

As it is, with the cooling solution on the n56vz/6-series asus, and the way optimus/nvidia switching works (it idles the card at the same low frequencies when not used) there's absolutely no reason to not overclock the 650m card. On a normally functioning system, the core-clock on a 650m can safely be raised 130Mhz/as far as it goes while raising the temperature about 5 degrees, with no issues of any kind. Raising the memory clock too much is going to increase the heat very quickly, though, and might cause instability. This will be increasingly more of a problem the worse the cooling system is.

But not running the n56vz with an overclock is a bit like driving a Ferrari with a plank put under the gas-pedal. Doesn't really make much sense, technically speaking.

3dmark11 results before light overclock is approximately 2300. A safe +135(core)/+100(memory) overclock should score about 2677.

Note that because of the way the optimus/nvidia gpu effect-scaling works, by reducing the activity when the v-sync is reached - increasing the core speed could actually end up decreasing the temperature in some circumstances (lower fps limit is raised, card hits v-sync quicker, nvidia drivers respond and turn down the performance, etc). So be aware of that when overclocking, and test with a program that will tax the card 100% (like 3dmark11, furmark, your favourite game that tends to tax the computer the most) when figuring out where the limits are. Since you could end up overclocking too far, without seeing the real temperature when the card is running at load.

Odds are that you're going to hit the vbios limits (the max limits set on the graphics cards flash-rom), or the limit of the ram-modules (this limit will be slightly different from card to card) - before experiencing any instabilities or dangerous temperature increases, though. When it comes to instability - either the overclock works, or it doesn't. So just use a tool that doesn't force an overclock at startup (msi afterburner, for example), and lay off the bios mods, and you're 100% safe).

Another thing, because of many comments about this: upgrading the graphics driver separately to nvidia's (currently beta) drivers for the 650m is easy and painless. The graphics driver is separate from the intel driver, and integrates perfectly fine between version installs and removals. It's the same way the drivers are installed from asus' driver packages. Both the display adapter drivers should and can be updated separately without problems. Beta-drivers as they are now (1st Sept.) are better than the rewritten reference driver without official support that ships with the computer as well - no reason to not install it right away.

Overall feel, most useful context

In any case, power balancing as it is now means that while just typing or browsing the web for the most part, the fan and processor drops down to the lowest state. On normal work it's silent, and the surface of the chassis is cool (whether in battery saving or high performance profiles). There's no frequent fan-revs in this state.

At full load, even after long sessions, the chassis still doesn't get warm on the outside. The fan revs up, but you hear the air-flow more than the fan itself - it's a good magnetically suspended fan, but more importantly the heat transfer out of the chassis is incredible. Note I'm not comparing the heat signature to other laptops, but compared to what it's like when the laptop runs idle. There is a spot on the left of the keyboard that gets slightly warmer than the room-temp the rest stays at, though. But it's maybe two degrees difference. (Edit: over a couple of hours, the edge of the keyboard plate will be warmed a bit by the exhaust but that is all).

The battery pack is a 6-cell 56Wh rated battery, and will last you about 4 hours on light work, when relying on the internal graphics card. If you add streaming Spotify in the background on the internal speakers, you can shave that down to 3h. This is a far cry from the other AMD setup (with the same battery-rating) mentioned earlier, that would last 4h while running on 25% processor load. But in this "class", i7 quad-core, it's actually very good. And note that the actual effect-draw is lower than average (meaning that with a better battery, this laptop would easily outperform the "winners" in the battery category)..

(edit: turns out that the internal speakers draw a lot of power - if no devices are playing sound on the internal speakers, the speakers turn off. And in that state, you actually do get close to 5 hours battery while surfing normally on wifi, typing documents, etc).

The battery is also not large enough to run for very long on full load in a 3d game (when running on either the integrated or the dedicated card). But the performance while running on battery is actually very good, and consistent. You can easily run The Witcher 2 on battery in 720p at "high" preset, for example, at about exactly the same performance as when plugged in (same happens while running 3dmark11 - same gpu score, slightly lower cpu and combined score). A positive surprise - very useful if you needed to run a small 3d context, and needed to know the performance is stable even if you're not plugged in.

