ASUS G73SW Owners' Lounge

Soem of my best temps yet! Notepal U2 cooler on the G73.

 

I am jealous! The lowest I ever got is around ~40C. Then again, room temps are 30+C.

 

When comparing temps, it is better to compare the difference between the ambient and GPU temps. Silicon dissipates more heat at higher temperatures due to resistance increase, but with the temps we're dealing with, this phenomenon is usually negligible or will equate to one or two more degrees.

 

Like I said, these are the lowest, with pretty much my windows open to just let the cold air in.

 

Fahrenheit, are you sure your graphics is 128 bit? I've got the same G73SW as you but HWinfo says it's 192..

 

^ I believe what you saw were the Unified Shaders. Bus Width says 128 bit

 

Precisely, open GPU-z and figure it out. Mine is a 1 GB card, 128-bit only. 1.5 GB is 192-bit.

 

Just ordered a 2820QM! Can't wait to install that beast in my laptop, just a week or two to wait.

 

Hello, all
looks like ASUS has a decent community going here. Comming from the AW side, i see that here it is Done in the Owners Lounges etc etc. Well, i just picked up a BEst buy version G73sw and i have some questions. Id really rather no read 70ish pages and 100s of posts looking for specfic questions.

- Can i upgrade the Video card to a better on that is MXM 3.0 such as a Dell 5870M, or a 192 bit 460gtx, or 6970, or 6990 or 560m etc.

- See that there is a throttle issue whit these machines, i thought i remembered reading there is a non official BIOS that allows for some changes ( changing the PROCHOT in the bios would be nice)

- What Proc's are compatible with this thing? ( mine has 2630qm)

_ will the Bigfoot Killer 1103n work in this? or am i stuck with this horrible wifi card =P

-offer any thing is should just do immediately that isn't in the Driver thread?


-THANKS!

 

So far, the only upgrade that was successful is the 192-bit Asus GTX460m. I suggest throttlestop to fix the throttling, if there is a modded bios, i am not aware of it's existence.

Regarding the CPU, any sandy bridge CPU is compatible, i don't think the chipset supports unlocked multis though.

The bigfoot will definitely work, but you'll have to wire a third antenna yourself if you want one.

 

Welcome to the club! To answer your questions . . .

-Proprietary video card format means that nothing other than the GPU from another G73SW will even fit

-Throttling can be solved with Throttlestop, you can just set it to run on startup and you pretty much don't have to think about it, more info here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...3sw-owners-cpu-throttling-798mhz-how-fix.html

-As said by the previous poster, any Sandy Bridge CPU should be compatible, I recently purchased a 2820QM to swap in, just waiting on delivery now (2630QM is already a nice jump from anything before Sandy Bridge though)

-To my knowledge, just about any wifi should be compatible

-I would highly recommend a clean install to clear out any bloatware

 

Do the GPUs still have the retarded reverse pinout?.... has anyone seen a pic of the ASUS 560gtx? i would imagine that its similar and the machines are similar builds.....remember i cam from AW mod everything =) i was a pioneer of getting the 460s to work in the R2.....if i can find an ASUS 560GTX i will probably try it unless its a different pinout..

 

It's soldered onto the motherboard with the G74 unfortunately. Honestly, the one thing I regret about getting into the Asus G series is the complete impossibility of a GPU upgrade in the G73 and G74.

 

The pinout isn't reversed, however svl7 tried a 6970m and 470m in a G73JW and it didn't work out. After three attempts by three different people, a fully working 6970m G73JH was obtained though. Basically, you'd have to try out a card from another computer you own or from a friend's before buying one to make certain you can get it to work.

 

There are possibilities of cards working, but, it is not worth the $400 loss if you can't test a card ahead of time. Since you do however have the Best Buy model, you can get the upgraded 460M, but that's going to run you about $300. I am thinking about doing this, and then maybe selling mine for $200.

 

Only thing you might want to consider there is that there is not exactly a big market for 128-bit GTX460M's. Pretty much the only possible buyer would be someone who has a G73SW and fried their GPU or something . . .

 

Yeah, true, if $300 comes out of nowhere, that's where it will probably go xD.

