ASUS W90 Review

3rd that

 

Correct, aspect ratios always cause so much trouble

 

Aw, looks like I missed my chance to ask for a picture with a tiny netbook sitting on the keyboard of this beast.

Maybe next time...

 

It wouldnt be right the notebook would eat it before the snap

 

are yall going to revise the review and split it when the A1 version comes out?

 

i just have one question...
exactly what set of settings did you use to get 31 frames on very high settings in crysis. we're you using these settings here?


and they seem to be averaging about 25 to 37 with those settings

and last time i checked, very high meant enthusiast settings. not gamer or mainstream.

and 31FPS in Crysis Warhead at 1920x1080 resolution!
really doesn't say anything, sorry...

so im just wondering. because when all these people go and try to pull a 31 fps in crysis on very high (enthusiast) settings and it pulls a 20 fps or less..im gonna start laughing.

 

I think the best thing you can do there is lower the res and use some custom configs if you find your fps to be low.

1920x1080 is perfect on my 37" screen at home but a little 18" screen thats overkill, it should look perfect at 720p and give you a big boost.

 

flip side.

i ran this at 1920x1200 on the gateway fx, but set everything to medium. it looked pretty dammn good and i had a very decent frame rate of around 30 fps (single card)

 

yeah for crysis thats probably fine as there is not much too see different from medium to high. In most games though I find sacrificing resolution for the game effects & graphics is better that having high res bland graphics

though I personally will still choose to lower the res probably for the advanced effects and one thing crysis did on lower settings was object popup and I hate that.

 

mine was looking like atari graphics when i lowered the res to 1024x768 and put everything to very high. it stuttered badly and the screen had major motion delay. by time it would catch up i was dead...lol. i did find a balance, but i like res over blur. and that's what i saw at super low resolution.

 

hmm I had to play lower res for a long time until I built my new desktop that 37" screen is 1920x1080 and I often played 720p, the important thing is keeping the same aspect ratio.

You did see a slight loss is sharpness if comparing the two resolutions back to back but after 5 min of playing you dont notice anymore, but you easily noticed the loss of effects, and draw distance by lowering settings and also if you didnt lower the settings you noticed the bad fps.

Though some people are more picky about the native res thing than others, and I imagine it depends on there scaling too, always use the video cards scaling not your monitors.

The nice thing about full 1080p is that no need for AA in most newer games, for older games though it usually needs 2x AA to clean up stuff but since its an older game you can handle it easier.

 

im one of those picky guys and native resolution. the only way ill change is if the less say..1680x1050 screen is 2 times brighter than the 1920x1080 screen. (i just did this as a matter of fact.. on my hp nw8430)

also tried explaining this about aa and newer games and got hit with this and that.
i don't use AA most of the time unless really called for.

 

AA is a game to game basis really. In this case talking about crysis it actually has two different AA modes and they do not stack.

Edge AA and normal AA

Edge AA is faster & effects things like the bushes & trees, while the regular AA will not effect those things and does the traditional polygon edge correction.

So IMO Edge AA is needed it makes the game look a lot better and its a small hit, and regular AA is a big no-no as you will turn off the edge aa and lower your fps by a lot.

So I feel sorry for the guys cranking up AA in crysis thinking just because there system can handle it they are making the game look better.

 

well, what ever AA ati is using it is increasing the frame rate.

 

I thought that was fixed, pretty much a bug where AA was not getting applied so it just turned off the edge AA and did not apply the real AA thus the gains.

 

now tell that to all these other people.
lol

you know they are about to try and tear you up about this AA statement, right? lol

i found a statement made about something very close to this with certain games, but at the same time i was wondering if the ati cards don't do the full pass when rendering in aa. example:
it is suppose to make 10 passes, but in reality it makes 1 pass.

but i dont have any high end ati cards to be fully testing them out to see just how this aa renders. so i go by what all the other ati owners say.

 

I only know this bug for crysis, AA should be fine on other games and in crysis too now. I am pretty sure in the late 8.x series drivers there was a patch note "AA is not properly applied to Crysis"

but heck maybe I dreamed it up.

