ASUS W90 Review

The HDX 18t dimensions are 17.17" x 11.26" 1.33-1.72" and the weight is 8.94 lbs.


So yeah the W90 is bigger and much heavier.

If you need a reference example...a W90 is the size of a Dell Adamo strapped to the back of an HDX 18T.

 

Very nice review. The laptop seems to be quite a beast, and with ASUS warranty it's probably one of the best gaming laptops out there.

 

Very nice laptop! I can deal with the enormity that this thing is, but the 16:9 ratio really kills it for me.

 

I know their dimensions thats why I said "feel"

 

Heh if that's the deal just tell yourself it's no bigger than a netbook....although 4lbs. is a lot even with mind over matter.

 

yeah...I have seen w90 in person and it was awesome,but... also,on other site I sow that w90 weights 11.5.

 

Thanks for the review. I have halted my decision making for now.

$2199 should be roughly £1600 (I'm in the UK)

but some sites such as whatlaptop are pricing this at £2400 ... I'll have to wait and see. If I can get a laptop like this for £1500-1600 I will instantly buy it, but if it's going to be £2400 I'll have to hold.

 

Was it listed without battery? Our weights come off our office scale (crack scale).

 

Any word on Raid features and a sound manager program that may improve audio quality, Kevin?

 

Some noted in the owners lounge that changing a few settings in the audio control area did improve sound.

Shame I hear that the sound is bad now after one or two people said it was great before. I guess I will find out first hand here soon enough. I heard Xotic is shipping on the 24th?? If thats the case I would Assume Gentech has the same date. I have no real confirmation on that date though.

For RAID, I do not think it has it as Asus usually mentions it and this case they did not, I guess it did not play well with too many people on other models like the G50V so it was best for them to cut it out to reduce technical problems and probably cost too.

I used Raid 0 the entire time I had the G50V, good for things like video work for sure but overall I am not sure if the speed was there. With a quad core though in this machine I think the HDD could become a bottleneck and Raid0 will be needed for the fastest work. Then again the A1 comes with 7200rpm drives, while the G50V only had 5400rpm drives.

I never did take the time to convert to independent drive structure to test the real life difference of Raid0 and Independent drives. In benchmarks though it was true to the normal standard of about 2x the bandwidth.

 

Nothing in the BIOS or boot options for RAID at least in the version we have. The sound manager might help a bit, but the speaker placement and drivers doesn't sound that good. It sounds like a boombox smothered with a pillow. It was really underwhelming when you compare it to other notebooks of this size that include *huge* speakers taking advantage of their size.

I think the stereo speakers on the A300 series Toshiba models sound better

 

BTW the review still says it's an X2 card with 1GB of memory, which is wrong.

 

maybe a driver issue?

 

Thanks Kevin and Vicious for the follow up
It's a shame that a 5.1 speaker system can't produce audio quality as well as other 2-channel speakers. Having no RAID option is a slight let down as well since that's probably going to be the largest bottleneck for everyday use.

 

I loolol'd.

 

It reports in GPUz and the control panel as an X2 card, but internally linked. Hence the X2 with 1GB of usable memory between them.

 

Kevin, would it be possible to change the title of the review to W90vp?

 

Can this thing play mp3s and DVDs?

Great review!

 

No, you're wrong. I don't think you understand how CrossfireX works. Each card is rendering alternate frames, and each 512MB card is holding the same data in memory. These dual cards with 512MB do not stack to have 1GB of usable memory, that's not how it works.

And second, the Control Panel and GPU-Z are wrong, open up the laptop and you can clearly see 2 discrete PCBs. It is not an X2 card.

 

No offense..but get over it. GPU-z reports whatever Device Manager reports, which gets its' info from the .inf which was used to install the GPUs. You can rename the card to a "E-wrecked 3130abc" in the inf and after re-installing GPU-z will then report that as well. Not sure I personally have created any cards, and if I did I would be more creative with the naming scheme. I'm also not sure Kevin has been defending either the x2 or the RAM. But, if you check ASUS' website you'll notice they also claim 1GB of VRAM. That's a selling tactic, and technically it DOES have 1GB of VRAM, however Vista can only utilize and stack 512MB when it comes to Crossfire. You are correct in that aspect, but the 2 cards combined have 1GB of VRAM. Oh, and for the 1 vs. 2 cards, I'm not sure why that is stuck on you, but he made it clear in the review that it has 2 individual, seperate 4870 cards.

 

"It reports in GPUz and the control panel as an X2 card, but internally linked. Hence the X2 with 1GB of usable memory between them."

Because he's wrong, the specs are wrong, and 512MB usable versus 1GB usable is a big difference. The review is posted on the front page of the single most used notebook website on the internet, and you think posting incorrect information is a good idea?

Lame.

 

Ok.. I'm not a psychic so I can't tell you what he was thinking when he typed that. However, he makes it clear 4 seperate places it has 2 individual cards internally linked. He doesn't claim it to be the 4870x2 in Crossfire - which by the way is different than the 4870 x2. And it does have 1GB of usable memory between them. 512 + 512 = 1GB. Quit nit-picking man. ASUS advertises it as 1GB of VRAM. Which it does have. Kevin also states, 1GB of VRAM between them. Soooooo..between the 2 cards it is 1 full GB of RAM. If he had said 512MB of VRAM between them then that means each card has 256MB. Just get over yourself and move on.. He can't change what GPU-z says, only the DRIVER can..he's just stating the facts which is GPU-z reports it as a 4870 x2. I see where you're coming from, but at the same time.. that's the only unclear sentence in the entire review. Otherwise it is VERY clear what type of GPU setup is involved.

