Asus ROG Strix GL502VT

I went to my local best buy and found the laptop on display, the model was 1199$ so it was the cheapest model i believe and the display was HORRIBLE, the colors were washed out and it was just plain horrendous. (Yes i read the discussion you guys over the panels lol, im not starting one again) Now, i was really sad that the laptop i have been wanting for so long had a horrendous display, and i ALMOST bought the MSI GE62 Apache pro they had on display for 1399$ because the keyboard and display were SO GOOD.

However i read here that the laptops that newegg,amazon,etc sell they have much better displays than best buys. ALSO, i read that nvidia is releasing the 1070 gpus for laptops and that they will be MUCH better than the ones we have today, so my questions are.

1)Should i wait for the new gpus to arrive? College is starting soon and i have no gaming laptop Also Legion is relasing on the 30th and im also sad i dont have a gaming laptop. I know it seems a no brainer to wait for the new gpus however i don´t know when they are releasing and i REALLY need a laptop or something to game on.

2)Anyone tried the MSI GE62 apache pro? The one i saw at best buy looked really good, what i loved most was the keyboard and the display, however i read reports that msi gaming laptops are really hot, idk if i can fix that by updating the bios.

3)Initially at the start of the year, my eyes were set on sager laptops, they seemed really good for the price but they are out of stock and i have read that their build quality is bad compared to asus or msi, or am i wrong?

Thaks for reading that wall of text

Stay safe!

 

First mobile gtx1070/1060 benchmarks:

http://videocardz.com/62955/clevo-preparing-p870dm3-g-a-dual-geforce-gtx-1080-gaming-laptop

Laptops available from 16-17th August. Hope the VS will be ready.

 

does anyone know if the ones newegg sell have the good display? not like best buy...

 

When I close the screen of my gl502vy, it remains black when I open it back up. It just doesn't wake up or turn on but the laptop itself is on. Then I have to press and hold the power button to turn it off and then restart the laptop once again from scratch. This has become quite annoying now and this happens 95% of the time now when I just shut the lid. My previous laptop's display never had this problem. Anyone got any ideas on what to do?

 

I bought a configuration which only has a 1TB HDD. If I got a 512GB or 1TB NVME SSD, would I be able to install it and boot from it while keeping the original HDD too?

 

Did you try tapping the a key like enter or control alt delete? It works fine for me.

 

It would have to be able to fit in the m2 slot and yes you can install and boot Windows from there. I got one with the ssd and it works really fast.

 

Mine has a 5400RPM HDD... it boots slow but once it's all loaded it works great. (I have the lowest-end model from Best Buy, but I'm happy with it and I can upgrade the RAM and storage in the future.

BTW, apparently the M2 slot does not support NVME... just be warned. I don't know much about SSDs, could anybody clarify?

 

Not sure about the nvme, but I know for sure that it supports at least m2 and Sata 3.

 

I'm under the impression that NVME is an extension of M2 in a way... so I'd want to look for M2 drives and stay away from NVME (and also SATA, considering I want to keep my HDD.)

By the way, Asus' website seems to have BIOS version 300 (my current version is 202) which has something to do with "updating thermal policy." Might this alleviate the extremely high temperatures that this machine can reach (personally, mine stays cool except for the strip above the keyboard which is very uncomfortable to touch for more than a few seconds.)

 

The GL502VT does support NVME, I have a Samsung 512GB installed in mine, works fine and is very fast.

 

Thank you! Do you have the base version (12GB RAM, 1TB 540RPM HDD)?

By the way, Asus' website seems to have BIOS version 300 (my current version is 202) which has something to do with "updating thermal policy." Might this alleviate the extremely high temperatures that this machine can reach? (Personally, mine stays cool except for the strip above the keyboard which is very uncomfortable to touch for more than a few seconds.)

On another note, the manual says it supports both NVME and SATA M2 cards. It gives instructios for upgrading the HDD and M2 slot SSD, but not the RAM.

 

Basically it adjusts the speed of the fans to a higher rpm when the components start to get hot.

 

Considering CrystalDiskInfo claims my HDD has a few G-sense (vibration) and write errors (no bad sectors or read errors though), combined with the slowness of the HDD and the fact that this computer will probably get bumped around a lot (college), I'm honestly considering saying goodbye to the HDD altogether and replacing it with an SSD.

