Asus G73SW-XT1 vs. Asus G73JH

Hi there,

Was curious about the new G73SW-XT1.
I currently have the G73JH & was considering retiring mine.
Been looking all over and cannot find comparisons as far as benchmarking goes between the two.

The G73JH runs the Ati Mobility 5870HD w/ GDDR5

The G73SW runs the nVidia GeForce 460m.

I have read around notebookcheck and I understand the nVidia's 460m has a lower rating than the 5870.

However, the new G73SW with the SandyBridge 2.0 has higher specs than the G73JH.

Regardless of specs only concerning the GPU and CPUs...which laptop would be best?

According to notebookcheck the 5870 gets around 40fps on average whereas I'm only getting around 32fps average on Mafia II.

Why is this? I downloaded the latest Catalyst package 11.3. Should I try updating from 11.2 to 11.3 for better results or is the factory drivers for this laptop better suggested for better fps?

Thanks!
-Kev

 

The leap from the JH to the SW isn't major in the graphics department, I'd wait for a later version of the G74 or something to get a major bump with the GPU. Unless you're really hankering for a better CPU and USB 3.0, I'd wait it out. As for the drivers, I'm waiting for 11.4 personally.

 

Does your G73JH not do things you wish it could? I have a JH and it does everything I ask it to with ease and I don't ask it to perform easy tasks either. I've not yet had any thoughts of upgrading it beyond just having the latest and greatest, which is solely to please my ego.

Good luck in your decision but I'll be waiting a while before I upgrade.

 

You won't see any performance game cept in CPU intensive games (Starcraft II, GTA IV and some more that I can't remember off the top of my head). IMO, it'd be a waste of money to upgrade to the SW from JH as the performance gain is debatable (you get better FPS in Mafia II due it using PhysX, but lose some FPS in other games that require pure gpu power). You should consider the resale value of your JH too and what the offset are (considering what you did to your JH). It is different for everyone, if you got the money go for it.

 

If you already have the G73JH, then just keep it but if you can sell it for almost 85% of its original price then go for it and get the SW.

 

Hey,

Perhaps when the G73JH was released it could handle most of the applications/games that were put towards it; however, the i7 7XXM processors that comes standard on the G73JH are starting to show their age in terms of how they perform with current games.
Example, Shogun Total War 2 (RTS) is a recent game, however, despite running the G73JH in "twin turbo" mode and with engaging the "turbo boost" feature (ie. built in overclock) the game bottlenecks at [what looks like to me] the CPU and not the GPU.

So in short, repackaging you question - where will the bottleneck be on the current games and new ones coming to be released?

My opinion is at the CPU; since the 1 GB ATI and 1.5 GB NVidia are current enough to handle current games for a good while; and bottlenecks, as others have pointed out, tend to be along the CPU lines.

So, unless you're infatuated with the ATI 5870, go with the G73SW. Personally, I would not bother with the G53XX since their smaller size results (most likely) in higher temps.

Thanks,

-NRUserII

 

You shouldn't turn on TwinTurbo or the Turbo mode in BIOS(that's also TwinTurbo), as people have noted a decrease in performance when it is turned on. The games that seems to have some issues are the ones requiring heavy PhysX calculations, since the 5870M can't do them, its all done on software (using the CPU), this is where bottlenecks might come in.

 

After seeing what you did to your JH, I would retire it too.

 

ha ha! Yes, but as long as it doesn't have a heart & is not an A.I., It'll be mauled by me >;-) unless the A.I. of course is frustrating me, I might consider persuading exiting my truck while it is moving >;-) but, so far my laptop hasn't pushed me to that point yet.

yes, thank you for all your concerns.
Some things that really upset me about the ATI is...

1- heat
2- jerking (in games such as FarCry 2 when running a higher cap than 40fps.
3- Lower fps avg on games.

well, this is based on my lappie top.

I ran 3Dmark2011... yes ha ha, this won't give me fascinating results (believe me, it didn't!) It did however show me that the Physics are actually being processed just fine by my CPU.

The GPU however was suffering greatly. I only got a P1997 score on 3dMark 2011 total on the basic version. My GPU suffered greatly during lighting and shaders. CPU didn't suffer much at all and actually still ran cooler than GPU.

 

My G73JH fared a little better on 3DMark 11. Here are the results of my laptop if you wish to compare. If I can check anything to help track down a performance discrepancy you might be experiencing please let me know.

 

I just ran 3Dmark2011 with new 11.3 catalyst drivers.

I got a P2113 now over the previous P1997.

not bad... wish it could be as good as yours.

What do you recommend for vision quality & performance settings for games? I'm quite surprised, Mafia 2 runs much better than GTA4 and Mafia 2 I see show to have much nicer HD graphics than GTA4. Wonder why?

