Vicious's G50V-A1 Review

Do not mind anything Vista WEI says, its a very random and pointless benchmark.

For cpu speeds WPrime is what you want to use, for gaming benchmark 3dmark06 or 3dmark Vantage are good.

 

The thing that surprise me was the multiplier. 10x !!!!
Is it possible to choose it manually?

 

9x is the normal if I remember, I did see 10x once myself but never saw it again.

You can turn off the cpu scale fucntions in the bios probably to lock it at the highest normal setting. Not sure about the 10x.

No way to fix it as far as I know.

 

Got everything working, some drivers were giving me problems. Just wanted to say thanks Vicious, my machine works like a friggin dream.

Also had another question. How'd you change that little screen at the top of the keyboard to put in your handle? I cant seem to figure that out.

 

Just open that Overdrive software its probably in your task bar, and look at the tabs I think its the last tab that controls it and lets you use the option for a custom message.

Comes in handy to remind you of something. "Get gas when you leave work, or your not going to make it home... Seriously its been on E for two days, gas prices not going to go down and you didn't even wear your walking shoes today..."

Use a longer message and it will scroll across it can take a pretty long message.

 

I cant seem to find the overdrive software. Is that something that came on the computer? Would it have been deleted when I reformatted to get rid of that bloatware?

 

Im sorry its called Direct Console. The little "eye" I was typing on my desktop so could not look at it.

Different Asus models have different software and the C90S I used to have used Overdrive.

I have Direct Console 2.0 on mine it has 3 options/tabs.

Cpu Overclocking

Flashing Lights Behavior

And the OSD

 

Hi Vicious..

What do you think of the new G50V T-A1 ASUS laptops?

The specs are:

SCREEN: 15.4” WSXGA 1680x1050 "CSV-Colorshine" WIDE-SCREEN LCD/TFT
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 2.53GHz - 1066MHz-FSB
RAM: 4GB/4096MB DDR2 RAM
HDD: 500GB HDD Set = 250GB HDD @ 7200RPM
ODD: DVD-Burner Dual Layer DVD+/-RW
VIDEO: nVidia GeForce 9800M GS 512MB DDR3 Pro GAMING 3D Graphics
OS: 64Bit Windows Vista Home PREMIUM
EXTRAS: Asus Backpack & Gaming Mouse
OTHER FEATURES: 802.11N, Web-Cam, Bluetooth, RJ-45 LAN, eSATA, HDMI, 56k Fax/Modem

I am about to purchase one of these in Australia!

It seems the major improvements are the video card (9800M GS compared to 9800M GT) I believe the 9800M GS is a class 1 card?
Another improvement is the hard drives. I beleive all else remains the same.

I have a few questions to ask if you can help me?

- First, what exactly is a clean install of Vista, and how will it benefit me? From what i've read it basically installs all that's necessary and not all the bloatware? I presume my comp will come pre-installed with WV64 and have all the bloatware? I want to re-format it with a clean install but I don't want to set it up for RAID 0 or RAID 1.. I want to keep it in the default way.. is this option #3 of your first post? I want to do 3 partitions - 50GB just for OS with the remainder of that HDD for games/programs. I then want to use the other drive purely for data.

p.s. excuse the noobness

 

Have a look at the Info BoothFAQ, that will answer at least some of your questions about the clean installation (there is an item about it). Also have a look at my Vista optimization guide.

 

hi,
i want to calibrate my battery and i saw this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=122632#batterycali

when i press F2 i entered the BIOS and i don't see there any options related to calibration.

help

 

hi,
i want to calibrate my battery and i saw this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=122632#batterycali

when i press F2 i entered the BIOS and i don't see there any options related to calibration.

i own the asus G50V-A2

thanks!

 

Still an enjoyable read many months later, no doubt!

 

should be the very last tab system or power management or something.

I just sold my g50v to upgrade to the w90 so cant check.

 

whats the key combo you hit to disable the windows key and other key combos for gamming

 

Fn+G I think.. or was it K?

 

Hi, I wanted to know if anyone had any luck with the installation and the compatibility of the drivers with the latest Win7 Releases ( Supposed to be RTM). last time i tried it was with one of the first betas and i couldnt get the Asus softwares to run on it . not that it caused alot of problems, but still..

anyone ?

 

I dont think you will find some of the Asus specific software to work on Win 7, even if the latest beta is RTM Win 7 is not out yet and this laptop was not designed for Win 7.

When Win 7 is out and they have an offical reason to start making programs compatible maybe they will visit the G50 and add support or you can use the software from a newer laptop and it will work with the older models.

 

Alright, first off I would like to commend you Vicious on this wonderful review of the G50. I purchased a G50v-A2 and am extremely satisfied with it (except for limited portability - i'm a student and it doens't lend itself well to being hauled around a huge campus for 7 hours). Aside from that it's fantastic. It even supports Mac OS X, which i am dual booting right now along side Vista.

Anyway, I have a question about the motherboard. I've been poking around the net looking at info on the PM45 Montevina motherboard this laptop has in it and i believe i saw something on Intel's site that said the PM45 chipset supports DDR3 memory. Now i know this has 4gb of ddr2, but i was wondering if the g50 actually supported ddr3? Or if anyone has perhaps tried it, if it worked. I'm not really looking to go out and drop money on it right now but i've been wondering this for a while and might considering it if it would work and perhaps offer some performance gains.

Any insight would be wonderful!
Thanks again!

P.S. - I also think i saw somewhere that it could max out at 8gb, but i've also seen places that say 4 is the max. Anyone?

 

As far as I've heard, upgrading to DDR3 makes little to no difference.

You would be better off putting the money towards a CPU upgrade or something similar, although 2.5 C2D is good enough.

 

It does not support it. DDR3 and DDR2 are different on the hardware level, they have a different number of pins and are not interchangeable.

 

The white papers for this chipset are correct it can support DDR3, however those specs are really talking about the desktop version. Its not uncommon to find dual spec boards on desktops.

In a laptop though DDR2 and DDR3 are more diverse, DDR3 wont work on this laptop. Infact it wont even fit on this laptop as So-Dimms use a different slot for DDR2 & DDR3 unlike desktops.

 

That's a good point, that never occured to me.