Reliability: G73 vs G72 vs G60 vs G51

Hi Everyone,

I am considering purchasing one of the following:

1) G73JH-RBBX05
2) G72GX-RBBX05
3) G60JX-RBBX05
4) G51JX-X3

I have tried to read through different threads regarding these models and it looks like there are BSOD/GSOD/Overheating/Throttling issues for these gaming laptops.

Which model do you think is has the least chance of conking out in a span of two years? I am asking this because I will be purchasing one from the US but will take them back home to another country where these models are not being sold. Asus warranty covers my country but since they do not sell these, it might take months to RMA.

Btw, I know Bestbuy models only cover 1 year for the warranty. Its really amazon or best buy for me because I don't have a US credit card.

Thanks in advance!

 

I have the G60jx from bestbuy, it's great. I have had not one issue with bsod or throttling. and I threw in a core i7 820qm, the cpu went form idle 35c core i5 to 50c core i7 but the gpu hasn't changed and as long as the computer gets good ventilation you won't have an issue.

I have maxed out the laptop for hours at a time using benchmarking software and playing games and have yet to have any issue. I know that some are complaining about the other models but I can speek from experience that this one for me hasn't been an issue.

 

Thanks pugboy9. Do you use a cooler with that?

 

Asus G73 has the best cooling. Cooler the notebook, better the lifespan.

Not to mention the huge performance gain over the other models.

 

This is what i'd get but not the best buy model.. the screen seems horrendus and u don't get bluetooth and blue ray and 8GB RAM.. get the X3 model and with bing cashback , its only $60 more expensive with more storage and full HD screen

 

ASUS G73JH-X3
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...s.asp?EdpNo=5725517&sku=A50-17315&srkey=G73JH

12.3% bing cashback ($190)
total cost = $1365

cashback steps:
1)adblock off
2)bing shopping
3)search "laptops"
4)click the 12.3% Tigerdirect link on the right.

It's a hell of alot better than the Best Buy model.

 

well, had a G51 that I ran hard for 9 months, and really liked it. No problems at all, totally reliable.

Now, sold that to a buddy and bought a G73, and while this is my second, the first one was because of a dead left speaker, which could happen on ANY notebok. CPU/GPU hardware wise, have had no issues at all, totally reliable for the past few weeks since I've had it.

If it's mainly going to sit on your desk, I'd get the G73. If you are going to be moving around with it much, the G60 is what'd I'd buy, as the G73 is quite large. Would not even consider the G72, and the G60 is simply an upgraded G51, so wouldn't buy the G51 either.

 

I've just recently got a secondhand G51 and the build quality is rock solid. Cooling seems well designed and I've had no heat issues even gaming for hours without an external cooler.

 

Asus G73jh equipped with Core i7-720QM processor, maximum 8GB of memory, 8-channel HD audio, 1TB hard drive, of course, the built-in Radeon 5870 graphics card. Screen is 17.3 ", 1920x1080 the FullHD screen, coupled with Blu-ray drive ,8-cell battery, 2mp webcam, 8 in 1 card reader and mini-VGA, a word there are many places where you can show off, but such models Nature will not light weight!

 

So how much of a performance boost did you get with the i7-820QM?
Better FPS in games?
Can you post those benchmarks?
Never had any of those models but I do have a G60VX and it's still running like new.

 

I've owned both a g51jx-x3 and a g73jh. The g51jx has a BSoD problem asus hasn't resolved YET (although I havn't looked for about a month)... and I prefer the nvidia card to ati; we have tools that use cuda for research - but the size difference isn't particularly large, and neither is the performance (except when crunching numbers, but I doubt you'll be doing that).

ALSO, if you get a BB model, you'll have to deal with BB warranty, not asus.

I'd assume that g73 will have fewer problems over the long term, if your GPU is great when you get it, ATI doesn't have the horrible track record nvidia does with shoddy GPUs ...

 

He's not talking about the FHD version of the g73. You should check the model numbers he's asking about.

FWIW, if reliability is an issue, the G72 might be better - replacement parts are cheaper and more available.