What kind of performance impact will I see using a SATA 2.5" SSD vs. a NVME M.2 SSD?

 

Well, the only 1070 laptop that seems reasonable at this point is this laptop with a 1070 in it. I'm considering purchasing it.

 

Mobile GTX 1070 Benchmark:

http://laptopmedia.com/news/gaming-...tx-1070-give-us-hope-of-4k-gaming-on-laptops/

First prices:
http://laptopmedia.com/news/here-ar...gtx-1060-and-1070-gpus-lenovos-medion-erazer/

MSI new models (without prices):
https://gaming.msi.com/promotion/alter-your-reality

Nothing yet from Asus.

GTX 1070 more than 2000€, GTX 1060 for 1750€ just for a Lenovo Medion. Probably MSI, Asus, Alienware etc.. will bring the price up (+ taxes).


Guess i'll probably have to stick with my 1300€ gtx970m.

 

I am so tempted to sell my 2-month old GL502VY and get the new one with GTX 1070 now (provided that the prices on Amazon can be trusted)!

 

Yes, the screen still refuses to wake up. Only thing I can do is to power up and restart.

 

Hey does anyone know how to stop the laptop from thermal throttling? Whenever I'm playing gta 4, it runs pretty much 60 fps in highest settings, but it starts thermal throttling after about 30 minutes and drops to 30 fps. I don't think it should do that considering it's older than gta 5, and that I've not heard problems about it doing it on there.

 

Ok so I was looking through the bios yesterday and there's an option to turn on the screen after waking up. Do you know what bios version you have? And try seeing if you have that option as well as me.

 

I just ordered a G502VT with a 1070 in it ^^ (France)
Should receive it saturday or monday.

Anything I should know about the barebone ? I will throw away the HDD and put a SSD inside it. Cannot go back to HDD...no God no, and I will repaste it as soon as I get it.

Does the computer have any serious throttling issues with a 980m ?

 

Where did you order it ? Fnac / Boulanger / Materiel.net / LDLC ?

 

Hi there

I haven't read all the thread yet so sorry if any of the above has already been discussed, but I want to share with you my experience as I had in my hands 9 Asus G502 !
I had some with I5 / 970m, some with I7 / 970m and one with I7 / 980m.

Mainly, I've never been able to get one without any problem, which is why now I'm just waiting the refund of the last one by amazon before to think about what I do.

I discovered this forum not long ago and I will try to read everything, but I'm very curious to know if any of you here have experienced the same problems.

I had 2 big issues : screen bleeding and sound problems.

- Screen bleeding : Out of the 9 models, 7 had more or less big screen bleeding, and some were more than annoying with a big part of the screen whiter. It was almost all the time at the right of the Asus logo.

- The sound : the first one had a perfect sound, I could do whatever I want with the EQ or loudness or bass etc, the sound was remaining perfectly clean. And I love the sound of this laptop, really not bad. But this first one had screen bleeding so the store changed it. And after, the 7 next had horrible sound : big cracks and sizzles at any bass, and even without any bass you could here random cracks. Veeeery annoying and since I had one perfect before, I knew it was not normal. The very last model I got had a much better sound, but not perfect. But it would have been ok to keep it.

The last model then, with the 980m. I started having the same issue than another one before, after like 20 min of game the frame rate was dropping to about 20 - 24 fps, during exactly 9 seconds, and doing this randomly every 3 or 5 min... I tried many many things to understand the origin of this issue, and it turned out to be caused by... Avast ! Without Avast, no problem running like a charm.
The crazy thing is that it did this problem on only 2 computers, which are supposed to be exactly identical and same windows configuration...

When I found this problem I decided to do a factory reset by windows, something I already did on almost all the 8 previous ones. But this one decided to bug during the reset, it crashed and never wanted to restart. It was a long journey to be able to have windows again on it, impossible to do anything, it was starting with the Asus logo but shuting down and rebooting in a loop. So I had an installation usb key of windows 10, but impossible to recover anything. I could install a clean windows 10 from it, and from this clean windows 10 I had the idea to start a factory reset, and it worked, it brought back all the Asus windows 10 and all softwares etc. BUT, a LOT of drivers were missing (touchpad, wifi, bluetooth, usb, graphic etc) so pretty unusable, the only solution have been to plug it by ethernet to have internet on it and from the device manager I could update all the missing drivers. The 980m was not even recognized !!
From there I had a working machine, but this bug and crash didn't inspire me, I tried again a factory reset to see if the computer would now be able to install properly everything back, but no, once again all the drivers were missing.

