ASUS U500vz/UX51vz Owners' Lounge!

I would say it's a perfect match.

Get the VZH(2880x1620) version if you can afford it, the display is IMPRESSIVE!.

 

Hi there,

I updated to Windows 8.1 yesterday and have been problems with the graphics card in my Asus UX51VZ ever since. Now the screen colors appear 'washed out' and for whatever reason if I do a dixdiag it is showing the integrated Intel card instead of the Nvidia card. (Basically seems to be stuck on Intel no matter what the application) I've tried uninstalling drivers, deleting devices etc. and the updating both Intel and Nvidia with the latest and greatest drivers to no avail. Has anyone else had this problem with this machine?

 

Kermode, it is normal for the direct x diagnostics screen to show the Intel HD graphics 4000 card because that is what is being used at the time you run dxdiag. The way I understand it is the notebook will switch to the Nvidia card as needed but at idle and for simple applications such as this it will default to the Intel card. There is a way to go into the Nvidia control panel and force certain apps to run on the Nvidia card, but I don't think it will ever show up that way in dxdiag.

Sorry, I know that doesn't explain the washed out colors. I updated to 8.1 and don't have that issue. I see that you have already tried the drivers. Just to be sure, you can find the drivers at this Asus site, or just go to Asus support and enter your model, etc. This driver is listed for Windows 8, but they don't have a new one for 8.1 as it should be the same. I am using that driver with no issues. I would go to the Nvidia site for their driver if you haven't already. Also, have you gone into the Nvidia control panel and made sure you are running the right resolution and 32 bit color depth?
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download UX51VZ

 

There is a beta driver from Intel and Microsoft for Windows 8.1. There seems to be a change in the Windows 8.1 graphics driver model vs. Windows 8. I am still running Windows 8 but I have installed the 8.1 beta driver. So far it is running flawlessly. I wull update to Windows 8.1 after reading more and more reports out of field experience by users ;o)

Windows8.1 x86 and x64 graphics driver availability status (Windows)

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=23194

Cheers


Edit: In fact I have installed the Windows 8.1 Developers Preview beta drivers. Sorry for the confusion.

 

Just for reference. I had this problem with my battery (see this post).

I ended up with sending the notebook back to my dealer. He inspected it and sent it to ASUS for repair. Yesterday, exactly 1 month later, I got it back. The repair status report says it was a faulty connection between battery and mainboard and ASUS fixed it (soldered?).

Just so you know what it could be if you encounter the same problems.

 

Hello folks,

I've been lurking here for months as I made up my mind which laptops to buy. Now I'm posting since I've just received my Asus UX51VZ-XB71 ultrabook, It is the UX51VZ model with 2880 x 1620 resolution and no touch screen with 8GB RAM and 2x256GB RAID0.

I previously purchased the 1080P UX51VZ model but a home burglar stole that before I could even use it so when trying to replace it I decided to go for the higher end high-res model because I wanted to do photo editing with it a lot.

So far I think its a great laptop. Nice looks, very thin and great build. However I'm a bit overwhelmed by the large resolution and majorly underwhelmed by the SSD drive and the ASUS out-of-box-experience and included software.

First of all with the resolution. I always liked the thought of having a "retina" class display (though in 16:9 aspect ratio) but I'm finding my enjoyment tarnished by blurry and too small to read text when browsing the web with Google Chrome which I'm dedicated to using over Firefox or Internet explorer. With default Chrome installation, the browser is completely unusable as it renders it's main window, tabs and text as if I had selected 100% scaling in Windows DPI setting - I don't . I have Windows set to scale the UI by 150%. Most of the Windows built-in software is usable at that setting but not Google's Chrome. After some googling, I enabled the experimental high-dpi support and that improved things a bit but the text is still to small, the fonts are still blurry and some sites don't render correctly. Oh well... I'm going to try Lightroom on it tonite to see if it is a better experience than on the standard 1080p displays. Also does anyone know how to get proper calibration settings for the display? When I go to display properties the display is described as "generic PnP monitor". That was the same thing I experienced on the Samsung AtivBook 8 (with touch) that I also recently purchased. Because the display is marked as "generic", there is no manufacturer specific icc profile associated with in Windows.

