RainMotorsports (Clutch's) ASUS G50Vt-X5 (Best Buy) Review

It is and you'll like it. You'd be suprised what a couple of degrees can do in terms of the tight spaces that laptops (especially this one) have to manage heat in versus long term stability/performance.

 

Hi Everyone. I just bought the G50Vt-x5 at bestbuy and i'm planning to upgrade the this laptop to 8gb when the warranty is over and the 8gb ram kit price go down. I just wonder if this laptop is 8gb expandable.

 

Clutch, AWESOME review, exactly what I was looking for!
I'm out to buy this when I can convince my dad. The last question I have for you is, which warranty did yours come with when you bought the laptop from BB and would you recommend the 2+ year warranty?

Haha I was about to get the MSIGT627, its lighter, but this laptop is $300 less than that, so I guess I will have to trade off for the ugly lid which I hope doesn't attract unwanted attention when I'm at college.

 

Haha I was about to get the MSIGT627, its lighter, but this laptop is $300 less than that, so I guess I will have to trade off for the ugly lid which I hope doesn't attract unwanted attention when I'm at college.

 

Skin it and do yourself a favor!
Very good bang for your buck rig if you can overlook the lid.
Look I really want to like this notebook....but lightning bolts?????
I know it's just me.....

 

Windows Vista/7 64bit will recognize that much memory (8gb) and I'm sure the X50Vt could handle it although I don't know (besides it being 4gb of course) what size memory chunks are in it stock. Do you really NEED 8gb or ram?

 

Yes you can buy 8gb (2 x 4Gb) sticks on newegg, though they are very expensive, almost $300+

 

in a few months i´m going to get this laptop, i love it, so when i get it i´m going to be part of this forum..
i´m living in Argentina and i´m going to pay 1400 dollar..what do you think about it?...we have not best buy sites here and that´s the best price here, so i think that the price it´s fine for such a great laptop
Greetings from Arg, tnx!!

 

Hey Panchoc.

I live in Dominican Republic and I bought it trough ebay at 800 dollars, the problem might be that you don't trust the shipping to Argentina.

But anyways is a great laptop, I recommend that you get a cooler if you plan to game a lot on it.

 

Great!
I never bought on ebay so, if you want, can you explain me how you proceed?
i mean, how did you pay the shipping, if you used paypall, etc, the waranty, how long did you wait for this, etc

I´ll apreciate any info.
Tnx a lot!!!

 

I used Paypal, and the shipping was free trough the USA.

What I use is a mail forward address in the USA via UPS, so when I buy from ebay they ship it to Florida at UPS, then from UPS to my address in the Dominican Republic.

Shipping took like a week to get to me and I only paid the weight in UPS when it got here. Like 80 dollars or less.

 

Finally i buy it in Arg at 1400, there are many problems for the import of electronics in Argentina, so to avoid any problem in the customs, the price is ok.
I´m waiting, in 20 days i will get it here, thanks for your help Silenus!

 

hI,
i bought a GV50VT-X5 when i went tu usa in march, and i have doubt.
is the spdif optical or digital? because i see no lights in the plug, but many people say that the lights only tur on when the plug is there. i have a logitech z5500 and i would like to know how witch plug i should buy to it works.
thanks.

sorry about the english, i dont speak very well

 

Based upon the fact that it uses a 3.5 mm jack it would be digital not optical. The optical jack has a very different input.

 

Thank you so much for the answer.
So, the cable should be like this
and not like this
Correct?
Thank you again.

 

I believe both of those cables are the same. The second cable just still has its caps to protect the glass.

If the laptop is indeed optical then the cable will work, I am not sure as ive only had the normal optical one. There is digital coaxial SPDIF like the picture below, i thought the laptop used the coax type just small jack on the laptops end.




Throwing out guesses though not 100% sure I no longer have an optical reciever to test on myne died.

 

Leaving Merom and Santa Rosa Penryn's alone here is a list of the processors that should all officially work from my in progress G50 Guide.

"All Monetevina Core 2 Duo Processors should work in the G50, Core 2 Quad Processors do not work. T6400, T6600, T9400, T9550, T9600, T9800, T9900, P7350, P7450, P8400, P8600, P8700, P8800, P9500, P9600, P9700, X9100"

I personally went for a T9600.

 

Expensive!!! $339 at newegg... Is it worth it?

 

I think anything less is a waste of money. Bought myne for 260 slightly used.

 

DANNNGGGG man I'm bummed. No BB store in the state has any more Asus G50vt-x5's....

I was really hoping to make it my college laptop.

Dang..

Do you have any other laptop suggestions I could look into?

I'm back at the MSI gt627, it has a 9800M GS as well.

Also, GS>GTS right?

 

GS and GTS are essentially the same, though GTS's tend to have twice the ram. GTS has higher clock speeds of which alot of GS cards like myne can run at GTS clocks.

If your going for cheap and can sacrifice a little power the MSI EX625 on newegg is 750 bucks. Has about the same specs as the X5 the cpu is a 2 Ghz P7350, the video card is a 4670 little less on the list but still pretty good.

 

is it possible to turn the refresh rate up on this baby? Id like 100hertz if possible.

 

Just a note, I'm not sure you would see any appreciable difference on an LCD screen.

And I didn't see any (easy) possibility to change refresh rates for LCD monitors, when I browsed through the display / driver options of my computers.

 

If i replace the original windows vista that comes with this lap, do I lose the guarantee?i want to put vista ultimate on this lap

 

E.B.E. is right there s no easy possibility - the LCD " refresh rate" is locked to 50, 51, or 60Hz usually, by the graphics driver, so it would involve tweaking there (not an easy task). The thing to worry about is the panel's response time not the "refresh rate".

