~F3sv Owner's Lounge~

Just to answer something, the TPM is a minor thing for most users, called Trusted Platform Module (you can google it), possibly needed for fingerprint reader -- who cares since you don't need that one either.

You should base your decision on other factors more important for you (GPU?)

 

Which is pretty much my debate at the moment... Which is the stronger of the two? The ATI Radeon HD 2600 or the Nividia 8600M GS (after OC'ing...if possible with whichever set of drivers I use)?

Btw, I was reading on here about opening up extra pipelines. Has anyone else been successful with that, and does that pose extra heat issues? I've never OC'ed anything before, so this is kinda new to me.

I looked at charts comparing the two, which says the ATI is better, but then I read posts saying that ATI doesn't provide adequate updates and are "behind the times." I think I just read too much yesterday, and overwhelmed myself

 

HD 2600 and Nvidia 8600m are almost exactly on par.

The 2600 comes with 512 megs of video ram if i'm not mistaken, but it's bus speed doesn't allow for it to take advantage of more than 256 of that, so the retailer is kind of jipping the 'average newbie' on that account.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-8600M-GS.3707.0.html


Also, I'd jump on that deal as soon as possible..When I got mine, they were offering a $100 Targus notebook back pack with it, I apparently got the last one of those, because when I refreshed the page after buying it, the offer was gone.

It dropped to $999 about two weeks ago...The discounts been steadily bringing the price down.

So far my opinion is this, Buy mature technology.

Brand new baby technology is unstable and to expencive, while old venerable technology will be out of date much faster.

At the rate it's been going, this laptop will be useful for the next four years...

It's vista 64 bit ready, the hard drive is easily upgradable, and can handle upwards of 4gigs of ram...

It's got fire wire and S-video/DVI Out ports.

Plus, something you can't really beat is the one year accidental damage warranty....but I suppose that this deal also comes with the other asus you're looking at that has the ATI Card in it...


P.S. In the link above you can find the ATI Radeon HD 2600 in the same class as the 8600m GS, As far as I'm concerned, they're the SAME video card...except as you can see here

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-2600.3771.0.html

these experts say the max memory for this card is 256, now, there is a + sign there, but on the 8600m GS it actually says 512, not 256+

I'm not expert, but that seems to say something to me.

 

Well, I said that it is the X4... This is the F3sv thread... I have the F3sv-X4, the same as you do.

I don't see what is so funny. This is the kind of fanboy posting that ***** other people over in the end. You should be more honest and take the bad with the good. The screen is hardly beautiful. Personally I would call it junk.

If you think your video card is good you need to try some more games. There are plenty of reviews out there that quantify and tabulate the results for you if you don't know how to quantify your results.

It is not enough to open a game and play it and say ohhh...it works fine. Let me give you an example. Some guy was playing a game and it looked slow and choppy to me. he thought it was great. I asked him how many fps he gets and he told me he gets about 60fps on avg. oooookay... or so I thought. Anyway, I asked him to install and fps counter and it turns out he was getting 11fps. To me that is not playable.

If you want to know why people install sli it is not because they can't play the game it is because they don't want to be like that guy. They really do want 60fps on avg and not just pretend that they get 60fps to make themselves feel good.

What is my point? My point is that when one says "good", "fine", "bad", etc...these words have no real meaning. This is all relative in many ways. So it is better to quantify things and say something like I get 15fps in this game during action scenes with these specific settings and that is OK for me. Then people can read your comments and make an educated decision.

You have the A1 or the B1? We have the 1280x800 screen. I know mine ain't broke in any way mate because there are reviews and posts with screenshots of the light bleed. This bleed starts at the bottom and extends towards the top....dies down about 60% up the screen. So more than half the screen bleeds to various degrees. Of course the strongest bleed is the bottom 15% of the screen.

No one ever said good things about this screen. The crisp comments were about the 1440+ screens.

 

my dvd drive makes sounds as if there is a tiny asus guy sitting inside it and scratching all the dvds I insert to read the data. its not a big problem but its a bit embarrassing in the class.

If I remove the dvd drive and use an external dvd drive, will it void the warranty?

