Asus C90S Review & Live Video

seriously guys, it isn't that big of a deal. This machine will still play everything you want it to very well, whether or not you have money for an upgrade now or later doesn't really matter, since you can upgrade it at all. The 8600M GT in any form will be more than enough to survive at least a year, in which you can save up some money to pick from the HD3xxx series and GeForce 9xxx series.

 

I think its hilarious that in the Asus forum you guys find out its gddr2 and go about your business, while in Dell they found out it was gddr2 in theirs and then ripped off 300 posts in 8 hours about jumping off bridges, etc.

Kudos

 

I agree with all of that. Unfortunately it's not currently possible to buy a C90 barebones with no video card -- is it?

I also believe that the Mobility HD2600 and HD2600XT will be better cards than the 8600M. Like I said before though -- ATI has always had some driver issues, which scares me.

 

As a side note, right off the bat Vista business is better than Home Premuim. It boots quickly and looks a little nicer. (I have used home premium a ton, this feels better to me)

 

3350 in 3dmark06 with gpu clocked @ 475/500
retesting again with 500/550
I think it would be incredibly helpfull if anyone can find out the stock clock in g1s and g2s.

 

maybe you should leave the core at 475?

 

My final conclusion:

Think about price difference of C90 and G1 and it was true it seemed too good to be true. There is a 150-200 price difference so something had to take a hit. In actuality if they used the gddr3 version it would destroy the difference so people would be like why buy the c90 when I can get the g1 except for the processor? Sure as hell why I bought the c90 cause of the priced and the future upgrades. Since this is a weaker video card it will also makes the upgrades whatever they may be more attractive (Asus is a business after all). Point being after figuring out overclocking test results it should be on par with g1 or near g1 and thats without overclocking the cpu.

Like right now I am more eager to save up for an upgrade which should be like what 300 to 350 max? Considering the 8600m mxm is 185. But don't fret it is still a great laptop just a slight disappointment and its not like the c90 cant deal with the overclocking heat.

Edit: Eddie stock clock is 475 for the core and 700mhz for the memory for the g1. Yeah and try just raising the memory for now without raising the core.

 

well keeping the core down limits the amount of bandwidth to the memory, which makes overclocking the memory harder. I dunno, though, why leave the core at 475? (That isn't sarcastic I actually wanna know)

 

I just looked into turbo gear and it has a "VGA Turbo Gear" in it as well...

 

c90s destroyed the g2s in all aspects of pcmark except graphics. That makes it worth it. As i mentioned above it would be incredibly helpfull for someone to find out the clocks of the g1s or g2s without me having to open one up and waste a few more hours

 

Eddie look at my edit in previous post.

 

You can buy it without the Video card. The cost is about $772-$800 without the card. The Video card 8600GT 512 is 180-198. The issue now is to find out when will ASUS get the other 3 GPU sku out the door so we can have more choices of GPU when configuring the C90S.
I must say ... the 8600GT 512 DDR2 is a disappointment. I hope ASUS would be nice enough to release 8600GT 256MB GDDR3 so that those of us who are disappointed with the choice of memory in use in the current GPU can still get performance on par or above par of G1.

 

are you sure? c90s crashed with 700 and 600 clocks for ram
how sure are you? is your source dependable?

 

explain... ?? why the c90 is better then g1s/g2s ? i will buy one, now, i must decide...

 

G1S Clocks are 475/700 "stock."
Highest 3DMarks06 on an IFL90 with the underclocked 8600M GT "stock" clocks at 475/400 achieved 3924 after overclocking to 545/495.

http://www.laptopspirit.fr/test-du-compal-ifl90stingray-z84/

EDIT: Highest so far that I have seen. On a side note, overclocking the core does not seem to have that much of an impact on scores compared to overclocking the memory clock.

 

clock: 500/550
score: 3587
nothing else overclocked
retrying further with 475/600 if it can hold

 

At the moment ...it look like C90S is not a better choice than G1 however this can change if ASUS releases a C90S GPU with 512GDDR3 in the future.

Benefit for G1 at the moment: Battery life due to mobile processor and low power newer chipset, plus the added benefit of GDDR3 memory GPU.

