Vicious's G50V-A1 Review

I'm using 177.92 and its working great. No glitches on assassin's creed and boosted my 3Dmark score by a few hundred points

 

please, pleasee do the ut3 benchmarks soon! I will get a laptop with a 9700GT, and UT3 will be my most played game...

 

I'm sure UT3 will be fine. If I'm not mistaken, its less demanding than assassin's creed and I can run that at 1600*1000 with med settings (and no AA)

 

just got my G50v-A2 today. LOVE IT. can't wait to load some games on here...

 

is the expressgate software installed on the recovery partition? if not i am just going to remove it, as why take up an extra 10 GB when the dvd's do the same thing

 

Ut3 runs great on here. If you look at my mass effect scores on the main review UT3 is almost the same as they both use the same engine (seriously the launcher or mass effect is UT3.exe)

 

anyone try running age of conan? What are avg framerates you guys are getting? I can't quite run it smoothly on all high, gotta keep it med-high no aa and bloom disabled to get 35-40fps.

 

Has anyone got their A1 connected to an HD television? I have gotten ordinary results and I am not sure why. I am using the VGA output and I'm seeing a lot of video noise. Desktop resolution is set to PDP native, high performance mode.

 

Looking for some help with installing these 'custom drivers' for the GPU.

I downloaded the one that is typically suggested, and made sure to use the custom file. When the laptop restarts, in my system information it lists my GPU as a 9600gs.

I figured this would not be an issue so I attempted to play WoW. Within about 4 minutes, the game crashed.

I loaded again... crash. This repeated for an entire day.

I have since reverted to the regular drivers that came with the laptop... no crashing issues.

Anyone else having this problem? I am sure it is because the card is not being detected correctly. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Yeah it changes it to 9700GS. I have only played BF2, no problems.

 

wow dude great freaking review you covered all the questions i wouldve had for this computer lol ty g50 here i come

 

Wow ViciousXUSMC kudos to you!!! this is a great review, and i just purchased the G50V-A1 yesterday from XoticPc. I have been skimming through forums like no other in the past 15-24 hours and i stumbled upon your brilliant review among the other few good ones. I have been reading up on various things from which AntiVirus Software i will use all the way up to what drivers i'm going to install (and how to install - which your review covers wonderfully).

I just have some questions for you if you're not too busy to reply to (thank you in advance Vicious).
-First off in your review you said you would be testing and commenting on UT3 and WoW later on. (I was wondering if you could do some testings for WoW, i am sure it will run it fine but i would like to see what your conclusions are).
-Second i love that the G50V-A1 comes with dual HDD's, now the only thing i have not got into or learned is RAID 0, 1 settings. I had no idea what these settings would do longterm but after reading your review i got a better understanding of what RAID settings could do. I was hoping if you could further explain this to me. As when i get my laptop a week or more from now, i want to do a series of the "THINGS TO CLEAN, DRIVERS TO UPDATE, THINGS TO REMOVE OR CHANGE" to my specifics or in this case with your help your specifics. I want to know what i should do to my hard drives so i could in fact use one just for programs and the other for data for future problems when i have to reformat so i dont lose all my data. Also, should i infact do a clean install of Windows like your review shows?

So with that said, could you help me with a list of "how to" or things i should do to clean up and further enhance my G50V-A1 USE!

Thanks so much-- Cheers
- _jungi

 

I did wow, maxed out 1680x1050 all settings to the highest and I stayed at 60fps at all times.

I did not enter any huge raid zones or shatt, but I know it will stay above 40-50fps with no problems. You most definitely do not need to worry about WoW on here, it even runs WAR (Warhammer Online) very very well maxed out and its harder to play than WoW.

UT3, its the same engine as Mass Effect so if you look at the ME numbers they should be similar,again it will play UT3 fine but you may need to chop the res down to 1280x800 or so for max frame rate.

As far as Raid goes.

I personally do not recommend raid 0, even tho I use it. I only used it to test it for my review and after installing all my programs & games I did not feel like wiping out all my data again to go back to a standard configuration.

