~ Asus U6 Owners' Lounge ~

Well, I finally chose to RMA my U6Sg because of the issue with the 3-cell battery (slow performance). I sure hope they get it fixed soon. I'm missing it already!

 

That is a very strange issue indeed..I was about to order this laptop the other day when the price on newegg jumped $100 WHILE it was in my shopping cart. I was so mad!!! I'm waiting it out though, it will have to go back down at some point lol.

 

I can verify the lousy performance with the 3cell about %25 percent on the whole. However, this is deceptive. The HDD marks are the same plugged in as on battery.

The CPU, GPU and memory all take massive hits. Some of the cpu tests on 3cell battery were 95% SLOWER than when plugged in. This is absurd.

Is this a BIOS problem? Or bad engineering?
Should I return it or do you think this will be fixed. Between this, meaning you have to use the 6 cell which is big and heavy, and the huge power brick is the u6SG even an ultraportable??

Did this issue exist with the U6s? I'm running Vista64. Is it the same crap on XP?

 

I noticed too that the great majority of the performance drop is because of the CPU and GPU. I found this unacceptable, and so I decided to RMA the laptop.

In the Asus Repair Status Inquiry, my U6 showed a couple of days as "Repairing", and now it's "Waiting" - probably/hopefully for a new part that will cure the problem. I'll let you know in this thread as soon as I get my U6 back whether the problem is fixed or not. If not, I'm going to demand a replacement battery, 6 or 9-cell, one that will not have this problem (the unfortunate downside is the increased weight of the bigger battery). If that's not possible, I will return the laptop, and buy a Lenovo U110 instead.

EDIT: I'm also a little afraid that if they fix the performance issue with the 3 cell battery, it will even further reduce the already short battery life... I'm not sure which would be worse. I hope they'll prove me wrong.

 

I think this is an ACPI (power management) bug either in the BIOS, or in the drivers. ASUS have a history of these, the fake battery wear is probably the most INfamous.

Bad news is even if they exchange battery, motherboard or whatever else they want, assuming the problem is in BIOS or drivers, it will not be fixed...

But you can only wait, hope, and see.

 

Well, if they can't fix it, I don't see why I must put up with it. I want either
a) a (6 or 9 cell) battery that works to replace the non-functional 3 cell
b) monetary compensation for the loss of functionality (it's supposed to come with two working batteries) or
c) brake the deal and get my money back.

c) is probably very unlikely, so I'm kind of hoping for a). That would be the second best thing after a fully working 3 cell. Increased size and weight of a bigger battery is unfortunate, but on the other hand the battery life of this notebook isn't too great to begin with, so from that poin of view it would be an acceptable trade-off.

 

I agree. O suggest you wait till the computer returns. If it does the same thing, call them and request a 6-cell instead of the 3-cell.

I suppose you are certain that the 6-cell batt doesn't show the same problems?

 

Yes, this is exactly what I was planning on doing. I'm also very interested to see whether they give any explanation to this behaviour.

I have extensively tested both batteries (3 and 6 cell). Though you don't actually need to test it much - you only need to boot up Vista and you can immediately see which battery it is using. The 6 cell has worked flawless every time, whereas with the 3 cell it's just crawling - every time.

 

They didn't explain it for me when I had the battery problems. I think they try very hard to keep this sort of recurring problems quiet, so they'll be tight-lipped about it.

It is of course entirely possible they didn't know about the problem, but I doubt it. it's more likely they didn't care enough to pay attention.

 

I wonder if this issue has been confirmed on XP or linux? Perhaps this is a Vista-specific issue?

 

At least I haven't heard of anyone having this issue in XP or linux. Then again, besides myself, chauncy is the only one I've heard of experiencing this issue. It seems most are only using the 6- or 9-cell batteries with their U6Sg's.

For me, it doesn't matter however whether it happens in XP/linux or not. I quite like Vista - at least more so than XP, and I've very little experience with linux, so that's not an option for me, either.

It would be interesting to know, however, whether it happens with XP or linux. Also, I'd like to know if anyone with a U6Sg can confirm they are NOT having this problem (with Vista).

 

I'm going to be getting this notebook for sure in the next couple of weeks and I'm going to dual boot Ubuntu with either XP or Vista (haven't decided yet, depends on how much I like Vista) but I will be able to confirm then.

 

Sorry, I mixed up you and chauncy in my previous post.

Let us know when you receive your U6Sg whether you have this problem or not - hopefully not, and if it's the same with linux/XP.

I like Vista for its more modern look compared to XP, vastly (I think) improved search & indexing features, and - after a few weeks of adapting and learning - I think its usability is much improved also (compared to XP). Though I understand these may all be up to personal preference.

