GenTechPC - Asus G73JW Youtube Vid Review

YouTube - Asus G73JW 17.3" Gaming notebook video review

Purchase Link:
http://1toppc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=G73JW-A1


Now we wait for the G53JW.

*resumes staring/drooling at pictures until it's released in two weeks*

 

Nice review.

 

Do a followup with gaming and tearing the thing apart

 

Very nice job here. I wonder if you can easily overclock the GPU so it can exceed ATI's HD5870 in the JH model.

 

but then they can also overclock the 5870 and we are back to square one.

 

That's true, but hopefully the NVIDIA GPU would be more stable than ATI's when the JH's first came out

 

I doubt it can, since its TDP is higher than 5870, it produces more heat, which might be problematic with stability.

Edit: Correction, it seems they improved cooling so that at idle its @ 41C, hell thats cool.

 

agree; can't wait for the benchmarks.

 

AW! I want that 2 button trackpad on my G73JH.
Drats.

 

I would want that cooling setup for my JH!!

 

Besides the better cooling....I see no advantage to upgrading to the jw for my jh. It also looks to have a proven benchmark performance downgrade as well.

 

Yes there is not a reason to upgrade from the JW from the JH, as almost never is there a reason to upgrade from one model to its recent refresh.

(A good example look at the people that upgraded from R1 to R2 on the M11X many of them are disappointed)

It is however a good choice for anybody that was thinking about the jw but didnt purchase and now they can get the slightly better jh instead.

The gpu seems to be a bit weaker as I expected, but only slightly so. The other stuff is all welcome upgrades though.

Better HDDs
Blueray Standard
USB 3.0
etc etc.

As others have stated the small performance gap between the 460 and the 5870 may be closed with driver updates and/or overclocking. Nothing you can bet on, but possible none the less.

One good thing will definitely be seeing if the Nvidia card has resolved any/all issues that the ATI card was causing like the GSOD issues, and recently ATI cards have issues with cursor corruption in Starcraft 2.

Looks like GSOD is all but solved now and I am sure a drive update will fix the cursor issue in SC2 so there is no reason to not get the JW still as well.

 

JW does not come with headset?
Mine comes with steelseries headset with ROG logo on the headset.

 

I'm glad to get the review. I may be out of line, but I'd also like to give a bit of constructive criticism. Much of the commentary sounds like a reading of the G73 brochure - with a list of specs, ports, lights etc. Most of this info we could get looking at the specification page.

While I wouldn't cut any of that, also try to give us a little info on how the system feels in the hands, and rank it against the 'norm'. Is the screen any different compared to the previous model? How are the viewing angles, brightness and contrast? How does the keyboard feel to type on? Do you ever miss keys, and is there flex in any area? Battery life?

I assume the build quality is similar to other models but it might be nice to hear. Are there any issues with seams or hinges? The notebook is listed as being quite, but how so? When running at load for extended periods is it whisper quite or can your hear audible fan noise? Can you hear the fans kick up and down as they throttle with temps?

These are the kinds of questions I ask myself when thinking about a notebook purchase. The port layout, physical design, and hotkeys are all something I can get from reading through the spec sheet and press releases.

 

I think many of the questions were answered here, and here, with more info developing daily. It's a work in progress!

Stay tuned!

 

I believe Gentechs videos are more just an overview of the machine then a "Review"...

Its tough im sure when you are pointing out say shortcomings of the machines like bad viewing angles or to much heat on the palmrests etc etc..

As a reseller i cant imagine that would be a good thing in the end...

Now if he were to put a positive spin on every machine he is doing a video of all in the name of sales(think used car salesmen) that would be bad as well ...

So i think in the end just giving people the basics is the best overall..

I have seen some of the other videos out there on laptops and they rarely point out the bad ..

 

I agree and I certainly wouldn't want any company to shoot itself in the foot by saying "wow, this thing is terrible, please buy from us" I'd mostly just request a little bit more than single statements. Maybe focus on the benefits of the system and the unique aspects it delivers.

Sentences like "now we're going to look in the device manager; here we see the Nvidia 460 GTX" aren't particularly helpful.

I guess my specific beef is, as Quadzilla noted, using the word review in the title. Perhaps 'hands on' or 'feature overview' would have changed my expectations going into the video.

 

I've asked this once, and the answer I got wasn't exactly satisfactory.

In the vid, the JW idles in the 40s at stock clocks. That's what my JH does at 250/500 without a repaste. So was there a radical redesign with the cooling vents, larger or more intakes/exhausts? Dimensions seem the same, so I'm guessing no.

Perhaps the JW sacrifices some of the silence for temps. Probably has faster idle fans. That and better application of thermal pastes (or using a brand name one as standard) because they learned from the overheating fiasco of the JHs?

In anycase, a proper review would be a 8 hour timelapse vid the JW spinning hairy donuts to 'prove' the so-called better cooling. Just for HellCry's sake.

 

There were certainly some design changes based on this pic...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/att...69-asus-g73jw-discussion-thread-g73jw-vga.jpg


Looks like they redesigned the motherboard as well since the wireless card is turned in a different direction and now there is USB 3.0..