 

Suprisingly no. I DID however do a fan mod to the bottom plate. Took a circular saw and cut a whole through the back plate then I sanded the edges and added a filter screen to keap things clean. it helped cool the core i5 by 10-15c don't know how much it helped the core i7 but I have to expect it was more. I run at about 40-45 idle? I am on my desktop now, will post some screens later.

I know load NEVER gets above 78c. I don't know how that is for an engineering model, yes I was cheap and bought an illigal model form the chinease mafia

as far as coolers, I might invest in a cooler that can shoot fresh air directly inot the mod, when I run a mid sized room fan over the whole I can get down to condensation levels.

Well, The only bench marking suite I have been able to compare aples to apples was Cinebench. And I'd say there was about a 30% improvement in multithreaded applications and about the same with single threaded if not a LITTLE better.

I have also got slightly overclocked gpu 3dmark 06 scores but only for the core i7.

I don't really fancy the idea of slapping the core i5 back into my beast to see what the actual increase was. To be honest I'd like to see others with this model and see what their stock scores were and then compare them to my maxed out scores.

But give me some time, I will post my 3dmark scores and cine bench scores this evening. Also I will run furmark if you like, and would you like pcmark vantage also? I'd like to run 3dmark vantage but I can't do it under performance mode, screen resulutions of course, but I can run the cpu tests and post said scores.

 

Sounds great!
Thanks for that, so how long did you have your G60JX before you opened her up for surgery?
Any game benchmarks?CRYSIS??
Sorry if Im asking to much but this laptops potential with a QUAD has me really interested.
First thing I did with my G60VX wad put a T9900 in it and it flies.

 

Thanks for your inputs everyone! I appreciate them.

I'd really like the TigerDirect version of the G73 but I think you need a US billing address for the Credit Card to buy from them and the BING cashback could only be applied for after two months right? I'll be in the US for only a month.

Best buy is the compromise since I will be able to pay for the laptop with cash.

As for the warranty, I was under the impression that Asus will still provide 1 year of warranty (as opposed to 2 for other retailers).

Lastly, I am not brave enough to do physical mods to the laptop. Won't that void warranty?

 

Yes physical mods will void the warranty.
@pugboy9
The only scores for 3DMARK06 I seen were with the BB version of the G60VX and were around 9800 at 1366x768 res.

 

G73 is the best, BUT

Considering the performance / price, I think the G51JX is the best bang for the buck. It has a great video card that will satisfy most gamers (those not requiring native resolutions for games), costs like 400 dollars less (BUY THE -XA VERSION and it's 1,100 CAD vs. 1,500 CAD). It's slightly more portable, and the i7 720 is plenty zippy for most people's needs.

If money is no object and the laptop does not move much, then you should get the 73. The ATI card in that laptop is phenomenal.

If you are looking for the best power/price deal in laptops IMHO, go with the G51JX.

I personally have a g51J, which I'm happy to say ASUS fixed the BSOD issue with a BIOS update. They took their sweet time, but I expect they will do the same thing for the JX.

Heat IS an issue for the J, but it's manageable if you get your hands dirty. I did the vent mod (will void warranty) and it made the temperatures much more manageable. The JX has a much more efficient card, and I understand the temps. are reasonable without the need to mod.

 

I had my laptop for about two days. I put my 60gb ssd in and a clean copy of 7 home premium 64bit.

I bought the cpu about 4 days later and installed it about 2 weeks ago.

I didn't get a chance to run a lot of benchmarks. I thought I would leave this puppy alone but after I slapped inthe i7 I had to dust offthe old 3dmark validation keys.

Sound reasoning bestbuy is a decent alternative. yes the store models have a 1 year warrenty, sorry to have gotten your hopes up on that one. But dollar for dollar I still feel the asus will provide a great laptop.

now as far as the mod goes, yes it will void your bestbuy warrenty, unless you buy a second back plate which can be obtained easily enough, then as far as ASUS is concerned warrenty backed!

Well I will start posting new scores for the g60jx then let the results begin!