My other main problem is that the SSD drives were setup in RAID0 but then the space was partitioned by ASUS into two separate hard drives (damn!) and a bit of space is wasted on various recovery partitions and one large (~20gb) uninitialized disk that I have no idea of its purpose. I want to have one single 512GB (or close to it) partition for Windows and my personal files but I can't figure out how to non-destructively merge the space taken up with the D: drive's partition into the C: drive. I first tried deleting the D: drive/partition with Disk Management but then it wouldn't let me merge the existing C: drive with the now empty partition that D: drive used to take. Does anyone know how I can merge the second D: drive with C: without wiping the entire drive?

Also I found the SSD drives to be quite slow. I can't explain it. I ran the ATTO benchmark against the empty D: (data) drive/partition and the highest data read throughput it was able to get was under 80MB/sec. This does not seem right because I can easily get 120MB/sec out of my desktop's 7200RPM SATA drive using file copying. It was my expectation that SSD drives were much faster than that and that the addition of RAID0 across two SSDs would give me something around 300 to 500MB/sec max throughput. Does anyone have any idea what could be going on here? I'm now running Windows 8.1 Pro on the laptop.

Finally, OBE, I noticed problems with some of the included ASUS software. The Vibe? software is crap and does not even work properly with high resolution displays (very tiny text) and I could not really figure out why it was pre-installed on my laptop in the first place. I refused the McAfee program's EULA during Windows first boot and after I got to the desktop I found I could not uninstall it due to blank error page every time. After I upgraded to Windows 8.1, McAfee suddenly disappeared. Since I have experienced laptop robbery recently I was wondering how I enable the anti-theft feature of the Intel processor/system. I hope this anti-theft feature was not linked to the included McAfee because the McAfee software is now gone from the system. Has anybody managed to setup intel Anti-theft (AMT?) on a laptop recently? How did you do it? I would like the laptop to be able to be tracked/phone-home/record&send pictures in case it is stolen and also wipe the hard drive if the thief tries to access it.

Some of the other software like the cloud storage looked iffy and had bad english grammar/translation and I wonder why. Same thing with the Asus web sites when I registered. The bad english and grammar scared me into thinking I had signed up on a fake asus phishing site or something. I don't really understand why the applications and web site of Asus support appear like they were made in China and English translation was a second thought. I looked really hard for Asus software to make a recovery disc for Windows 8 but could not find it. How do I make a recovery disc for this laptop that can be used to restore it to the original ASUS factory condition?

I also could not understand why you can't find any information about Asus UX51VZ-XB71 on any official Asus web site. I googled it and not one site with info on this laptop points to Asus.com. It makes no sense. Why would Asus not have any information on their own sites about their own high end laptop even though I can buy it and it is listed on sites like Amazon and B&H. For what it is worth, I bought mine from BestBuy outlet for much less than the retail price but it seemed refurbished as it came without manuals or the subwoofer.

Please forgive my negative tone but I'm definitely looking forward to joining proud owners of this laptop and hearing from you on tips and tricks to get the best out of it.

 

Hey guys, had a UX51VZ for a little while now and im loving it.

Only problem im getting is with really weird lag spikes while gaming. Have yet to diagnose if its a router problem or the laptop because it otherwise works really well.

As a side note, is there any reason i would not be able to upgrade to wireless ac by putting on of these in?
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Plus Bluetooth*

They look to be the same size and i don't think the internal antennae will be a problem, but i've never done that sort of upgrade on a laptop before so im a bit unsure...

Thanks

 

Dont try change. They have a different size of antennas connectors. In our laptop, antennas connectors is smaller then standard.

 

Ikenga, Do NOT install Intel Anti-Theft on this laptop!!! I had to escalate to their CEO in order to get it fully uninstalled. The software is extremely poorly written, and you will find yourself locked out of your own laptop permanently.

I am mobile right now, so I don't have the link to send to you. But when I get back in front of my laptop, I'll find the link to hundreds of super angry users of this mess of a software. Just don't do it!

 

Thanks a lot for the heads-up. I look forward to hear the full story when you get back online.

 

Thanks for letting me know. Since this is an official Intel card the antennae must have been standard size at some stage? It there some way to adapt the smaller antennae to the larger ones?

Is there another card that would fit correct with the smaller sockets?