Raid 1, you will lose half your HDD space but keep the same data on both drivers, so if you do not need more than ~250gb of space and want your data to be safe raid 1 is a great option. Im pretty sure when the day comes that one of my hard drives fail and I lose all my pictures, data, ect that I will learn to use raid 1 pretty fast

So if your not interested in ether of the raid setups, I say just leave it as it comes. It will come with both drives partitioned so you will see four hdd's in your my computer screen. If that annoys you, you can merge them with Vista built in partition management tools or something similar.

You definitely do not need a clean install, just uninstall the few things you may not want to use, there really was no "bloatware" on this system other than the trail for the antivirus & the microsoft works.

 

wow, again thank you mr. vicious. lol
your response time was incredible. i spent an hour or more going through each page reading the posts whilst i was watching The Godfather Part II, i finally reached my post where i was going to edit out the "UT3/WoW tests" because i had seen that you already covered them, but i was too slow

you answered my RAID and clean isntallment of Vista questions terrificly, i have one last question which regards the uninstalling of the AV: Norton, i hear is hard to fully clean off your computer or something? or is this not true and a uninstalling easy to do with that particular program.

Kudos again, Thank you
i cannot wait for my G50V-A1 to come in!, the wait is horrendous (its only been 2 days lol).

- _jungi

 

Just go into your control panel and the add/review software option and take it out from there. Worked fine for me.

 

ah ok thanks.

i have never used or even see the desktop of a vista os. haha thanks for clearing that up for me.

*edit*
if i wanted to give you a rep point for this magnificent review and helping posts, how would i go about doing that?

*edit again*
ok i found it, =), rep added, /cheers again

 

Nice Review!

How are the speakers?

And. Im planning on getting a G50V. Is there something you have to do for Raid 0. What do I need, I really didn't get it.

 

Yeah the Raid 0 has to be manually setup, the steps are in the reivew.

The speakers are a good quality, but I think almost all of us feel they should be louder. It will depend on your source the most tho. My MP3's for instance are plenty loud at just half volume but certain online video feeds are too quiet.

I was using DFX 8, to boost the volume of some stuff, somebody posted a program they used on the EEE to boost volume and they said it works with everything. If I find that post I will come back here to repost it.

Edit: Found it! I have not tested this yet but feel free to try it before me and tell me how it works.

http://www.srs-store.com/store-plugins/mall/sas-plugin.asp

 

i have one question. when we put our laptop in hibernating, is the harddisk in "locked" position?? meaning is it safe to carry it in the backpack with it in hibernating mode??? sorry for my poor english...

 

Yeah in hibernate everything should be saved to the HDD and the notebook is basically off.

S3 sleep would probably be ok too for short trips (everything is stored in the ram, very low power state) but I do not know what kind of sleep it uses and its risky so I suppose I should not recommend using sleep to transport.

 

Hey everyone, I'm a long time reader, first time poster. I just bought a G50V A2 but I'm having a little trouble making it run smoothly. First off, this is my first computer with Vista and I'm not a computer genius but I do know a thing or two.

So here are my problems which you guys might be able to help me with:

1) My Ram is running at about 40% when I'm not doing anything on the computer, does that sound right? I know Vista takes a lot so I wasn't sure.


2) My biggest problem is I'm having trouble running games. I installed Company of Heroes but about ever 15 seconds the screen goes black and it freezes. It does this on all graphics setting. I did a preformance test in game and its avg is about 60FPS so that is normal, what is odd is that the low is about 5-6FPS (when it freezes I assume). Also when it freezes I get the following message "display driver stopped responding and has recovered". I tried uninstalling the driver and installed the one in the review but I'm getting the same problem. Also, where can I get the original driver that came on the computer?



I hate to be that guy that signs up on the forums just to ask for help but I've tried everything I know how to do. Thanks in advance.

 

1.) Totally normal its ok, unused ram is wasted ram.



2.) Sounds like the display drivers are not working right. Are you using the stock drivers? I would try to re-install them maybe they are curropted, or better yet just follow the steps in the reivew to update to some newer drivers from laptopvideo2go. If one set gives you problems try another set.

Also make sure you have the newest direct X

 

BTW, the original GPU driver should be on the drivers CD.

 

I tried installing 177.79 like on the front page and I was still getting the same error.
The I tried 178.15 and it worked last night but this morning I'm having the same issue.

I'm going to try and simply install the original driver to see if that works with a fresh install. Thanks for the advice and glad to here my memory is good .