In other words, the n56vz fits into the low range for typewriter notebooks (being miles away in battery-life from for example the Macbook or the Vaio lines of notebooks with larger Lithium polymer battery packs - note again that the actual power-consumption level is identical or lower on the n56 than on a similarly specced Macbook (or a dv6, some testing shows), it's just that the battery doesn't last).

The laptop is also placed in the "average" range for gaming laptops, not being able to compete with Asus' ROG laptops, or Alienware PCs in that sense.

On the other hand, it is actually comfortable to use for smaller tasks, being small in size for a 15 incher, as well as not too heavy (2.7kg - it's more than a kg up to a g55). While still having a monster of a processor, and a far above average graphics card hidden away. It also runs that setup comfortably with very silent and modest cooling, even on full load, without conducting heat into the external chassis.

This comes from a combination of newer tech allowing lower heat signatures on the internal components - along with a laptop design that takes advantage of it enough to ditch many of the heavier and more expensive materials you typically find in laptops. Meaning that Asus could use more plastic without any of the problems you usually have when using lighter materials with high-end components.

So what we have here is a good all-round notebook that fits into a not very heavily populated category placed between towable gaming laptops and lighter portable typewriter/office-notebooks.

Seen from a bit further away, this means that we finally have a reasonably powerful and solidly built gaming/media netbook, that still is as portable as other netbooks, with cooling that actually works.

So if the battery was a bit bigger (or it was possible to buy a larger pack, I suppose), it would be very easy to recommend this laptop for all kinds of roles. Specially since most laptops on the market actually does offer similar battery-life, even with much less powerful hardware.

Still, with Amd's Trinity line of laptops turning up soon, we might quickly see cheaper laptops with performance above the mentioned Amd A6 setup, except with even lower power-draw and lower heat signature.

It might be a while longer before laptop-manufacturers would create a design that would really take advantage of the lower heat-signature of the components - as well as they did with the n56vz, though. And it's out of the question that anything with actually higher graphics performance at the same low power-draw will turn up any time soon - so this is a optimal choice in many ways, and will continue to be for at the very least six months. Note also that you don't get desktop performance even on the most expensive gaming laptops anyway, and you might perhaps end up having spent your money better on a smaller desktop rig if higher gaming performance was the goal.

Meaning that the n56vz is placed very nicely in a "above good enough" segment ([email protected]/gt650m), even if it does not have the best synthetic 3d performance on the market.

So for it's use, this is a very good notebook. The very large number of perfect design decisions as well - trackpad, keyboard, form-factor, screen resolution, weight, amazing cooling, graphics card - makes it a very appealing purchase.

Alternatives that will be more immediately available could be the n46, a 14 inch version of the same laptop, with the same hardware. To maximise the portability, while still keeping the secondary screen option and graphics/processing power. At the cost of screen size and the extra row of keys on the right. The version with intel's slightly less power-hungry i5 processor might also be worth a look, if you do not care about multicore performance.



edit: P.s. Throttlestop link - you can install throttlestop on this laptop, set (documented but not enabled) power-saving flags, etc. to save battery. Will be possible to get it over 5h on light load that way. With no adverse side-effects, etc.

editer: So to sum up the things you can do to extend the battery:
-Throttlestop, as mentioned above - enable power-saving flag, copy the limiter in Power4gear by setting a max multipler, plus disable undemotion flags to allow processor states to stay in c6-c7 between instruction cycles (btw, these settings will not actually significantly impact performance with boost enabled except in extremely specific cases).
-Disable bluetooth adapter when not in use (control panel/icon in taskbar).
-Install latest bios/vbios updates.
-Disable gpu overclock settings, but retain nvidia acceleration (kepler "dynamic underclocking") of webgl/browser windows/flash (i.e., avoid using the intel hd4000 card for anything else than displaying the desktop. Disabling aero has very little impact on battery life, since when you disable the instruction acceleration, the system writes directly to front-buffer instead - this is actually more expensive battery-wise).
-Reduce brightness.
-Change refresh rate* from 60hz to 40hz in (for example) the nvidia panel.