 

i did some research on the pipeline issue, i read quite a few sites and they all say that nvidia cuts the extra pipelines so they can sell it as a cheaper card. So, no you cannot unlock any new pipelines.

 

Hey Fittersman, from your signature i can see you got a dualboot on ubutu 7.10 and XP. You mind sharing how u managed that?
I booted the ubutu disk after i have an primary partition set up with XP and another one for Vista. ( so basically i already have a dualboot, and i am aiming for a triple boot by adding ubutu).
The cd boots fine, but towards the end of the instalation(95%), i get a fatal Grub error(which i know has something to do with the bootloader), and the instalation exits.

Looked on the web, and didnt find anything consistent. Any help would be great.

PS. i never used lunix before

 

No it won't. It'll leave a hole in the computer though.

Instead of an external you can buy a replacement for your current ODD assuming it is a standard slimline ODD. You can look for a brand that is silent.

 

I'll admit my first post in responce to you 010101 was a bit of a retarded 'net-speak' responce, but I assumed you were a moron, I see now that I am mistaken.

I think you're judging to harshly, you seem to know what the hell your talking about, and you bought the laptop, so why did you buy one with such a low in video card(even though most people consider this video card to be class 2, which is high end, but not best)

Also, who'd you buy it from? If it's such a ****y laptop, why didn't you return it? why dont' you try and re-sell it and get another one?

I still think you're being a bit over zealous and hateful without much cause to do so. This laptop performs well beyond my expectations, but I come from a long line of really terrible computers, so this is like going from driving a Kia my whole life, to geting a BMW....So I can see how my opinion can be biased in the possitive, but that still doesn't excuse your opinion being biased in the negative. You might as well of typed in all caps and used an explitive every other word in your description.

 

Fittersman, thanks for the info!

Muezick, thanks for the links!

 

Well, I've been building cutom "high-end" computers (for money ) since about 1998. So I have plenty of experience with Asus motherboards.

I bought an Asus laptop expecting quality. I am not disappointed by the laptop in any way other than the screen quality. I knew the battery was dreadful before I bought it. Knowing that fact ahead of time, was something I could work with. By the way... there is a 9cell for this laptop.

There are 2 things about this laptop other than the battery that suck. The Optical drive does make strange noises...but this is not that uncommon for laptops and I would suggest to the guy that is worried to stick with it an not waste money. it seems decent, I've burnt a few discs with it, and although it is not a true 8x (burns at about 5.5x in reality --@8X speed to 16x Fujitsu DVD-5+), i does the job. It does seem to be a true 2.4x DL burner though. Anyway, AnyDVD and Nero both have util that u can use to fine tune the spin-up and spin-down times. Give hem a try. I would also suggest installing XP, that fixed almost all issues for me. Make sure to get the XP Asus F3 patches from the Asus website. There is about half a dozen F3 patches for XP.

The other thing, and this does bother me, is the screen. I have never, and I mean never seen such a bad screen. The text is sharp and focused but the lighbleed desaturates the colors of the screen drastically. Increasing the contrast does improve the situation but that washes out the detail, esp for the lighter tones, making it impossible to use Photoshop with the build in screen. This is a problem for me.

As far as the vid card goes. It doesn't bother me that much. I needed a laptop fast and no laptop vid card can cut it as far as I'm concerned so it I went with the 8600GS. the GT is more or less twice as fast but even that is not so great. the 8700 and 8800 cards are comming to laptops now. You can also get sli laptops but that is not cheap. The avg person imo, should be able to upgrade their desktop PC with close to top of the line (P/S,CPU,RAM,VID_CARD) for under $800. So I'm not sure that it is worth throwing all that money into 1 laptop. This is an individual thing tho.

Why don't I return it? If I bought it in a local store I would, unfortunately I live in Canada and got it from Newegg which is in California. Too much hassle. This is why I'm pissed. If I knew the screen was this bad I would never have bought it knowing the hassle it is for me to return it.

I can live with it. Like you said, the laptop is fast, not to mention quiet and cool. I program with it on my lap for hours and it stays cool and quiet. A very nice suprise. I guess I'm just used to being able to pick and choose each component so I'm not used to being stuck with a subpar component here and there in my PC's. The fact is I can't find a laptop I like under 1800. I was considering the XPS line but I'm not a fan of Dell nor do I personally trust their warranty.

