Asus G73 or Asus G51JX for Multi-Media usage

I'm interested in the Asus G73 or G51JX for mainly multi-media usage. I will mainly use this laptop for videos, and editing raw files. Right now I'm not gaming at all but I plan to start again in the near future.

If I buy one of these laptops and use it with the factory bios, and GPU drivers will I experience any of the issues other G51 and G73 owners are complaining about???

Thanks.

 

If you stick to Asus-supplied driver packs you'll be fine. Tho 10.5 Cats added DXVA 2.0 support. The quad i7 in the G73 will do very nicely, as will the 8G RAM for video editing.

 

Thanks for the response.

 

The g51 has lower latency than the g73 ... but only marginally, and both are well below anything required for multimedia. The g73 will look nicer on stage, if you're doing real-time mixing, etc ... and they both take up about the same amount of desk space (the g51 is a bit of a fat beast...)

 

Hmmnn. So I picked up this laptop (G73JH) about a week ago. I am into gaming and Video editing. Here is what I experienced so far. Straight out of the box with bios 0211 abd vbios BR35992.001 with stock video drivers, I had no problems playing games; lots of them. I installed my brand spanking new Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Premiere Pro CS5. Photoshop starts but will not allow you to use the OpenGL. It will crash and disable OpenGL. Many post about this issue on the net, so google it. Premiere Pro installs but would not start; again many post on net about this issue.

I installed ATI Catalyst 10.8. This did NOT fix photoshop or Premiere issue; however it introduced games crashes on every single game I played within 2 mins of starting the game. GSOD, exactly as well documented. I removed Cat 10.8 and went back to factory drives and games work again, but still no Photoshop or Premiere. Frustrating!!

Anyway, Removed stock ATI drivers, used driver sweep to delete all remnants of driver. I installed the new vBios BR38352.001 and re-installed ATI Cat 10.8 and guess what games work, photoshop works with OpenGL set to advanced mode and Premiere Pro starts and works sweetly.

So, for multimedia work, I guess I would advise to update.

The one unforgiveable thing about this laptop is no eSata or USB 3, worse than that no way to add either cos no express card slot. If you really serious about Multimedia usage, then this is a killa blow. I thought it had one, only realised after I bought that it didn't. For a lot of people not an issue, but if you regularly shift large size files to anf from external devices like I do, USB3 or eSata is a must have on a notebook this expensive. Mine came with an i7-740qm and it is sweeter than my deskp q6600 which I was hoping to replace with this laptop.

 

You can retrofit an eSATA by getting a port bracket for the Optical drive bay and putting the optical drive in an external enclosure.

 

Thanks Chastity. Any links to such a device, I would snap one up in a flash.