I could sell for $100, just to get some bucks back.

That 20% is the difference between having some games run really well or being just awful, like Skyrim. I don't really want to sacrifice quality, but I just need a little more horsepower to get rid of random dips (HOPEFULLY).

 

Haha, I understand, I just blew $300 on a processor after all. And I'd drop another wad of cash in an instant if only I could upgrade the GPU to a 485 or 580 (it would be a dream come true if someone could devise a way to make that work)
It's really a pity that Skyrim is so poorly optimized, we can only hope that patches and mods get things running a bit more smoothly sometime soon.

 

Hello guys, could you help me with finding 2 drivers for my laptop?

As I mentioned earlier, I'm suffering from flickering between power charge and battery mod. I want to try to reinstall power management driver but I don't know which one it is on Asus website. Does anybody of you know what its name is?

I also found out that there is a problem in device manager. There is an exclamation mark on "other device" - "USB 2.0-CRW". I guess, a drive is missing but I remember installing USB 3.0 driver. Any idea what else I need to install?

Thanks for any help

 

What you need is "Power4Gear Hybrid Utility" which is under the category "Utilities" on the website and the "Multi-Card Reader Driver" under the category "Card Reader".

 

Guys, im still going through the skyrim performance thread but what is settings u guys use to play skyrim comfortably?

 

The memory bus is 192 and I have the BST6

Unfortunately, you were absolutely right. The frequency of the flickering has increased to almost unbearable level. I'll have to try RMA. The problem is that I'd wanted to save some money and bought it on Ebay so I don't know if they'll fix it for free...

 

Because I'm too lazy to retype:

Shadows look like crap to be honest, but it's worth it for the performance boost.

 

After patch 1.2, I run at High, all view distance settings maxed, FXAA on, no AA, 8x AF, and other details enabled (water, sky, etc) @ 1600x900. Very playable, but I still get those random slow downs, I haven't tried any other mods to increase performance.

Sent from my MB855 using Tapatalk

 

what is up with the touch pad on the G73sw? this thing is ridiculously bad

 

It's pretty awful, I use a mouse 90% of the time. Since the laptop is so big I can just put my mouse pad on the right side over the number pad and move the mouse around there.

 

it freezes up ALL THE TIME , is there a fix or????

 

Then it is either a driver problem or a faulty touchpad.

 

Hey all!! I just got a G73SW and I'm so happy!! I am used to building my own towers, but when I saw this beast a few months back, just the sight got me drooling, I think this thing looks so sleak and powerful...even if the insides weren't the most elite, I just had to save and get one.

So, now to push it further. I'm purchasing a new SSD, I figure about 120gig just for the os and a few choice mmrpg's I play, and move over the 500g HD to the other slot.

I went to crucial and had it scan and saw 4x2g ram and slots, it says it can use both pc3 10600 and pc3 12800, but when I've scanned over a few pages of info to decide on the best....fastest and most reliable RAM I come to find out that since I have the 2630QM it can use a 12800 but it wont get 1600 speeds....so...

Which is it? Can I use it for the fastest speeds or should I just get pc310600 nice ram since it wont push past the speeds I want anyway?

I do know from reading on this site that you can upgrade the cpu also, but at this time I'm just doing a couple upgrades, but may upgrade that as well at a later time.

Thanks!!

Legion

 

Just get 1333 MHz, 1600 MHz is like a 2% performance increase at best. You should have 4 DIMMs total so you should have 16 GB if you decided to get another 8 GB.

Also, yeah, I would go for the CPU upgrade last. Something along the lines of the 28xx or 29xx series.

 

Only 2%, ah well, was hoping it would be worth it for maybe another 10% boost atleast. Yeah will eventually get a cpu upgrade probably within the next 3-4 months, but want to take advantage of the holiday sales on memory and the ssd's.

Thanks!

Legion

 

If someone else already have calibrated profile for CMO1726 Please upload it!