 

The larger antenna size is still standard, it is the UX51vz that have a smaller connector (IIRC Murata HSC/IPEX MHF4) probably because the build height of the standard connector would require making the notebook a bit thicker. Doing some searching earlier it seems like one can force the smaller antenna connectors into the larger ones but IMHO that seems risky.
The best way would be soldering smaller connectors to a WLAN card.

 

Thanks heaps for the advise (also for the names of those connection standards)

I think im going to buy a set of the correct size antennae and just attach them to the base of the laptop. That way i don't do anything permanent, i don't have to take the screen apart and i don't need to solder anything.

Worst case scenario i waste a small amount of money and end up with poor signal, at that stage i will probably look into soldering those connections to the card

 

Hi all, I've had a UX51VZ for almost three months now and just wanted to share some of my grievances, in case anyone is experiencing similar problems. Let me say that I was tremendously excited to get this laptop because it seemed like the most perfect option for me on paper, literally checking every box (discrete GPU, SSD, 1080p touch, slim, good-looking). However, I am seriously thinking of replacing it soon.

I have the dual 256GB model with 12GB RAM, touchscreen and running Windows 8.1 Pro. First of all, it needs to be said that Asus has horrendous quality control. This is actually my second unit; I had to replace the first one because the touchscreen was not working and the keyboard had crooked keys which were very obvious. I thought my second one was fine but I realised after taking it home that it too has crooked keys, albeit not as obvious as the first one. Nonetheless, it's one of those things that you can't unsee once you've noticed it, and really detracts from the uber-premium feel this laptop is going for. The only reason I haven't replaced this one is because I have more important things to do than to keep sending my laptop to the store.

It also turns out that the touchscreen on my unit is not perfect either. Most of the time it's fine, but sometimes the touch input just turns off, usually after I close the lid and open it again. Even system info will show that there is no touch input available. There is no immediate fix for this, I just have to keep restarting the machine until it decides to turn touch input on again.

The biggest problem for me, however, is with my work. I'm an automotive design student and one of the most important softwares I use is Autodesk Alias for CAD work. It seemed so straightforward at first: the GT650M should have no trouble handling CAD and rendering. But it was a chore to get it running to even a usable level because the program did not recognise the GPU and instead defaulted to the Intel graphics which obviously aren't cut out for this. After adjusting the Nvidia settings I managed to activate the 650M, but the performance is woeful. My research has concluded that this is because the GeForce has not been certified by Autodesk for Windows machines, but that does not explain why my friend's 2011 Dell XPS 15 with an older GeForce card has no issue whatsoever. In fact, my 2010 Dell Studio XPS 1645 with a Radeon 4670 handles the same CAD files far smoother than the Asus, despite also not being certified by Autodesk. I don't do any gaming at all so the GPU's prowess in that area is irrelevant to me.

Another serious issue I had was with D:, the second SSD. Thank goodness I had everything in there backed up because more than once I would have entire folders' worth of files rendered corrupt and read-only, so I couldn't even delete them to free up space. So far I've had to reformat the disk at least three times to recover the space.

At this point I'm just waiting for the Dell Precision M3800 to become available, because at least I can rest assured that the Quadro K1100M would be certified by Autodesk, and I've had a good experience with Dell before.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

YYJ, I understand your frustrations and share them. Since you are running CAD programs, I understand that you have to run Windows.

I've posted here many times, that I broke the RAID the first day I had the laptop. I had several reasons, but the biggest one was that this just makes zero sense for performance reasons on this particular laptop.

You might consider going through many of the earlier post it discusses how to break the RAID and set it up as two separate drives. I can guarantee that you'll never see a decrease in performance.

as for the graphics driver issue within Windows, I really can't help you there. I do about 95 percent of my work in Linux and I have no problems using the Bumblebee configuration that juggles the Intel & NVIDIA graphics cards. Windows supposedly had this fixed well over two years ago, so the problems that you're having almost sound like an application vs.an OS issue. But again, I'm just postulating on this as I don't seem to have this problem in Windows with what I am running.

 

In case anyone is interested: version 1.0.0.0 of NoteBook FanControl is out. It is free and it comes with a built-in temperature profile for the UX51VZ -> [Vorstellung] NoteBook FanControl (NBFC) - ComputerBase Forum
I am running this and its previous versions without any troubles and it makes a difference in the noise level for light workload.



P.S: Regarding the conversation above I also have broken up the RAID 0 configuration mainly because of the reduced chance of data losses. The SSD speed does not make any noticeable difference. In fact having Windows on the system drive and my data and some portable software on the data drive is not the worst thing for overall disk speed.