On light loads, this will extend the battery to a reasonably long work-day.

* Many thanks to Zaphod for figuring out the screen-refresh tip (Zaphod is just this guy, you know?). This drops the most constant drain on the system, so it is the biggest power-saver on normal light use.

 

Thank you so much for this outstanding review. It was about time someone here on Notebook Review got one underway! I thoroughly enjoyed the read and can't wait to get mine in the mail today. Thank you! I'll definitely update this thread with my experience as well and hopefully we can make this into an official owners' lounge! I'll be sure to update the BIOS as well.

 

Thanks a lot for this great review, I really appreciate it!

It simply brings up the NB' strengths and weaknesses in a very clear and structured way. Everyone can now easily decide on his own if this is something worth to buy or not.

Only thing I missed a bit are some pictures. You could consider to take some from the chassis and some performance screenshots (maybe some temperature stats from HWmonitor while idle/under load would be also nice).

For me I can say, I am just waiting until the N56VZ-Serie is available in my country and then I finally own this awesome looking laptop. I really can't wait anymore longer.

 

Thanks and yeah, it's a nice laptop.

For benchmark graphs and so on, see GentechPC (guy also posts on the forum here once in a while) Product Showcase: Asus N56VZ Unboxing & Review - YouTube

He's measuring this while running a synthetic benchmark, and that's going to load as much as possible. You actually won't reach that kind of load while running a normal game, but it's a good indication of where the upper limit is. Note, like he demos in the vid, the chassis is almost cold.

Point being that sensor temps aren't as important to look at here as usual, since the chassis actually doesn't absorb heat. Unlike with.. every other laptop on the market. I mean, when you build desktops, you always choose a cooler that can transfer heat quickly when the temperature in the heatsink is high. What you want is a stable temp where the heat is transfered effectively, to have as low noise level as possible, without burning things up and so on. So you don't try to push all the heat away while the copper is lukewarm. But that's usually not the best strategy with a laptop, since the heatsinks can't be very large.. ..I'm going to have to stop myself from opening up the chassis to figure out what exactly they've done to solve this right now, though..

But I'll be adding some graphs with the gpu temps, fps, and cpu temps while running The Witcher 2 later, so you can see how it looks. ..It's very nice to actually play this on high/720p and get a stable 30+ fps. Specially the increased boost helped raise the lower fps level. So yeah. I was a bit worried that the performance wouldn't be much better after all - that we'd still have some microstutter and sub 24fps because.. it's a laptop. They all have this kind of thing, right..? But no..

So I'm very happy about how this turned out.

 

Great, great, and great! I'm looking forward to the graphs and temperatures. Can't wait to get this thing in my hot little hands, update the BIOS, and see how it does. Thanks again for starting up a great thread and writing an excellent review. As mentioned earlier, a few more pictures would be nice even though they're readily available on the web.

 

Thanks for your effort! Always good to have some different graphs from other people, as there are so many factors (ambient temperature, laptop base etc.) which often affects the temperature in a different way.

@lulzchicken:
I am glad that you gonna get your NB soon! I am already interessted what you think of it and spread your experience with us

 

Ffff... can't get rivatuner to work. And my e-mail server is down, so I can't get a registered version of hwmonitor..

Here are some screencaps with a fraps counter from The Witcher 2, though. This runs on the external monitor via hdmi at 1280x720, with the hardware scaler tilting it to 16:10. Default "high" preset. Standard graphics drivers from Asus, haven't tested the beta-drivers yet. Works about exactly as well as on the internal display.

While playing, I end up with the hottest cpu-core going to 78 degrees (the lowest max is 72). The graphics card peaked at 67 degrees.

Ambient temps here right now are.. too hot.

The Arena, Flanking, Riposte, Your Spleen, Sir..

 

I am impressed, your temperatures are pretty low. Do you use a cooling pad?