So in my opinion something was wrong with this SSD or Bios or I don't know what, and I decided to return it and ask for a refund which I'm still waiting.

Such a story since more than 1,5 month that I tried to buy the first one, and I'm back to zero now. I like Asus, but I'm very disappointed by the totally random quality of this product, it's almost impossible to have 2 times the same and in my case impossible to have one without any major issue. I wrote the the Asus support, they said "so sorry but mainly go fk yourself" ^^ . I love this computer it has everything I want, but I'm so afraid of getting again this horrible screen bleeding and this horrific sound. When you experienced to have one perfect, you know it's possible so you don't want something bad (sounds logical no ?!).

I bought it in France so I assume it could be a problem related only to a little serie but I saw a review of the G502VY and they got the same screen bleeding. I never found anyone talking of this sound problem for the moment, but maybe here anyone ?

Thanks for those who have read this long message, but it may interest someone to read this experience.

 

Hey guys so I found a video that seems to help with the cpu overheating problem:

The video shows you how to use the Intel xtu to undervolt the CPU, like what other users have said in this thread previously.

 

I tried 2 models of the VT and both of them had moderate backlight bleed, expecially in the bottom of the screen. I kept one, anyway i can see the bleed only when it's really dark in my room. I found also a dead pixel on my previous VT laptop screen. About the sound, it's really bad on every model but if you tweak the settings you can make it "sound" normal. I did a fresh install of W10 and it worked perfectly.
Never had fps drops or throttle with my gtx970m.

Afterall i think the Asus GL502 is cheap due to the lack of the audio and the poor quality of the screen (it's a good IPS screen but with backlight bleed and maybe some dead pixels).

 

Boulanger . Usually i take my laptops from materiel.net (they're the best) but when I ordered the asus they hadn't posted the product yet on their website (it's online now).

 

When I bought my GL502VT I only spotted very little backlight bleeding. Nothing really noticeable. Sound hasn't really bothered me since I always use an external sound device (be it headphones/speakers, depending on where I am), but it wasn't really as bad as you described it.

But as you said, the bleeding was a repetitive issue for you. Are you sure the retailer wasn't just trolling you by re-packaging and returning you the same unit?

Well, why were you trying so hard for a factory reset? You even had a W10 USB in your hand. Just clean install and leave it be. After it boots up, connect it to the internet and it will activate itself and install every single driver you need, except for one: the ATK package (for keyboard F1-F12 hotkeys), which you will have to get manually from the product website. This is what I did first thing after booting it up.

 

About the screen bleeding yes I had some that had little one and it would have been ok to keep it (if there wasn't other issues), but this one was way too much as you could see it even in a sunny room, as soon as the image was dark (like... the windows taskbar ^^). Here is a photo :



About the sound, in my opinion once you tweak it, it's far far better than any other laptop I could see in the past, it's really not that bad. Of course it's not like a good speaker but for a laptop I was even enjoying listening to music with it. But I only had one 100% good, out of 10 ! So I agree about the poor quality, not the product itself but about Asus and its quality standards.

Haha yeah the store is trustworthy they were really helpful and they were all the time taking one of their stock and we were opening it together, they were all the time as surprised as me. I had to "fight" with one of the tech there who was saying that it's totally normal that a laptop can't have a proper sound, but at the end he recognized he was wrong...

I couldn't let the clean install for different reasons : I don't have a windows key for it and from what I remember windows didn't activate, when I buy a computer more expensive to have a windows on it it's not to do a clean install after, otherwise I would buy it freedos. Also, I like the custom of Asus and I'm more than fine with it. Finally, I was really afraid to have bugs or issues in the future with this hard drive that crashed already, and the PC was totally unable to recover anything by itself. So if one day I had a problem I want my laptop to be able to recover by pressing F8 or whatever when starting, this one was not able to do this anymore. For the price I expect something without problem.