 

I really don't think its because the 650 is not certified. Typically only workstation class video cards get certified for use with professional graphic software but that doesn't mean others don't work. I've got the 512 no touchscreen model and do occasionally work in 3ds max without any performance issues. So that makes me think it might have something to do with your renderer settings or so on. Have you tried searching and messing around with different settings?

I primarily work with adobe cs and on my old desktop at work which had geforce 210 (that was on the approved list by adobe) I had nothing but problems with it. So eventually had to turn GPU acceleration off. Point being even if a card is approved or certified you can still have problems.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Dear Gentlemen,

I bought an UX51VZ-XB71 a month ago.

1) I installed Win 7 64 bit right away. Managed to update all drivers (Asus not supporting Win 7 is unbelievable!). But I CAN'T change the screen brightness by using either the hot keys (utility is installed and functioning), the display options or the power options. The sliders do move but there is no change in screen brightness of the display.

As you can imagine, my eyes are constantly sore and my battery life is a pathetic 3 hours at best when just surfing the internet on minimized power consumption settings.

I have already tried the following:
- Different Nvidia Geforce drivers from Nvidia's website (R331.x)
- Different Nvidia Geforce drivers from Asus website (9.18.13.x)
- Disabled the Adaptive Brightness
- Uninstalled the Generic PnP Monitor driver in Device Manager and rebooted

Unfortunately I did not try the brightness adjustment options on the terrible Win 8 that the computer shipped with, since I reformatted it right away. So I can't tell if this is a hardware malfunction or a function of the complete lack of support for Win 7 by Asus.

PLEASE SAVE MY EYES!!!

2) I bought this laptop for the ability to maximize graphics performance and minimize it to save energy consumption as required. So I decided to see if I could squeeze some extra battery life by switching between the GPUs. However, no such function can be found in either the power options or the Nvidia drivers. I decided to disable the Geforce in the Device Manager. This works but it gives me only a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200. However, I am pretty sure that this laptop should be running on the integrated HD 4000 GPU when not doing any graphic intensive tasks, like web surfing. But since I always run it at its native resolution of 2880 x 1620, this would make it impossible for it to use the HD 4000 even during normal web surfing tasks, if I see that disabling the integrated GPU gives me a significantly lower maximum resolution. This leads me to believe that battery life is being significantly drained by the discrete GPU even on minimum power consumption settings. Does anyone have any ideas on this?

I thought that this could be a driver problem. But none of the Intel HD 4000 drivers from the Intel site install on this computer, it always gives an error of "this computer does not meet the minimum requirements for installing this software". I tried disabling the discrete GPU and even removing its drivers completely to see if that could help me install the updated driver (per a Googled response to this issue from an Intel employee who said the drivers won't install if you have a video card) but the error message keeps appearing. I even tried the icky online Intel Driver Updater but it did not even find the integrated HD 4000 GPU! What's a poor soul to do?

Now I can't tell if the integrated HD 4000 GPU is EVER used by this laptop, leading me to believe that we've all been lied to about the capability to switch between graphics cards.

P.S. This laptop has the worst mousepad I've ever used.

 

I just benchmarked my new Asus UX51VZH (WQHD+) running Funtoo/Gentoo Linux setup with software RAID0 through mdadm (no intel matrix here!), and here are the whooping results:

http://www.petterk.net/files/downloads/disk-benchmark.jpg

Thats almost 100mb/s faster than in Windows 8 with the Intel fakeraid.

 

If you have the HiDPI version (which it seems you do, like myself) there is no Intel HD Graphics. There is only the NVIDIA one as the other cant handle the resolution.

You can set the power mode in NVIDIA control panel to adaptive or power-saving, and this should help alot.

I run Linux, threw out the Windows 8 garbage on mine, I get between 3-5 hours depending on use. If idling, I can get more.

 

Where do you get the information that there's no Intel graphics? As far as I know every single IVB CPU does have integrated GPU. I'd also think it should be able to drive wqhd display.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

If you read through this thread you'll find multiple sources to that.

I can also confirm that, as I have one myself.

The chip is disabled. I know every IB has it, but it's not active on this model.


