Asus M3 vs W3

All the different Asus numbering/lettering is getting me a little confused, but I believe these are the two 14" models, with the W3 being widescreen? I was wondering where I may be able to find a review/comparison of these two, mainly showing specs of each and large differences? Is one simply the newer version of the other? If not, is a newer version of one or other coming out soon? Also, I am having trouble finding the W3 for purchase--is it only an overseas item right now?

 

Thanks for the input, didn't know it was so anticipated (I'm currently reading the enormous thread)

 

First, the M3 and W3 were never meant to be anything like each other and the M3 is getting phased out. Not similiar an any way.

If you're in the states, get in line... We haven't started out pre-order yet, but there is a mailing list of 50-60 people waiting just to get on the pre-order list.... We should have that up this week some time if Asus can just come through for us. It's still atleast 3 weeks away though. We have the first 90-100 that are coming into the states on their way here.

Thanks,
Justin
PROPortable
www.proportable.com
[email protected]

 

well.. it's small.... dedicated graphics... good design and materials... it's a great all around system.

Thanks,
Justin
PROPortable
www.proportable.com
[email protected]

 

Currently, the M3 is more appealing to me than the W3. As great as the W3 is, it's lack of custom options and premium price tag make it a difficult option to choose.

The only things about the W3 that I find missing on the M3 are an s-video output, and of course the widescreen display.

From reading your other post (BoostedA4), I think we are looking for similar notebooks. I'm pretty sure that if the W3 came without dedicated graphics, it would be the ideal notebook for us. Too bad Asus won't be bringing such a model of the W3 to North America[V]

 

Finally, guys who would rather the M3 over the W3...... haven't seen many people who are realistic about their needs in quite a while!

Thanks,
Justin
PROPortable
www.proportable.com
[email protected]

 

I hear ya man...

I gotta admit though, I'm a sucker for style since I don't need all the bells and whistles and power and the White W3 is just beautiful. I want something like looks just like the W3 with the white widescreen or maybe a SXGA and without the expensive bells and whistles, but I have not found it yet.

EDIT: Justin, or anyone for that matter, do you have any pics of the M3 in real life (not the standard pics on the websites) of both chassis from different angles?

Thanks

 

The W3 is going to be black and no where in the world will it be white....... nor was the M3... that was silver.... Are you thinking about the W5 maybe?

If you need pictures of something, you can always just drop me a line.

Thanks,
Justin
PROPortable
www.proportable.com
[email protected]

 

One of the W3's is actually silver, the rest are black. I'm trying to remember which one it was though...

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by PROPortable

 

All of the W3's would have been available in black or silver, but it's a matter of what will be ordered into the states. The black version is what Asus US choose...... the silver looked more along the lines of the W1.

Thanks,
Justin
PROPortable
www.proportable.com
[email protected]

 

I like black... it just seems more professional

ASUS M6800Ne, P-M 1.5 Dothan, 512MB Ram, Toshiba Combo drive, Samsung Spinpoint M 40G HDD with 8M cache, Mobility Radeon 9700

 

the black anondized brushed aluminum looks hot... it's also different... Asus didn't want all of their new notebooks to look like the W1... they wanted some sort of connection, but they have too many good ideas to limit themselves to just 3 different sized W1s......

Thanks,
Justin
PROPortable
www.proportable.com
[email protected]

 

Well i'm a happy m3 owner. It's light and has phenomenal battery power. When I first got it, it would last around 6 or 7 hours. Now I've owned it for nearly 6 months and I go to classes in the morning and use it on battery all day, so I now only get 4 hours -- but from what I've heard, that's still the same as a M6 or W3 brand new! I've asked this before, without any responses, but has anyone tried underclocking their radeon 9700 to 50MHz/50Mhz and saw how long it would last? I know that would be more than enough power for 2D.