 

I think we may have the last one left in this bb store.. I saw one Saturday but don't know if its still be there..

 

it´s posible to put a Intel Core QUAD Q9100 SLB5G 2.26G 12M 1066 Socket P CPU on this lap?
and i have another question:
if i replace the vista home that comes with this lap for the vista ultimate, do i lose the guarantee?
tnx!

 

Never mind, got it working.

 

No, replacing the operating system will NOT void your warranty.

But replacing the CPU will. So I would advise against it unless you are willing to give up the warranty.

I don't know if that CPU would work.

 

anyone comment on how heavy the laptop is?

 

If you have to ask its too heavy for you. If you cant carry 7.5 or so pounds, not sure how you made it through high school.

 

Just curious if the G50VT-X8 essentially identical to the X5 except with a faster CPU and smaller battery?

 

That and it also has bluetooth built in.

 

Sweet sold as long as it has the 2 year warranty

 

You can add a warranty if you want. Its right below the picture on the protect your investment and click on add more options.

 

eh the warranty pushes the price over my threshold. If I buy 2 year of protection I might as well get a G71 from BB which will have years of warranty for free if I buy it with a credit card. I'm contacting asus and crossing my fingers that newegg made a mistake on their website and didn't list it. It does seem weird that newegg claims to it has 1 year of accident forgiveness warranty but no standard warranty to speak of.

 

Hey clutch just curious does the G50vt come with 1 or 2 hard drive bays?

 

2 .

 

Ive had this laptop for about two months now and its great. Plays Team Fortress 2 smooth as butter with everything high. Its replaced my desktop. I have only one problem and was wondering if anyone else has come across it. My keyboard will miss keystrokes every so often when Im typing emails or posts. I notice it happens more after a session of gamig and wonder if its just a bum keyboard or if it could be the sign of something worse. I contacted ASUS and they are sending me a new keyboard but Im paranoid it may be something worse.

 

Ive yet to experience this for sure but i believe the usual fix is to uninstall the touchpad driver. If that works you may also try installing the latest version from synaptics. The only thing you lose with not having the driver is the ability to scroll with the touchpad it works as a normal mouse without the driver.

Go ahead and replace the keyboard, its free lol. Real simple. There are two screws on the bottom related to the keyboard, one of them is on the bottom panel and one isnt but both are on the bottom and marked by a little icon. Look between the escape and f1 key there is a tab push it up. Between F6 and F7, Above insert and finally the last tab is between / and *. They keyboard will come up and then just undo the ribbon cable and swap.

 

Do you think a GPU temp of 88 is a bit warm? Whenever I finish playing Crysis Warhead or Team Fortress 2 Im up around 90 and the lappy itself is pretty warm.

 

anyone help with my problem? I upgraded to windows 7 RC and everythings finally workign fine but the function vol um and down dont work?

 

That may be on the high side, but it also depends on the computer. Have you cleaned the dust from your fan lately? If not that may be part of the problem.

Is the following software installed properly:
ATK drivers
ATK Generic Function Utility
ATK Hotkey
Audio card drivers
and to be on the safe side, also: ATK OSD2, although strictly speaking it isn't necessary

 

Bravo Clutch, very good review there. rep added

Should be receiving my Asus G50VT-X1 which has the slightly better CPU within a week and this has obliterated any fears I had about performance. I'm planning on benching it (not as extensively as you though)

 

Clutch, thanks for the review on this.

I decided to go cheap and grab an ASUS G50Vt-X5 refurb from Tigerdirect.com. $734... If the 10.2% bing cashback works its around $660 overall. I'll be working on some of those tests to see if everything is in working order before my 30-day return window is up.

I'm not sure if I'll get much of the original warranty, which is not a big deal if I plan on grabbing a better processor. I'll see how happy I am with WoW/Fallout 3.

 

Does anyone know how much power the G50Vt uses at max load in Watts?

 

Power adapter is 120 watt output, which means it could use more then that from the plug. Best way to check is to buy a kill-a-watt meter ive been meaning to buy one.

If your gaming the battery wont get as much power due to system demand so to max it out id bring the battery below 90% and then go play crysis and should be at max draw.

 

I'm planning to buy the Coolermaster SNA 95 AC adapter which has total power of 95W with a peak of 150W but does the G50VT require a 120W AC adapter?

http://www.coolermaster.com/products/product.php?language=en&act=detail&tbcate=22&id=6799

 

Wow nice review man. This was the most comprehensive review on the X5 that I could find. Good job and lots of info.

I'm pretty sure I'll be picking this one up soon.

I can get it refurbished from TigerDirect for right under $700 after bing cashback but it only comes with a 3 month warranty through ASUS.
Or I can get it from Bestbuy, new, for right over $900 with a 1 year warranty...

Now I'm pretty accustomed to refurbished, recertified, open box and used computer parts. I've used them a lot and haven't had a problem. But the question was raised elsewhere about why there are so many recertified/refurbished G50Vt-X5's?
Is it just really popular and they moved a lot of units, and now there is a great demand for the refurbished/recertified ones since it is being discontinued soon? Or are these laptops prone to failure? I could handle something small dying down the road, like a hard drive or something else random. But if it explodes or something I might be in trouble

I'm really wanting to find out so I know if I can be safe with the <$700 3 month warranty. Typically most hardware failures occur within a very short period of time from when you acquire said hardware. Couple that with some thorough testing / stress testing and I'm leaning towards the 3 month warranty