For example, check out this wiki from Arch Linux: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ASUS_Zenbook_UX51Vz

"Note that unlike most other UX51Vz models, this one has no integrated Intel graphics (plain Nvidia, not Optimus) and a retina 2880x1620 display."

 

Dear Petterk,

I am having an O M G moment right now, since I was hoping for that integrated GPU to save me some power! I feel befuddled now.

Do you know what could be the reason for the lack of control of the brightness? It's driving me crazy. The only remaining option at this point is to send this expensive door stop to Asus in the very ephemeral hopes that they might wave their magic wand and fix it. In all reality, they will likely blame my unsupported Win 7 and reinstall Win 8. I am so frustrated

 

First of all: This is a fenomenal laptop, by far the most impressive I've ever owned. I see some of you guys complain about certain stuff which 99% sure isn't the laptops fault.

This laptop comes preloaded with Win8. Therefore, function keys etc cannot be guaranteed to work. This is a software problem, and not a hardware problem. There is no need to send in the laptop for this issue. You are right, they will only do a software recovery on it and ship it back to you.

I suggest you either do a fresh install of Windows 8/8.1 and install all of the drivers found on Asus Support. OR, you can toss away the whole Windows shabang, and do a clean Ubuntu or Linux mint installation. I highly recommend people to try a Linux distribution, as there is nothing that really cant be done in Linux when compared to Windows.

All in all - I cant really help you figuring out the problems, as Im quite sure the problems are within Windows 7, and not the laptop.

 

The function keys work just fine! It shows the brightness bar moving when I press them. Except there is no actual change in brightness! I would hate to be forced between Linux and Win 8 because there is no Win 7 support for this function. I've tried everything I could find on Google about this issue, which is not much since it doesn't seem to be a common issue. So I am wondering if it could be defective hardware in my particular case. I guess I will reinstall Win 8 to check if it works there.

What would be the benefit of going with Linux? Can it run engineering software?

 

It will most likely work under win8. Is there a particular reason why you're so against win8? All of the metro stuff can be disabled by installing start8 and once that's done I can almost guarantee you wouldn't even notice you're using win8. Unless you have a different reason, like a particular program not working under win8 which shouldn't happen anyway.

And yeah while all the recommendations on using Linux instead of windows are appreciated people need to realize that it usually comes down to software compatibility. I for one would love to use Linux but none of the software I use is compatible therefore it's a no go.

 

xismno, No way that I am challenging you, just curious what you run that drives Windows use. I have one or two, apps but that's it. Otherwise, my day goes well in Linux.

The bigger issue I have with Asus that causes me to not recommend them is their many configurations of the same old . And of course, their POS support.

 

As mentioned primarily adobe creative suite for my living (no Linux support) as well as DJ/music production software mainly from native instruments (again no Linux versions)

So unfortunately until these large software companies have a change of heart and all of a sudden start developing Linux versions, any Unix based distribution is pretty much out of the question. Unless I ran it through VM but then what's the point...

Of course only speaking for myself and my needs specifically. Linux is great for a lot of things but unfortunately not for what I do.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

And these are all actually valid reasons. If you make a living out of software that currently only runs in WIndows, then ofcourse, you wouldn't want to change. My target is the people who use Windows just as a habit and actually just ignores all of the faults it has when there could be better options out there.

Anyway, regarding the brightness problems for you gibba;

If the keys work and all of the nescessary software is installed, and the only thing that's missing in your setup is to control the brightness, I would seriously consider downloading a 3rd party application that lets you bind keys to control the brightness. There are tons in Linux, I dont know of any in Windows, but Im sure they exist. Google is your friend.

 

Dear Petterk,

Your advice worked and I now have total control over the brightness. I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart. May karma bless you!

 

No problem! Enjoy this great laptop! By the way, I just setup my nvidia drivers to adaptive when on battery, and performance when on AC. Will post battery times here later

 

Hey all, I am new to the forums and bought the u500vz online a week ago and got it delivered yesterday.
I am experiencing some strange issues, to begin with the fan is really loud and with loud I mean abnormally loud! it seems to be always on aswell. Another major issue I ran into is that I have no sound! I've tried uininstalling and reinstalling the REALtek drivers from both the driver CD, the ASUS support page of the u500vz and also the ones from the official realTEK website, nothing worked! The weirdest part of it all is that my headset which is the Razer Kraken Pro works flawlessly when I plug it in. Is there anyone here who has a clue what might be going on here? Help would be much appreciated!

