Asus G51Jx-A1 w/ GTS 360m (GDDR5), now available for pre-sales!

I've been doing lots of little updates to my review, but I just did a big one a moment ago, including adding some more pics of the internals (as requested by pm1o) and bottom of my G51Jx and a question about the GPU card and a surprise (at least for me) physical difference on the bottom panel when compared to the G51J. Also added boot times, and a bunch more stuff - still working on it, but if you already checked it out once, you might want to take another look.

You can find the link to the Review in my signature.

Will do a few more boot runs and then look up the GPU overclocking apps - if anyone can suggest the best one that would help...

Peter

Oh and plus, I found that you can buy a Portable Travel Adapter that has been on clearance many places for $20 CAD that works with the G51Jx - awesome - so much lighter than the brick .

 

Im debating between this laptop and the N61, can anyone please let me know how much better the G51JX is. Im not sure if its worth the extra 300 dollars or not.

 

Which N61? ASUS just announced a new one yesterday with a USB3.0 port but I don't know what graphics solution that model will have yet.

Peter

 

Hi CCz,

I am surprised that the memory you found are 2GB Kingstons 1333mhz. Did the specs on all the retail sites not say it would come with 2GB 1066mhz memory sticks stock? Or did you upgrade yours during check out?

Do let us know if this was a surprise upgrade from Asus.

Thanks!

 

We have been shipping the ASUS N61JQ-A1 with the ATi HD 5730 w/1GB GDDR3 since late January. There is already a thread for it in this forum.

Whether the ASUS G51JX-A1 is worth the $300 extra will depend on what you are going to use your laptop to do. Unless you need the higher resolution, or you are an avid gamer, the ASUS N61JQ-A1 is probably the better choice.

 

Hey mobilezila - No upgrades by me, not yet, everything is still stock - and the box was factory sealed straight from ASUS so the retailer didn't change anything.

The retailer's site just says: RAM: 6GB DDR3 4 SODIMM Sockets

The outside of the ASUS brown box says: DDR3 1066 2G*3

But the RAM cards themselves say: ASU1333D3S9DR8/2G.

I read that serial # as meaning it is a 1333 Mhz chip - am I wrong? What's a good app I can use to quickly check the RAM speed?

Thanks,
Peter

 

CPU-Z should do it.

 

Thanks - if someone had given me the info for the overclock app I'd have done it by now. Ah so much to do so little time!

Here's the result:



Peter

 

I wonder if any of the active notebook resellers who frequent this forum board thread can confirm this; That the specs of the G51JX-A1 have been upgraded to the 1333 Mhz RAM by default. If so, than why would all the reseller sites still require you to pay extra for the upgrade to the 1333 Mhz mem from the 'default' 1066mHz mem?

 

alright well im gonna be using for school work , and i like to game on it most of the time now league of legends, but would like newer ones aswell. How much better is the G51Jx graphics card than the n61, like good crysis run on high settings for one, and not the other? (i also heard the g51 is smaller and more portable). I dont know i still have a few days to decide, the g51 looks like it comes with mouse/bookbag which is cool to.

 

I have the predecessor to the G51, the G1 series. The problem I had was that it's a single fan cooling system with a heatsink on the GPU, with copper pipe attached from the heatsink to fan. It's not quite adequate.

Is the G51 cooling system the same way? I really think with these notebooks a dedicated can is needed for CPU and GPU.

 

Hey Ziddy, you can see a pic of it in my review - yes it is a single unit with a copper pipe. And strangely enough they removed the grill that the G51J had directly on top of that one fan...

Good job mobilezila noticing that, with the rush of the buy and writing the review and everything else going on it didn't even register it when I posted the info how significant it was.

I do seem to have a DDR3 1333 (PC3 10700) straight out of the box, the box says it should only be a 1066 - I'd really like to know if it's just me getting lucky, or an upgrade on purpose on ASUS' part or a mistake. Or it could be that the supplier changed the RAM specs at the last minute, stopped production of the slower chips maybe. These ones were made fresh < 3 weeks ago. Looking at the various retailers it's about a $200 difference if it's there w/o need to upgrade.



Peter

 

You are correct CCz_Cataphract, it has 1333MHz Ram. We just spot checked two models and they both had it.

 

Wow, that's cool!

 

That's great, I think that just made enough reason to go for the G51 over the N61 for me...

 

Oh Oh, I paid extra to go to 8Gb. Now I can see the case where the reseller plops in an extra 1066 and wham.. not I'm mismatched. Sounds like I should 'cancel' that upgrade.

 

How do we know that the ASUS N61JQ doesn't also come with the 1333 MHz RAM as well?

Assuming that it doesn't, does it really make a difference from a gaming perspective, especially when it comes to playing FPS like Battlefield Bad Company 2?