 

Nice write-up Nipsen! I actually learned something new about my machine while reading it

I have an outboard d/a converter that would be fun to try with the spdif combo jack. Do you know if the asus outputs spdif via mini-optical, or alternatively, through a stereo mini-jack like the "flexijack" on the old x-fi series cards?

 

Fantastic review! So the bios update allows the CPU to boost even when playing games now? (No random turbo lock because of GPU)?

 

No, completely standard setup, nothing weird. Maybe I was lucky with the assembly, I don't know. A cooling pad in general also won't make a difference for the core temp. The cooling pads only cool down the chassis.

Yeah. I think it's a digital jack like that one.

I'm not completely sure now if it ever was locked. But it might have been set up so the cores wouldn't go to 3.2Ghz unless all the other cores (all "eight" with the hyper-threading) were busy. And since that's not really how games work, the processor would probably never go to boost, because typically only one or two cores are busy.

Saw the same in the synthetic benchmarks that use linear load - not all the cores were busy, and the one core that was would stay at 2.2 or 2.8. After 2.04 it seems to have been changed to go quicker to boost with one core. Not.. completely sure, though. If it wasn't something else they did. It's not like they have changelogs we see, after all..

 

Fantastic review however the 650 is not part of Nvidia's Kepler family its the previous generation.

 

This is completely wrong? I don't mean to sound mean or anything, but 650 is Kepler. Where on earth did you get this info?

Edit: OP, can you disable cores in the BIOS? I'm curious. It might improve battery life if you can.

Double edit: is there an i5 model for sale right now?

 

Sorry i got my brain mixed up due to reading so many pages about laptops. I was thinking about the 670.

 

Thanks for taking the time to complete this review, very informative!

 

^thanks

But yeah. 670, 675m, etc, apparently are rebranded fermi cards with different clock/timing configs. No chance cooling these cards well on anything less than the dual exhaust setups on the ROG laptops.

In somewhat the same way, the 650, 660 cards have the same chip, they just come with different configs. Gddr5 vs gddr3 configs, etc, which don't seem to give you much performance difference to speak of on a laptop.

Cores in the bios - no settings you can change for anything whatsoever in the asus bios. The settings are still there, of course, but changing them involves editing the settings in the bios manually, and then flashing it. I think someone has made a program to simplify the process a bit, though... AMIBCP..?

Honestly don't think it will help increase the battery-life, though.. The array of processors are set up in a way that will draw power over all the cores when they're powered up.

That's really what has been so annoying about all of this. If you want a quad-core setup, you're stuck with a pretty high power-draw no matter what. The Trinity tops might change that. And it's another alternative to go for i5/dual core setups instead. But.. then again, the difference isn't /that/ great. And you're kind of left with only one option: buy another battery.

At least the n56 has proper cooling, though.. That is worth something.

 

Yeah. The Asus hits everything for me pretty much except for the battery. And the Samsung S7 hits everything for me except for the screen. And maybe cooling. Decisions decisions, XD.

Samsung has a 640M, but its DDR5 so performance is basically equal to DDR3 650M

 

..it's probably more that it's the same chip, same amount of cores, etc. And it's the same slightly limited bus on the bandwidth. So it won't actually benefit from ddr5 ram on the mainboards you have on laptops right now.

But pretty much the same performance on the Samsung, at least.. You get some strange differences as welll, though. Take a look at www.3dmark11.com/search

 

DDR5 definitely does benefit a GPU, the bandwidth is significantly higher, you can pass more memory through the same "space" or whatever. I might not explain it well, but a DDR5 gpu definitely does help, Anandtech explains it better than me though.

 

In theory, at least. Or, more specifically, in "industry theory", or whatever Anandtech is plugging this week. Seriously, though, turns out that the benchmarks on a 650m with gddr3 and a 650m with gddr5 are identical.

Take a look here:
http://www.elpida.com/pdfs/E1600E10.pdf

It might be a couple of things that could explain why there's no immediate benefit, and even drawbacks for us as consumers.

The differential clock internally, that needs to run at a higher multipler in small phases to shift the data. This needs a more instant response and a higher power-draw on average.