The ATK package was one of the only thing without problem surprisingly, it was just impossible to set the luminosity (it was 100% all the time) until I could make the 980m recognized and install its driver, then it automatically made the keyboard shortcut work again

Thanks for your answers !

 

I just upgraded my overclock on the GTX 970M (GL502VT): + 135MHz Core Clock, +700MHz Memory Clock (VRAM above 6000MHz), got 10fps more in game and GPU temps still under 76°C.
I am sure that the core clock can be overclocked more but the BIOS is locked (is there any hope for a future official BIOS unlock?). Don't wanna risk to loose my warranty so soon with Prema mod.

Anyway did some tests on The Witcher 3:

(My GTX 970M OC) Ultra (Hairworks On): 35fps
(GTX980M stock) Ultra (Hairworks On): 33fps
(GTX1060 stock / laptop version) Ultra (Hairworks On): 39fps

GTX 980M and 1060 frames based on Notebookcheck benchmarks. Btw Nvidia Hairworks eats at least 25fps.

I will keep doing tests on other games as well.

EDIT: @splashy Yeah that one on the left corner is a huge bleed, i just have some on the top and on the bottom like the one you have but less visible. I have tried different gaming notebooks and most of them had a better audio quality and a subwoofer, expecially the Lenovo Ideapad Y700 with the Dolby Digital Surround (and a bad gtx960m). So i think Asus just decided to go cheap on the audio.

 

If I'm not wrong laptops nowadays have Windows activation keys embedded in their mobo so even if you do a clean installation Windows should reactivate itself eventually. So in your case since Windows wasn't activated may be the mother board was defective.

 

Yeah that bleeding seems a bit excessive.

As far as I know though, this laptop always comes with a pre-installed W10 Home that will activate itself automatically. And since W10's activation key is tied to the serial number of your motherboard, it should always activate itself after a reinstall once it has successfully reached Microsoft's servers.

I'm not sure what the problem with recovery is, as I haven't really used this feature. I suppose the Windows' recovery partition might have been corrupted somehow, which can once again be solved by simply doing a clean install and deleting all existing partitions beforehand to let Windows create new ones.

 

Yes I guess it could have been possible to do something maybe, but since there were lots of problems on this last one, including screen bleeding and sound not 100% good... And now I have the opportunity to get the new ones with 1070 maybe
But good to know for the windows activation key in the mobo, I was not sure about that.

I didn't mention but I also had 2 computers with defective keys on the keyboard, one time was the power one that was working ok but not put correctly, and another one was the Enter key that was not working at all on the down side.

As you can see, it's a lot of issues out of only 10 different models, Asus is really disappointing on that.

 

All those 10 faulty laptops were from the same retailer right? Seems to me either this retailer was extremely unlucky and got a significantly bad batch of gl502, or they were just trying to scam you. Either ways, I would try my luck with a different retailer, especially when the Pascal models are only days away.

 

So I just sold off my GL502VY today. Sad, really. When this model was just a rumor around 4 5 months back I instantly felt in love with it and had been eyeing the laptop ever since. Bought it on June 20, exactly 2 months ago. Man that babe was so sweet to me, ran smoothly without any problems and crushed any games I threw at her. I knew Pascal was coming, I just never thought it would be this fast, just 2 months later. Never had I expected Asus to outdate the GL502VY so quickly, and it is totally unfair! I loved my laptop but I had to let her go Had the GL502VS came half a year after the GL502VY, things would have been different.

That said, my next laptop is gonna be the GL502VS. Asus better not introduce a newer model with GTX 1080 or Titan XP or something for at least 6 more months!

 

how much do they go for used. I'm on the same boat and am thinking about selling mine off. Its a shame it missed the return policy by 1 week

 

Here in Singapore retail price is S$3098 so I sold mine at S$2700, considering I always used external keyboard and monitor so the laptop was hardly touched at all.

 

Hey guys so it seems that there's a fan issue with my gl502vy. It starts making a ticking noise about 30 minutes after playing a game. Anyways I'm going to return it but I'm getting an Msi instead of the gl502vs because it's about $250 cheaper for the 1060 rather than the 1070. It's still definitely an upgrade that'll last me longer than a 980m like @hmscott said. Finally desktop graphics in a moderately priced laptop. Just one more thing, why is the asus $1899 still when a gtx 1060 is only $1600?

