g73jh-bb version initial impressions and questions

Hi All,

I was really nervous to get the g73jh from best buy because of all of the reported issues. It wound up being the only thing available when I had the cash so I downloaded everything I thought I would need and bought it the 23rd of December.

Initial impressions:

1) The build date on the notebook is 11/15/2010
I haven’t looked at any driver or bios versions.

2) The keyboard works fine. Sometimes I hit the WIN key and drop to the desktop on accident but that’s more of my ham-handed gaming style.

3) The touchpad works fine. I disable it for gaming and use a mouse but for everything else it works fine.

4) Left for dead 2 will run for many hours with the very highest settings and super smooth frame rates. I run WoW with everything maxed including sunshafts and I only drop below forced 60hz in ogrimar or dalaran when there are hundreds of people and flying mounts. Fallout 3 and New Vegas look AMAZING! they look SOOOOO much better than on the consoles it’s not even funny. I run both with everything maxed and locked at 60hz. It’s silky smooth. I had some hard lockups playing these games, but I founds out it was because their engine can’t handle 4 cores well so I modded the ini file to only use 2 cores and those games run fine now. I’m going to install fraps and stalker and do some real benches.

5) 1600 x 900 doesn’t bother me, in fact, I think at full HD some things would be too small for comfort. It’s subjective of course, but I am happy with 1600x900.

6) The super multi combo drive can be very loud at times.

7) The Notebook hasn’t gotten hot or loud (fans) at all and I have had some long sessions.

8) I have had no flavors of SOD. pink nor green nor prismatic.

9) I removed some bloat, and left some more. I have a list somewhere I’ll post when I find it.

10) I am liking Windows 7.




Now, I have a couple of questions for owners of the g73.

Above the keyboard on the upper left (opposite the power button) There are three buttons. The middle one, I’ve guessed from reading the box, is a one-touch overclock?

What does this do? It’s not covered in the sparse (for asus even) manual.

Also, what are the buttons to either side of it?

 

The 3 buttons work as follows from left to right:
1st one Little light with line through it)-This controls the blue lights and the keyboard light on the computer. Pressing this cycles the lights on and off.

2nd: The Twin Turbo: Most have shown that the "overclocking" feature that this turns on actually lowers performance but you can test and see for yourself.

3rd Screen with S) this cycles through the splendid utility color profiles for your screen.

 

Hey I got a question, I have the same model and I play L4D2 too and I play on max settings. I get no lag whatsoever, but the loading screen is slow. It takes about 30-45 seconds to load. Does yours do the same? I wonder if it's my internet connection or if this is something else.

 

I play l4d2 all the time and I would say 30 seconds is the upper limit but I dont go beyond that.

 

Yeah, it does take forever. More than 30 seconds, I'd say.

 

do you have the 640G drive version? If so, this is your problem, as it comes with a 5400RPM drive... if you have the 500G version, then you have a 7200rpm drive, and that shouldnt be the problem...

 

How can you tell the difference?

 

Look at the model number(s) in Windows Device Manager then look up the model to see its rotation speed?

 

Or download something like CrystalDiskInfo (google it..), it tells a lot of good to know things about your HDDs. Also, L4D2 taking a long time to load is perfectly fine. This probably has something to do with *cough* illegal *cough* *****.

 

Could be video drivers. I noticed on the stock drivers my load times were really long. After updating them to 10.12 it cut load times in half.

 

I have the newer BB version with the 640GB HDD. It's one of the newer "high areal density" drives and its throughput is about the same as a 7200rpm drive without the extra noise, heat, vibration and power draw. But if you really want fast load times, get an SSD. My L4D loads in about 9 seconds.

And I agree with the OP: 1600x900 is perfect for gaming. Full HD is 44% more pixels for the GPU to push around -- more heat, more strain, lower framerates. You can always pipe the signal out to an HDTV or HD monitor for Full HD. The card can do it, no problem.

Also, if you want to upgrade your BB model to 8GB, here's the RAM module I bought from Newegg. It's cheap, compatible, and works great. There's an empty RAM slot that's easily accessible and just begging to be filled.

I moved the 640GB to the 2nd bay and rigged up a system to hold it in place since there's no hard drive caddy there. I put a small piece of plastic underneath it and some compressed foam earplugs to hold it in place. Works great. Bay 1 has the SSD in it with a clean-install of Windows 7. Most games are installed on the 640GB drive but L4D and a couple others are on the SSD for faster load times. You don't want to fill up your SSD more than about 70% because it needs empty space for TRIM and wear-leveling. Your SSD will last a lot longer this way.

 

Perhaps the difference between our CPU's and/or video driver versions? Idk, but its not too long/bad

 

You don't have the BB version so your post isn't really relevant to this thread. Those with the G73JH-RBBX05 have an i7-720QM. Mine's the G73JH-BST7 with the i7-740QM. Not much difference between the two. But game load times are going to be dependent on throughput from the hard drive (or SSD) more than anything else. CPU will not affect it that much but video drivers might, to some extent. Graphics drivers will have more of an effect on actual play rather than load time.

 

True, but I just wanted to add that if mine does get more then 30 seconds then either way there is nothing to worry about

 

I highly recommend an SSD for the G73. The platter-based hard drive will always be the bottleneck in your computer without one. Yes, they're expensive, but I believe they're worth it. There's a really detailed thread here in the hardware section dedicated to SSDs. Lot's of good info in there.

 

I find it very amusing that whenever "gaming" is mentioned, that it is assumed that it refers to First Person Shooters, and that the whole technology exists for them. Well, there are other games, and your formula does not hold true for all genres. RPGs benefit from the greater real estate so one can have more 1-click icons for abilities and spells, as an example. They also do not require gobs of FPS. 45-60FPS is perfect.

 

You got me there... I'm a shooter. I haven't yet gotten into the RPG's, MMO's, RTS, etc. When I get tired of shooting and blowing things up, I'll give them a try and make whatever hardware adjustments work best for them.

 

Dragon Age represent!

 

Did my avatar give me away?!

 

BTW, The link with the extra 2gb ram is 1333mhz. What if my bbmodel only has 1066mhz? Is it okay to put extra 2gb ram that has 1333mhz?

 

Heh, 7200rpm drives, on Steam.

I just find it takes forever. I've always thought it was my connection.

Not a true RPG. Baldurs gate though... that's a good RPG. Dragon age is an awesome game, but besides choosing your area, it's quite linear. I mean, there is an entire battlefield and I'm limited to a very small space. No ruins to accidentally find. Still, AWESOME game.

 

The 1333mhz stick should work fine, it will just be downclocked a notch to match the RAM you already have installed.