There's probably also a fall-back mode if the manufacturer chooses that for compatibility reasons - note that the real benefit of gddr5 ram is tighter transistor count and lower production cost for different devices, not primarily performance. But the ram still needs to operate on higher signaling speeds.

The addressing space being 256bit.. that's going to be great when instruction fetches actually increase in size for all graphics cards. Before then, no benefit. Internally on the card - perhaps that would be a benefit - but will the instruction set on the card exploit it? Will the driver to hardware layer be rewritten..?

Then there's the memory layout configuration. It's pretty much guaranteed that the cards with at least the same chip won't be set up with different memory layouts. So chances are that both configs are set up for "32x" modes. And that the seller and supplier are both happy when they achieve the same performance with the newer and cheaper (to produce) ram. Even though it does draw more power.

 

By the way, for anyone who is interessted in the N56 with AMD technology, there will be soon another model available called N56 DP, offers the Radeon 7730M and as CPU one of the Fusion series either A10, A8 or A6.

Here the official specification list: ASUS - Notebooks- ASUS N56DP

When and in which countries it will be released I didn't find out yet. Maybe someone will find out soon though.

 

I'm on vacation now. However, I got my laptop right before I left in the mail. I booted it up and there was an entire verticle line of dead pixels running down the screen. I called Amazon and they overnighted me another one. It's at my house right now, but now I'm out of town. I'll report back in a few days. What a disappointment.

 

Do you have a link to that? From what I can tell, lower resolution gaming benchmarks are pretty similar, but DDR3 RAM almost always suffers at 1080P and higher.

 

..no, I was going by the 3dmark11 tests for the samsung, gigabyte, sager and lenovo setups. Seems the gpu scores are just about exactly the same. Also prefer those tests over benchmarking games, since you don't get unexpected differences because of different hard-drives and ram-speeds and so on. And I didn't see any reason why a stress-test like that wouldn't make the differences turn up.

But I guess it might be possible that some of the operations that would happen internally on the card, like AA and some types of Physx routines, and so on, would run faster. While other programs won't have any difference.. Difficult to say. But the 3dmark11 benchmark results don't lie - the graphics card part seems too similar for this to be a coincidence.

There's.. the thing about bandwidth not meaning just faster transfer speeds as well. Says right there in the pdf I linked to how it's intended to be used. And I honestly can't see any way where that setup should have a clear advantage in performance over the gddr3 setup.. I.e., you could imagine having a different physical construction that would make it possible to split the physical chips, and double the ram with a standard stock-card setup that would fit to lots of different devices - and still have the same bandwidth transfer speeds.

But how that would translate to increased performance in a game, I don't know.

edit: The increased power-draw has been known since the first gddr5 card turned up, though..

 

Well unfortunately I'm not exactly an engineer, I'm just one in training so I'm not very good at reading those kinds of articles. ^.^

Umm, iirc the 3dmark tests are run in low resolution settings. That's the kind of situation where different RAM is going to be similar - while I don't know for certain if this makes a good analogy, I imagine it's kind of like the move from DDR to DDR2 to DDR3 RAM. While one might be fast enough for many tasks, some require more bandwidth and the older types of RAM are going to suffer for it.

In a low resolution setting, bandwidth isn't a problem. Hence why its ok to have a DDR3 setup, and why you see a lot of budget cards going for DDR3 ram, because it's also cheaper. It's also the reason every single flagship GPU runs GDDR5 ram. At the point where you run into memory bandwidth bottlenecks faster than needing more shader power, GDDR5 comes into play. That generally happens past 1680x1050.

Another example is how people market 1600-2133mhz RAM. Now THAT is ty, useless marketing (for gaming at least). While there are uses to higher clocked ram, you don't need anything faster than 1600 (or even 1333) for gaming because after that point, you aren't going to run into memory bandwidth issues from the normal RAM. That said, you don't want to use 1066 or lower ram because you might run into bottlenecks at that point.

