ViciousXUSMC's Ultimate G73JH Review

Nope nobody has it figured out 100% yet. I think the only way to know is to take apart the unit and I am not going to do that until I have a reason to (cpu upgrade) so you guys donate me a Intel 920XM CPU and I will be sure to take step by step pictures of the install and find out where the cooling system is pulling air from

I tried to find out via simple testing like tissue paper over the vents on the bottom or the keyboard at top while things were revved up under load but there was not enough vacuum for me to determine where the air was going in. It very well could be a balance, some of it from the keyboard, some from the bottom, and some from under/behind the lid area.

Better yet I can do video now, I ordered a Creative Vado HD camcorder the other day, nothing fancy but it should handle doing simple video reviews pretty well.

 

I did a smoke test and confirmed the air intake is behind the lid. So the smoke goes below the space between lid and top cover and into the back. In the back are two slits on the left and right side. The smoke test confirmed for both sides. So yes it's being sucked in from the top. The lid is designed that if you close it down, the back of the lid will cover up the intake, so don't close the lid.

Why no one seems to believe what I'm typing is a little odd to me. Do it yourself. You can easily feel the air being taken in with your fingers.

JUST DO THE SMOKE TEST FOR YOURSELF.

Slide a piece of paper under the lid and into the back and you can feel where the vents are...

 

Even if it does suck air from the top (I have seen no evidence of this myself), if you open the compartment door on the bottom you can see how the GPU sticks out right next to the memory modules. Next to them going towards the back is the CPU. You can use a notebook cooler to bring in air from the bottom and cool the important components.

 

I'm only against this theory because I've opened it up to see how it worked. If it is in fact sucking in air from where you say it is then that air is going directly into the fans and back out the system. It would not be enough to even cool off the copper pipes next to the fan.

 

That's also confusing me.

@ ziddy123 It's not that no one belive you. It's human nature to be suspecious.

 

Oh well, but that's where it is. You can do the smoke test also and see for yourself the air being sucked under the lid. It isn't much but that's where it is.

 

Did you try from underneath?

 

I tried the tissue trick from the top and the bottom. What I did was started running Crysis in DX10. After about 10 minutes of getting my butt kicked on the beach, I turned the laptop on it's left side. This gave me access to the front and back at the same time. I can verify that air was being drawn in from the top. I held the tissue parallel to the keyboard and slowly brought it closer until I could tell that the tissue was being pulled towards the laptop.

However, I did the same test to the bottom, and the suction from the bay door was enough to hold the tissue in place. In other words, I covered the slits in the bay door with the tissue, and let go of the tissue. The tissue stuck right were it was, and did not fall to the table.

I think it's safe to assume that the fans are drawing air in from wherever they can. Perhaps the most air is coming from the bay door on the underside, but there is additional air being drawn into the system. There may not be direct channels where air is being pulled in on top, but then, you wouldn't want such a closed-off system anyways, because the additional heat from the other components needs to be pulled into the fans too. I think the cooling system is great, but a cooler with a single centralized fan pushing air into the bottom will bring temps down another 5C, based on tests done by Vic or Mandrake (forgot who did that test).

 

174 watt draw with everything maxed. . I'd be interested to see if it was drawing power from the battery to compensate. Might be worth a look.

And just a thought. . . . drag a piece of paper over over the top of the unit during a heavy benchmark? the suction SHOULD draw the paper like a magnet. Can't say for sure atm, since my X1 won't be here until sometime this afternoon.

 

It really depends on the game, and yes you are right. The number is exaggerated because of the 1fps it clocked when I transitioned.

Don't forget, that bench was done with AA on max, which I find completely unnecessary at this kind of resolution. My frames would be up 15-20 fps with AA off.

45 fps with AA on is VERY playable. I will run another fraps average and make sure I don't load into an area, that way we can have a more accurate picture of what the overclock gets you. To be honest, that overclock is so rock stable that I set it every time I boot the machine. In ~ 3 weeks when the 10.3 ati driver comes out, we won't have to reset the overclock every reboot. CCC will save it for us.