 

ASUS G73SW-A1 - $1,465.00

- 17.3" FHD 16:9 "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Glossy Screen (1920x1080)
- 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 2.2-3.1GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache) - Special! (SKU - X2N164)
- Stock OEM Thermal Compound
- nVidia GeForce GTX 460M 1,536MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11 (SKU - X3R451)
- 8GB DDR3 1600MHz CL9 Dual Channel Memory (2x4GB SODIMMS) (SKU - X4N203)
- 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 Sandforce Solid State Drive (Up to Sequential Read 550MB/s - Write 500MB/s SSD Serial-ATA III)
- 500GB (w/ 4GB SSD Memory) Seagate XT 7200RPM NCQ Hybrid 32MB Cache (Serial-ATA II 3GB/s) - Default (SKU - X5R405)
- Combo Dual Layer SuperMulti DVDRW/CDRW Drive w/ Software (SKU - X7R452)
- Bigfoot Networks Killer™ Wireless-N 1102 (2x2) (SKU - X8R051)
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Pre-Installed + Drivers & Utilities Disk

VS.

Sager 5175 - $1,429.00

17.3" FULL HD (1920X1080) LED LCD w/nVIDIA GeForce® GT 555M w/2GB GDDR3 - nVIDIA Optimus Switchable Graphics
Intel® Core™ i7-2760QM (2.4~3.5GHz) w/6M L3 Cache - 4 Cores - 8 Threads
Sager Thermal Compound
8GB (2x4GB SODIMMS) DDR3/1600 Dual Channel Memory (Intel® i7-2630QM and up Required)
120GB Intel® 510 Series SATA III Solid-State Drive
Combo Dual Layer DVD +/-R/RW CD-R/RW Drive w/Softwares
4-in-1 Memory Card Reader (MS/MS PRO/SD/MMC)
Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6230 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi + Bluetooth™ 3.0+HS Combo Card
6-cell Smart Li-ion Battery (62.16Wh)
Windows 7 Premium - (64-Bit installed - 64 and 32-bit CD included)
Full Range 120W Auto Switching AC Adapters



Ok so I ordered the Sager about 5 days ago and just found this phenomenal sale on the ASUS G73SW... 250$ instant rebate.

My question: for those who own one, especially who have for a while, are you happy? Is this thing a lemon or for the most part, solid machine?

Please advise as I need to cancel my Sager order asap if I'm going to make the switch. Thanks guys.

 

I am happy with mine, especially with a re-paste/re=padding. My temps are similar to that of a desktop and there is a lot of overclocking headroom. However, the one you have configured will be considerably faster than mine.

I'd get the Asus, of the two you configured.

 

First I have to ask what you are looking for in your laptop. If you want decent battery life and portability, stick with what you've got. However, if you want raw power, you should definitely cancel that order, but the G73 is not necessarily your best bet for the money, unless you're buying it used. I have no complaints about the quality and reliability of the G73, but the GPU, while faster than the 555, I'd already showing its age in gaming. So, if you want to keep the same price point and get a good bit more power, I'd order a Sager NP8170 or NP8150 with a 6990M. Alternately, you could save some money and pick up a used G73. One with a equivalent configuration would probably run you around $1000 (factoring the SSD into the equation).

 

Better Asus , GT 555M is weaker than GTX 460M , if for games there processor not so important like GPU. Overclocked GTX 460M is almost GTX 560M, so fill the difference!

 

Thanks guys...

Check it out though. The 8150 isn't even close pricewise w/ same options AND a 6990 upgrade. If you drop the CPU to 2.0 ghz - save $50. Drop the 1600 ram to 1333, save $50. No other options to drop. So the cheapest I can get the setup, new, w/ windows 7, is $1669.00 AND it doesn't come w/ a second HD OR extra bay for a second HD along w/ my CD/DVD drive.

