Vicious's G50V-A1 Review

@Vicious's
Are you gonna write more about the overall build quality? Or maybe you could just reply your thoughts so far. Would like to know about the paintjob. Is it solid? Any flexing parts, like chassi and keybord?
Got my order sent yesterday.

 

After I get done with he benches I plan to do a pros/cons breakdown, write a overall conclusion and do the power tests. I may elaborate other areas as read over it if I feel it needs more work.

 

Added Crysis and Warcraft 3! Next up is Team Fortress 2 and then Portal.

After that Mass Effect.

 

yeah, i'm also still in stage 1, i ordered on the 4th, well i guess that as long as i get it before the second week of school (wich is around september the 1st) i'll be okay, but then i'll have to live for 2 weeks with this crappy toshiba laptop wich costed me 600$ 2 years ago xD

 

Any chance of World of Warcraft at 1680x1050?
Or would it be identical to Warcraft 3?

 

WC3 and WoW are totally different engines. WoW will be slightly harder on the system but its still a rather easy game to run. I may get around to installing WoW here soon but I did not bring it with me to Miami. I also have not got around to registering it online for a digital download like I did with WC3.

I just added TF2 & Portal and gonna get onto Mass Effect.

 

you play bf2142 often?

 

I dont play anything often, father of 4 kids and working full time

I used to play at work more than anything back in the day but the new hotel I work for keeps me very busy. I just help out on the forums mainly with my downtime.


I am proud to say the review is complete!!!

I am still adding more too it like a few more game benchmarks and the power test but all of the written stuff is done and the layout is complete.

Added - Mass Effect benches
Added - Pros/Cons breakdown
Added - Personal Conclusion

Have a look and tell me what you think!

 

hey, great review. Do you by any chance know if this laptop comes with intels turbo cache?

 

It supports it but does not have any kind of internal memory to use it so you can use say a usb flash drive for it if you want.

But there is absolutely no reason for it with 4gb of ram you will get no performance boost from it. Its really only good for 2gb or less.

 

Does anyone know if the 9 cell extra battery they offer for the G50/M50 series is any bigger than the stock 6 cell, I need a spare battery because my classes have me running around campus and was wondering if it was larger than the regualr version or just more cells in the compact space. any help would be appreciated!

 

The 9 cell battery will stick out from the back... it is physically larger than the 6 cell.

 

Thanks for that info emporium, another quick question does it go straight back or is it down and back giving the laptop lift off of its surface?

 

It goes straight back

 

Thankyou so much emporium you are super helpful! This makes me less concerned about my purchase. May I also compliment you on your wonderful review of the rig!

 

wa very good!!!

 

Oh and Vicious, can you do tests at the screen resolution (1680*1080) please? Just a few would suffice.

 

Hey, I don't know if anyone asked this, but what kind of backpack do you get with this laptop? How does it feel and how much can it carry?

 

Hmm... the back pack is the same as the one that comes with the G1 series.... it ain't much of a looker unless green is your favorite color. However, in terms of functionality, it is pretty decent. All the necessary areas that need extra protection are well padded - including the straps and parts of the back which makes it easier to carry. There's also a separate main compartment for book/pens etc and a few secrete compartments here and there. It's definitely the ideal book bag for school, but probably not so much for going to work with.

 

Hey Vicious,

I hate to be a bother but have you tried using the HDMI output on an HDTV yet. I want to know if the drivers implement the overscan fix corectly to display the picture without cutting off the edges. This has been a large issue for Nvidia since 2006....

 

Not yet but I will try it at some point when I get home I have HDMI on there with a cable.

 

Sounds good. Just out of curiosity, though, what kind of bag is it? A Targus or what?

 

the bag is a Targus

 

Great job on the review Vicious. Would it be possible to get some benchmarks at native resolution? I'm curious if the system can run any games well at that res. I hate the fuzziness of non-native resolutions.

Also, any idea if the Intel 5100 wifi card is half height or full height?

 

I read your review again, and am really impressed. You did a **** good job reviewing this fine piece of machine and...tempting me to buy it.

I have a question for all the owners out there. Is there any overheating in the GPU and CPU/when overclocked? Very important thing to me.

 

Mines ice cool by laptop standards. I mean check out what I posted I had the cpu overclocked to 2.8ghz and ran wprime for like 3 minutes bringing both cpu cores to 100% max steady that entire time and temps were only like 50c thats absolutly unheard of!

As for gpu I have not really found a program that I like yet to monitor. Nmonitor is what I like to use but its crashing with this card and drivers since they are so new.

 

Vicious, can you please comment on the WiFi? I heard that it is worse than the Intel 4965 card so can you shed some light on this? I'm thinking about upgrading to the 5300 but don't know if it's worth it.

Also, if you happen to know anything about WiMax...I know the WiMax counterparts are 5150 and 5350 which will have to be purchased when they are released and upgraded manually. So if we have the 5100 wifi card in the G50, can we upgrade to the 5350 card when it is released or would we have to go with the 5150 card?

 

great review thx vicious...just deciding if i need that blueray now

 

Great questions. I'm also curious about fan noise. Vicious could you please tell us how loud they get during intense gaming?

 

I hear it's pretty loud, though I am not sure what it's like during light usage (ie word processing, web surfing, etc). What's it like during regular use Vicious?

 

Crysis, full high everything, fan noise is audible but not distracting. It is relatively quiet and the fan noise is more of a whooosh than a high pitched whine. Don't worry about it, it's perfect.

****. Freakin. Quiet. fan is hardly on. Not much air blowing out right now. If you turn your head away you wouldn't hear it. Again, not distracting in any way at all.