 

I can verify it works the same in xp. The numbers in the benchmark were the same as in Vista. I ran Vista 64 ultimate, got sick of the constant problems with the programs I installed. Now running xp pro sp3.

The 3 cell performance is the same.

 

By the same, do you mean that it has the same performance as the other batteries, as in it is not a problem, or it has the same performance as it does in Vista and the performance is still bad? Sorry for not understanding, just trying to clarify.

 

same performance problem as in vista

 

Okay, this is about performance with the 3cell battery in and unplugged.
Overall performance was %75 slower than plugged in. The cpu performance was much less, like 90% slower. Too big of a difference seems to me.

Winxp is a little faster that vista64- not much 5% or so.

Yeah, I know about speedstep- but this is much more than that. There's either a bug in the power management of the machine or in the bios.

I don't think power4gear Extreme made much of difference with the 3 cell in and cpu maxed there was little or no difference as opposed to not doing anything.

Has anyone gotten power4gear xtreme to work on xp??

Anyway, I tried rmclock, a cpu control prog. RMclockis a pretty intimidating program.

The difference was immediate. It ran twice as fast, overall performance was about 60% of plugged in.

I didn't do much with rmclock just ran it with flat setting but this puts the power managemnt in rmclock's hands not windows.

I'm not sure whose to blame but this is interesting and, I suppose, a bit of a relief.

 

Hi everybody, I've got a U6S and I have some bad *** problem with the recovery option (I mean the Windows PE). It's like this, that, the recovery option in F8 list, is disappeared. So I found that the recovery partition actually exists, but the partition is inactive, so I activated it, BUT, I have another problem with it. When it's booting with the recovery partition, suddenly a BIG "ERROR!" message appears and title of the message is "Cannot open c:recovery.dat" So I replaced the one that was in the recovery partition with the one in C:\ Cause the day before I had reinstalled Vista by the recovery DVD. But the problem didn't solve. I wanted to ask you people that OWN U6S, if you do me a big favor, of sending me an IMAGE of your recovery partition. Thank you for the time you're spending to read my message.

 

Well then it seems that RMClock can solve the problem or at least most of it. This is good. Since I'd recommend RMclock over Power4Gear anyday, it's even better -- I don't think you lose much functionality except interaction with the power profile hotbutton; and brightness settings.

For how to set RMclock, check my Tips and Tricks (link in sig). There are good guides on the Guides forum, as well.

You don't need to bother with undervolting for now. Just use it for frequency control.

 

Well... 60 % of plugged in performance is an improvement, but I don't think it's quite enough. I want 100 % performance - that's what I paid for. Maybe I'd settle for 90 % if I absolutely had to.

Btw. E.B.E, great tips you got there! I'll be sure to read them through once I get my U6 back.

 

Hi there.
Just got my U6Sg. Same 3-cell battery performance problem here. Booting using this battery takes like forever! I really hope this is something that can be fixed.

Haven't tried the RMclock yet, but I will.

 

Anybody EVEN take a look at this message?!!
Can't you even send all the recovery partition files, EXCLUDING the windows installation files.(Means NOT a big size of upload)

 

OK, let's take a collective breath and try to be calm here....

Is your system not working, or are you just trying to get back a recovery partition? If the former and a OS reinstall by recovery DVD didn't work, you might be left with having to call Asus about RMA to fix it. I'm not sure you can even go back and simply recopy the recovery partition on the HDD in a functional manner, but one of the resellers might know more about that. If the latter, I'm not clear on what the big issue and need is.

 

Thank you man for the response. My system is working right now, BUT the Vista Recovery Environment(RE) doesn't exist. What I wanna do is to restore the recovery partition with an image of some other U6S and then replacing the factory Windows installation files, with the files on Recovery DVD. That's why I'm asking for the partition IMAGE. Cause I think some of the RE files are corrupted. Hope I could explain it well. OH, and about the ASUS service center, they didn't even know that Windows RE exists.

 

Placed an order for my U6SG today. Looks like I'm going to be getting the same 3-cell issues everyone else is having. Oh well. Hopefully Asus will acknowledge the problem exists and release a fix. Sounds like a BIOS problem (maybe BIOS flash/upgrade would fix the issues)

 

Sounds like either a BIOS or ACPI drivers/utils problem.

For the RMClock fix: I don't know who posted it, but did you make sure all the CPU multipliers are enabled in the power profile that you use with the 3-cell batt? If so, does the CPU go full blast when pushed?

For the recovery: I'm not sure you can just copy the recovery files off the recovery DVD. They may be different. I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm just cautioning against a possible problem.

 

Called Asus today to inquire about the status of my RMA (it's been 2 weeks now since I sent it). They said it's waiting for a part, and this might take anywhere from 10 days to 5 weeks!

