ASUS G73JH-A1 with ATi Mobility Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5

Hmmmm....these last 95 pages were an interesting read. At first I was not feeling the design of the G73JH, but the more I look at it the more it grows on me.

My past experiences with mobile ATI GPU's have been awful as far as gaming goes. I've always had graphical glitches in games with ATI. The updates were also few & far between. I also have friends that experienced the same problems with similar ATI GPU's. Lately I've owned a G51, G72 & G71 all with the 260m and have experienced not one problem from the Nvidia GPU. I think it would be fair to go as far as to say that Nvidia has done well with driver updates and Nvidia tools. Currently I can play everything that I've encountered on my G71 at native res and at max settings.

Come someone with positive ATI feedback tell me something to help me not miss out on this great buy.

 

All I can tell you is that I run Nvidia and Ati desktop cards at home and have not had ANY problems with the Ati cards in the last 2 years (4870, 4850, 5750, 5850). Ati really is a different company than even 3-5 years ago. All of their new desktop cards are the cream of the crop.

I also work as a network admin at a large enterprise with lots of laptops. I can tell you we had a HUGE batch of laptops that went dead with bad Nvidia mobile parts. This forced our company to only order laptops with Ati chipsets (politics from bosses got involved) and we have not had any driver or over-heating issues with the mobile Ati stuff. Granted, it is not super high end gaming ati chipsets...

I think Ati is going to put a lot of effort behind this new crop of mobile chips and is going to get serious about supporting them. They have already over-taken Nvidia in the desktop market (for now), and I think they are now looking hard at the mobile market.

Just my opinions!

 

Thank you for you PoV.
Nvidia 100 Ati 1

 

I can say I prefer the ATI 4870s over the nVidia 280Ms, having owned both of them. Driver and performance was better with the ATI cards.

 

Btw where do you get drivers for ATI, i mean is there like DOX version for ATI for supporting laptops?

 

lol! I don't want to sound biased. I DO run Nvidia desktop cards at home, but have a sour taste about their mobile stuff after out IT department took a beating for all those laptops going bad.

Assuming the 260/360 280/380 chips hold up longer than the last revisions, I have no problem with them. I'm just saying Ati is a major and serious player in the mobile market now. It usually takes them a while to get a foothold (see xt2900 HD/3870 etc...), but once they do (4870/90 5850/70) they don't let go. I am confident they will apply what they learned in the desktop market to the mobile market.

 

Well, I just queried again about the 5870 bit rate, and now like Donald, I am being told only the desktop cards are 256-bit.

 

The OEM drivers and the mobile drivers from ATI's website both worked. Plus mobility modding the Cat 9.12 drivers worked. The Cat 9.12 drivers are a big boost.

 

So what exactly does that mean in lamens terms? This is still a great 260m replacement right?

 

I'll go and quiz the ASUS and ATI guys at CES every day until I get an official answer

 

Could you also find out what time their press conference is?

Thanks!

 

Is this the 8700GT all over again?

7950GTX (256bit) > 8700GT (128bit) > 8800GT (256bit)

 

Bah you posted what I wanted to post. Just talked to a friend of mine at AMD (Hell I live right beside the company)..and he told me exactly the same thing..which is only the desktop cards carrying 256-bit

 

Kick him where the sun dont shine maybe? Maybe then they will listen to the customers!!!

 

I had both an ATI 4870 and currently own a nVidia 260 desktop card. The key difference is not so much the hardware, but the drivers. ATI have a much smaller team for developing, while they release new drivers every month they hardly make a difference performance wise. I also encounter numerous issues with glitches, for example many games would not allow anti aliasing, yet my nVidia card would. You would have to rename the exe just to get it to work, which is just annoying.

I played Crysis on my 4870, and it the drivers leaked memory like hell in the last level. I saw a 6gb leak, yet none on nVidia. To this day, 2 years after I bought the 4870 the issue has not been resolved...Another thing is the big games are usually TWIMTBP, which means nVidia devs had a big helping hand in the development. This results in most of the AAA titles coming out with hardly any issues, whereas on ATI you tend to see performance issues and anti aliasing problems. Examples of these would be Resident Evil 5 when it first came out and NFS Shift, both of which took numerous driver revisions to be fixed.

Regards hardware, the cooling on ATI is always cheap and much noisier than the nVidia equivalent. My 4870 used to ramp up and down in 2d, which was bloody annoying when surfing the net. It also idled very hot ( 80C ) and sounded like a jet engine in 3d as the fan went in to overdrive.