 

Fan noise for word processing and things is none existent for me. I do use a Zalmans NC1000 cooler and while its supposed to be silent, its louder than the laptop. In other words I can hear nothing unless its a dead silent room.

Gaming, I have not actually had the time or pleasure to really game on the laptop, for the benchmarks I was so focused on the benchmarking. Where to save the files, uploading them, posting them ect that I have not engaged in any lengthy gaming for myself yet and thus have not paid attention to fan noise. I do know that while say running the crysis benchmark there is a lot of hot air coming out of the side vent, its like a blow dryer.

I'll go run a loop of Crysis with turbo extreme mode on and my cooler off to see what I get. My work office is not a silent room or I would record it. Our movie rack has like 400 hard drives with huge fans in there so that makes noise in the background.


Edit: Fan noise it took awhile for it to get hot enough to trigger the fan but pretty much its very quiet you can hear it as air movement noise more than a fan noise like you would be used to in a laptop. If you build pc's it sound very similar to how a 90mm PC fan sounds when in operation. I have not taken apart the G50V yet but my guess is that they must have a rather large fan in there that moves a lot of air at a low rpm.

 

amazing this review/laptop get better and better one question though what do you think this thing could get with an overclock, like an estimate? thanks in advance

 

I'm very close to picking up this laptop (Just making sure no one posts about a problem that I would consider a deal breaker) and was also looking at the Zalman coolers. I have a few questions since you mention you're using one:

1) I read the Zalman cooler is better for cooling systems whose heat is more towards the front rather than the back, due to the positioning of the vents. Does this match the heat pattern of the G50 well?

2) Based on dimensions, it was looks like the N2000 would be a better fit. How do you feel about this?

Thanks for the all the info, I'm really feeling better about picking up this laptop every day.

 

Im guessing you mean a gpu overclock and something like a 3dmark06 score?

I really do not know, the 9700gt is a new card so I have no idea how good the memory is or how low they clocked the core stock compared to what it can do.

I did manage to get the cpu to 3ghz with the fsbset utility.

from 28seconds at 2.8ghz the normal highest of the direct console setting to about 26 seconds at 3ghz.

 

1.) yeah vents are low on the unit, take a look at the bottom picture on the main review.

2.) the NC2000 would most definitly be a better fit, it hands off about 1" on each side with the NC1000 but it still fits just fine, about 9/10 of the rubber feet that hold the laptop up are on the cooler so its well supported like its supposed to be. I think I'll try to get a pic of it for you.

Edit: here is the fit of the G50 on the NC1000 as you can see the rubber feet that support the notebook are almost completly on the cooler so its a fine fit, if it was wider it would still be supported the same way, just means a bigger cooler to lug around

Note that I absolutely destroyed the image quality by boosting the brightness and removing shadows so that you can see the feet on the cooler.

 

Thanks guys. Glad to hear fan noise isn't an issue. How about WiFi performance on the 5100? Is it worse than the 4965 like reported at Anandtech? Any idea if it is a half-height or full height card?

 

Let me know when you do your World of Warcraft test. I finally got my copy all installed and patched up and it appears as if the G50v suffers from the dreaded Error #132 error which renders it unplayable after 5 min until it's figured out what is the cause of it.

 

Hmm I was about to install it later today after I eat lunch. I play on a private server but the game runs all the same so I will see if I have issues.

 

Oh no!!! WoW is my main game. No offense but I hope this is isolated to your system. Are you running stock nvidia drivers or newer ones?

 

Patching up now almost done.

 

WoW is super awesome for me, 1680x1050 maxed out with the highest settings and it stays at 60fps almost constantly with v-sync on.

 

Same here but play for awhile and I bet error #132 will pop up unfortunately

 

Were you using SetFSB. What PLL code did you use? How stable is it at 3ghz under full load (have you gotten any bsod's)?

With that same FSB speed the X9100 could "theoretically" get 3.7ghz with the standard multiplier of 11.5x. Of course the entire machine would likely melt at that point, but it's still a nice thought.

 

Yeah I used the setfsb program, it auto detected the pll for me, or atleast the one that loaded at program start worked for me. It was rock solid stable at 3ghz but I bsod'ed when I tried to jump all the way to 3.2ghz.

Cpu temps were fine and the cpu can handle it I think it was just too much fsb for the rest of the system.

I get so many different values the the VID and cpu multi between rmclock, direct console, setfsb that I have no clue what the cpu can really do.

I have seen the cpu mutli jump to 10.5 before randomly in cpu-z when using direct console but rmclock says the max multi for the cpu is 9x when just in normal operation its 9.5. The VID was reading 1.3xxv and that seems kind of high lol but hey whatever.

When some of these programs get upgraded to support the new hardware we can do much more, same goes for gpu overclocking.

 

Over 30min with no errors. Gonna shut down and get some sleep.

 

The error #132 is a pretty well known issue with Wow and isn't restricted to one brand/model of computer. You check the Wow forum for some possible fixes

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10021053

 

I know this, its a very general error it took me weeks to figure it out with my last PC so I'm not gonna bother this time. I emailed the error to WoW let them figure it out for me hopfully. I have been playing battlegrounds for awhile without the error it might not be so bad hopfully it was just a fluke.

 

I've gotten about 5 Error #132 crashes already I guess it's not a fluke. Longest I was able to play w/o one was an hour somtimes I get them as quick as 5 min oh well just not gonna play until blizzard emails me back. Warhammers comming out soon anyways

 

For everyone in the thread asking about the g71v

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...&prev=/images?q=g71v&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&sa=N

theres a link about it, no real upgrade from the g50 for the price besides a larger screen and media keypad,oh and it has 2g of turbo memory YUCK!