G74SX-XR1 Info/Availability Questions

I'm looking at purchasing this model in Asus's gaming line of laptops. After doing some comparisons, I really like the specs compared to the others. Intel Core I7 2630Qm 2.0 Ghz, 17.3" 1080 HD display, Nvidia Geforce GTX 560M 3 GB, 12 GB DDR3 Ram, 640 GB HD. I can do without blu-ray and have read the speed of the hard drive (5400 RPM) is mediocre which I can live with. The cheapest I've found it online is $1298 pre shipping which seems like a great deal. Everywhere I look though it's out of stock or not available. Any reason for this? Anyone know when more will be available? If anyone has this model and can tell me how it runs for you that would be very helpful. I just can't find that much hands on information online anywhere about this particular Asus model. I'm also open for reccomendations on other similar priced laptops with similar specs as I haven't completely made up my mind yet. Thanks!

 

I purchased the same model locally , from London drugs ,2 days ago....
Generally, I'm satisfied with it.
Drawbacks :
#1 - The slow 5400 rpm WD 640 scorpio blue ( replacing with WD 7200 rpm scorpio black, SSd ,too expensive.)
#2 - Sound volume ,apparently , a windows 7 glitch, is just too low. Will use EQ in winamp, t o compensate

I'm only a casual gamer , Titan Quest, no problem there
Will mainly use this unit for DV, once my upgrade is done

 

Thanks for the reply userdude. Those are two problems i've read from other users of this particular model. How much is the new hard drive going to cost you? If the hard drive turns out unbearably slow I'd like to know what I'd be getting myself into financially. I think the sound issue applies to the Asus G line in general across the board.

 

It will be unbearably slow, a friend of mine just got the BB JH with the same slow 640gb 5400rpm drive, jeez it was like watching him use a single core ATOM cpu lol

If you dont want to go all out for an SSD, you can get a good Hybrid drive for about $100.

Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive

Sound volume has been pretty good after the compatibility update, though I cant comment on the G74's sound.

 

I'm sure you can live with the harddrive ,at least for a little while, once you remove all the useless junk , Asus installed there.

Also ,there is a list of torough win 7 tweaks , out there, to speed-up your notebook.

The 500 gb scorpio black , I'm looking at (ncix.com) is about $69.00 cdn
It's not as fast as the the momentus xt hybrid , but then again , I trust more the standard well established non hybrid thechnology.

Why dont you take it home for evaluation purposes ? , you should be able to return it within 15 days, if not satisfied

Just my 2cents ,thought...

 

The 750GB Scorpio Black HD is an awesome drive, and you can usually get it for less than $100. If you don't mind the space differences, the 500GB Hybrid mentioned earlier is a good choice as well.

SSDs go bad after a while, but even when the Hybrid's SSD parts go bad, you still have a reasonably fast (7200 RPM, 32MB cache) and working 500 GB HD with all your data on it.

Can not speak to the sound problems. The G73SW has the loudest, best quality speakers I've witnessed.

That's a great price on the laptop you mentioned! Let us know how it works out for you. We love hearing success stories with newer ASUS products (makes us want to go out and buy another ASUS laptop, even though we're very happy with the ones we already have).

 

Today I went ahead and purchased the G74SX-XR1 from Frys.com after them finally being in stock. Paid a bit more than I would like but for $1400 I still think it's a good deal. It's been a while since I've treated myself to something this nice! I'll stick with the included hard drive for now and you guys will be the first I go to if I decide to switch it out. Thanks for all the help guys. I'll update once it arrives.

 

Hi!

I purchased mine from Sam's Club. It was listed as $1299, but after taxes and membership sub it came out as $1430. I ordered it on Monday 8/1, and got it next Monday 8/8, in spite of paying extra money to have it on Friday 8/5. Something didn't work out... I'm pretty much satisfied with this laptop. It comes with backplane and ribbon cable for the 2nd HDD in a box, and caddy is already installed inside. Gorgeous screen, very nice speakers, awesome keyboard. Huge step up for me from G60JX. One thing that bothers me is that HDD performs kind of slow, makes some hiccup sounds during which system getting very unresponsive. I formatted the drive, did clean system install. Probably the drive is faulty or maybe it is working the way it should? Anyway, looking for another drive to install as a primary one. Great machine overall!

 

Sams Club was the website I was originally going to buy it from until I realized you have to pay to become a member first. It isn't much but it's definitely the principle that turned me off. Theres also only a 1 year global warranty compared to frys 2 year warranty listed. I'm encouraged by your positive experience with it, although the more I hear about the slow hard drive the more I think I'm going to have to upgrade.

 

The XR1 should come with the faster stock HDD if I am not mistaken; similar to mine, which are more then bearable

EDIT: Just noticed you said it feels sorta slow? What model HDD is it exactly?

 

It comes with WD6400BP, that is 5400RPM model.

Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD6400BPVT 640GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

Ah dam that is the one the BB model comes with

Words can not express how shocked I was at its terrible performance when putting my G73 next to my friends BB G73 with that HDD; needless to say he is about to update to an SSD and secondary HDD like my primary

Thats the one I would replace ASAP

 

After spending a few days with the G74SX-XR1, I have to say it's just what I expected... Awesome! Totally blowing through everything I've thrown at it. Haven't done any heavy gaming yet but I don't expect any problems when I do. The hard drive might be somewhat slow by some of your standards but for what I do it is sufficient enough. Now I'm looking for Windows 7/Nvidia 560M updates/drivers and am a bit confused exactly where to look.

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download G74Sx

Is this the right link? If so, which of the updates are most important if not all?

 

Grats on your new model, in regards to the slow HDD you can just do what most do with the 5400RPM models and when the time comes to buy an SSD move the 5400RPM to the second bay for storage and your sorted.

Here is Chastity Driver Reference page it has all the latest driver updates which are updated frequently. You can use the Asus ones however they are not always upto date.

 

Does anyone know if this model comes with a SATA III board???? I'd like to know as I just recently bought a Kingston 240GB HyperX SSD and I'd like to get a laptop like this beast (current G73JH-X2 owner) that would support SATA III speeds. I can't find any info about what board it comes with.

 

yes it has SATA3 ports, 2 in fact

 

Sucks that it doesn't come with USB 3.0

 

Does anyone know if G74 has S/PDIF out on it's 3.5mm port?

 

All G74SX models have 2x SATA III ports and 1x USB 3.0 port

 

Nice I'm going to break mines, run it over with a car, put it in the oven, and bring it in to micro center so that I can get the G74SX model muahahahahaha. Thank God for the platinum warranty!

 

Anyone got info on this?

 

Yeah i own this laptop,i was thinking about this since i got it,so i never could get a yes or no answer,i wanted to use the laptop with my home theater but my receiver its old and it doesn't have a hdmi in/out,but it does have an optical one so i ended up getting a toslink adapter just to see what would happen.i plugged the toslink in the 3.5mm jack right away i noticed that the optical light didn't turn on red(when this is plugged into the xbox 360 it does light up red)went to windows sound/realtek digital output properties/supported formats/encoded formats/both dts & dolby did play in their own 5.1 channels,before this i tried this with a rca adater1/8 to male rca audio but only could get left,center,right,both rear speakers sounded at the same time no separation as with the optical cable it did separate every channel,so i don't know if i'm hearing true 5.1 audio or something else,the toslink adapter is working with the laptop.

 

You need to see a red light. RCA audio is only stereo, only. Anything else is just software-made, i.e. fake/simulated.

Make sure you have the sample rate checked for which your receiver supports. If you don't know, just check all of them, and over time uncheck the lowest quality one at a time.