And the worst part is, they don't have any loaner machines to give out, even though I'm entitled to one according to Finnish law (repair must be done in two weeks, or else the customer is entitled to a loaner).

Nice, I'll probably get my machine back sometime in June... Would've been quicker to just wait for Montevina...

 

Performance problems regarding the 3 cell isn't the only issue I've experienced with this laptop. After just one week, the fingerprint sensor stopped working. I've reinstalled the software pack - and the OS using the recovery partition and the CD. Nothing could make it work again. Anyone recognize this problem?

So now I've returned the PC thing to the dealer. I'll probably have to wait for quite a few weeks to get it back.....

 

Yeah, that sucks... should we add Finland to the list of poorly-supported ASUS countries?

If a recovery didn't fix it it's probably hardware, so RMA was the right thing to do.

 

I guess we should. We don't even have an official Asus repair center here in Finland, they sent it to Holland for repairs. Wasn't Holland supposed to be one of the better places to get an Asus notebook fixed? I hope they deliver

 

Yep, they are in the sense that they fix the notebook well. But they're not good at timing. The fastest turnround for me was 10 days. Add to that that you need shipping to/from Finland and the fact that it may have a lower priority because it's from outside Holland...

So Finland sends their notebooks to Holland... UK also, usually after ANovo destroys them... they must have a LOT of work on their hands, these guys...

 

Just got my notebook from BTOTech, loving it, first impressions are that the build quality is phenomenal (coming from my Acer Aspire 5672) and very small and light. Service from BTOTech was great, recommended.

 

Congrats! It is a very nice notebook, hope you enjoy it a long time.

Do you have the 3-cell battery? Can you confirm what's the performance like - is it the same with battery power as compared to plugged in?

 

Has anyone else running XP had trouble doing multiple stand-bys/shutdown freezing?

When I standby after a reboot it works fine, but the time after it freezes... I'm assuming some acpi driver is ****ing up but can not find which. Suggestions/experiences?

 

Well there is only one ACPI driver... it's called ATK. Did you try to reinstall it?

 

I have not tested in Vista yet, I will do so later and post the results here. I have, however, done some benchmarking in Ubuntu 64-bit, and here are my findings:

Fibonacci benchmark (lower is better)
3-cell: 3.569 Seconds
6-cell: 3.582 Seconds
3-cell (battery power): 24.406 Seconds
6-cell (battery power): 4.035 Seconds

MD5 benchmark (higher is better)
3-cell: 56.180 MiB/Second
6-cell: 56.388 MiB/Second
3-cell (battery power): 8.575 MiB/Second
6-cell (battery power): 46.148 MiB/Second

SHA1 benchmark (higher is better)
3-cell: 85.751 MiB/Second
6-cell: 86.103 MiB/Second
3-cell (battery power): 13.117 MiB/Second
6-cell (battery power): 62.714 MiB/Second

Blowfish benchmark (lower is better)
3-cell: 14.813 Seconds
6-cell: 14.792 Seconds
3-cell (battery power): 98.118 Seconds
6-cell (battery power): 16.943 Seconds

Raytracing benchmark (lower is better)
3-cell: 8.418 Seconds
6-cell: 8.354 Seconds
3-cell (battery power): 59.397 Seconds
6-cell (battery power): 10.085 Seconds

As you can see, little or no difference in performance between the two while plugged in, however the 6-cell suffers a minor performance drop when running on battery power (which could just be Ubuntu's power saving, I'm not sure because I'm a linux n00b), but the 3-cell has AWFUL performance while running on battery, similar to what others have been experiencing in this thread.

 

Thanks! Now that's thorough benchmarking. If you have the time, could you try some benchmarks in battery power also? I didn't notice much of a difference in performance between the 3 and 6 cell batteries when plugged in, either, but when on battery power, the difference was quite noticeable.

 

Bump for edited post. Indeed, the 3-cell suffers from very serious performance issues in Ubuntu. I don't think I need to benchmark Vista as I'm going to experience the same thing according to other people in this thread, but that just about confirms t...hardware issue, not software.

 

Actually, I suspect firmware rather than hardware. Either BIOS bug, or battery firmware bug.

 

Hello,

It is normal for latop to run slower in battery mode because of power-saving scheme and to prolong battery life. Besides, it doesn't generates the same amount of current unlike what a bigger cell battery pack or an AC adapter does.

The power-saving scheme is an Intel standard in order to keep the CPU stable and the system since it also utilizes the onboard Intel chipset controller.

To help us better assist you, please provide feedback at:


Regards,

RL
ASUS Notebook Technical Support


Pretty lame. I suggest that all us contact support. Maybe they can fix it.