Again, I might not explain this well, but if you look up benchmarks/read up on Anandtech, gaming benchmarks can specifically point this out. You'll see DDR3 graphics cards take significantly worse hits at higher resolutions. Other than what I've explained, I don't know how to explain it cause I'm not an engineer, but I know that that's how it works ^.^

 

Hm.. Are you going by Anandtech's comments in the Macbook review? Where he insists that the aggressive standard clock is somehow going to make the 1Gb config with gddr5 better than a gtx660m (and apparently a 680m as well..). I don't trust that guy, he says things that are guesses mixed with isolated facts from different contexts.

Basically, the entire point is that gddr5 ram configs run at a "4x" multipler internally, rather than a "2x" multipler like the gddr3 config. This means that the "exposed" internal clock will be massively higher, of course, and that might look good on paper. But the way it's used is not to increase the core clock and the transfer speeds externally, but to increase signaling speeds on the actual ram-chips to maintain similar transfer speeds (at higher power-consumption).

Same with the bandwidth addressing. It's only going to be used internally on the card when moving or rewriting between physical areas. I don't even know if that interface is transparent to the actual code the card will run..

And there's just no sense in that a 720p stress-test with opencompute, physx, etc, is supposedly not going to stress-test something that happens only in 1080p. Instead, I'm 99% sure we're looking at memory timing, pci bus speeds, ram speed and hdd speeds having an impact instead. That we're running into some other bottleneck in particular games that makes an impression on one particular system.

That's why the 3dmark11 test is useful. Because it allows us to more or less disregard the processor and the rest of the system when looking at the test (since we don't have the same laptop config with two different cards). That's why it's so interesting - that we can look at the score and say: yes, this Samsung 640m system scores lower - but the gpu-test is the same. And that's interesting.

..Kind of have to correct you on the ram as well DDR2 to DDR3 (which gddr3 is based on) was a huge leap. In the sense that it allowed higher and faster signaling speeds at lower power-consumption. But RAM speed towards the bus still is the biggest bottleneck on any PC system. So for aiming at cracking any hd-gaming problems, we really should be looking at ram-speeds, and the way the bus interacts with it.

I mean, the graphics card ram is already slow as tar compared to the ddr3 ram you have in the pc, see. That's what allows some "flexibility" with stock-configurations. And like explained, the main and largest benefits of gddr5 ram will be tighter pcb construction and the ability to use the same ram-module for multiple different configs in all kinds of different shapes.

So I think we need to be looking at something else than the gddr5 ram to explain why some games run differently in 1080p, on "some tests", etc.

Always open for being convinced otherwise, of course. But like I said, but I'd need more than a random test showing a difference between two differently specced systems, with different cpu&ram, etc. And a "this should theoretically give higher performance" statement really isn't worth much..

Note. I don't mean to rag on anyone or anything. But when a presumption about something morphs from "should give better performance" and into "should apparently give you performance increases in a mysterious special case that can't be confirmed by tests.." then that's just not very convincing..

 

Wow what a detailed review, thanks!

I have a very specific question concerning the SATAIII compatibility. So I read that n56vz supports it, but its deactivated in bios. So is it possible to activate it somehow in bios, or update bios etc. to make it work?

Thanks!

 

..was a bit random, though.

No, SATA 3 support out of the box on the first and second bios. Mentioned it in the review, that it maxed out a Corsair ForceGT at 500Mb/s flat. Completely stable, nothing weird going on with the volt outputs, etc.

The n53tk, and the n53ta at least had sata 2 set as default, but could be set to run sata3 with a modded bios. There are a lot of laptops out there that also run sata 2 by default. (edit: even if the mainboard actually supports sata3).

It could be a few reasons why they're doing this:
1. The laptops don't ship with an sdd anyway, and won't benefit from sata 3. sata 2 - 300Mb/s is still much more than any hdd can transfer.
2. It draws more power when enabled, and might increase the chance of a malfunction on some drives. It's not common, but it's a problem with laptops and smaller power-supplies, or something that draws power from a smaller component on the mainboard, etc, that you could lose the optimal current and burn the connector. Pretty dramatic, so if there's a chance that might happen.. why enable it just for the enthusiasts..?