Edit: Tried the drivers it came with and the problem is worse. I'm not sure whether to call Asus, Nvidia or both. I know this is a great computer I just have to get past this little problem.

 

Hi vicious, just a suggestion, but maybe you could add a section for average temperatures when you get some free time, because i know heating is a big issue for first time laptop buyers

 

Hi,

I have ordered the A2 model and I want to check few things about the Vista 64 bit:

1. I'll use the laptop for my studying, I want to be sure that Microsoft Visual Studio 6 and Office 2007 will run smoothly on Vista 64 bit?

2. I believe that most popular softwares are suited for Vista 64 bit, but if I'm still be using 32 bit softwares that will cause problems?

3. I have on my PC a legal copy of Windows Xp (not OEM). If I want to install it on the laptop (additionally to Vista), can I transfer the license, and how to do it?

*to install both xp and vista the right way is to clear all the os's and first install xp then vista?

Many Thanks!

 

1.) I cant say for sure VS6 but I know Office works
2.) 98% of the stuff you will be running IS 32bit software, very few programs have 64bit modes. 64bit OS can run 32bit stuff its the really old stuff thats like 16bit that has issues...
3.) You can setup dual boot in any order but its easier and more streamline to install XP first and Vista second as it will do all the work for you, just setup two partitions and install. If you have a legal retail copy of XP you can install it on any machine you want but just one machine at a time (it may work on more than one at a time not sure, but the license I think is only good for one) no need to transfer it or anything, its all automatic.

 

Thanks for the quick reply Vicious soon I'll be a member of the G50V owners.

If 32 bit softwares can run on VIsta 64 bit so i won't need installing XP on the laptop.

I have additional question that should be relevant for you guys, about the sata drives configuration:
In that vista tweak guide their is a step that called "Make Sure Your SATA Drives Are configured For Max Speed", it seemed that enabling both "write caching on the disk" and "dvanced performance" will boost the HD performance but on the other hand will increase data loss. what is your opinion about that feature? and how it can affect the overall stability of the laptop?

 

can it support 8gb of ram please answer asap i need a new laptop and it is very important characteristic for me. thanks in advance

 

I don't think write caching will affect the stability (not sure what "advance performance" does). What happens is that there is a greater chance of data loss if something else is causing the notebook to shutdown/BSOD/restart unexpectedly. Still, I have used write caching in Windows XP for ages now, with all kind of bad BSODs and shutdowns, with no data loss whatsoever.

 

Thanks EBE,

Two more questions if you don't mind:

1. I'm not sure about how to delete the 4 partitions and make them just 2 HDs non-partitioned with 1 having OS on it and the other for data storage?(without deleting the recovery partition)

2. I read something about setting the HD's jumper in the A2 model for better performance, what is it?

you are the greatest

 

1. You could use the "Recover to entire HDD with 2 partitions" option on the recovery DVD. Then you can use a tool like qtParted to resize them around to the sizes you want. Alternatively, use qtParted from live linux or FDISK from DOS to work on the partitions.

2. That jumper I think put the HDD into SATA2 mode.

 

Id have to ask why lol, I can think of no task that would use 8gb of ram.

I do belive they have 4gb so-dimms now, very very expensive so nobody here has tried it, you can be the scape goat and tell us

Chipset should support that much ram, but I guess the bios itself could turn it down.

 

Well, it'd help for MAJOR vid editing, cad work, photoshop.

I think ppl have tested it. The apple forums had something about the macbook (pro) being able to support as much as 6 or 8 GB of ram (evidently someone with deep pockets bothered to test it) and they were running on a santa rosa platform.

 

I also remember someone testing it for an ASUS notebook (8GB, and it worked -- in Vista 64 of course), but I don't remember the model. adyingwren, you could try searching?

 

Thing is I do video editing and photoshop too and, photoshop will never use it unless your loading a 500 layer ultra high res crazy photo, infact I still think you would be under the 4gb mark.

In video editing the only time it would be used is a ram preview, more ram equals more preview time. 4gb of ram gives you a very long preview, more than enough to see your current changes/filters/sync ect, how is 8gb very important/needed? The cost/benefit ratio is off the charts.