 

No, you will not see the difference between 1066 and 1333.

 

If the 1333 MHz is there by default, why is your company's website (and others) charging for an upgrade to 1333 Mhz?

 

No, they won't as long as the official spec remain at 1066. Even if they did, I would not trust it as long as the official spec remains unchanged. Even if some are getting 1333 in their machine now does not mean that you will get one with them in the future.

The memory market is a strange place. Prices are all driven by supply and demand and changes daily. It's not strange to see 1333 price fall to the same or lower than 1066 parts at certain times but it doesn't mean it will stay there. Also, demand may out strip the supply and they may have temporary run out of 1066 dimms and have to ship product with 1333 instead.

 

I wouldn't use that as a reason to buy the G51. If you want it otherwise that's one thing, but you won't see a whole lot of difference with the faster memory for most applications.

 

If what you say is true, then it would be only fair or the upgrade prices to change as well to better reflect the market prices and conditions (e.g. a FREE upgrade to 1333 MHz RAM).

 

Or just change the default specification to 1333MHz.

 

So true Justin!

First, Toyota and it's cars. Now, Taiwan and it's PCs. Will it never end?? lol

Wish we could develop and all-American PC that could kick some tail ....

At least this country as some of the world's finest gamers.

 

I am guessing that Xotic PC will get the bulk of the G51Jx-A1 orders now as all the other reseller sites still list the specs as the default 1066Mhz Ram given.

Great job on being so quick, and keeping up to the days events Justin! It's always comforting to know that a reseller is an active member on a board like this.

However, i must also give a large credit to CCz, the first reviewer, who posted the picture and specs of the memory in his laptop.

 

I agree mobile. Justin and XoticPC are a first class operation for responding so quickly to the new information. I am really impressed with what they've done today.

Thanks CCz for putting 2+2 together for all of us!

 

Looks like someone at Gentech Computers reads this board too as I see their website just updated the specs of the default memory too to 1333Mhz as default!

 

if customs+tax+shipping to canada wasn't so expensive i'd be considering gentech/xotic/powernotebooks for the next refresh... unfortunately the first two (does customs stack onto tax or is it considered the 13% for ontario?) tend to put a nice price well into the 'omg' range.

+1 for the review. 3dmark shows a difference of a little under 5%, which is more or less the same with vantage. i demandz oc results now!

it also looks like they took forge's copper mod into consideration, if i'm looking at the new GPU heatsink correctly.

2 corrections:

the gtx260m is a 65W card by spec iirc.

add in the device ID to the INF. look through it near the top and bottom for examples.

 

^^^ Hang tough and see what NCIX, BD or DC retail these for...then Price Match away, the $$$ you save on Customs / Brokerage Fees will make the wait worth it !

 

Yeah I just checked the RAM it's 1333 indeed, but outside of the box still says 1066:

 

FWIW, Newegg.com carries this model now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220688

 

i'll be sticking with the g51j for now
but it's good to know you can match CAD to US prices. maybe when they have the gtx360/380's out, even though something tells me they're gonna be g92's on another die shrink.

 

Yep, I saw that too - would be interesting if we ever find out if it was a supply issue or a price drop or what that caused the change.

Hey thalanix, Out of curiosity what part of the country are you in? I picked my laptop at a shop in Toronto (well Markham) and got the price match set. You could order locally and avoid customs, delays, etc.. and just pay taxes - the unfortunate thing is that it's final sale only. Otherwise I can probably set you up with the price match/cash only discount I got, which brings it down to $1493 CAD + tax + $2.50 enviro fee - that's cheaper than what most US merchants have it for (well except for the 13% tax). They do mostly have a satisfaction guarantee though and do custom mods, where as up here it's just a sealed box purchase with any problems or anything taken care of by ASUS.

Thanks for the corrections btw, I'll stick them in shortly. About the INF, awww, that's what I had Mobility Modder for - I didn't want to get my hands dirty . But I'll do that and upgrade the drivers, run through another 3DMark06 set and then overclock. If you tell me what overclock utility to use that would help save me time.

By the way, I've also been trying to recover an old SATA drive for a friend, it died on him and he spent 5 days trying to recover the data on it - I had everything set up to do a Windows Recovery Console Fix / fdisk repair - but then I just hooked it up to my G51JX through the USB port via an adapter and W7 picked it up right away and except for 2 files everything is copying off great - so once I'm done getting all those files then I'm back to testing this thing out .

Peter

Update: I managed to mod the drivers with a combo of the ASUS driver on the web and the 195.62s online. I had to change 2 files to get it done, but it works now . Running the benches. Overclock app suggestion anyone?

By the way, the nVidia control panel says that it in addition to it's 1 GB of memory it is taking over almost 2782 MB of System Memory as well - glad I've got 6GB so it can do that - I wonder if the 1333 RAM is helping a bit here? Back to the tests...