 

Are you serious?

 

512MB per card, yes, but the way dual GPU setups function is that they mirror the contents of the VRAM. You do not get 1GB of usable unique video memory like a 1GB card. That's where this review is misleading. It's especially misleading because everybody knows the 4870 1GB edition performs significantly faster than the 512MB edition.

It is not nit-picking to expect the cards to be labeled properly. 4870 X2 is a specific card that these are not, and it has specific VRAM functions that these cards do not have.

 

Uhm.. is there such thing as a 1GB Mobility HD4870, or 4870x2 that is currently available on the market? You need to seperate your train of thought from full-size desktop cards vs. notebook MXM modules.

He wasn't teaching how VRAM works.. he was stating the facts about the amount. And as I said in the ASUS forum, take the labeling up with ATI or ASUS - they label the card description via the driver. It's a Mobility thang ma'an, you just wouldn't understand. I also had the same qualm with my OCZ but I got over it and thats why I am telling you, move on. It will never change. It's the mobility way. Unless you, as a user, renames it in the driver .inf then it will remain the same. Oh, on another note.. Win7 Beta will auto-install the newest 3870 mobility drivers, which it also labels as 3870 x2 for the crossfire setup. Only one common denomenator here, ATI. Save yourself the time of talking to ASUS or MS.. just hit up ATI and ask them why. They'll tell ya, "That's our representation of the Mobility CrossfireX Platform". Just smile, and nod

 

The review is functionally incorrect, and that's what I'm complaining about. Companies will always try to mislead, it's up to reviewers to cut through the BS. Unfortunately and disappointingly this review isn't doing that. That's where my complaint lies.

 

I'm guessing you haven't picked up a computer magazine lately
NBR does a fantastic job on notebook reviews and goes much more in-depth than others in general.

 

I know, and I agree, which is why I think that being functionally incorrect is below this site's quality standard and should be corrected.

 

out of sheer curiousity.. what would you change, exactly? And how would you change it?

 

# ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 X2 with 1GB GDDR3 video memory

to:

# Two ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870's with 512MB GDDR3 video memory

 

Hmm.. not splitting hairs here. Wouldn't that mean it only has 256 MB per card? The general population would assume that the memory would have to be divided cause of 2 cards. Keep in mind, most folks aren't as versed with computers as the locals to NBR. Maybe if it were:
# Two Individual, Internal 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870's with GDDR3 video memory utilizing CrossfireX Technology.

That way there's no confusion at all.. but then again, some folks may still be thrown off. Regardless, I'm moving on.

Good job on the Review O.P. Wish ya had a screenshot of the sm2.0 3.0 and CPU scores from 3dmark06 though

 

I'd be fine with that too.

 

I have an old Latitude and before that, a P4 1.6 Ghz desktop with a Geforce MX 64 which could play DVDs and mp3s. So no, I am not serious.

 

Updated the spec sheet for the cards, but someone really needs to take that up with Asus, Newegg, etc to get them to change the official naming scheme

I can grab a screenshot of 3DMark for you in the morning

 

Here is a video of the W90 bios showing the raid option, its about 6 seconds into the video.

 

Crap, well it does have it, I was looking through the section how my Asus motherboard had it laid out. I do have to admit though that the majority of my time in the bios was after disabling one of the cards and trying to figure out why it would not work at full performance until I wiped the system and reinstalled stuff off the restore disk.

 

Its all good man, i was just correcting the misinformation because there are people that may have not bought it if they saw it had no raid .

 

Thanks for the update Quadzilla. This is absolutely great news knowing you can set your HDDs to RAID0

Kevin, have you tried the BIOS reset button located underneath the laptop? I would assume that would an easier way to get both GPUs back and running if it works.

 

Well it wasnt on the hardware side of things that was causing the problem, it was Windows. The first time after it loaded up Vista uninstalled the old 2nd card. The next time it booted with the card re-enabled Vista saw it as unrecognized hardware and asked for the driver disc. Reinstalled the driver and it still only had the performance of one card (about 11-12k 3DMark). As a last ditch effort I went through the entire restore process which worked, but was a huge inconvenience to only gain like 20-30 minutes more on the battery.

 

Hmm so it has raid.

So now the question is do I want to use raid again or not...

You probably have to do the same thing I did on the G50V and hit control+i or something like that to bring up the intel storage matrix dialog and setup your raid partitions & type. Its done during boot before the OS but outside of the bios.

Im leaning twords using the drives independently so when using FRAPS I can record to a drive not in use, or if one drive fails I keep my data on the other, but if I find a HDD bottleneck when doing video work then I will probably side with raid 0.

 

2nd that .

 

Didn't actually get as high as I was expecting in COD5. Didn't get over 50 and sometimes dipped under 40 if there was a lot of heavy action.

 

Thats what I meant! ATI card are very good in some games,but not so good in others!BTWmwhat settings did you used?

 

1920x1080, AA 4x, detail settings on this game seem more limited than on others, hard to scale back just certain areas.

 

I see...will you try other games?

 

Going to try and squeeze one more if I can before it has to ship back.

 

can you also try some GPU OC'ing?

 

Unless it is a feature on the notebook we shy from OC'ing review units to minimize breaking it. I have bad enough luck as is. Also Asus needed the notebook back pronto for the next reviewer, so off it goes.

 

What resolution was 3dMark06 tested at? I know that this has been discussed before but I still have no idea what the standard is... you really ought to make a standard res.

 

I believe the NBR standard for 3DMark is 1280x800 (or 1280x768 on 16:9 monitors). So, I think the W90 was tested at 1280x768.