 

Maybe he wants to run multiple VMs? In that case 8gb of ram might be worth it

 

ViciousXUSMC,

In "Raid Setup & System Recovery" in your review you wrote about the three options for installing Vista via the recovery disk#1.
I got Confusion between options 1 and 3:
If i want to delete all the patritions and be with 2 HDD non-partiotioned each, i will have to choose option 1 or 3? according to my logic each option will operate on 1 HDD, that's correct? and if so the right option for me is the first.

I still don't understand how can i leave myself with 2 HDD non-partitioned, one has Vista on it and the other for data.

Thanks again for your patience

 

I did this by using the Vista built in partition manager, it's not the best but it does the job.

Right click on Computer > Manage > Disk Management

Here you can right click on a partition and delete, shrink or extend as needed.

 

If your running Raid 0 or Raid 1 you can use the format all and create 2 partitions option to get what you want.

If you are using both drives with no raid I think this option may create 2 partitions on each drive like how the machine comes when you first buy it.

So you would have to set up your partitions ahead of time (just format both hard drives and create one partition for the whole disk) and then use the install on first partition and leave others alone option to get the effect you want.

No matter what you do Okuni make a good point that Vista has its own built in non destructive partition manager, its not the best in the world but it works so you can modify the partitions after the fact if you need to to suite your needs.

 

8 gb of ram is only about 120 euros and that is not much for benefit it will provide. . .

 

Hello all,

I have 3 questions:

I am also very interesting in using 8Gb (I will use my laptop for scientific calculation where it is crucial to simulate complex design). I am wondering if it is possible to install DDR2 667MHz instead of DDR2 800MHz and what would be the consequence (massive drop in performance or tiny drop). For information, in France, 1 bank of 4Gb 667MHz costs 135 euros, and I haven't found so far banks of 4Gb 800MHz in retail.

Did someone install XP64 bit ? if yes, does the overclocking of the CPU still work?

Is it possible to use a second battery in the optical drive space?

Thanks all, and great review Vicious.

 

Time to play 3 questions! (well 3 answers)

1.) Sure you can always use slower ram, it will just possibly run slower, but due to the nature of the G50V I think it does not run 800mhz in most modes anyways. If I am not mistaken the X1 model from best buy comes with DDR2 667. The performance drop would be negligible, atleast for most tasks like games and stuff. If your going to be doing something so ram intensive that you need 8 gb of ram, the speed would definitely help you out.

2.) XP64 Install? Nobody that I know of and since the Direct Console does not work in XP 32 I say you have a even lesser chance for it to work in XP64 as it has very little support for anything to begin with. I really really cant recommend it in any way, Vista X64 is much better.

3.) Not by default, there is no battery or connection out there for it to be a factory option, but if you not just a super scientist but a super modder like me and some other guys here, you can always make your own

edit: #1 confirmed - http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...=g50v&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1213046768588 BB has 667mhz ram in the X1

 

Ok thank you Vicious for your answers and your rapidity.

That's definitely the laptop I need. It's a pity that the laptop has such a gamer design. I will be noticed
Instead of making my own battery, I will wait until a 9 cells is available. I am not really comfortable with doing a battery.

take care.

 

Did someone try to put a 9 cells battery from a G1V?

 

No, but ask GentechPC (Ken) about it. I want to say off hand that the battery for the G50 is the same as the M50, and they have released 9cell for the M50 already. They just cant sell the battery officially as a G50 battery until Asus says its a compatible part.

Send him a PM and tell him I told you to ask.

 

Done. Thank you Vicious. I will tell you the answer from GentechPC.

 

I am buying a laptop these days.( ASUS NOTEBOOK G50V-A1) . I have a question:
I saw there are 2 types. What is the difference between Manufacturer Part#: 90N-SPYA8QP3276KQL0Y and Manufacturer Part#: 90N-SPYA8Q33276KQL0Y ?
Bilingual keyboard means that the left shift key is shorter , there is a key between the left shift and the z keys and the enter is bigger? I would prefer that type. Look .

Thanks!

 

I doubt it is possible to "make" a modular battery, no matter how strong your modder kung fu is, since the connector will not be there to connect it to the motherboard, and the wiring won't be there to transport the current from the battery to the components.

 

Yeah I would just insert some cells and wire it in with the existing battery.

Also often you can open a battery and fit additional cells into it or higher capacity ones. All of these mods are on the upper scale of danger/difficulty tho.

The main problem with DIY batteries is the regulator chip for charging.