 

What kind of 3DMark2006 score is this machine expected to provide?

 

Courtesy of www.stuffopolis.net...

Both with stock drivers.

With turbo:


Without turbo:

 

More specifically:

 

mississauga. i'm not looking for anything just yet, can't retire my g51j this quick. most (read: all) of what i have goes into tuition with a little extra from the parents, so right now i have to get away with saving 50% of lunch/dinner money

your one and only hope is http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_system_tools_6.05.html. you can extract the package and only install ntune, save yourself some unnecessary programs.

if it's borrowing system memory, that could be a small performance hit. no idea how to doublecheck or turn it off.

 

New Model? I found this G51JX-X2 on tiger direct...which to me is the same as the X1 unless I'm missing something.

Can anybody venture a guess as to what's different with this one? It's $1229 vs Newegg's $1299

 

The Tiger Direct one has a 320 GB HDD as opposed to the 500 GB one that the Newegg model has.

 

Asus have not yet officially change the spec to 1333 so you might be right, could be just supply issue.

 

Oh how could I miss that. Thanks!

Anyway..I ended up ordering the N61JQ-x1 from Newegg as I have a 500gb hard drive and 2 x 2gb 1333mhz RAM that I'm going to swap with my Studio XPS 1340.

 

I think I'm going that route tomorrow. Be sure to post your impressions in the N61 lounge when you get it!

 

There's no way I could deal with 1366x768. I don't need a beefed up graphics card to play the antiquated World of Warcraft, but that resolution would kill me.

 

Cataphract, are you able to confirm that Turboboost is actually working? Your 3dmark scores look like they could just be within standard deviation.

 

Yeah that's what I thought for a while too. But I have a 1280 x 800 screen now, and I've never really been bothered with it besides the fact that I can't get the full 1080p high definition quality when watching movies. But I don't normally watch videos on my laptop anyway besides like trailers. And I don't really feel think the eye strain from a 1920 x 1080 screen is worth it. The sweet spot for me is 1600 x 900, but I can settle for a little less.

 

It's confirmed, they use 1333 was just because the supply issue, therefore, the shipment will come with mixed of 1066 and 1333 RAM, so the official spec of the RAM is still 1066, we will follow by Asus's official spec and change the specification back to 1066Mhz.

 

That was exactly why I chose the N61 too, although I would have really really liked to have the backlit keyboard. I'm used to it with the StudioXPS 13.

Perhaps ASUS will release a newer model of the N61 with the backlit keyboard and I can order the keyboard to replace it.

 

Thanks for letting us know GTPC - I guess I was actually lucky in something for once - I should go out and buy a lottery ticket! Here's hoping this supply issue will make more people happy than sad...

Thank you, downloading now.

Yes I think it is - I've run about 5 tests both ways switching between running two in a row or changing it up and every time there is about a 1-20 point difference for the SM2 and SM3 values, but the CPU values are always ~150-200 or so points better than without The Enhanced Turbo enabled. It's about a 15% improvement in the CPU score comparing with and without it.

For example, here is a sample of the 3DMark06 tests to make sure the CPU Turbo vs. non-Turbo was not an anomaly:

9652 turbo: CPU: 3176
9527 no turbo: CPU: 2985
9634 turbo: CPU: 3140
9621 turbo: CPU: 3129
9516 no turbo: CPU: 2967

The only time I've gotten results outside that general range was when I was running the test with the 120W Travel Adapter (120W @ peak) - then it dipped as low as ~8700 due to throttling. With full power though, I've yet to see it go below 9400.

Getting set to test now what sort of improvement a GPU overclock can give

Peter

P.S. About the resolution, I have to say I really like it. I had a 1680x1050 15.4" monitor and this 15.6" 1920x1080 feels just right. I like to watch movies, and for my work I do programming - and I really like being able to have more windows and more code visible at a time, it definitely helps. I prefer ATI personally, heck I worked there for a year in the Notebook division back in '06/07 - but I just couldn't live with such a low resolution panel. Heck even my 3.0" Xperia X1 phone has a 800x600 resolution lol - the 1024x600 on my N10J Netbook is actually driving me crazy - FHD all the way

 

I ordered mine from you with 8Gb (#896XXXX). I'm assuming you're just 'adding' a 1066 DDR3, and not 'replacing' the 3 x 1333's in there now? Looking forward to playing with this bad boy! Sure hope it ships tommorrow....

 

From what I read, does that mean that the G51JX-A1 can't be outfitted with a second hdd? Because I was sort of hoping to take the hdd from my current G50Vt-X1 and put it in the new G51JX-A1. On another note, does anyone know what sort of performance increase I can expect from going from a G50Vt-X1 to G51JX-A1? Thanks