Cheers,

Ryan

 

I would try to set the computer to its factory default state by using the inbuilt Recovery function. Should be a key combination, often F9 at boot.

If that doesn't work, seems like you've recieved a faulty machine.

I have called asus about this computer before I bought it, and in Norway atleast, there havent been many faulty units at all, so seems like bad luck if thats the case.

Regarding the fan noise, there are many who have had this problem. What kind of U500vz do you have? If you have the one with the retina-display, there is a bios version 207 at asus.com that solved the issue for me, but dont try that bios if you dont have the retina display, as it's only for the UX51VZH. Check out asus.com to see if there's a bios update that fits your machine.

 

I've had this machine (US-version UX51VZ non-touchscreen) for a couple of months now and I've been dealing with a pretty frustrating problem since I bought it. I'm at wits end, and I'd love it if anybody could give me any suggestions.

I found a review at Review Asus Zenbook UX51VZ (U500VZ) Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews that lists the machine's Cinebench 11.5 rating at 5.6. When I run Cinebench on battery only I'm seeing 100% CPU utilization, clock speed at 2.8GHz on all 8 cores and get the same score. When I plug the machine in to AC, I see 57% CPU utilization, clock speed at 1.2GHz and get a Cinebench score around 2.3.

This mirrors my own use; I'm an engineer in grad school and I run Matlab scripts that take about 2 hours to execute. On battery only they complete in ~1 hour, on AC power they take ~2 hours. I just completed a reinstall of Windows 8.1 Pro and was (super) disappointed the behavior has continued. I am running the newest BIOS (204) and the utility won't let me re-flash the same version. I've tried all Windows power profiles and confirmed CPU limits are min=5% and max=100% on AC and battery. I have also tried 2 different (OEM) adapters, and the behavior is identical.

The only ASUS-specific drivers I've re-installed are the ATKACPI utilities and Smart Gesture (touchpad software). I did install the Asus Power Gear software and found the issue was not resolved (so I uninstalled it; I don't understand what additional capability it is supposed to provide beyond Windows' own power management).

I will point out that I didn't really notice anything until I started running these very intense scripts, because day-to-day use being capped at 57% CPU utilization isn't restrictive for web browsing/Youtube/etc. Can anyone with a clean-install of Windows confirm they can see 2.8GHz on all cores while on AC power? Does anybody have any idea what might be happening on a clean install of Windows? I've spent a few hours on the phone with ASUS tech support and they really aren't very helpful, they just want me to send it in. This is my only computer and I just can't be without a PC while I'm trying to get school work done. I've attached a screenshot of my CPU utilization running Cinebench, as you can see, power was unplugged about half-way through the run and CPU utilization dropped accordingly.

Any help, tips, suggestions would be infinitely appreciated!

 

Seems odd, although I would recommend you dont remove any of the ASUS software that is bundled with the Win 8 install, other than the obvious crapware.

Asus HybdridEngine is supposed to deal with power-settings, and it seemed to work fine the 2 hours I used it before throwing out Windows on mine.

You also have an advanced-tab in that program, although I didn't check it out. Maybe there's something you can do from there? You should be able to switch power-profiles by holding Fn and pressing the Spacebar, although probably not without the Asus HybridEngine.

Try installing all of the software from asus.com if you did a clean Windows install, and try changing powerplan by the aforementioned keycombination. Thats probably your best bet, and this seems like a software issue aswell, and thus should be solvable.

On my VZH running Linux, I get approx. 3ghz on all cores when on AC, and 2.2ghz on battery.

 

I need a new laptop quickly and have been trying to decide what to get. I need it to be 15", lightweight, and have decent hardware specs. I'm considering purchasing the Zenbook UX51Vz-DH71, but it seems a little overpriced, and there may be something better available that I'm not aware of.

Would you recommend the UX51Vz-DH71? It's about $1,800 on Amazon right now..

 

I can definitly recommend this laptop. It 's got everything you want - power, great battery life, great screen (especially the 2880x1560 version), mobility, SSD's, decent graphics.

 

Thanks for your advice! If I get it, I'll probably end up going with the DH71 since it's cheaper (it's $1,812.99 on Amazon right now). I'm pretty sure this is the one I'm going to get (it looks like a great laptop), but I just wanted to double check that there's not a new model or better alternative before pulling the trigger

 

md_lieber
Also you can try in bios setup menu to set "Default Settings" in "Save and Exit" page. And then press F10 and Enter.

