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

I already have the money sent to my friend in US via paypal. He has pre-ordered this baby for me and since his mother works in some logistics company he can send it to me reliable and cheap (+-30$).

Glad to hear the AC will be fine. And i already have wall plug adaptors.

 

Sounds like you are all set then...... also, if you are getting an optical drive, changing the region code will not be a problem.

Cheers, and best of luck!

 

Ooh, this is good to know, Asus.eu is selling plugs for 7,99€

The only downside of this laptop seems to be the 500$+ upgrade to the 820qm, when there are many resellers only charging 150$ for the upgrade on other laptops.

Edit:

I need you to send my laptop aswell



I'll have to see if I can get some far relative livin' on the US come to spend some vacations here on Easter.

 

Dude, here in Ireland you can find them in Tesco for 3€. Im sure you can find them cheaper in your local electronics shop.

 

They receive the laptop with the 720qm already in place, so you're paying market price for the 820.

Which really isn't a worthwhile upgrade unless it's $150 or less.

 

The only thing im worried at the moment is that my preorder ticket will be on low priority at the first shipments. I ordered from Xoticpc since they were one of the cheapest, and so will probably alot of other people so their first shipment will be bought out like ice cream on the beach. I will get my laptop 20 days later than the first shipment(even if i make it in the first shipment) because of the shipping time to europe.

 

Sadly, I can't. I remember paying around 10$ for 1m of an RJ45 cable. And they said it was because they were emptying stock

As for the 820qm upgrade@500$... yeah, it's a rip-off. I would consider it for 150$, but 500 is overkill.

 

ASUS Warranty is not like Sager Warranty, so if you change the CPU on your own, the warranty is lost, right?

 

Ooh, this is bad, I was thinking of getting a 820qm on eBay and selling the 720 one.

 

Correct...

 

That's another reason they charge so much for the 820qm, I'm pretty sure buying it from the reseller grants you the warranty, much like them changing thermal compounds keeps the warranty intact.

 

Yes, if you buy it from an AUTHORIZED reseller, ASUS's warranty IS NOT voided. They ARE AUTHORIZED by ASUS to do this type of work WITHOUT consumers feeling threatened about their warranty.

 

Which I think is completely lame. Many of us are more than capable of changing the Cpu in a laptop. It should not void the warranty.

 

I agree 007, we may have the technical knowledge, but without the official training by ASUS techs, we are no more than the average home user.

 

btw, any1 know if the VGA in this beast going to be changeable or integrated on the motherboard?

 

It will be a dedicated, independant one, but will most likely NOT be interchangeable due to the reverse MXM format that ASUS uses for their GPU's.

 

Yes, but there are 3 types of users:
1) who don't know how his laptop works, only uses it and never opens it
2) user who knows how the laptop works and knows it's inside like his palm
3) user who THINKS he knows everything about his laptop, but when he opens up the laptop, he screws something up and return it in warranty saying the laptop went bad on it's own

I think Asus made this policy because of the 3) type of users

 

I assumed it will be dedicated, but my question was that will it be in some kind of MXM format and be removeable or the GPU will be integrated on the motherboard itself ?

 

yes ASUS uses a REVERSE MXM format, so it is NOT compatible with other cards that are NOT proprietary to ASUS.

 

it feels like I'm having a Déjà vu a lot these days.

 

Agreed and understood. Unfortunately for me, I am an I.T. professional that deploys and services over 800 computers including laptops in our enterprise environment. I have disassembled the most ridiculously hard laptops you could imagine, so you can see why I would be frustrated with that policy.

 

Agreed...but then you are indeed the "rare bird". Most users don't have anywhere near your level of expertise

 

<--- common bird

 

i'm type 4) don't know squat but i'd find someone who knew what they were doing and buy them lots of beer ...or whatever they want to change out whatever needs changing...

 

hairdryer + common sense = upgraded with warranty intact

Also not 100% but can you certify your self on Asus products to be able to work on them like you can Dell's?

 

I pre-ordered my G73 before they offered any RAID options and now I need to decide what I want. I'm no expert, but I have now done some research and believe I understand the difference between RAID-0 and RAID-1. But this still doesn't help tell me which I want.

RAID-0 (striped) sounds great because it's faster and I have the full 1TB to use, but I'd hate to lose my data if one drive crashes (I'm not good about backing up my data regularly).
RAID-1 (mirrored) sounds good because I'm a little safer in case of a drive crash, but then I only have 500GB of space (should I really be complaining about ONLY having 500GB of disc space?) and it'll run slower than RAID-0 (but still a little faster than no RAID?).
But then I've also read (from a link in this thread) that most people are better off with no RAID at all.

What are you guys (that aren't going with the SSD as their primary drive) using? Is one better than the other?

Also, in regards to the cooling issues . . . I agree that the vents on the bottom panel look awfully small, but is there any reason why you couldn't just remove the bottom panel all together (especially if you use your PC as a desk top replacement and don't plan on toting it around). Without the bottom panel on, the G73 should be able to pull in more air.

Thanks for your suggestions,

NightBandit

 

Well, for me I have a desktop to back-up my files, so I enabled RAID 0 (since it's faster)
games will load faster, files will read faster, and write faster.
if you're worried about losing all the files you have then enable raid 1.

welcome to the forums.

 

If i am going base 500x2 HDDs. Is there a better option than raid 0?

