G73SW - New owner with questions

Ok, so I was in the market for a new laptop and I was eying the pavilion dv6qe and xps 15. Right before I was going to pull the trigger on a pavilion I decided to look at craigslist. I found "2 month old g73sw" "800". I decided to offer the guy 700 and he took it. The next morning before I met with him he said "Since you have to drive to me ill knock 50 bucks off" So I ended up with a g73 with a new bag, cm storm mouse, box and all packaging and the laptop was in pristine condition. This is the bestbuy model, but even with a gimped 460m it will eat the pavilion and xps that I was considering for breakfast. I have to say I didn't think Id like it, but wow.... I'm in love with this laptop. Its one of the sturdiest laptops Ive ever owned. It is dead sexy. On to my questions...

1. Almost every time I pull up cpu z it states that my multiplier is at 8 and running at 798Mhz. I play lotro and occasionally i will alt tab to check the processor. Sometimes its at 2600Mhz and then drops back down to 798. Is there something wrong here? I tried googling but couldn't get any straight answers.

2. Light bar under the lcd, where can I buy one and is the zif socket to plug the light bar into on the motherboard or is it just not soldered?

3. If I wanted too, would it be possible to install the 460m with 1.5 ram or is the layout totally different?

4. Is there any modded drivers that will turn the functions into multimedia first so I don't have to hold the fn key down every time I adjust brightness or volume?

 

1. There is a throttling issue on the G73SW. All you need to do to avoid that is run throttlestop. Just open it and then close it and it will stop throttling the only to permanently fix this is for Asus to release a new Bios. Check the G73SW owner's lounge if you want more info on it.

2. The light bar is disabled in the G73SW, apparently there's a way to have a functioning light bar, but i have no idea on how to do that.

3. You will need a GTX460m from Asus to get the 1.5GB version, different PCB layout than from other GTX460m.

4. Don't know sorry.

 

Beat me by 2 minutes, dang!

You got a great deal, gimped GPU or not, $650-700 for that is awesome!

1) This is normal. The Sandy bridge CPU chips clock up and down on demand to conserve power. So when you are not doing anything, they run at the 800mhz you mentioned. When you need power, it ramps up to 2.8 ghz to get the work done. I think they do 2.8ghz on 1 core, 2.6 on 2 cores, and 2.4 on 3 cores, depending on the work load. I am not familiar with the Throttling issue, so you'll have to look into it. But the speed going up and down is normal. Since yours is making it to 2600mhz, I don't think you are having a problem.

2) I don't know, I think the light bar doesn't work on the SWs if I remember other threads correctly.

3) I would think the layout between the 1.5GB and 1.0GB Asus 460m to be the same. Either way, I don't think I'd do it. Although you might be able to break even if you found a great deal on 1.5GB GPU, and sold your 1.0GB GPU to a sucker, it would be a PITA. You could sell your Best Buy G73SW on ebay for $1000-1100 easy (-12% fees), then apply that to a real G73SW. Although the 1.5GB GPU is clearly better, I doubt you will notice it all that much while gaming. Enjoy all the money you saved and don't sweat it.

4) You can obviously lower the volume and dimm the screen using the mouse through Windows, but the FN keys are faster. There is a program called AsusKey, or something, that can do what you want. It is a little complicated so I never bothered trying to figure it out. Do a search and you'll find it. At the the end of the day, the FN keys are kinda tough to use, but still better than anything else I've found.

 

Thanks for the answers. ValkerieFire, thanks. I'm extremely happy with it thus far and it sure beats the heck out of the laptops I was considering. If i'm not going to see a huge difference in the gimped and ungimped cards I'm not even going to worry about it. Its just after reading on these forums people make it out to be this huge unacceptable difference in performance, but so far I haven't ran into a game (LoTRO, CIV5, witcher, dawn of dicovery,dungeon siege 3 demo, and sc2 ) thats not playable at high to ultra settings at native resolution (1600x900 for me) and that works for me

 

You will definitly notice a difference between the 1 gb 460 and the 1.5 gb 460. If you look at the benchmarks, the 1.5 stock is getting like 15000 in 3dmark06 and im personally getting mid 19000's @ max OC... the 1gb i promise you cannot even touch these marks.

 

i think stock is 14000,
seriously after OC 19000? in default settings 1280x1024? i never see score exceed 17k
screenshot/3dmark result link plss

 

Hey Cayocayo,

I was able to max OC'ed my 192-bit 460M on memory of 1600/ 825 core and staying stable with The Witcher 2. At 1610 memory, The Witcher 2 would act funny (crash momentarily, then go back to game with lower frame rate).
Max core I could do was 825 with the highest memory and staying stable while playing Witcher 2. I'll do couple of boss fights in TW2, watch the fps and temp. logging with MSI Afterburner. Both fraps and MSI Afterburner are on while playing TW2. It's my test for OC stability. Temp. I've seen was 76*C highest while doing 2 boss fights, 2 open field fights, environment running and dodging on bushy areas in TW2.

I've got the benchmark #'s on Vantage, Mark 06 and Mark11, all on stock CPU clocks..

 

I am not arguing which is the better card, or which gets better benchmarks. That is already very clear. Inspite of the 1.5GBs clear advantage, it is probably not going to show any major noticeable gaming difference. Considering he saved $500 vs a new G73SW, the performance of his card certainly beats the 1.5GB card, when looked at from the perspective of price vs performance.

To quote the bad guy from Iron Man 2
"don't get attached to things, learn to let go".

 

Hmm, I just ran 3dmark06 at default settings and got 14996, what settings did you run your 3dmark at? Mine was the default 1280x720.

 

..Default setting is 1280x1024. I too can't reach 17K with OC.

 

Oops, yea 1280x1024 @~15000. Thanks for the correction.

 

...At 1280x1024, ..14000 is stock for 192-bit 460M, 16000+ OC.

 

Here's the link... Result

The default was 1280x720, I used the non pay version so this was the default and only resolution available.

 

I also looking at bestbuy version which I found on ebay for less than 1000$
The best buy machine have lower resolution screen

 

The screen on mine is good, not great, but good. The only reason I have mine was the price 650. I've personally only owned 1 laptop with 1080p, studio xps 1640 and it was great. The vertical viewing range on the screen I have now is not to good. Its better than most 1366x768 displays. I need to sometimes adjust the screen if I change my head position. Horizontal viewing angles are just fine. On the plus side, I run most of my games at max on native resolution and I have poor eye sight, so the lower resolution is good for me when browsing the web.

With all that said, I would look for a non bestbuy model for the same price if you can find one. Non best buy has a better graphics card and a higher resolution screen plus the warranty is 2 years on non bestbuy models for some reason. Newegg has one for 1249.99 right now.