Sager NP8150 / Clevo P150HM
- FREE!! Continental (U.S. Lower 48 - UPS Ground Only) Ground Shipping on ALL Sager Laptops - Until 01/01/2012
(Enter Coupon Code: "SAGERFREESHIP" during order process)
- SAGER Sale!!! - $100 OFF When you spend $1500* or more! (*excludes accessories, shipping, non Sager items & taxes)
Confirmation of discount will be provided after Order Processing. + Sager Price Protect & Chance for Xbox 360 Giveaway!
- 15.6” FHD 16:9 LED Backlit Wide screen (1920x1080) Super Clear Glare Type Screen (SKU - S1P318)
- NO Professional Monitor Color Calibration
- Standard Dead Pixel Policy
- 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 2.2-3.1GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache) (SKU - S2N224)
- -Stock OEM Thermal Compound
- ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD6990 2048MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11 $100 OFF (SKU - S3R151)
- No Video Adapter
- 8GB - DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 SODIMMS) (SKU - S4R371)
- Sager Branding
- Standard Finish
- 120GB Intel 510 Series Solid State Drive (SSD2 Serial-ATA III) (SKU - S5R055)
- Combo Dual Layer SuperMulti DVDRW/CDRW Drive w/ Software (When selecting a Hard Drive in the Optical Bay, No Optical Drive is Included) (SKU - S7R455)
- No Extra Optical Bay Hard Drive Caddy
- No Back Up Hard Drive
- NO External USB Optical Drive
- No Floppy Drive
- Internal 7-in-1 Card Reader (MS/MS Pro/MS Duo/MS Pro Duo/SD/Mini-SD/MMC/RS)
- No Back Up Software
- None Standard--
- Intel® Advanced-N 6230 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module + Bluetooth (SKU - S8R111)
- No Network Accessory
- Built in 2.0 Megapixel Camera
- No TV Tuner
- Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audio - Included
- Basic Black Business Case - Included
- Smart Li-ion Battery (8-Cell)
- No Car Adapter
- None Standard*
- No Dock/Hub/Adapter
- Integrated Fingerprint Reader
- None
- No External Keyboard or Mouse
- No Notebook Cooler
- No Thanks, Please do not Overclock my system (Overclocking will add 3-6 business days to build time)
- No Operating System Redline Boost
- ~Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Installed (64&32-Bit CD Included) w/ Drivers & Utilities CD's + Microsoft Office Starter 2010 - Included with OS Purchase
- No Office Software
- No Software Bundle
- LIFETIME Ltd Labor* 1 Year Parts Warranty Lifetime -24/7 DOMESTIC Based- Toll Free Telephone Tech Support (Labor Warranty through Xotic PC)
Includes FREE Shipping Both Ways for Warranty Repairs (SKU - X9R009)
- No Outside of US Shipping Coverage
- Standard Production Time
- No Xotic PC Gear
$1,769.00


Can one of you find a better deal?

I could go used.. but, I really want this to last me 3ish years and i'm afraid of going used/refurbished for that reason.

I'm using this for gaming, school and work. I'm taking courses online for my masters right now and am also a real estate agent and use online software a lot. Games will be SWTOR, STO, Skyrim and eventually Diablo 3.

 

It's the SSD that's driving your prices through the roof. Honestly, you could save $80 or more buying a 120 GB SSD on your own. And you'd be better off saving money and getting a significantly larger HDD. In a single hard drive setup, 120 GB will be extremely limiting, especially on a laptop used for gaming. In a couple years SSD prices will have dropped to a point where even 500 GB solid states will be much more affordable, and that would be a much more effective data solution. And both the 555 and 460 will be feeling pretty anemic by that point, but a 6990 should still be pulling strong. If I were you I'd get the most powerful GPU for the money, because they age so much faster than hard drives and processors, and you can always get a much better deal on an SSD a little way down the road. And don't forget the $50 discount you can get for being a member of this forum!

 

How hard is it to instal your own ssd into a laptop? I've never built laptops but have desktops..

For that matter, if I start out w/a 7200 rpm hdd for my primary, will I be able to switch to the SSD for my primary w/o having to repurchase windows software?

 

Easy as pie on all the laptops you are considering, they all have convenient access hatches. You just take the old hard drive out of its caddy and throw the new one in. And Windows reinstallation isn't very difficult. You can just create an install disk from the files found here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

And the activation backup program referenced in that post even saves you from the trouble of reentering your activation key. So, you don't have to buy anything!

There are also drive cloning programs you can use if you don't want to go through an installation.