 

yah, ive got a 1440x900 screen... That could be the difference. Also, the angle of the screen matters alot, you need to find a good angle to look at it at so the bleeding isnt noticable. (i look at mine straight on and have no bleeding)

i used the alternate cd installer, it doesnt give you the nice graphics during install, but it works. You might want to try that.

You will also need to repartition your hard drive to allocate some space for ubuntu if you want it installed. You need at least ~2GB for the base install, but you wont be able to do much else (ie install other programs) so you will want more than 2GB, i recommend 10GB if you want some extra programs and some of your own files. (I have 10GB for the root file system / and 40 for my files /home)

if you need any more help installing it i will help you as best i can

 

Yeah I got mine from newegg to, you simply can't return computers to newegg, how ever, if you screen is that bad, we have the same laptop, I strongly suggest you return it for a replacement before the 30 days is out.

seriously dude...my screen is awesome, it's no better, or worse, than the screen on GRAVI(see signature for spects)

I've been strongly considering going to XP, There are things on Vista I like, but everything about XP I like, So I'm not sure, it's kind of a toss up. though the point at the end of the day is, My laptop could perform a hellova lot better with XP on it. So This weekend I might actually stick XP on it.

Thanks for the tip on the drivers though...

It's pretty funny we both own the same exact laptop and you hate it and I love it.

we should get together and write the review for it, sense we both seem to be somewhat knowlegable(I bet you know more than me, But I to have spent a hefty time inside a box tinkering with ram, mobo's, SATA's and so on...)

I'm sort of new to laptop ownership though, I owned GRAVI For a year before I retired him, now I've got AEVA and I love her to death, But AEVA is the fastest computer I've evern worked on or owned, So like I said, I'm a bit biased

my MSN is [email protected] if you're interested in throw together a review with me...if not, I'll probably end up writing my own stand-alone review.

 

the problem is, I dont have the use of the dvd drive. what I thought was, if i remove it, I may be able to save on some power. and NO!! a hole would be awful. Is there a way I can disable the dvd drive?

just wanted to say a few things regarding the gaming capability of this machine. I am probably not a heavy gamer but F.E.A.R, Oblivion, Doom 3, Stalker and POP Two thrones run very well. And its even better with XP. I maxed out almost everything in oblivion (1024x768, HDR, distance, grass and trees almost full, water detail high, water ripples, water reflection, texture high) and it gives me 28-40 outdoors and 40-50 indoors. quite impressive considering its a notebook.

about the screen, I am probably lucky. My screen is ultra gorgeous!!

 

Disable from device manager (or even better, from the BIOS if it's possible).

 

would disabling the DVD drive save much power? I really never use it so that might be a good idea for me if its going to save me some power

 

A watt or two, maybe even less, when it's idle.

 

Thanks Fittersman
By "alternate cd installer" you mean that's an extra option available from the same ubuntu instalation disk? And when u did that you didnt get any GRUB errors? Did you install XP first?
I already have a partition for it. But was actually thinking about doing it as a virtual machine under XP using VMware( which still dont know how to use it).

 

yah, its the extra option you need to select before you begin the download, i installed XP first, and i didnt get any grub errors.

 

Thinking of going to XP for a bit to see how it works.

The drivers on the drivers CD they gave me say vista 32 bit.

Will these not work at all on xp?

(Just a thought, I can still always go back to geting them from the website as 010101 suggested)

 

How'd you manage that? Newegg doesn't ship to Canada, or has that changed?

 

no, you need xp drivers. I wrote a bit of a howto on how to install xp on the f3sv, but its not that complete (all i use xp for is gaming so i didnt need drivers for stuff like the cam, memory card reader, etc..)

 

Yes, I see that there in your signature.. very nice.

Thank you fitter.

I do need those drivers, So we'll see what happens.

I look to geting XP setup on it this weekend.

So we shall see...

 

Question (it may seem a very stupid question, but please bear with me)

A few people on here have talked about reverting back to XP once they have Vista installed. My question is this: Do you have a separate copy of XP with its own product key, or does a new laptop come with Vista and XP by any chance?