 

This is a short post, but I just wanted to say that I am 100% satisfied with this laptop. I'm just wondering what the best way to clean the internals are... When I say internals, I mean the fan/heatsink. I guess compressed air in the fan port on the side will suffice along with blowing it through the hard drive/ram compartment.

 

About BIOS 204. As I understand it, we only have guesses, whether Asus think it's a cool ver. number, or it actually fix something? According to their download side, there is no reason whatsoever for upgrading = no data on the release = stupid to meddle with BIOS, if everything is just fine!!!

 

Hey Nipsen - having just read through your clean install post, I don't suppose you've figured out the trick to getting the windows experience index ("WEI") score back up to 7.1 for graphics after a clean install?

My 3dmark11 scores are exactly as they should be, but even running the newest July 3 nvidia beta drivers and the intel hd 4000 v.8.15.10.2712 (which supposedly did the trick for one user in the original n56 thread), my WEI graphics scores are stuck at 6.7. By contrast, if I pop the stock hd back in, they show as 7.1 while the hd score plummets.

Tweaking 3d power and texture settings to high performance in the nvidia control panel doesn't seem to make a difference. There must be some setting I'm missing...

 

No, no you didn't miss anything. The WEI index score is run once the first time you open the test.

This could perhaps have been while running on internal graphics, on the first display driver, without the updated profile that triggers the dedicated card when it recognizes a particular (and rarely used) windows-library used to run the test.

And then the times you open the test after that won't update it to the new results.

It's also unreliable and really tells you next to nothing about the system response or performance.

Just forget about it ..or.. hack it and reset the score, or.. set it to nine thousand or something..

@elmer_f: yeah, agree with that. But it's certain they did make some sensible changes to how the boost-states are used. System goes more quickly up to 3.2Ghz boost for single cores at least, and stays on 1.2Ghz longer. There's a new "nvidia audio unit" turning up when you switch to hdmi out as well. Presumably this is the bitstreaming support for the hdmi out.

At least they don't remove features, so that's something.. But I would like to see an actual changelog as well. ...

..but I do know why manufacturers usually don't make the changelogs public. I.e., "Fixed [major highlighted feature, that reviewers somehow didn't notice wasn't there], bringing laptop up to advertised spec one month after release". Three seconds later, there's a headline on Gawker saying: "Asus swindles users, attempts to rectify matters via optional firmware update after the fact - five million sold devices may be recalled. Incidentally, Apple doesn't swindle you and loves us all". Six seconds later: "New trend in the hardware world, manufacturer's abuse firmware options, rush out unfinished devices for marketing purposes, which is something we didn't know happened before this particular event we just mentioned".

Seen it happen a few times.

 

Hey there, great review! This laptop sounds pretty great and I love the look of it and the fact that it has a blu-ray drive in it. I was really curious though how well it handles games like skyrim. I'm not looking to be able to play it on ultra but medium-high on native res would be great! If not then I suppose I'll have to look more closely at the thicker, heavier sager 9130.

 

thanks.

..I don't know. The 650m is able to do some 23-24 fps in 1920x1080 on ultra in Skyrim, with standard clocks. Some stuttering. You can overclock it a bit without increasing the heat all that much. Increase the core clock some way, at least.

But then that is the absolute maximum you're going to see of the n56 for the rest of the time you're going to keep it. No upgrades, etc. Not sure what might turn up that could be in the same range of power-consumption, but..

Depends on what you're looking for, really. If you buy the model you mentioned from Sager, you're going to be able to buy new parts later. With the fermi card, you'll also have some more grunt on the graphics card in exchange for more heat - which that laptop will be able to handle. Same with the power-supply. You'll have something to go on.

On the downside, it's a much warmer and heavier system. And you will have a cooling system with more noise. Two different approaches. I know what I prefer, since I was looking for an as light system as possible first, and then how much processing power I could get without sacrificing too much mobility. But since neither system is some sort of ultrabook, it's about what you prefer..

I'll say this, though. The cooling system on the n56 really will cool the system effortlessly at full load, with unbelievably little whine. That part really impressed me.