 

also.... i was under the impression that the gtx460m was a 192 bit GPU... is that not true, is it 128?

 

Would you rather start out w/ a 500 gb hybrid drive + 6970 OR 500 gb 7200 non hybrid w/ 6990?

If installing the ssd is as easy as you say; your advice to max out GPU first is definitely correct then..

And, the Asus g73sw is likely to never have an upgradeable GPU from the 460m?

 

Best Buy models are 128 bit on the G73, buy it from anywhere else (so Xotic is fine) and it'll be the full 192 bit.

Definitely go with the 6990 and non-hybrid drive, HDD speed gains are negligible with a hybrid drive.

And yeah, I am sad to say that with the G73SW it is pretty much impossible to upgrade the GPU due to the proprietary MXM format that Asus used.

 

So what's your vote on this setup?

ASUS G73SW-A1 - $1,465.00

- 17.3" FHD 16:9 "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Glossy Screen (1920x1080)
- 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 2.2-3.1GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache) - Special! (SKU - X2N164)
- Stock OEM Thermal Compound
- nVidia GeForce GTX 460M 1,536MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11 (SKU - X3R451)
- 8GB DDR3 1600MHz CL9 Dual Channel Memory (2x4GB SODIMMS) (SKU - X4N203)
- 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 Sandforce Solid State Drive (Up to Sequential Read 550MB/s - Write 500MB/s SSD Serial-ATA III)
- 500GB (w/ 4GB SSD Memory) Seagate XT 7200RPM NCQ Hybrid 32MB Cache (Serial-ATA II 3GB/s) - Default (SKU - X5R405)
- Combo Dual Layer SuperMulti DVDRW/CDRW Drive w/ Software (SKU - X7R452)
- Bigfoot Networks Killer™ Wireless-N 1102 (2x2) (SKU - X8R051)
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Pre-Installed + Drivers & Utilities Disk

VS.

Satori P170HM - $1,544.00
17.3" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED Backlit Glossy Display
Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.2-3.1GHz
(12GB) 12288MB, PC3-10660/1333MHz DDR3 - 3 SO-DIMM
AMD® Radeon HD 6990M 2GB GDDR5
320GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA-300
8X Multi DVD+/-R/RW RAM Dual-Layer Drive
Intel® 6230 Advanced-N 802.11A/B/G/N LAN and Bluetooth Card
Windows 7 64 bit

Do you think it's worth it for the extra 100$ knowing i'll have to drop 150 - 200$ on a 120 ssd later?

 

Yeah, I would definitely go with the Sager, totally worth the extra for what amounts to double the GPU power. And I wouldn't worry too much about spending $200 a year or so down the line, it could be a birthday gift to yourself somewhere along the line!

And are you sure you need 12GB of RAM? 8 should be sufficient and would save you a little cash!

 

#2, my lord, #2!

Also, to drop cost a little bit, you could get 8 GB of RAM (doubt you will need more if this is just for gaming and other light tasks) and then you could pop for a 500 GB 7200rpm HDD. However, all else looks good, and then just get an SSD down the line.

 

Thanks guys... you've saved me from myself!

 

Hi Guys, just joined up after seeing this thread - I have a major issue with my G73, mainly the fact you cannot disable hyperthreading - I saw the posts back on page 207/208 regarding this - but it seems no one ever managed to disable it - is this still the case? Or has someone managed to fix it?

FWIW I am using the computer to run solidworks, which only runs a single thread, meaning that hyperthreading is literally halving the performance of it.

 

Nope, never got HTT disabled, tried a couple of different things, but it always stayed on. :\

 

hi guys, getting issues with my ethernet port/driver. occasionally the ethernet port doesnt show up on my network connections, and when i plug in an ethernet cable, nothing happens. Device manager shows the yellow exclamation mark next to the adaptor, and after uninstalling and reinstalling the Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller it works again.
Ive also noticed for some reason my ethernet connection speed drops down to 10mbps instead of the usual 100mbps. To resolve this i have to manually change the duplex speeds from auto negotiation to 100mbps half duplex. Any ideas as to whats going on here?