The video card is absolutely huge and they dumped the thermal pads on the memory for paste ... The GPU is almost like another motherboard stacked on top its so big lol...

Looks like ill have a JW coming next week so i can put it through its paces ...

 

I have to say the size of ASUS 460m edition is a monster looking card. Bigger is better no?

 

Lol it certainly is a biggin... Is bigger better ? im not sure but the one thing good about it is the components of the card are spread out further so heat will be less of an issue and clearly thats why the board is the size of Starship Enterprise ...

So far out of the box the numbers speak for themselves interms of the temps ... With the right amount of work on the JH though you can certainly get close to those temps on the 5870...

Only bad thing about the Nvidia cards is the lack of being able to monitor the Memory temps on the GPU like the ATI cards .. So the Memory could be running at 80 or 110 but no real way of knowing ..

 

I had 30+ videos done on asus notebooks before this became a trend. Whether or not we are fair and balanced does not matter. We dont make these videos for fun. I got out of making video reviews on the regular long before our comps got into it. Serve the public by innovating and supporting your products post sale and post warranty expiration. Yes i do feel like a used car sales man every time i make a video review good review or bad alike. If i were to mention all the negative aspects of the machine and the brand i would be shooting my self in the foot. We are all trying to sell something some of us try alot harder then others. Some of us take pride before profit. Some of us have no pride which is why some of us can copy each others styles, concepts even forums. Some of us vendors ultimately have no shame.

 

In my humble opinion unless your willing to enter the realm of the bad then dont bother entering the good either ...

I have seen your reviews and i know you speak truthfully so thats a good thing but some of the others i have seen its all a shine job and makes me want to rip my hair out ...

If you cant say the word BAD and at most you will say Average then dont bother at all...

Everything cant be Average and things can be bad so thats why i think its best to leave it up to major publications to give there comprehensive unbiased reviews because they dont have the vested interest of sales involved ... Thats not to say some pubs are not getting paid for there work by said companies but most people know by now the good from bad reviewers out there ....

Either way this is just my opinion of all the videos i have watched and the simple overviews are what i enjoy the most to be honest ... A couple benchmarks and talking about the specs and just a video showing a closer look of the machine that you will not get from a brochure...

 

i cant argue with that. wouldnt be selling the product if i did not think it was atleast 99% good. I have pulled products many times from our site for bad reasons. Most if not all videos i have ever made have some mention of negative aspect. reviews should be done by end users not resellers. I still dont know why people think we are serving you and we are saints. We are not serving you by making these reviews. We are serving our selves period. The average joe who comes here and answers a question is serving the public because he has no incentive to do so

 

Well that's the problem right there, isn't it? The conflict of interest is precisely why I don't believe that sales people should be doing reviews to begin with. Because if you are fair, honest, measured, and give a review that is a truly professional quality, it might actually hurt your sales.

More likely than not, though, all the so-called reviews by people who sell the very product they are reviewing are nothing more than Youtube infomercials. I haven't watched one, nor would I.

Bottom line? Unless you are prepared to give an irreproachable review based on the FACTS of whatever you are reviewing, regardless of your profit and loss, then don't try to pass yourself off as a reviewer, because you look like nothing but a self-serving used-car salesman.

This wasn't directed at you, by the way. I respect your decision not to do these reviews for the very reasons I posted. Stick to sales and customer service, and let the reviewers write the reviews.

 

The more videos out there the better since everyone has a different approach on how they review the laptop. I personally watch them all (unless someone has a really annoying voice, which I only find in some user-reviews )

 

My god. They fubarred the heatsink again. The only reason they now use paste for the memory chips is because they have the same problem with this heatsink I noticed on the G73JH.

The memory pads are to resistive for the heatsink to get completely flat on the core. So they removed the RAM pads but there is way to much room for paste so the result is......waaaaay to much paste.

Please, please, please...... Arctic! Can you make a replacement cooler for the G73JH and JW. I bet they would sell like hotcakes!

 

They use to much paste from the factory on everything whether it needs it or not, so im not sure its a case of they used to much to fill in a giant gap lol...

Paste on the memory is used alot in the desktop arena but when people see others using it on a laptop they freak out and say "Dont use paste on the memory its BAD!!" when in fact its not at all ... Lets face it , paste provides much better heat transfer then a pad ever will period .. The pads act more as a blanket over the Vram...

Here is a good example of the benefits of pasting the Vram

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ll-internal-cooling-mod-huge-improvement.html

 

That may be true for the RAM chip on the bottom left. But if you look at the top row you can see by the amount of paste and the way it standsup because the heatsink has been removed that the gap is large. I would say atleast more than 0.5 mm.

 

I think your putting way to much thought into this since you see more paste at the top lol...

Your basing all your assumptions on some 2d pics ?...

Unless you were there first hand to actually measure and see the differences in height all that your saying right now is purely speculation...

..

 

Looks like the g73jw really likes Batman Arkham Asylum. YouTube - Asus G73JW : Batman Arkham Asylum

Thanks Ken for the video. I've recently been playing the bejeebus outta this game on my desktop with a GTX 480 and the jw seems to handle it nicely.