 

How nice of that fan to fail

Good news on getting the 10 series GPU. Don't always go by price, especially for a $250 difference. It's a lot of $, but not really enough to tilt a laptop choice.

If you can go for the 1070. It's faster than the fastest of the last laptop GPU generation. The 1060 is awesome, but if you can do the 1070, it's just that much more for the future.

Be careful about getting an Optimus model, they are problematic for supporting dGPU things, as all the video goes through the iGPU - which heats up the CPU - it's nightmare. You don't want a high performance GPU gaming laptop with Optimus.

Try to find a laptop that uses a MUX switch - all the MSI's have dropped their MUX switch below the GT73 - IDK if any are dGPU only or if they are all Optimus. I wouldn't want an Optimus laptop...

The Asus GL502VT had Optimus, but the GL502VY didn't. So check out the GL502VS 1070, as it's the jump up from the VY - so it should have the MUX switch. IDK if the GL502VM 1060 has Optimus or not...

Good luck

 

Yea I think you're right about the 1070 over the 1060. I think I'll wait until it gets released at bestbuy instead of getting the first one I see this time. I checked some benchmark sites and apparently the 1060 is weaker than the 980! I didn't even know that until yesterday. Anyways the 1070 laptops should still be within my price range so I'm going to return the asus and wait a while.

 

Since the 970M version of this laptop here is quite cheap now, I am considering it. Only two questions - is BIOS 300 enough to keep temps in check in games like The Witcher 3 (my most demanding one) and are there any major issues I need to be aware of?

 

I'll check the bios version later today. I'm thinking of doing a clean windows 10 install as well. All this while I was using it with the windows image it came with. This is probably why intel xtu doesn't work with my laptop as well.

 

Hey man in case your laptop is still within the return period, I recommend you take it back and get something like the gl502vs with a 1070 or at least one with the 1060. Much better performance with low good prices.

 

The 1070 would a viable upgrade, if he can return/sell his current unit. The desktop version 1060 is however equivalent to a desktop 970. And since 980M = 970 = 1060, be aware that if you own a VY version, anything else with a 1060 will not be an upgrade.

 

Actually the 980m compared to the 1060 is much lower in performance.

 

Please don't ever take videocardbenchmark and such websites at face value. The statistics displayed there often do not correspond with real-life benchmarks of given cards. Do some research on trusted review websites and you'll learn that the desktop 1060 has a slight edge over the 970 in DX12 titles and is mostly on par with it in DX11 titles. Now if you take the 980M alone, it will be slightly weaker than a 970. But don't forget that we're trying to compare overclocked desktop cards to a stock mobile card here. If you overclock the 980M in like 5 minutes' time, you could push it past the performance of a 970 (and also 1060). Also don't forget that the 1060 you would find in a laptop comes with a lowered core clock ( http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/nvidia-pascal-laptop-specs-gtx-1080/), so you would once again have to overclock it as well to be able to compare it to its desktop counterpart.

 

I think you're way undermining the capabilities of the notebook 1060. Just because it's clocked down a little doesn't mean that it isn't more powerful than the 970. It's a desktop card that definitely outperforms the 970 for sure. The only card that you can say outperforms it is something like a 980.

 

My bios version is 202 and that wake feature in the bios is enabled. I'm past the 30 day return period now. I received my laptop on june 28th. It sucks that the new cards came out just a couple of months after I made the purchase. With the money I spent on the 8gb 980m, I could have gotten the 1070 version now. Even the 1060 version with comparable performance is so much cheaper.

 

Yep, luckily I only received mine the other day so I'll be returning it to get a 1070, which is amazingly $100 less than the 980m.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I'm just sticking with my 970M. Maybe in a few years I'll get a 10-series (or maybe 11-series if it exists by then) desktop. I feel like this computer, if it survives for a while, will be a good secondary machine for years to come.

I do have a bone to pick with the 5400RPM hard drive that I got in this low-end model. I'm thinking of replacing it with a 1TB SATA SSD (I don't want to keep the hard drive because I would prefer the shock resistance of the SSD.)

 

Anyone have the GL502VS yet with GTX 1070?
Just wondering if they improved temps and fan noise.
To those that have the GL502VT with 980M is the fan noise as bad as advertised when gaming?
If so can it be controlled a bit with a better quality thermal paste or under Volting?