It's great that the technology is there, but if you do not have decent drivers it is incredibly frustrating. Alas, I will have no choice but to go with ATI this time as nVidia do not have any DX11 mobile parts on the horizon.

 

The tech will be there. Just need to wait a little longer for it.

 

Yea, as I stated previously in this thread we talked ourselves up on this one for one of the greatest let downs in recent memory.

 

Just remember, it could be a official, yet incorrect, answer. Has happened before too, heh.

 

That is a much different experience than I have. My 4870 at home run CS:S, Oblivion, Dragon Age, Rise of Legends, Crysis, Half life 2, TF2, CODMW2, and Battlefield 2 without any issues or glitches at all. That card runs on an Intel (Asus P5qPro) motherboard, C2D E8500. I have never seen any of that stuff in my gaming time on it. I also never had any of those issues on my desktop 260 Nvidia.

 

I have owned both and I prefer ati for support

At least ati didn't rebrand and lie to people for 2 years and have a mass failure ...then not offer anything ...

Point Is I hate nvidias antics and ways and would prefer to never give them my money

 

156 bit bus ftw !

 

Load up the last level of Crysis ( assuming you completed it ) bring up the console and type r_DisplayInfo = 1

Watch the memory leak like a mofo. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=la...s=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

Secondly, HL2, TF2 and CS:S all run the same engine. ATI have always performed well with source ( not exactly hard, even a low end gpu can run it well ) Therefore the aforementioned games are a mute point.

BF2 and Oblivion, well both ran ok and again always did. Try NFS Shift and Resident Evil 5 ( both AAA titles ) with driver revisions from a couple of months ago and you will see the issues.

 

lol! I will settle for 192 bits as a compromise. Nothing less though!

 

It also doesn't help that almost every game that does have GPU branding is of Nvidia. Notable mention: UT3 & Borderlands. When I see that Nvidia branding, I take it as" Hell yeah!! You picked the right brand of GPU to play this game!!" lol

 

I never did finish Crysis, so you may have a point there...

Look, I don't want to get into an Ati/Nvidia pissing match believe me. I have both cards and like them both. But there is no denying that Ati has the upper hand on the desktop side right now, and the will surely transfer over to the mobile side very soon.

The new 5870 (desktop) is off the charts and will take a miracle for Nvidia to match with Fermi. I'm not sure what happened to Nvidia, but they need to come back to life this year so that it keeps Ati on it's toes.

Also consider that I deal with over 2000 machines at my business as an IT professional and we use both Nvidia and Ati. I'm not trying to knock Nvidia, just giving my honest opinions.

 

I point you to the W90vp and humbly disagree with that statement

 

I don't even want to start with nvidia's "TWIMTBP" shenanigans. That is basically cash to developers to advertise that it runs better on Nvidia. There is also the case of Assassins Creed on PC where the DirectX 10.1 support (which Nvidia coincidentally didn't support) was removed in a patch that came out after release. This patch removed DX10.1 which reduced the feature set and performance and is highly documented on Anandtech and Tomshardware.

 

Soo are we beginning to feel like this is the 8700 GT? Was this a "too good to be true?" I think it needs the 256 bit bus to be worth it for any type of future dx11 gameplay. My personal value is that I upgrade when I need to in order to play new games. But on the laptop side of things, I upgrade to the best when it offers at least on par performance of the best dual GPU setup or double the performance of a single card setup. It appears this card may be no where near 2X the performance of an M8800GTX which is what I currently have...from almost 2 years ago (February of 08).

 

This card performs at par with desktop 5750 just like notebookcheck stated weeks ago. Check out some benches of 5750.

Linky

 

Oh don't take me wrong I am not trying to get in to a pissing match. However, considering I have owned and gamed on both cards ( top end at that ) I felt it was my duty to keep people informed about the quality of ATI drivers.

It is incredibly frustrating to get a new game, only to find an ATI specific issue that either never gets fixed or takes months to resolve. All the time people with nVidia gpu's are saying "no problems here" It just made me want to rip out the card and throw it in the bin!

 

Hmm... maybe I should start looking for a laptop with a 280m or 260m.... still in the group buy for now.

Really wishing someone could get their hands on this thing and get some benchmark scores.

 

Well, with all these apparent delays, there is time to mull things over. This nonsense of delaying until Asus can unload the G72, makes NO SENSE to me. Afterall, who in their right mind would even consider a G72, now that the G73 has been announced...... LOL, not me!

If this excuse for delays is for-real, I feel Asus has made a serious err in judgement, and they risk now losing momentum and customers with the G73. The longer the delays, the more they also risk the like or better coming from a competitor.