That same overclock only yields me about 4 fps in BattleField Bad Company 2, but if it's stable and the temps are good why not?

 

Done both of those, first of all the power tests was with the battery removed I guess you did not read that part.

2nd I did the tissue test under full bench load with the fans at max and not enough suction to make paper stick to the vents on the bottom.

I feel that the machine is pulling air from several air spaces and not just one place, the bottom vents, the keyboard area, and behind the lid.

 

In bios does Asus Easy Overclock need to be set to normal or turbo? What's the difference?

 

I want to know what app controls that turbo button.

 

Sorry about that, was only half awake this morning.

That was the part I was REALLY curious about. If the bottom of the fan casing has the same hole the top does [in the pics I've seen] it could well be pulling air from any non-sealed area on the bottom of the unit. . . . Either that or the fans aren't moving enough volume, which I can't imagine.

 

If the G73 is pulling in air from wherever it can, it then does stand to reason that a cooler would help. With that in mind, is there a cooler that you all with the G73 in hand think would be particularly effective with this machine?

 

Power4Gear. Without it the Turbo button doesn't work.

 

Are you sure? Power4Gear might just be what's showing the on screen notification. ie no power4gear installed, does the volume keys still work? i'm guessing they do, but they just don't show the on screen stuff.

 

Volume keys and everything else work. Without Power4Gear Turbo Mode does not work. I've tried it already when I was uninstalling bloatware.

The Turbo mode is not the ATK on screen display. It's a feature of Power4Gear. It's right there in Power4Gear, you don't have to press the button on the top left above the keyboard, you can turn it on directly in Power4Gear itself.

 

What else does Power4Gear do?

 

I know this is essentially a desktop replacement, but I'm curious how portable this laptop is? Do you find yourself using it often away from a desk? On your lap or in bed? I'm seriously considering buying the Alienware M11x but I keep thinking that this thing is only $400 more and I get SO much more for the money. However, there is the fact that you can't even get through some movies without the battery running out. I'm curious if you think someone in my position would be happy with it. I don't travel much, but this would be my only laptop and I would like to take it with me if/when I do travel.

 

Its not heavy or bulky but it is 17" in size and with strong hardware so it eats a battery fast.

The best movie companion is a netbook. I just sold my EEE 1000H for $250.00 its 10" size and 7+ hour battery life was perfect for movies. Toss a 500gb HDD inside and rip your entire DVD collection onto it and never even think about one of those portable dvd players again. Not to mention all the digital content you can just download directly onto it.

If you fee you have to make a sacrifice one way or another (power/portability) rather than trying to find a machine that is good at both and fails, get 2 laptops that are specialized and use them for what they are good at.

 

Thanks, that's one of the apps I've not installed. I will try it.

 

Say hypothetically you have this class every other day and you want to take this bad boy to school instead of printing out the power point. Would you think it would be a hassle in respect to the nature of its size and weight? Putting into account that this a lecture hall with stadium type seating with these dinky arm table things, so most likely it will be on your lap the whole time, and also this is the only thing in your back pack.

 

If I was going to use something on my desk for class stuff it would be a 10" netbook. Then when I get home from school I would use the 17" for work/play.

netbooks are fast to type on, have long battery life (no need to plug them in all day in school) they are cheap, and they can do anything you need for class stuff. Notes, powerpoint, web/research, music/movies , oh and SNES emulation.

Plus they only cost like $300 or less now, so if it gets broken/stolen/lost at school its not nearly as big of a loss.

 

Yea that would be the most efficient way, but i just dont like typing on the netbook. Though I have only tried my friends.

I already have a desktop at my apartment to game on. The reason why i want this semi-mobile is because when I go home home(where my parents live) on the weekends to do laundry I can just play on this laptop instead of lugging my desktop home.

I've been just researching for the past few days because my dumb dell inspiron 1420 finally died. So far i've narrowed it down to the asus g73jh, asus g51jx, and the msi gx740. With the many problems i had with my dell, i am trying to research as much as i can. Sigh...dells....