I love my M3, but if the W3 was at a comparible price, I may go for it, assuming I can get close to the same battery longevity with an underclocked radeon 9700. It would be nice to have that available 3D power on demand (and a higher res screen). The M3's integrated solution is the same performance as a GeForce2 MX 400 (I've done many tests), which isn't terrible, but useless with the latest 3D engines for first person shooter games.

Asus M3NP 1.5GHz Centrino (Dothan /w 2mb L2)
1GB PC2700 DDR
40gb 5400rpm 8mb Cache Seagate Hard Drive /w 5 Year Warranty
Intel 2200BG 802.11g Wireless

 

I've got a question for you.. ok, two... how much ram do you have in your system and do you have an M3n or M3np ...... i'm looking to see if you have ddr266 or 333 and looking to see how much ram is being allocated for video.

Only when you have the system maxed out with ram, will you get the full benefit of the video. Like, in the M3, with a gig of ram you'll have 64mb allocated for video.. with 512mb, you'll have 32mb.. with 256, you'll have 16mb..... there isn't anything you can do about that, it's how the system is set up..... Now, there also is a slight performance increase on the dothan ready models (the Np), because of the use of the slightly faster DDR333..... Now, in my tests I figure intel's extreme graphics 2 with a gig of system ram performs similar to a geforce 4, 4200.... I'm not sure of the difference between that and the geforce 2 MX... but I'm assuming there is a lot......

Either take this post as informative and maybe you can get better performance...... or atleast we can figure out what's what.. I'd be very interested to know if you had less than a gig, how much that degraded performance and so forth.. I don't think many people know that most intgrated video systems work that way.... I know on some desktop systems there is often an option in the bios for how much ram to allocate, but I haven't seen one on any of the systems with intel's extreme graphics chipsets....

Thanks,
Justin
PROPortable
www.proportable.com
[email protected]

 

I've got a M3np with 2x 512mb PC3200 chips that are running at PC2700 CL2 and a Dothan 1.5GHz with 2mb L2. The RAM automatically goes to pc2700 when the slowest chip is pc2700. There's no way i can adjust it, so you can't overclock ram cuz the motherboard simply checks the SPD table on the RAM.

As for performance, there's around a 13-15% boost in video performance when going from PC2100 to PC2700. As for how much shared video ram is allocated, well it's interesting. The motherboard automatically takes 8mb of RAM, so the reported amount of RAM in windows will always be 8mb less. However, depending on how much free RAM is available and the demands on the card, it dynamically allocates more RAM up to 64mb in total. So right now my driver says Min: 8mb, Max: 64mb, Current Usuage: 7mb.... but if I run one of my opengl terrain generating programs, it goes to 11mb. If i run a bigger game, it'll go up to 32mb, and i'm sure i've had it using the full 64mb in high graphics games.

As for performance, there's a HUUUGGEE difference in speed between a GeForce 4 MX 440 and a GeForce4 Ti4200. I wish this thing was equivelent to either, but alas it is only the same speed of a GeForce2 MX400. So to put it into perspective... a TNT 2 Ultra is half the speed of a GeForce2 MX400, which is less than half the speed of a GeForce 4 MX 440, which is about a quarter the speed of a Ti4200, which is about 30% slower than a Radeon 9600 Pro (without AA or AF!! with those features on, the ti4200 is brought to its knees) which is roughly the same speed as a Radeon Mobility 9700 featured in the W3 and M6.

So if you play RPG's, strategy games, or any shoot em' up game for DirectX 7 and lower, this integrated solution will do awesome. I can, for example, play Quake 3 at maximum graphics, 1024x768@32bit color and it'll do a respectible 65-100fps. I haven't tried installing a game like Unreal 2005, but i'm sure even at the lowest setting, it would be virtually unplayable.

Another thing to note is that when I went from a Banias to a Dothan CPU, i found i had to downgrade from the latest audio drivers from asus to the concervative windows certified audio drivers, because my system wouldn't boot. It was a very anoying discovery, let me tell you!

Hope this answers your questions and anyone else who had these questions. Sorry for the spelling errors, i'm sort of in a rush and didn't even look back to fix what i wrote.

