Opinions on G75VX-BHI7N11

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I'm thinking about upgrading my current Gateway P-7805u FX Laptop to a new Asus G75VX. I had some questions and wanted to get everyone's opinion before I make the plunge. Best Buy has the following G75VX available: Asus 17.3" Laptop 8GB Memory 1TB Hard Drive G75VX-BHI7N11 - Best Buy I'm looking for a bare bones G75VX. I'm an IT professional and I find it easier and cheaper to do all the upgrades myself instead of shelling out all that extra money for all the pre-installed hardware options. As long as the G75VX initially has the 1900x1080 screen and the Nvidia G670 or 670MX GPU, I can work from there. I have the following questions:

1. Is the blue ray DVD reader or writer drive on the higher models available to purchase by itself online? If not, is there another model that will fit in the G75VX?

2.What is the difference between the Nvidia 670M and the 670MX GPU? Is the newer 670MX worth having over the 670M?

3.I don't care for Windows 8. If I want to downgrade to Windows 7, are there drivers available from Asus for all the hardware?

4. How difficult is it to access the CPU and GPU? I'd like to replace the thermal compound with IC Diamond and possibly do a CPU upgrade later.

5. How strict is the warranty enforcement? If I open up the case to do the previously mentioned upgrades, does that throw my warranty out the window?

Thank you all very much for your time.

 

If you are looking for upgradability, go with a Sager Np9170 or Clevo P170em. They are incredibly simple to open up and upgrade as well as they look more like business notebooks than gaming machines. You will also get more bang for your buck.

Upgrades are also covered in their warranty while Asus is not and voids the warranty.

The Asus use proprietary GPU's so you cannot upgrade them.

As far as 670m vs 670mx, the 670mx is considerably better than the older 670m. The MX uses the new Kepler architecture, is faster, cooler, and more power efficient. With overclocking, some have even reached stock 680m levels.

Edit: That's actually a pretty good price for the G75 and specs. I am a little biased because my last G53SW was an absolute nightmare to modify. In order to add a hard drive, I had to remove the keyboard, the touch pad, the palm rest panels, a bottom panel, and all the ribbon cables connecting them. Terrible. For comparison, on my Np9150, I had to remove two screws. Two. That's it.

 

I'm not too worried about the GPU upgrade. My old Gateway P7805u had the 9800GTS and I was never unhappy with the performance at 1900x1200 even in shooters like Stalker. I'd be willing to bet that the 670MX is more powerful in this generation that the 9800GTS was in its generation. I'm going to throw in 32 gigs of ram and try to find a blue ray drive replacement, possibly even an SSD later. That will easily hold me over for a couple years and then I'll go through this process again. Thanks for the info.

 

Dunno but pretty much all notebook optical drives share the same form factor. It should be easy enough to swap the faceplate/bezel and whatever bracket is attached to the DVD drive to the BD one (if you don't mind the BD drive not having BD written on the outside...).

670MX is based on newer architecture. Less power consumption, less heat (I think), overclocks better, and is faster. As far as how much faster I don't have numbers but somewhere around 10-20% feels right. Considering the Best Buy VX-BHI model is going for what the old VW with 670M was going for (until about two weeks ago where I live) it's not a bad deal as far as cost goes at all. See here NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670MX - NotebookCheck.net Tech.

Asus does not have Win 7 drivers for the VX on their site. AFAIK the only real difference between the VW and VX is the GPU and WLAN card. Drivers from NVIDIA didn't install for me without modifying the inf file (detailed in an asusrog forum post somewhere), so that should be the only issue. I don't know if there are drivers for the WLAN card available elsewhere or if you would need them. I'll be putting Win 7 on mine in the next couple weeks. Send me a PM then and I can tell you.

Not possible to access either without pulling the MB. This will void your warranty. I don't think a repaste is needed. CPU and GPU in mine idle around 35-40 and I don't think I've ever seen anything higher than 65 or 70 so far on stock compound. Like smellon mentioned, NP9170/P170EM is a good choice for upgradeability. You can get one with a 675MX for only a little more on xotic if they still have free shipping and the winter discount going. G75 is not friendly for upgrading.

See 4.

 

1. Laptop ODDs are pretty standard, just need the faceplate from your current ODD.

2. 670mx is better than 670m

3. Some drivers are cross compatible from the G75VW, others are not and you might need to do some searching

4. Not difficult, just time consuming, search for G75VW dis-assembly videos to see.

5. Only the HDD/SSD bays and the 2 user accessible RAM slots are available to be upgraded while keeping your warranty intact; anything other than that will void your warranty (2 non accessible RAM slots on the top side of the mobo, WiFi card, CPU, GPU, etc.)

 

If I'm not mistaken the VX has a realtek sound chip instead of the VIA sound chip found on the VW.

 

Yeah, its a realtek. Some of the hardware on the VX seems to be the same as the VW. Just be a matter of tracking down all the windows 7 drivers for the new hardware.

 

Hi guys, wondering what happened with this situation. I just purchased a G75VX-TS72 (Tiger Direct version) and formatted all the partitions and installed Windows 7 Pro. I was reinstalling all the drivers however the WLAN drivers will not install. It begins installation then the window just closes before install wizard can begin. I tried manual install on drivers as well but it's not working. Can someone give me a hand please? I really need WLAN on my laptop!

 

What drivers did you use?

 

Hi Meaker, I used this guide: ASUS G75VX Windows 7 clean install guide - Tweak Arena Forums

Everything was going great in order, until I hit #7 on the list of drivers, the "Broadcom WLAN Driver 6.30.95.29". I've also tried a few other drivers that I thought might work to no avail!

 

The Broadcom WLAN Driver package doesn't include support for the new 802.11ac controller chip. Go to the Asus website and go to the support section for their PCI-E PCE-AC66 wireless adapter. The Windows 7 driver for this device will work. It uses the same broadcom chip. The device manager in Windows 7 after you install this driver will list the wireless adapter as: Asus PCE-AC66 802.11ac Network Adapter.

 

Thanks for the response Lord_Devlin. IT WORKED! ASUS PCE-AC66 driver 6.30.95.26 was the driver I used. You're help is greatly appreciated!

HOWEVER...there are still BCM20702A0 and Ethernet Controller listed under 'Other Devices' in device manager. Any ideas on which drivers to install there? Thanks again!

 

IT WORKED! Thanks so much Lord_Devlin!

However..there are still 'BCM20702A0' and 'Ethernet Controller' listed under the Other Devices tab in Device Manager. Any idea on what to install for those?

Thanks again you're the man!

 

The Ethernet Controller is the Qualcomm Atheros AR8151 PCI-E. I used the AR813x_AR815x_AR816x version 2.1.0.15 driver package. BCM20702A0 is the Bluetooth. I used Broadcom Bluetooth driver package 6.5.1.3800. There may be newer driver versions of each.

 

The Ethernet Controller worked perfectly thank you. The Bluetooth isn't working yet. I tried the driver you recommended and also the recomended driver from that guide I linked earlier. Neither is working, really weird.

Any other suggestions? Thanks again for all your input!