I mean, look at the series-7 in the same class, for example. Their strategy is to allow you to turn the fan off, while locking the processor to the lowest state. Then the laptop will collect heat until it becomes hot to the touch - middle of the keyboard, chassis, etc. Same thing happens when on full load, even with the fan running full speed. Most laptops run with a cooling strategy like that.

So this part of the n56 is something special. You don't get any other reasonably portable laptop, with this class of hardware, that can be overclocked.. you know.. and handle it without modifications to the heatsink. Never mind run at peak very easily. Or without causing obvious wear, by just not transferring the heat out fast enough..

 

So if its can play Skyrim on ultra at 1920x1080 at 23-24 fps I assume I could expect it to be playable at medium-high.

I really am having a terrible time deciding between the Sager and the Asus. The Sager has that extra oomph of power over the Asus, but the Asus has the looks, size and weight over the Sager and as you say, and as I have heard many times, it is a fairly quiet and well built machine. Coming from a MacBook Pro, I am leaning towards the Asus due to its design and large trackpad.

 

Still waiting for the Asus N56VZ to be released in Europe...I think this will be my next notebook (after doubting between the Dell inspiron 15R SE, Sony S15).

 

I play in high full hd every and it run perfectly, trust me . P.S. i know a guy that say that he can play skyrim in ultra full hd smoothly with the GT630M so i realize that smoothly doesn't mean the same for every people lol.

Europe isn't just your country you know? In portugal we already have it since end may or early june(we have it so long that i can even remember the release date) lol.

 

I'm in The Netherlands and it still isn't released here, even in neighboring country Germany it isn't yet released .

 

seems that you don't know how to search, use google LOL
Even Amazon.de has long time ago:

Amazon.de: Asus N56vz

 

#32 Hmm... So no changelogs definitely means sensible upgrade!!! Makes sense, at least when reading through your post

 

Yeah, but it isn't being delivered before 20th July...

 

..no, it just means we don't really know for certain. Could be they made a mistake, and just didn't tell us about it.

 

Keep your drivers up to date, especially your BIOS, it's important! Everyone here should update their Intel HD 4000 drivers from Intel's website and their GT 650m drivers from nVidia. Has anyone overclocked the GPU? What program, and what clocks did you get that were stable? I think there was a post in another N56 thread but it's long gone.

 

MSI Afterburner works.

P.s. Funny screenshot. It's.. probably possible to create a better graph from this, but I couldn't be bothered to run the test again. This one is on battery, with the processor capped at 50% or so. 2105 gpu score. 61 degrees max during the test (during the "combined" test at the end). Standard timing seems to be 950/1900 Notice how the gpu temp drops quickly, even between the individual tests.
http://i45.tinypic.com/19qz9u.jpg

 

Hi,

is your original installed windows with sp1?

after downloading an iso sp1, I can`t activate my windows.

 

..install the other service-packs first? They did something with the way the activation scripts are launched on sp1. That they changed again later. So it could very well be that it's impossible to activate it online now with sp1..

 

hi nipsen,

the activation worked somehow

one more question maybe a silly one:

I wiped the old HDD with KillDisk and tried something in BIOS. Then I couldn`t restart, because of the message: BootMgr is missing.

I used the win7 cd to repair it, it worked. But now I see under computer with the my system drive as C: also the System reserved partition as Drive E:. Before this whole thing it was not there. What did I do?

I am really a noob with pc`s ;-)

 

Thanks for the pic! Do you plan on overclocking the card any?

 

There will always be masses of new things to learn, so we all are. But what you had when you got that message was the remains of the windows loader in the bootsector, before the system-files launch.

Not sure what happened afterwards. If you recovered the partitions with the backup-disks, you could have ended up with an mbr boot on an efi setup..? And getting the system-partition and the last extra info in two unmarked partitions.

Not really. It's fast enough and it's not very warm. I added a link to supranium's OC in the review. Those numbers should be something to go on.

But seems like we can push the core clock pretty far without actually increasing the heat.. Note that there is some kind of dynamic overclocking going on here that isn't exposed. Not sure how that will affect an overclock.

 

You haven't, by chance, tested out Ubuntu or some other Linux, have you?