Asus M3NP 1.5GHz Centrino (Dothan /w 2mb L2)
1GB PC2700 DDR
40gb 5400rpm 8mb Cache Seagate Hard Drive /w 5 Year Warranty
Intel 2200BG 802.11g Wireless

 

Thanks for the input.... The desktop card I tested this against must have been bad or something. I was getting close to the same numbers last time I checked and there have been reviews stating higher too, but it's been a year since we ran those tests, and I think it was tom's hardware that ran something similiar.

You're exactly right about teh 13-15% increase between ddr266 and 333.. that was the increase in performance of the M3n to the M3np.....

Whats the difference between the 3dmark numbers of a geforce2 mx and a geforce2 4200?

If you take out one of your sticks of RAM, check out what's being used...... I'd bet that doesn't allocate more then 32..... but you're right it does step up when it needs to, but it should still be limited to a percent of the full system ram.. I haven't check on the systems with extreme graphics 2, but on the banias systems, I'm sure thats how it worked.

Thanks,
Justin
PROPortable
www.proportable.com
[email protected]

 

I Just ran 3DMark2001 SE Build 300 with everything set to default at 1024x768x32bit and got a score of 2550 (which is consistant with other PM users with the same RAM and Extreme Graphics 2 Chipsets) which is a little higher than what most Centrino laptops get with the integrated Extreme Graphics 2, which is nice. Below is a comparison of other video cards (I'll include the score of a Athlon 2700+ which is probably quite close in performance to my Pentium-M 1.5GHz). Now keep in mind that this is only 3DMark2001SE... I will test with other benchmarks as I've seen some video companies tailor their video cards to do very well with 3DMark benchmarks when their real life performance with most games lag behind.

My M3NP /w 1.5GHZ Dothan & PC2700: 2550 (around 3000 for a P-M 2GHz)
nVidia GeForce 2 MX400: ~2800
nVidia GeForce 4 MX440: ~6000
nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4200: ~10000 (for a P-M 2GHz equivalent you could expect 12500)
ATI Radeon 9700 Mobility: ~10000

So as you can see, the Mobility Radeon 9700 is about the equivalent to a Ti4200/4400 in DirectX 8 games, but in DirectX 9 (3Dmark03) it's ~35% faster than a Ti4600 at around the speed of a FX5700. Speaking of 3DMark2003 (DirectX 9.0b), I think the last time I tried it, I got around 200 marks as appose to the Radeon 9700 Mobility that gets around 2700 marks!

I'm still waiting to see if anyone has tried underclocking their radeon 9700 to 50MHz/50MHz and tested how long it lasted on battery.

Asus M3NP 1.5GHz Centrino (Dothan /w 2mb L2)
1GB PC2700 DDR
40gb 5400rpm 8mb Cache Seagate Hard Drive /w 5 Year Warranty
Intel 2200BG 802.11g Wireless

 

All of the talk about the Asus W series is swaying me towards the W3 again. The elegant design is definitely the biggest selling point for me; I'm a sucker for class. It's just a matter of how much more I have to shell out for it. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to have a system which can perform beyond my needs...

 

hmm great info here

My dream was to get the W3v, and i waited forever.
Now that its out, i having second thoughts because of its hefty price tag.

how does the m3 look compared to the w3? the w3 looks awsome, but i think im going to have to settle for something cheaper.. Plus i think a m3 is more practical for me anyhow

flaxx- where abouts did you buy ur m3 from?

thanks!
-nathan

 

If you're in Vancouver, nathan_chan168, then I'd suggest you go to
http://www.vastechcomputer.com

They have great prices on ASUS notebooks...particularly the M3 and M5
The M3 isn't as pretty as the W3v.. that's obvious... but it's not ugly by any means. I'm sure you'd be happy with it.

ASUS M6800Ne, P-M 1.5 Dothan, 512MB Ram, Toshiba Combo drive, Samsung Spinpoint M 40G HDD with 8M cache, Mobility Radeon 9700