 

Are your power settings correct? If they are wrong your GPU will downclock and you won't get max performance. I noticed when I was running 3Dmark11 that my GPU wasn't clocking up, I manually set the clocks to 700/1000 and I got a 2200-something. 2405 was with 800/1095 clocks

 

@forgottensoul82

GTA IV runs much worse because it is a horrible unoptimized port and requires tremendous CPU power.

 

No kidding! I did not know that! Thank you for this helpful tip!

p.s. How did you gain access to "CCC 11.4?" I only was able to get 11.3, thx.

Just ran it again with your suggestion of manually setting the clock speed. I only got a 10 increase in score bringing it up to P2123 now.

I am assuming that the Professional version might allow you to do more setting changes than the free version (which doesn't allow you to do so). I would suspect that is why i am not getting as high of a rating.

 

No the settings should be set as performance and not changed to give a correct result. Still quite low considering you are running a better processor than me and I clock 250 more points than you as below. Although my clocks were running 800/1100 when I ran the test.

Are your temps good? drivers clean?

 

P2123 is too low for a JH. You should run with the "High Performance" power plan.

 

the second link in Chastity's signature has the aforementioned CCC. The linked site has been up and down recently.
If U gotta have it now.. http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...65852-11-3-11-4-amd-mobility-support-out.html

 

Yes, I know! It always is and on balanced (For me) when im on battery. I'm not sure.

as for this thing... it's retiring for sure. Going in to Fry's today to p/u a new laptop.

thank you!

wow... I was looking up on the MSI GT680R and with the specs they were on w/ a GF 460GTX, it got a much higher score on the 3dMark Vantage than yours! surprising to me!

 

I saw your other thread. And yeah, if I were you, I'd retire the poor thing. But that's just me. Anyway, if your JH still does the work you want it to do, and it still performs it decently, I don't see any reason for you to replace it.

 

It's going to my ex-wife LOL!

 

I went in to Fry's in Fishers, IN and got the Toshiba X505-Q8102X.

Going to upgrade to Kingston Hyper X 1600. Gonna get Thermaltake 23LX cooling pad for it. I did the measurements and even though it is only designed for laptops up to 17". The laptop will only overlap by around .5" or so. I don't trust the design of the NZXT CRYO. I have read much about it and it doesn't have as good reviews as the Thermaltake 23LX.

Now, I know what you all are thinking. "He retired his G73jh to his ex for a laptop with lower specs."

Yeah, anyway. I ran the benchmarks on Vantage and they were obviously not as good as my G73jh, until I found out why.

The cooling system on this laptop is okay but, the fans lack potential.
Plus, I think upgrading the RAM to true DualChannel 4GBx2 will help.

I ran Mafia II's built in benchmark under extras and, I was actually getting impressively better FPS with this Qosmio laptop, than with my G73jh.

Only problem was, the laptop fans were at max speed but the FPS was still dropping. By the end of the benchmark with all on high, I only averaged 24-27fps each different time I ran it. At start I was getting up in the 50-60FPS all High and halfway through, 28-30FPS.

The GeForce GTX460m rocks but, the cooling setup on this laptop I don't think is perfect enough to keep the GPU from overheating as well as the CPU.

With a good cooling pad and HyperX DualChannel memory, I think i'll get better steady Benchmarking.

We'll see. That is my next project and that will come within the next month of May.

 

Now you will haunt the Toshiba forum with your escapades.

 

the 1600mhz memory is a waste on your system as the 2630 can only do 1333mhz.

 

Yep and more ram for 32 bit games won't do anything.

 

Since the G73sw has Sandy Bridge, does that mean that the 460m GPU will shut off when you are not gaming/DistributedComputing and you can just use the GPU inside the CPU!!??

I bet you could get 4 hours battery life. But can this happen with this laptop or did Asus not support this power saving feature of Sandy Bridge?

Are most SB gaming laptops across the board taking advantage of the internal GPU or are we still going to have 1.5 hr battery lives when surfing the web? I don't wan to hijack.

 

No, the SW doesnt use optimus so the 460m never completely shuts off, however I still average around 3hrs of battery life just surfing the web. So SB does a good job with power efficiency and ofc the 460m downclocks/undervolts quite well too.

Most laptops with high-end video cards wont offer optimus as I've heard its most likely too buggy, so its not just something Asus is doing.

 

The JH can get 2.5 hours just surfing and browsing if you turn your clocks down really low as well - no problem! You just have to do it manually... Too bad asus doesn't support powerplay the way they support powermizer.

Then again, it's a 17 inch desktop replacement. If I need more than half an hour unplugged, I'll take my laptop, not my massive beast.

 

M17x R3 w/ GTX 460m non 3d version has optimus and it last close to 5 hours.

 

-giggles-

Rite, thank you. That helps

I guess that makes some sense. But, what is nonsense is buying another stick of RAM from Toshiba direct for just under the price for HyperX RAM, WHICH IS compatible with 1333mhz bus speeds. And they might come handy in the future when I decide to upgrade comp again.