Honestly I can't understand the logic between why the 3 cell and 6 cell batteries make the power save/speedstep behave differently or for that matter a 65 volt and a 90 volt power supply.

It's either on the mains or it isn't - and everything should have the capability of working at full speed. Same with the battery- it's my business if I want to go full speed with the 3cell and go empty in 20 minutes. And the machine should be enginnered in such a way it is drawing enough voltage to allow for that.

 

Uh... that reply has a faint scent of BS

I think it's just battery bugs and, as usual, they're not willing to fix them.

 

Actually ASUS's statement was right. I just ran PCMark05 with 3 cell battery and with AC adapter. For some reason, when running under battery power, CPU will automatically throttled to 1/2 the clock speed (0.6Ghz / 1.2Ghz). I will do a print screen comparing the two shortly.

 

I think the bad performance may very well be due to a power saving "feature" (= bug), but I don't think it works as they planned. Otherwise, why haven't they used it on any other of their notebooks? Also, if it's a processor feature, why haven't I heard of this kind of behaviour on any other manufacturer's notebooks? Or on Asus' other Intel based models, for that matter?

In any case, I hope it's something they can fix, be it a bug or a feature. And I hope they fix it soon (still waiting to get my U6 back from repair...)!

 

We're not questioning whether there is a slowdown when running on the 3cell battery. It is clear to all of us that there actually is a slowdown.

We're questioning whether ASUS is being truthful about this. Personally I think they are trying to cover up yet another battery/ACPI bug by stating it's a "power management feature". It has happened before with the G1S bug of throttling down under 95% charge, people have done the tests and measured the currents and the adapter supports the full-blast and charging the battery just fine.

Also, the battery wear bugs of the V1J, V1S, V6J, R1F, R1E, are STILL not recognized as such by ASUS.

Sorry, but I will no longer trust ASUS when they say "this battery problem is not a bug, it's a feature". I would need to check for myself and find out. Sure, I can't do that for the U6, because I don't have one. But I hope U6 owners will.

 

Maybe it's possible that the battery life of that tiny 3-cell would be COMPLETELY unacceptable if it weren't clocked down to such an extent? It is quite a small battery and let's face it, Asus notebooks don't get the best battery life.

 

Here's what I've just been told from Asus regarding the battery issue: the 3 cell-battery is "meant to be an emergency battery", the guy told me on the phone. There's nothing wrong with it, he argued.

An emergency battery? Why not just call it a "normal" battery with a lousy battery life and leave the choice to the customers?

I want the speed I've paid for, not some crap that reminds me of old IBM XT-days....

Anyone experienced a more lame explanation than this?

 

The only one I found was ATKDrv_Vista32 which was already installed... Is there actually another one?(that one is for the ATK0100 ACPI UTILITY)
(Side note, the XP version of it page 5 is exactlyt he same driver as the vista one, I tried it too, but same result)

What bothers me is that the first standby/hibernate works fine always... But once I come back from one and try doing one again, things freeze...

I've had that one too... screen turns off when I close the lid but never comes back when I open it again. Extremely annoying as it forces one to do a forced reboot. If anyone found a solution... I'd be glad to hear about it...


And an unrelated one:

I have been seriously wondering too Extremely "what the hell"

 

Thanks for the info. I'll dig into it.

 

That was the driver I meant, did you try reinstalling it? I don't actually remember the problem that you had but I'm sure I meant to ask whether you tried removing the driver, and installing it again.

Looks like ACPI bugs. If the screen flickers, it can also be bad interplay between the ACPI drivers and the video drivers; perhaps it's useful to change the latter: if you're using stock, get a good version from laptopvideo2go, and the other way around.

 

Actually... I did upgrade it... I'll try remove, reboot, reinstall, reboot right away.

Tried tons of video drivers(stock/tons frop l2v) and never got rid of that problem, so I'll have to assume it's still an acpi problem.

Here is my current configuration in device manager->system devices:

If you could point to anything that seems wrong I'd be happy to try changing it...



EDIT: Uninstalling&Reinstalling the driver did not help:/
I even tried killing almost every services and process running(only had 12 basic ones left) and it still "froze"(mouse works, but it's stuck at "going to stand by")...

EDIT2: Also just tried disabling almost every single loaded driver... no help.

EDIT3: After quite a few attemps, it seems that it might be linked the dameware keyboard driver... Really did not expect that to be a problem..

EDIT4: confirmed, the atk acpi does not behave correctly towards non-hardware drivers, and some(like the dameware keyboard driver) dont behave well when they're turned down. This is the second conflict I get between an asus driver and normal apps/drivers.(Last case was OTF font rendering getting broken by asus splendid+recent nvidia drivers(splendid&nvidia both seem to hijack gdi+ functions, and recent versions are obviously doing incompatible stuff)