 

So does anyone know how I can make a backup of the recovery partition and re-install after I partition my drive into one large raid drive instead of the two partitions currently?

Also I just learned just now from this thread that my Asus model (the one with retina display) does not have an onboard Intel video. That surprised me as the 1080p model does and I assumed that the only difference between the two was the display. Anyway, on my desktop is the Intel WiDi program and each time I try to run it, I get a message from Windows saying that there are compatibility problems with the program and Windows. I follow the instructions to update drivers/software from Intel web site but then the Intel software refuses to proceed saying my hardware is not supported. Do you know if Intel WiDi functionality requires the onboard HD4000 video? Also why did Asus include this Intel WiDi software on my machine if it will never work?

 

2880x1560 - not the best choice.
1. When you work in most programs, it looks very small. Even when scaling 150%, even Windows 8.1.
Many programs still do not work properly with such a high resolution. You'll break your eyes.
2. Absolutely all games and 3D applications will slow down on this resolution. GT650M graphics card can not cope with such a resolution and 2GB of memory no enough for large textures in such a high resolution. When reducing the resolution, everything will look blurry and fuzzy.
3. In the model with 2880x1560 no Optimus technology, ie integrated graphics from Intel is not used. Always running Nvidia GT650M. Therefore, the battery life is markedly reduced and more heat.
This notebook is excellent, but only need to buy a model with a resolution of 1920x1080.
A 2880x1560 is just a stupid marketing ploy.

 

Link WiDi requirements: Self-Service
If you have laptop with 2880x1560, you can`t use Intel WiDi technology.
Stupid marketing ploy from ASUS.

 

Thanks for the suggestions petterk and Klem66. The saga continues; I installed all of the software on the ASUS site for this machine and there was no change in behavior. Then I did a clean install of a 32-bit Windows 7 disc I had laying around and tested it as soon as the machine was running; same behavior; low score on AC power, about twice the score on battery.

I also found a command line flag, '/nodate' that allowed me to flash an old BIOS version over a newer with WinFlash and I can confirm the behavior is the same for BIOS versions 203 and 204. Klem66; good idea about making sure the BIOS is at default settings.

I sure don't know how this could be hardware related, but with 2 totally separate OS's and 2 versions of BIOS tested, I don't understand how it could be anything else. Is there anything else I should be looking at?

As always, thanks everybody!

 

I don`t understand are you try to set "Default Settings" or no?
And you need to try run some different bench programs, Aida64 stress test or any other.
And you can try to use program Throttle Stop 5 or 6, and try to set in this program differents multipliers.

 

I disagree with you. Although some programs dont work perfect with this resolution, eg google-chrome, you can scale up the size of the fonts in both windows and in the program itself, I see no problems in doing this.

Also, when running games, I can select any resolution that the 1080p model can, and the image dont look blurry when doing this. For example, I installed some games from Steam on my computer, set the resolution to 1080p, and the image seemed just fine on this resolution aswell.

Yes the onboard graphics is disabled, but you can tune the power-settings in the nvidia control panel (atleast in Linux), to prefer power-savings over performance when on battery, and vice versa when on AC.

Currently my GT650M is running at 135mhz (instead of around 800) because Im on battery, and I get good battery times.

 

petterk
I don`t want to argue with you. But unfortunately all that i have written is true.
+ In models with 2880x1560 do not work technology WiDi.
+ In models with 2880h1560 glossy screen (not good)

 

You're right that WiDi doesnt work on this model because it has no Intel graphics.

But all of the other statements you made, I consider false. Also the panasonic panel I have in my U500VZ-DB120H is NOT glossy, but MATTE.

 

Is there anyone that use WiDi? I sure don't.

No only the touchscreen model is glossy - the high resolution one is matte.

 

False? You have Optimus?

 

You stated "Therefore, the battery life is markedly reduced and more heat."

I run Nvidia only, set it to prefer power-savings (adaptive) over performance when on battery, and get about the same battery times as you expect from the optimus-configuration in the 1080p model. Computer is currently running at 40 C degrees on the GPU, 46 C degrees on the CPU. Do you consider these temperatures, problematic? I sure dont.