Just bought a refurb G71GX RX05

Hi all, I have joined the ASUS G series buyers club. I've always wanted one of those uber massive gaming laptops, so I pulled the trigger on a refurbished G71GX for 570.

Specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 @ 2.53 GHz
6 GB DDR2 800
500 GB 5400 rpm drive
GTX 260M 1 GB
17.1" WXGA+ LCD

Now I know this is a Best Buy model so no quad cores, but reading around, it should support 4 GB sticks in each DIMM so max would be 12 GB DDR2 RAM?

I'm also interested in upgrading that screen, 1440x900 is too low of a resolution to put on a 17.1", I am seeing plenty of WUXGA screens, I'm going to assume just reuse the existing inverters and it being a straight swap.

And yes I understand ASUS reversed engineered MXM, but I have read people swapping out a 9800M GS to a 260M. Any possible way to go above a 260M for the GPU?

 

Good purchase!

Those get hella-hot though. Not as bad as the g51s ... and probably not as bad as the dell 155X series either ... but you need a good paste job.

You could *probably* go to a 360gts, since those should be available in their reverse MXM format, but you'd have to tinker with the bios (which I think you have to do, to get the 260gtx working). And since the 360gts isn't actually any better (less cores but higher speed, slightly lower at-peak power draw, same benchmarks) than the 260gtx, I think that's your EOL for upgrades.

As for the screen swap, you're about bang on for what needs doing. Make sure the dimensions are right, at least asus standardized on their LVDS...

The CPU upgrade isn't really worth it, since you can't go quad and the p8700 is a champ for OCing anyways. I think you'll get 200-300mhz higher with a T9600/9800 (or whatever the highest chip was...). You could get an extreme chip which will perform about the same as a T9600.

 

Hrm okay cause I was looking at ASUS' G73JH's GTX 460M, perhaps that was a possibility to swap, maybe not.

Also I'm guessing the only other way to get a quad core in a G71 is to get a different motherboard (perhaps BB got a version that whitelists Core 2 Quad mobile). P8700 seems good enough for gaming, maybe a T9x00 later on if I really wanted.

 

Welcome to the premier section of NBR, http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...ers-asus-g71gx-rx05-full-review-best-buy.html
Yes it will support 3 X 4 GIG ram DDr2.

 

Well this is my 2nd ASUS, but does ASUS whitelist WLAN cards? In there now is an Atheros, I would like to go to an Intel 5300 AGN.

 

No, asus doesn't whitelist cards. That's dell/hp territory...

 

Dell BIOS is some of the most lenient, they don't whitelist WLAN, CPU. HP and Lenovo lock down their BIOS and whitelist. Well that's good to know, but the WLAN card seems not very accessible, underneath the bottom casing.