 

testing crysis on the ati radeon mobility x1600 256 meg card right now....wonder if that AA stuff will boost performance here...
edit: bahahaha, missing textures. a bunch of ghost . all i see are eyes...lol

 

Do 1280 x 720

your distorting the aspect ratio with 1024 x 768

 

everything looks like atari (hell of an exaggeration) graphics at that low of a resolution. i dont' care how much you try to spice it up with settings...lol
anything under 1280x1024

 

lol ok.

I find it looks better with high graphics settings but with resolution dropped instead, its all different peoples preferances though.

 

very true. and i tried, but it just doesn't sit right with me. looks way to blurry. i just tried it again right now.

 

Do you mean controlling AA via CCC or in-game? But, if this were true, regardless, then there shouldn't be any gains regardless. Rather, the performance should remain the same as if there was no AA applied and not increase.

I'd like to see links or references to these claims. Otherwise, the best way to determine this is to take screenshots of the respective sessions (i.e. 1680x1050, very high, 0xAA and 2x or 4xAA), and compare the image quality of the screenshots.

 

already showed you the link in another thread. you commented on it already. said something about it was with certain games.

 

which link?

 

im trying to find it now.

 

Wow, I just skimmed this review, and this is one absolute beast of a laptop. It looks like they have a quad-core version out now for around $2250 at newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220527.

 

Great review! Although I could never see myself owning an 18" monster.

 

Just depends on what you do with your laptop, if it only goes from A to B then its great. If your backpacking it around though it may not be fun.

Though the backpack is comfortable and it would be good exercise

I just take mine to work each night and now its like I can have my home desktop at work, I hate when I have to get off my W90 to use one of the work computers.

 

Amazing looking computer, but way too expensive for my tastes. Say, are there plans for lower-end models that sell fo $1.6k or less?

 

I want to say yes there is a cut down version with just one card but not sure the details and when/where/how much.

 

Will this be able to run windows 7 without any problems? I was given the impression to wait till later this summer to get a computer because of new chipset releases for windows 7. I really want this but I want to know if its worth getting it and later upgrading to 7 without any problems

 

Newegg had the refurbished models going for 1.5+. However, I believe the warranty on those were not the typical Asus warranties. And they also sold out in less than 5 minutes of being posted on Slickdeals.

 

really?do you have a link?

 

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=437195&t=1313651

I saw it on Newegg while it was at that price, but it had already been sold out. Price was still shown though. The current link does not show a price, but the thread does.

 

Holy *&^@#!!! Hope that they ll have more soon!

 

Oh Kevin, if its possible can you add my review as a link in your main review? I know you got front page as a offical site writer but I had more time hands on and did more testing in my review so it deserves to be mentioned I think.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=370294

Also anybody that actually gets one this is going to be an important thread for you: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=371558

Also so will be the owners lounge, we have a few new tricks since I put together the limit breaker package.

 

ASUS W90 Series W90Vp-X2 is out with quad core cpu.
please review it

 

Its the same as the unit in my review except minus one HDD & the Blueray Drive.

 

Question....
I have a 3 yr old laptop and I need something super fast...

How is the W90 compared to the G71GX?????

 

This will last longer then the G71(Graphically). With the crossfire it will probably last years longer.

 

I believe the W90 has been discontinued.

 

^^ What?! Really?

 

It's what I've been hearing for a month or two now.

 

It could be possible i think there were alot of overheating problems as well(At least at launch) Sad to see it go it was the first of its kind.

 

it didnt have overheating problems the GPU's were faulty and would freeze along with crappy driver support and locked out bios....o and fake 4870's

 

Hm, you are right i was getting confused with the G51.

Yes i remember and BSOD were going on as well. I think there are owners who have theres now though that have them stable(In the owners lounge)

 

I hope it can come back in either a refreshed model or new model altogether with the upcoming Intel Calpella platform.

I'd really like to see desktop replacement notebooks succeed, especially gaming ones the main barrier for me is the price compared to a desktop.

Actually, Asus should really bring the C90 back, that very customizable and upgradable notebook. Make a way to use desktop GPU's externally and even have them produce motherboards for it so it can be upgraded to each new Intel mobile platform without buying a new notebook, just like a desktop. But it seems very unfeasible right now.

 

Ah, the C90 what an awesome notebook.


I think i would love to see Barebones in general again from Asus.

 

Been awhile - anybody have a clue about a replacement for the W90? I'm almost ready to buy.