 

Well, the more I thought about it the more your review has made me decide to cancel the M11x and get a real gaming laptop. I plan to sell my desktop so I have one question. I'm a 3D artist and I need to run Maya, Photoshop, and Zbrush. Do you think this will be a problem? Are you aware of any driver issues related to those types of programs and using a stylus, etc.? If I'm posting this in the wrong thread please let me know. Thanks for your help!

 

Nothing has been noted yet on compatibility between the m5870 and those 3d development programs. In fact, the mobile 5870 in this laptop is actually a desktop 5750/5770 so you shouldn't have any issues. New drivers out by Ati today should also help you. You will have one mean development machine!

 

Perfect. Thanks, that makes my purchase easier.

 

I use Photoshop CS4 and use the GPU accelerated features with no problems. If your doing that kind of stuff you will appreciate the great overall system specs of this unit like the 1TB HDD space, the 8GB RAM, etc..

 

I've been reading there have been a lot of problems with the system. I'm looking for something that is reliable as I will be using it for work. Without going through every thread and counting the issues, I did get the impression it was a pretty high failure rate. Do you think I should wait or does the system seem to be fairly reliable to you?

 

The ones with issues are of course going to be the most vocal and visible. There are hundreds, maybe even 1000 that have ordered the laptop from this forum alone. Yes, some people are having issues and we are trying to narrow it down right now. You run the risk with any system. The difference here is that you have a forum full of people dedicated to isolating any problems. The failure rate is low in the scheme of things. I think about 7-10 people have had some issue. That's out of hundred and hundreds that have ordered it just on this forum.

 

yeah, that's why I post this poll http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=461117 to get a clear idea of the percentage of people with problem machines

Hopefully the sample size will be big enough to make it a relevant study.

So far, the poll indicates the majority of people have no issues with the machine they got. It will become a more meaningful survey once more people vote

 

Great review, thanks ViciousXUSMC

 

Fantastic review ViciousXUSMC !! Waiting for my bonus annoucement before I go in for the kill ... Rep to follow

 

ViciousXUSMC, you should do all game benchmarks again for see the improvement with new 10.3 driver

 

http://item.taobao.com/auction/item_detail-0db2-c55257e6fb422f2908936975d9f8eb24.jhtml?cm_cat=0

this guy used your review pics

 

WTH!? BUSTED!

 

what a retarded jerk! I hope a senior citizen steals his car and leaves a few moldy wan.

 

worst part is that he even put a crappy watermark on all the photos. it would be one thing to just use them but wow...

 

those watermark says he is the owner of those pictures lol

Not surprised that it is a Chinese auction though

 

Vicious hasnt commented?...

Vicious are you trying to sell your G73JH?!?!?!?!?!
lol

 

Shame, I actually started a NBR thread asking if it was ok to watermark my stuff since I had somebody steal my entire review before (the Asus C90S) and I didnt want to get in trouble because I have been in trouble before for linking to my site.

Final verdict is I could watermark them but I was rushing the review so much that I did not take the extra time to watermark my stuff. I dont really have a site logo anyways lol.

 

maybe put a bookmark saying "This machine is defective"?

 

LOL!!!
10 char

 

the good thing is atleast those of us behind a firewall can atleast see those images now. haha.

Im guessing this guy is actually in the US since picasa is blocked in China.

 

I was curious if the ATI card could be changed to nVidia on this machine? From what I'm reading it doesn't look like Maya runs well on ATI cards. So when nVidia finally gets a decent card could I easily replace it?

 

No, you cannot. There are a lot of reasons, but I don't feel like writing that much.

 

The answer is because Asus won't let us.

 

Fantastic review, Vicious - this (along with several other reviews) helped me take the plunge and pre-order one. +rep!

 

I used to love dual GPUs because the laptop manufactures blow my mind with rediculous 3dmark and 3dvantage scores . But many games don't fully support dual gpu and only gained 5%-10% (1-2 fps) from single gpu. 3dmark and 3dvantage just programs was set up to accumulate the cpus and gpus work togethers but the games are not and mostly gpu bottleneck. Some games only gain to 1-2fps, upgrading from stock to extreme cpu. I'm glad to have this g73 a lot of games above 30fps