Picked up the Asus GL502VM

So far its a pretty decent unit. I was deciding between the Asus and the MSI Ghost. The Asus has better specs (G-Sync screen, larger battery capacity, faster secondary drive). Really the only place the MSI was ahead was with it's Killer NIC (which is a joke) and it also has two RAM slots while the Asus only has one.

The big difference was the Asus is $1750 CAD and the MSI is $2280.

The Asus is also very easy to disassemble and upgrade. The RAM slot, M.2 slot and the HDD cage are all easily accessible simply by removing the rear panel.

I have a spare Samsung EVO 850 500GB which I installed in place of the 1TB mechanical drive. Much faster that way.

The screen is fantastic. Colors are excellent, the IPS, G-Sync screen has great viewing angles and is very smooth. I expect G-Sync and a GTX1060 could play most games quite well.

I wish the M.2 SSD were bigger (the unit I bought has a 128GB) but really that's my only complaint.

 

Very nice, I picked up the VS with the 1070. I have been enjoying mine a lot. Be glad you picked up the Asus if you've never had a MSI ghost before. Although it is thinnner and sleeker looking, if noisy laptops turn you off, then you made the right pick. My asus is night and day quieter then my ghost pro was.

The only issues I have ran into with the g502 are, the drivers, will not automatically update in GeForce Experience, its showing the stock one that came with the laptop is the latest driver. To update you have to manual download and re install, I did this once and I was unable to adjust screen brightness on my laptop after that. Needless to say i rolled back to the stock driver on asus website. Seems like the 1070 and some games are optimized for the new cards yet, my main rig has a 980ti in it and runs h1z1 at full settings 100+ fps, World of warcraft ultra settings upwards of 100fps. This laptop with h1z1 just drags on medium settings, same with WoW.

Not sure how the whole G-Sync thing works, i've tried vsync forced off, gsync on in control panel, vsync off in games like overwatch, with capped fps, no capped fps, vsync on, I can't tell a diffrence on any game, and with vsync off, gsync on , if the frames go above 70 it still tears horrible. Maybe its something that needs patched idk.

Lemme know your experience!

Thanks for sharing the pics!

 

Thanks for the comments. Regarding G-Sync, I have a G-Sync monitor with my main rig. The thing about G-Sync is going above the refresh rate of the monitor works against it. These laptops only have a 60hz screen and as such the framerate cannot go above 60. In games like BF4 create a custom CFG file and lock the FPS at 60. If it goes below 60 thats fine as G-Sync should compensate for it.

If you are seeing stutter, go in the nvidia panel and make sure G-Sync is enabled. If you had to roll back your drivers you may need to re-initialize it.

For drivers, as soon as I got the unit I downloaded the most current driver set from nvidia and installed them. I am not a big fan of the geforce experience software and typically do a custom install with the drivers to prevent it from being installed as well.

 

Hi Robilar, I' about to replace my actual laptop and I've found the GL502VM pretty interesting.
I've just a little questions about it (the 1060 6gb one):
1. Does it support the VT-D for virtual machines? (I will often use it with vmware) can it be enabled in BIOS?
2. Does it have the support for Nvidia Optimus switchable graphics cards? i.e. the Intel one in power saving mode?
3. is the USC-c port Thunderbolt compatible?

I really appreciate if you can post some pics of the BIOS screen.

Thank you so much,

 

Hello!

Congrats on your new buy! I just have 2 questions:

Like above does it support the Thunderbolt port?

And I am really curious about the temperatures and noise that this thing produces

Thank you for your help and enjoy!

 

My friends owns the GL502VS as well, mainly as a Overwatch machine.

I would like to add that although Nvidia didn't really market it well, FastSync is the high-framerate partner of GSync. In games like Overwatch where a 1070 is going to crush past 100FPS on 1080p, FastSync forces the latest frame to be updated to the monitor which reduces tearing and does not introduce nearly as much input lag as VSync. I don't consciously notice tearing a lot, but what it did benefit me was how it reduced my eye strain at no cost.

Might want to watch this for reference:

 

How much battery life are you getting under less intensive scenarios such as web browsing/word processing?

 

1. I don't know!
2. Optimus doesn't work because of g-sync
3. It is thunderbolt 3. Thunderbolt drivers exists in asus support page.

 

Thunderbolt is under type c.
Temperature is slightly higher than others.
It can be reduced by undervolting and stay in very well level, 73℃ gpu 79℃ cpu in high-end games.