 

You only have 3 options. Raid 0, Raid 1, and No Raid.

 

For speed no.... Raid0 is the best for speed as it splits the data up between the 2 harddrives. This is increasing the damage done to your system though in the even one of them crashes...

 

what is the speed increase between standard and raid 0? Let's just put a % to it. 1%, 5%, 10%

 

Approx. 70% faster than the single drive when reading and about 30% faster when writing.

 

that sounds fast....70% quicker read rate....

thinking about what one poster said - get teh base 2x500gb hdds and when time is right, add a ssd, take one of the 500gb hd out and use it as an external drive....

 

Yeah, I was reading some information plastered around the www. looks like minimal application increase, 25 pct increase in file moving, reading, writing. on the other hand there is a higher probability of getting 2x hosed drives through corruption, the death of a drive, so on and so forth. with that being said raid 0 is probably not worth it. well...depending on your use. i think anandtech said 2 - 3 pct increase in gaming speeds...well whoopty-do.

 

It's realistically not much .. In laptops it's useless since it's actually software raid

 

eh? how is it software raid? we have hardware raid controllers.

 

no, you have a hardware sata controller that supports software raid, trust me

that is why raid 5 is so miserably slow without a hardware controller

 

so what is the real world performance gain for raid 0 when using what the g73 is packing? For applications? For file moves, reads, writes, etc?

 

The controller hub on hm55 supports AHCI only as show here:
http://www.intel.com/Products/Notebook/Chipsets/HM55/hm55-overview.htm
and here(see table):
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mobile-core-i5-arrandale,2522-4.html

to see what ahci is read these:
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imst/sb/cs-015988.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface

the older pm55 and newer hm57 have controllers which supported raid as show here:
http://www.intel.com/Products/Notebook/Chipsets/PM55/PM55-overview.htm
http://www.intel.com/products/notebook/chipsets/hm57/hm57-overview.htm

so any RAID on the g73jh is likely to be software-based which from what i gather shows nearly no real-world benefit and might even slow down your system due to the increased processor load(although not a concern on the i7 IMO)
software-raid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Operating_system_based_.28.22software_RAID.22.29

Hope this helped.

Side-note: anyone know what chipset in the m17x-R2? i saw they were offering raid too, i suppose they went with the hm57..

did not know about this! : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Firmware.2Fdriver-based_RAID_.28.22FakeRAID.22.29
opinions?

 

In my M17x enabling raid 0 for 2 wd3200bekt drives gave me roughly 150 MB/second in HDTune for what that is worth. That is pretty much 2x the speed of the single drive. But I had this in place only long enough to load windows before replacing the setup with a single ssd so can't comment on real world difference, but I am sure it was faster as shown in HDTune

For Raid 0 and 1 the software raid is not really an issue, it is raid 5 and other more complex arrays where it is an issue

 

M17x isn't your typical PM55 chipset, it does have two 8x PCI-E 2.0 lanes, for example. But all PM55 chipsets, being the performance line, should have an Intel RAID controller.

 

Concerning the bunch of posts about warranty, I think Element talked with an Asus person and said that a broken warranty sticker doesn't automatically void your warranty. If you RMA the machine and the techs see a broken warranty sticker, they'll just check it extra carefully to ensure that it wasn't some ham-handed user that caused the issue behind the RMA.

But don't quote me on that.

 

Ya sounds good in theory but I would hate to be the guy with the broken sticker and a busted laptop hoping the Asus Techs were going to take care of me heh

 

I wish I have it but I don't.

The actual dimensions and weight provided by Asus:

8 lbs with 8 cell battery
16.6" x 12.8" x 0.8" - 2.3"

Here you go:

 

Ken,

Do you know if Asus used a proprietary design with this 5870 like their previous cards or is it a standard MXM 3.0b?

 

It'll be proprietary card, the only MXM card Asus ever had is C90S and Z83 (rumor that it has MXM 2.0).

 

I know MXM was designed to switch cards easily and make it switching GPUs in laptops as simple as it is in desktops and most notebooks makers market it this way telling you that it provides great potential for upgradability, but dont you usually need bios updates to be able to run newer cards, bios update which these manufacturers never release..
i have a friend who has a sager with a 8800mgtx and they only ever provided support to upgrade upto 9800mgtx..
Also, with upgrading notebook gpu's aren't there bound to be power issues, i mean even if this had a standard MXM slot and a 256 bit MR5870 or mobile fermi came in tomorrow, they would need a lot more power, power that this machine would not be able to supply.. atleast thats the way i see it, please feel free to correct me if my opinion is flawed..

@5150joker, has alienware provided any dates as to if and when a 5870 powered m17x is coming out?
also, if it does come out, would people with the 4870s be able to upgrade to 5870 w/o a bios change?

 

In the past, in the US, judging from what I've read on these forums ASUS have been pretty lenient with broken warranty stickers. There's nothing official of course, and once you have broken the sticker they are within their rights to refuse service if they see fit. So, you should definitely be thinking twice (thrice) to see if upgrading / changing thermal paste etc. is really worth the danger of losing the warranty.

 

So, most likely there will be no real world difference with the software RAID 0. The only advantages I would get is a slight performance increase, one large drive, and I would double my chances of a major data loss.

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I wish they had a model with lower screen resolution, I don't need 1080p in games and it would make it cheaper