I know ASUS is sending out select laptops with both, but was wondering if I'd have a choice once I order my laptop.

Thanks for humoring my question. I feel ridiculous asking it, but my curiosity got the best of me on this one

EDIT:
Note: I want Vista but would like to dual-boot with XP.

 

no, asus doesnt offer any support for XP on the F3Sv, so you will be on your own when installing XP on it if you choose to do so.

so, to answer your question, we have our own XP product key and a separate copy of XP.

 

You need to have a valid legal copy of both. Asus doesn't sell any laptops with both OS's, nor does anyone else. They have a prog for some select laptops to trade Vista Business in for XP Pro at no charge.

While Asus does not support XP for the f3sv officially, you do get support in the official Asus forum. This has nothing to do with the warranty by the way. I believe that Dell does void the warranty if you install any OS other than what comes with the laptop. This is no quite clear for Dell. This seems to be the understanding on the web, also this is how I understood it from the contract reading... but it is not quite clear. That would be illegal. Anyway, many replace the original HD with another just in case. The strange thing is that there is help in their forum to install XP. So... I doubt your warranty actually is made invalid... I think they just refuse to service you while you have another OS installed. So if you need service, you don’t have Vista installed and can't get the system installed due to some defect, you are **** out of luck. As long as you can reinstall it, you should be OK. This is where the orig HD comes in handy.

 

that seems really weird.. the OS has nothing/little to do with the hardware, so why would a warranty be void if all you did was change the OS?

 

Yeah. That's what I'm saying, I don't think they have the right to void the warranty but it seems they do have the right to refuse to service your laptop while you have another OS (as long as this is in the service contract). It does kind of make sense. Think about it, if they expect say Vista and you only have Linux... they can't run their quickie tools and benchmarks to find and fix probs... they don't want to take the time to install VISTA just so they can test the laptop. Too much time, plus the format, people *****ing about losing their data and financial info, etc. Head ache. Read the contract. They should run the tests off another HD, or boot media. Anyway, it seems some companies use this as an excuse to avoid servicing laptops. There are many articles on this online by some of the big tech sites.

I doubt that if you plan ahead any comp would void your warranty. There is help in teh Dell forum to install other OS's, so it should be fine as long as you plan. That's why I'm mentioning this issue.
People should read up on this and make some plan if you want to run other OS's. Don't get into a situation where you're laptop does not have VISTA nor can you install Vista (because you cant format C or whatever). It may be wise to practice the same due diligence for Asus. Don't keep your data on the same partition as any OS!! I would suggest you leave vista in the laptop as C. Install XP to another partition. Install Linux to another partion. Keep your data on yet another partition.

 

Perhaps the Dell issue is because Dell also offer software support? Then it would certainly make sense to require the original OS in order to offer software support. The ASUS warranty concerns only hardware, so I would find it really weird if they would condition servicing hardware faults on the OS that is installed on the computer.

In fact, I wouldn't give second thought to installing another OS (I'd just do it if I wanted to) and never mention it in my dealings with them, I'd just expect for the laptop to be serviced.

And noone should ever need to install an OS just to test the hardware in a computer. Things can be put on a bootable CD and they can do all the testing they want without ever touching the user's data. Except of course when the HDD may be the cause of the problems, cause then it might need to be changed.

 

my thoughts exactally, i found that so weird that they would deny your warranty just because of the OS you have installed :S

 

a new problem!!

till yesterday, it was fine. but this morning, the screen started shaking.. it goes up and down. like a rolling advertisement. but when i tilt the screen to an angle, it gets alright.. must be some loose connection. is it normal on laptops?

is there a way i can repair it on my own? i cant afford to stay without it for a month or so. exams are coming up too.

 

sounds like a hardware thing.. but what i hear about asus support is that it will be back really soon, dont worry about it being gone for a month. I remember when i thought i had problems they gave me an RMA number and paid for overnight shipping scheduled for the next monday (it was friday when i called) so, if you called now you might have it back in like a week from what i hear

 

I've been having a lot problems with the webcam. When I run LifeFrame, it will get stuck on the splash screen and never actually load the program. I get the same problem in AIM. The buddy will accept, but the camera does not come on. I have not had any luck with the internet to help solve this. Either its just my webcam or no one cares too much about it.

