Asus F3ka-a1

Well I've been looking around for few days now for a new laptop and I saw this at newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220202

For the price I couldn't find anything close to it. It has a ATI 2600HD 512MB card. I know the processor isn't as fast as lets say the Intel Core 2 Duo but its atleast $200 bux cheaper than a comparable Intel model from Asus.

I was wondering what people thought about this new model?? My budget is around $1200. Thx for the help.

 

It's a good machine bro, just picked up the X-1 about a month ago and absolutely no complaints other than the gun-metal trim because I prefer all black but gunmetal is starting to grow on me, I believe there is an Intel twin of that machine available-I could be wrong, it may be Nvidia gpu based, if you are worried about getting an AMD based machine, newegg should have it and I believe it was at around 1200-1300 bucks. You pay the extra for the "Intel" in it . I went with the X-1 because I wanted a tried and true AMD/ATI combo and it was easily within my budget, and I can always upgrade to a larger HD if needed and a stick of ram is roughly 30 bucks when I have the cash. I went with the TL-56(1.8ghz)-(I do kind of regret not being able to get a 2.0ghz TL-58 and just underclocking)to run a little cooler and hence possibly less strain on the battery and it was within my budget...<1000 denero's.


Good luck,
razo

 

If you don't care about battery life (and not too much about heat, either) go with it.

But the AMD are power-hungry CPUs which means you might get about an hour battery life in the worst case, and also the generated heat will be higher. And heat is already something of a problem with these budget ASUS notebooks crammed with powerful CPUs and GPUs...

 

well it seems like the X-1 is a bit faster laptop with the intel processor. its only 100 bux more for than the f3ka. guess i'll go with the x-1 model... thx for the advice guys..

 

only 1 hour?

I do 1:30 on my C90S under vista (last vista patche increased battery life for about 20 minutes)

In fact, power saving gets my gpu to 168/100 like on XP rather than 275/200

 

1 hour in the worst case. I have looked once at an A8 ASUS model and computing the battery life using the CPU TDP and the battery capacity in Wh, gave the battery life close to 1 hour...

Typical battery lives for F-series ASUS notebooks with good GPUs and Intel CPUs are around 2hours. So you can get close to 1 hour with an AMD unfortunately.

 

Tha's not true, I get close to 1.5hrs with that machine on p4g high performance, 100% LCD brightness and a full size usb mouse plugged in while gaming and can get an average of 2.5hrs in battery saving mode right out of the box-I believe that is average, AMD or not for any 15.4" notebook with similar specs. I find it hard to believe that anybody with an 15.4" Intel based machine with comparible graphics is getting 2+ hours out of it running max performance.

I am also quite impressed myself with how cool this laptop runs with an AMD/Dedicated ATI combo.

If you like AMD bro, then get AMD, all of the Turion x2's built after May of 07 are completely up to par with the wintel platforms when it comes to the average user and you save a couple hundred bucks at the same time to spend on other things like a decent case cause the bag that comes with that laptop is only designed for bare necessity, I have been using the Asus provided case since I got it but only because I have not found an ideal case as of yet, the shoulder strap attatchment points are questionable and I always worry as I throw it over my shoulder and there is insufficient padding if the strap did break and the notebook hit the ground. So take the 200 bucks you save and get a good case, upgrade to 3gb ram, a decent 1gb flashdrive to try playing around with Vista Ready Boost and you will still have close to 100 bucks left in your wallet!

Good luck,

razo

 

yeah, the ATI consumes less than the nvidia so it makes them even.

 

I should have checked out your link first also bro(for pricing), when I was looking at the A1 it was priced at either $1199 or $1299, either way it was out of my budget and just wanted to say to go for the A1 if you were thinking about the X1, you can't beat an extra 1gb ram, 40% increase in HD capacity and an extra 200Mhz for an extra ~200 bucks, in fact, I don't think the X1 is even available anymore on newegg.

 

Like I said, the 1hour was a generic "worst-case-budget-ASUS-notebook with AMD" warning. I didn't have any specific data about the F3.

Edit: Well I see I wasn't so clear in my previous post. That was an estimation, again without actual data about the machine.

 

well the one that comes close to the X-1 is this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220231

ASUS F3SA-A1 has a Intel core 2 duo 2.2ghz and 512MB ATI card for about

$1250. The only thing I would add would a extra gig of ram for about 30 bux.

So in the end it would be just under $1300. I'm leanin more toward the Intel

processor now.

 

I just bought the F3Ka-a1 deal from Newegg - $1154.52 delivered. Because it comes with Vista, I wasn't going to buy one with less than 2gb of memory. The ATI HD2600 was a plus - powerful and power efficient.

The AMD processor seemed adequate according to the review I read. Turions are not Athlons, and the power/heat comparisons of Athlons to Core 2 don't quite apply to Turions - they are designed to be laptop/mobile CPU's. For that matter, Core 2 chips come in several configurations, some of which are very, very low power, and others designed for desktops. Make sure You know what you are buying.

No kidding about the heat shoving a high-performance GPU/CPU/.5gb video ram/2gb system ram in such a small case. I blocked the cpu heat exhaust while trying to register the syste - looking for the serial number - and the system shut down after 10 seconds.

 

I have a question for you since you just bought an Asus-well, anyone can actually answer this if they own an Asus. But I've heard that they are "fingerprint magnets" What exactly does that mean, and is it on the outside or the inside? Is it really that noticeable? Thanks in advance.

Also, how is Asus customer support?