Asus G73 Benchmark Thread

I'm the 5%. That's ok though, you should be allowed to enjoy a machine for once and not have to write guides for it. I don't really have a reason to tear it apart unless I decide to grab a 920xm at some point.

 

Just did some Cinbench10 runs using the Asus Easy Over Clock.

Asus OC OFF: 1 thread 4min 09sec, 8 threads 1min 27sec
Asus OC ON: 1 thread 4min 04sec, 8 threads 1min 28sec

An easy 3.6GHz OC on an i7 920 desktop does 8 threads in about 43sec for comparison.

I find it interesting that the G73 8 threads is about half as fast on this bench as a 3.6GHz desk i7, because that is about what I have seen an many DX10/10.1 games using FPS. I can just about state that the G73 is about half the power of my desktop running at 3.6GHz with a 4870x2.

I don't know about you guys, but I find the Asus Turbo button from useless down to hindering. I haven't noticed any benches or games that can clearly show an improvement at all, and have noticed it being a hindrance in Vantage.
Like most of you, I am disappointed in the lack of BCLK OCing in the BIOS, I was hoping to get 2GHz across the cores and judging by the heat it is putting out now, the G73 could probably handle it.

It is encouraging to see Mandrake get a BCLK option after dropping in the 920QM (that was his G73, right, not his M17? it's hard to keep track sometimes), so there is hope for a BIOS to allow for the 720&820.

I have good money for a stable BIOS that allows me to OC my BCLK and alter my timings. Entrepreneur anyone?

Hopefully the G73 will be a big enough enthusiast hit that some people will work on it. I have to say though, even if I don't get to OC my 720, it will do for now and it will be a good reason to buy a 920 a little cheaper and give my G73 some new life after the warranty is up.

Q

 

All you need is the PLL and to support or invest in soft FSB or grub overclocking project on NBR

 

Is it all 4 cores on 3.3ghz or it turbo boost to 3.3ghz? Thanks

 

Hey moo you stole my avatar I was going to be your arch rival for a while.

As for G73 benchmarks. I have a few in the review and doing a few more as we speak. Just got done with FEAR updating to 1.8 and it ran well all maxed out with soft shadows off.

 

what program are you guys using to tweak the GPU?

 

Yeah the twin turbo even though it adds a meager 100mhz to all 4 cores seems to drop my score in my cpu tests, so it must lower something else in the process.

Id give like $5 or $10 to somebody as a donation if they came up with a stable overclock tool for the G73 that let me get 2ghz+ on all 4 cores. I am even considering a ebay 920XM right now just so I can use the bios options to overclock. For gaming its ok as is but for encoding there is a lot to be desired.

 

If it makes you feel any better it's not BCLK over-clocking in the bios. It's still changing the turbo mode multipliers. The big advantage is being able to raise the power limits in the bios. The AW M17x with it's "5%" OC is technically BCLK overclocking. It would be nice to get a bios that combines both along with more manual control over all the BCLK multipliers but I guess that's called a desktop.

All 4 cores. Change your turbo mode multipliers and set your power scheme to high and all four cores will sit at the higher multiplier.

I've been using RBE which means flashing a new vbios every time.

I played Borderlands for an hour last night with all 4 cores sitting at 3.5Ghz and had no issues. I decided to turn on OCCT right after playing and it crashed within 2 minutes. lol.

 

Great news regarding ATI drivers...
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3743&p=5

(saw it posted in the AW section and haven't seen it here yet)

 

It's about time. Asus better not opt out on this... I don't really understand why OEM's didn't opt in considering they all do such half assed, horrible job at providing drivers themselves.

 

Mandrake if you set the power scheme to high for i7 720 will it also have all 4 cores turbo boost to 2.8ghz? Or only 920xm is able to do the job? Sorry quite confuse about the new i7 overclocking

 

Out of curiosity, how much is your system, babyhemi? Looks fully geared

 

No, I didn't test with the 720 but what it should do is keep the 4 cores at the default multipliers without down-clocking them to save power. So in other words it would be the same as turbo mode being on all the time but all four cores do NOT clock up to the Core 0 multiplier.

Hope that makes sense....

 

I got it for about $2,500. I personally added the SSD, HyperX memory, 6300 WIFI, and upgraded to the 285M. Got to keep it up to date (within reason of course).

 

Whats up with everybody getting HyperX memory? The days of lower latency effecting performance have been gone since the P4 days.

 

E-peen ..........