I was seriously considering this SINGLE gpu notebook, but now with this 128-bit disappointment, I am going to watch CES a little harder for alternative news. Also since we may have to wait until Q2, another competitor may step up to the plate.

We will see! I am really bummed right now!

 

I don't know if you are thinking that is good or bad. It appears that despite being a "5000" series card, it performs worse than the flagship 4800's. I am going to wait and see some benches as I don't put much weight on 3dmarks and Vantage. 1600 bucks and the inkling that this is a 128bit bus card, makes me think this card is going to be very similar in performance to the current flagship mobile cards but just at a reduced cost...hence the cheap price for the computer. I hope I am wrong but this isn't starting to look that great for me personally as I still have an 8800gtx card in my lappy. I just wanted to upgrade as I have had the computer for almost 2 years. COD MW2 and L4D2 are a bit laggy...

 

You backing out bro. I was sincerely bummed by the news of the 128 and the less than stellar pcmark score.

Please let me know if you see something else that catches your eye.

Is there any ATi mobility card on the market that has a 256 bus? Or is the best single card still the GTX 280m?

 

ATI 4870 is better than the GTX 280M.

Edit: 4870XF
Edit2: 280M SLI

 

I'm with all of you in your disappointment, but for me, if it matches the 280gtx mobile I'm still feeling good about it. I keep looking at those pictures and the cooling system and that also helps me feel good about this machine. Now, if I could find out what happened to the damn Ati conference that disappeared from the official schedule I would feel even better! Wth is going on here!?

 

hey guys. this is going to be my first gaimg laptop purchase ... evar ...

im curious if its not possible to just replace the GPU yourself when a more powerful one comes out?? similar to putting in a new HD ? surely the i7's have enough power to also support a video card that comes out in a year or so?

sorry if this question is brutally newb !!

im also wondering if anyone knows a good Australia retailer. I was going to have it shipped to the USA while i was there in mid february, but since the delay I will be heading to Australia for a year so will need to get it there i suppose.

thanks guys

Ronin

 

we can only push Ati to change idea! maybe now is impossible make a gpu with 256bit.
i didn't expect nothing better than a 280m and forget dx11 too heavy even for a desktop gpu.

 

It's not possible on an Asus laptop. They reverse the card slot for the GPU, so you can't purchase a standard Mxm3 card to upgrade.

 

I think you missed my point. The 8600m gt was the first card to bring directx10to laptops (so a first generation as one could say).
These new ati 5series are also the first generation, in direct x11. Thats why i'm having doubts wether it will work as its supposed to, since my 8600 could not play all games with direct x10.
Ofcourse it would be wrong to draw the conclusion that if nvidia failed, that ati whill fail too, but it just makes me a bit sceptical against this first generation of direct x11 cards which, as mentioned in this forum, might not even be worth an upgrade from the gtx280.

 

wow, good to know.

 

I haven't seen a sub woofer mentioned anywhere in the specs. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

I think the bigger concern will be how well games are handled at 1920x1080... Forget 1280x1024 other then the synthetic benches its a useless resolution that virtually no one would play in... Id love to see Vantage and 06 run at the max res to know if this card will crumble like the old 128bit cards have done in the past, GDDR5 or not... 128bit cards choked beyond 1440x900...

 

That is in fact an excellent point. A synthetic score that leans too heavily on the cpu (because of the resolution used) hardly taxes or measures the gpu at all. That's why all cpu mark tests in 3dmark are run at 1024 or some such ridiculous resolution.

 

By my current understanding, there will be no 256-bit 5xxx series mobile solution..... at least at this time.

I feel Dell/AW will do a M17x refresh of sorts, but I was seeing this much further down the road.... now, I am not so sure it's that far away. An X-Fire solution will certainly be a better way for me.

For now, if appears we have some time to wait on the G73JH, and if a competitor steps up to the plate in the meantime, I'll jump ship in a heartbeat.

We will see!

[watch'in CES!]

 

could someone near that CES machine install something on it, to see the actual spec? e.g. Gpuz?

 

You are still missing the point.
8600GT is a mid range card it doesn't matter if it support Directx11 or Directx100, even 8400GS 128MB and other G8 series support Directx10 but you can't even play Directx9 games with these cards

5870 is another story it's a high end card it will play pretty much every game with maximum settings expect crysis.

 

So are there any solid indication, as for one way or another on the ATi MR 5870's spec? or is it all speculation atm?

 

I think a lot of us want proof of this. The 128bit is scaring people away.

 

post 1000!!! Just had to throw that out there