However, one thing I have found is that if I enter "Device Manager", expand "Imaging Devices" and check out the properties of the webcam, it will get the camera running. I might have to cycle through some of the tabs ("Driver", "Properties", etc.). Once the camera starts running, the "Device Manager" list gets refreshed.

I'm thinking it might have something to do with permissions in Vista.

 

the webcam wasnt a big deal to me, so when it started causing problems for me i just disabled it, but you could always try going to asus's support site and download the latest driver for your webcam. Make sure you select the correct manufacturer of your webcam though when you download the driver (asus hired a few different manufacturers to make webcams for this laptop, mine was made my D-MAX but other people have had theirs made by other companies. A driver for a D-MAX webcam will not work for webcams other than those made by D-MAX)

 

Just ordered my ASUS F3SV-X4!! Now the waiting commences...

 

weird :O my professor just knocked the back of the lid slightly and it got alright!!! last 24 hrs it hasnt given me a problem.

seems there is some loose connection. now that its not happening, i cant send it to ASUS. but if it happens again, I should take it to the local service centre or call them? its a small problem and I hope they can do it there itself instead of sending it somewhere to get it alright. but I am praying it doesn't happen again. But I got a real scare yesterday. It is such a solid notebook and I take care of it more than myself.

 

Good news for you andy.. Asus has opened up in india too. The F3Sv retails at nehru place, so I am guessing you can get the warranty here itself...

 

o yeah, thats right.. your from india xD

(so my previous comment about super fast repair might be a bit off )

 

So...I have an F3sv-B1 and have about had it with Vista and its updates screwing with my OS. I"m starting to research putting XP on.

Has anyone gotten all the drivers working on this machine in XP?

 

ive got all the ones that i need for gaming, but no others (so i dont have memory card reader drivers, webcam drivers, etc..)

i think some people have gotten all/most of them working, so read a few pages back in the owners lounge, it has been a recent topic

 

hey guys and ladies
I just bought this laptop F3SV-A1 today...and few things I want to know

Is there any website or webpage with fully detail teach you how to install Windows XP on F3SV-A1 and fully drivers for all? Thanks

 

ive got part of a guide linked in my signature, it gets the basic drivers going. it wont be hard to find and install the drivers not included in my guide, all you would have to do is use the same "have disk" method with each driver you find.

 

Please don't double post. Will remove the other thread.

 

ok E.B.E

anyway, i had found all the drivers for XP, if you look carefully the Vista Driver CD Asus gave you are the same with F3SC which mostly i downloaded it from that model anyway, i still cant find the LPC ICH8H Interface Controller 2815 doesnt anyone know where I can download it? Thanks

 

I received my F3SV-X4 today!!!! Now I'll be up all night playing around with it. Just wanna thank everyone here for such an informative forum. The links and "how-to" pages are just priceless!!

Now I need to get around to changing my signature...

 

The manual for my F3SV-X4 implies that the mic input jack is mono. The drivers for the sound card imply it is a stereo input. Does anyone know for sure? I want to transfer some LPs to CD's but I need to know before I go buying cables, etc.

Also, a lot of laptops have the ability to change the input from mic in to line in to attenuate the input in software. Has anyone tried that with the F3SV?

Thanks.

Jon

 

I have a question regarding these F3 series notebooks.
If I buy it form US, can I use the recharger in Europe? (220v)

 

you will need to buy a new piece of the adaptor (im assuming europe has different plug-in styles?)

The power adaptor can be taken apart in the middle so you can change the american/canadian plug-in part to the european kind (if it makes any sense what im trying to say)

im not really sure where you can find this, but it shouldnt be too much as a whole new adaptor is ~$30, so im guessing the piece you will need might be $10 (just guessing)

 

I have a adapter from US plug to the european one. But will the recharger accept 220v?. Some are build only for 120.

 

o, im not sure.. sorry i guess i misunderstood you.

maybe the manual has somethin to say about that