 

Money burning large holes in pockets??

 

reserved for future Benchmark

BTW my twin boys are almost 3,

believe me when i say you guys are soooo up the creek without a paddle, and the twins rocking the boat.

 

Exactly, I am finding it excellent in gaming, but weak encoding. Although it's not fair to compare it to an OC desktop. When it comes to encoding on the go, it will do.

Well no, I don't feel any better, hell maybe a little worse , but thanks for the heads up. Your last sentence says it all for me, I made an assumption in laptop land as I have been spoiled by my desktop enthusiast boards over the past several years.
Still have my fingers crossed though, but no expectations.

I actually see this effect in HWinfo32 in high power scheme (all 4 cores dancing around 2.6GHz). CPUz will show the 2.6 when in performance mode so I'm not sure what HWinfo32 thinks I have going on when we just switch it to HP mode. It can't be 4 actual cores running at 2.6GHz. I still have yet to wrap my finger around this mobile i7, but I do know the Asus Twin Turbo is useless and will not be used on my machine.

Q

 

Here are some screen-shots to show the affect of turbo mode. The main thing here is that NONE of the programs we normally use can read the CPU frequency correctly with the i7 processors.

This screen-shot shows the turbo mode enabled and the system power setting sitting at high performance. Notice hwinfo32 is showing all cores maxed. The Argus program which can read the frequency correctly shows each core at different multipliers. In real time that chart is bouncing all over the place.


Now let's put stress on the CPU....no more bouncing around, cores are maxed to my OC settng.


Here is a screen shot of what it looks like when the turbo boost multipliers are NOT OC'ed but the processor has a load on them. They are sitting at the lowest multiplier.


I hope this helps more people understand what is happening when turbo mode is enabled and when you OC the multipliers.

 

We now have integrated memory controllers in these processors. Without the FSB acting as a bottleneck we can now squeeze more performance from the memory.

I have a direct link to your trust fund...you haven't been checking the balance have you?

 

Wait.

I have a trust fund?

 

You did but now its all sitting in Mandrakes sig ...

 

I will hunt you down, drake!! lol

Just send me the 920 and we'll call it even, k?

 

bwahahahaha it's untraceable!

 

I see what you're saying, but my "turbo boost multipliers" haven't been OC and I see in HWinfo32 what you have in your 1st pick (except at 2.8GHz) when I have the High performance set. I was writing this off as the sensors not being set for it like you suggested (I was also getting my readings from CPUz, RealTemp, Intel Turbo Gadget and monitoring thread use with AllCPUMeter gadget), but I am going to try this Argus program since it seems to know what it's reading and do some comparison. Thanks.

 

Thing about the 720QM is that turboboost only comes on with less than all 4 cores under load. I guess you can manually make them come on via bios on the 920XM. If we could force the turbo boost multipliers to come on with the 720QM that would still be 2.8ghz on all 4 cores and thats pretty damn good and would be good enough to make me happy.

So maybe thats the route we should look for, is a way to hack those multipliers on.

Right now under full load its only 1.6ghz on all 4 cores with a single thread it can go as high as 2.8ghz but just for one core.

 

sleepy0 discovered where the vent air intake are on the G73. The large hump in the back there? That's the air intake system. If you slide a piece of paper underneath the lid on either right or left side, the paper goes ALL THE WAY BACK to the end of the laptop. But you'll be able to tell there is an edge to the hole meaning the far left and right is solid and so is the middle. Thank sleepy0 for figuring this out.

They are about 1.5-2 inches wide for each air intake.

DO NOT CLOSE THE LID AS IT WILL COMPLETELY BLOCK THE AIR INTAKE.

 

The back of the system where the air is exhausted is the intake? I read the post multiple time and don't understand what your saying. Maybe sleepy, bashful and grumpy can come here and explain it himself.

 

It's been my understanding all along (as with the Hothardware link I posted in places) about the mobile i7 turbo mode and how it differs from desktop i7 turbo. The mobile 720 works at 1.6G on 4 cores when the i7 senses the load, but if a single thread/core load were to be sensed, it would boost one core up to 2.8G while essentially cutting the other cores off. There is also a mode where 2 cores would operate at a freq around 2.4G, but this is all intel i7 selected based on load demands and not for us to decide (with the exception that we can create the load).
In their design you can see there is a balance in total output, if you give more speed to one core, you remove ability from other cores, so to think we could just unlock the turbo mode and expect all cores to be running at 2.8GHz (8 threads), that we would just fry our chips. Yes, I know Mandrake is showing this, but I'm not feeling it yet.
It would seem if that were the case that we all have dragons and intel is keeping the chains on it. It wouldn't make sense to me to have a chip that can handle 2.8G on all 4 cores and then absolutely cut the gonads off of it and give it to us in this state.