Just thought I'd post my cpuz results to show the cpu is being recognized



Idle temps before running furmark



Furmark settings



sorry for the poor quality, the temp had a high of 83 before the fan kicked in then it dropped down to 79/80 pretty consistant with other models right? but then I decided to plug up my hole, no pun intended



I usedmy wallet to plug up the hole. the temps shot up to 91 then settled at 89/90. this is where the hole really proves it's worth. If I tried to runmy gpu without it I'd be getting lock ups pretty regurly. most users won't experience this because they have the cooler running core i5 which still gives the gpu an 85-86 with no whole. so in review core i7 raises gpu temps by 5-6c.



I also decided to simulate a cooling pad and the hole AFTER the "wallet" test.

The temps dropped to a consistant 75/76c

mind you my simulation was based on a small room fan from two feat away with the air flow directed over the hole. I was get ~30cfm. which is about average for a performane cooler.



After the furmark experience I ran the simulation cooler test again at ile to see how low my system could get. these temps were taken ~ 3 minutes after the test.

Notice my gpu nice and cool 37 oh yeah! mind you normal use without a cooler will be in the upper 40's.

now the fun part was the quad core under the furmark test the quadcore reached 64c on one core telling me that the furmark program is single threaded. not the best for load temps but pretty good at simulating a decent game on the market. remember this was the highest temp the cpu recieved durring the wallet test.

I was happy to get the cpu down to 38/39 with the sim cooling pad.



Now for the only test I had results for that the only difference on my laptop was a core i5 or a core i7.

as you can see the core i7 gets about 50% more performance than the core i5 nice scaling, almost perfect.



now this might not look impressive but I did the math the core i7 out preforms the core i5 by 20-24% on single threaded operations this again is a beautiflscale since 3.06ghz on the i7 is 21% faster than the 2053Ghz onthe i5. why does the performane out do the theoretical scaling? my best guess would be the L3 cache differences.



I know that cpu's usually don't have much of a bearing on gaming performance, and the difference is somewhat small, but here is the explanation.

the core i5 benchmark in the picture had the gpu at an overclock rate, I didn't record the clocks but they were close to 625/1925/1450.

so the core i7 allows the gpu to perform better without overclocking at least in this bench mark program.



this one is of the gpu test with the gpu over clocked on the core i7, I am able to get5fps more on the core i7 over the core i5 this is about 20% performance gained.



3dmark vantage score for the cpu, not bad really, not bad at all should be able to find the i5 equivelant somewhere.



3dmark06 11K that's 2K over the the other model you found since 3dmark06 can't do much if anything with the cpu I wanted to run vantage to give that part of the equation.



And I threw in pcmark to get an overall rating of the laptop. breaking 10k is big for a laptop, especially when I didn't overclock the gpu for this test.

OK, I am done you guys can digest this info,I'm going to bed

 

Wow!
This is great, good work bro + rep
keep them coming.

 

I thought after reading this thread that I should suggest another version of the G60 being the G60J series. I purchased mine in France last month and after reading the threads mostly based on the G60vx, I discovered my unit was substantially different. My G60J has the PM55 rather than the HM55 chip set, which gives me the features missing from the other G60 series as well as the G73. I have the 720qm CPU, GTX260 GPU, e-sata, VGA, DVI/HDMI ports, bluetooth, wi-fi, express slot, SD memory slot and 2 ea. 500 gig, 7200 rpm Seagate HD's with Blueray tossed in as a bonus.

I am very happy with the unit's performance and have had no problems. I did install Ultimate Win 7 32 bit for better compatability with older programs and Ubuntu 9.10, with I prefer for general admin tasks and internet use. I had no problems other than drivers/codecs for external devices. I did update all the Asus and Nividia drivers, as well as cleaning up the GPU/CPU heat sinks and applying AS5. This last action dropped the GPU temps from 95 down to 89 and the CPU temps from the 70 to 60 ( about 10 C difference). I do plan to mod the case and put in a fan in the fake vent, as well as at least 1 miniature fan to improve interior component cooling.

My complaints are few. I wish the USB connectors were toward the rear and the Video connectors in the back. I don't like the very limited BIOS options. Also, I wish the optional 9 cell battery was easier to obtain. I hope this helps some one trying to make a decision. I think the only drawback to some will be their desire for a higher resolution screen. Personally I think the 16 inch screen is just fine once it is properly calibrated. It is much lighter than the G73 in weight and of course more portable and with better battery life. Add the 9 cell and it becomes more attractive.