What I was really hoping for from the beginning in the BIOS is the ability to disable the i7 mobile turbo and increase the BCLK, adjust multipliers and tighten the timings if possible. I didn't even care if there would be the ability to raise voltages as I wouldn't do it on a laptop anyway. But over the past few years I have been able to OC the FSB and BCLK a good percentage on my intel chips without having to raise voltage and I was thinking we could get another 25% rather easy giving us 4 solid 2GHz cores running 8 threads and no i7 turbo shinnanigans. That would be an realistic encoding workhorse for a 720QM.

Like I said, I assumed too much in lapland. What do I know, I'm just a user.

Q

 

Just do what I said and you'll see what I'm talking about.

 

I did but the paper hits the back "hump" and stops. I also took a laser thermometer and measured the temps by the blue light and it's not any cooler there.

 

Hey Guys,

Is there a way to keep GPU OC's.

I just realized that when I reboot my machine the changes go back to default 700/1000

 

Here are some pics of the back of the system with the "hump" removed.

 

vbios flashing. Vic had some instruction on the forum how to do it. Would need to search. I'll eventually add it to this thread.

 

Drake,

Imagine where the fans are in the system. Kind of cup your hands on the side of the lcd where the power button and turbo buttons are on either side. You can kind of feel cooler air around there. Well, at least I can.

I don't know. Looking at the fans with the system apart, it would seem as if one fan is pulling air from the bottom and one from the top.

I suppose you could turn the system on with the top chassis removed and feel from there, if you are feeling daring of course

 

Thanks for the pics - now you can see what I am talking about. lol

In the second pic, see where the fan is? Now go straight up and you'll be over the mesh plastic from the top chassis. That is the intake, IMO.

 

The fans are down in that area. You might be feeling air from the ports.

 

Don't you remember what the top of the chassis looked like?

BTW, the "mesh" area is where the speakers are.

 

Yes, I remember very well.

Where else is the air coming from, if not from the 2 holes in the mesh?

 

Those are speakers. When removing the system board you needed to unplug the speakers and the wire came from under the mesh.

I'll take more detailed pics when I take it apart....again.

 

Then the air that the fans are pulling is within the chassis - and that is not good at all....

 

Good enough to keep it cool, right?

 

drake, anymore benches?

 

I still think the air intake is behind the screen within the hump. Sure the air is being pulled in further back you'd expect. Why else would Asus create two 2 inch slits into the back of the hump? Just for giggles?

Just take paper or something thin. Slide it in and you will see that there are two slits on both the right and left side. If you move the paper towards the middle, you are forced to pull it out. That to me is the obvious answer of where the intake is. And I do feel air being pulled in about where the two slits are with my hands easily. Take a tissue paper. Once you find where the two slits are take tissue paper size of two plies. And then move it towards the screen where the slits are, the tissue paper will immediately be stuck to the screen bottom. That IS the air intake.

 

No need for taking photos Drake, all the photos are in the disassembly guide..
he's right, the 2 holes under the mesh are speakers..
Can't anyone use the smoke from an incense candle or cigarette or somethin to see where it gets sucked in??

 

Of the people that put the 920XM cpu into the G73 who has all 8gb of RAM working? And for those that do not, what module did you have to take out to get the system working?

Im thinking of getting a 920XM when I find one for a good price on ebay and want to be fully prepared for any problems I may have.

 

Yeah but they have been doing that for years lol, they are not going to sell you the best cpu for cheap, they want people like Mandrake to pay $1000 for it, and then in 6 months release some refresh chips in the mid range with better clocks. The gotta milk it for all its worth.

I have never failed to take a low cpu and do atleast a 50% overclock on it in most situations. I even had a 100% overclock on my Opteron 148 back in the day.

This is with FSB overclocking, if you can control the multipliers directly like you can with the 920XM on this machine its even easier to get a lot higher up as the system FSB wont hold you back and nor will your RAM.

 

Understand the first part, not quite get the second part.

 

hi guys just did fresh install of on my laptop. But it seems like I cant find the power 4 gear under utilities. So where do I download it? can anyone link it to me would totally appreciate it