Benefit for C90S: upgradeable GPU with the hope of ASUS release a better GPU in the future compared to G1.

 

yeah because it is ddr2 Eddie cant handle the clock speeds. Like the f3sv example I gave with the ddr2 vs ddr3 the ddr2 wont be able to reach the ddr3s stock speeds.

Eddie here is how to do it properly :
1. Leave cpu on stock.
2. Try doing the core first while not changing the memory. 1 reviewer found the max to be 545 but hes not doing it properly your supposed to raise only 1 at a time. Ok raise the core to 530 and keep going by 5-10 increments until it crashes. Once it crashes take that number and reduce it by 5 thats the max core if it still crashes then reduce it by 5 again. That is the max core.
3. Now put the core back on stock. Raise the memory (guy found 495 to max) so try 475 and keep raising by 5-10 increments until it crashes. reduce by 5 until it runs, (reduce by 5 again if it still doesnt run if your using 10 increments, you get it) that is the max memory.
4. Finally try the max cores and see if it runs if it doesn't reduce each by 5 once more. It should be fine by this point.

 

It seems that there is a magic combination of the core and memory to get the highest score, rather than just tuning everything up till it drops.

 

c90s destroyed g2s scores in pcmark by far except the graphics score. How do you justify the statement above?

 

No one can tell what which is the better machine for you. They can give you comparative benchmarks on things like CPU speed, memory throughput, FPS on games, battery life, etc.

They can also be subjective on things like build quality, screen quality, etc. They often don't tell you when they're expressing opinion rather than some objective information so read carefully.

Any machine will have strengths and weaknesses. You have to decide which machine is strongest for your needs.

 

I agree with Eddie, graphics scores aren't everything, so far the gaming benchmarks indicate otherwise as well.

EDIT: left out a key word =P

 

Oh I agree I am still very satisfied with my purchase and do not regret it one bit. Like I wrote in my final conclusion post it was a bit too good to be true for the price but it should still perform on par with the g1 in gaming and like Eddie says the conroe blows the santa rosas away. Only thing was it was said it was gddr3 but ended up ddr2 which was dissapointing. If I had heard ddr2 from the beginning I still would have purchased the c90.

Eddie Read my previous post.

 

I am just thankful that I stumbled across this forum. If not.. well... I'd be screwed. I've learned enough on these forums to the point where when I start talking about the laptops I am looking into people just look at me funny as if I am speaking another language.

Everyone here is helpful and has good-to-sage level advice. I've been torn up about buying a laptop myself recently and all the threads here have helped a LOT. I have a much clearer picture of what I am looking for and once I decide on my laptop, and purchase it I'll keep you all updated. Hell of a decision to make, a lot of money, so I'm making sure I do my research first.

 

Perhaps he's talking about the global score, that i think the C90S is lower than the G2 isn't it true?

 

great info... rep up!

chris

 

Do I really need to provide a justification for it when you state the reason yourself. CPU wise ...of course C90 beats G1 or G2. But the game rely 65% upon the GPU for performance. So in that case G1 or G2 do beat C90S for now. That will change if ASUS releases a GPU with same spec or better spec than G1 or G2.
I guess I could say that ASUS released a Porsche 911 but made the mistake of putting a boxter engine in it. So for those who have to consider G1 vs C90 the question now falls into ...are you willing to wait for a better GPU option. If not then you cannot expect C90 to beat a G1 atleast for now.

 

3dMark06

Asus G2S-A1 (2.2GHz, 256Mb GDDR3) ------>~3,800<------

Asus c90s (2.4gHz, 512Mb DDR2) -------->~3900<---------

This is correct ?

 

xenupy that's with the 8600M GT of the c90s cores overclocked isn't that right?

 

I suppose however you should compare it to G1S rather than G2S.
2.2Ghz 256MB GDDR3 score is 3630 at stock and 4221 on overclock ..both at (1280x1024).
vs
C90S at the moment... stock was <3000 and so far overclock is around 3900.

 

The G1S/G2S scores in the mid-4k with OC.
Then again, like many people said, benchmarks aren't everything.

 

c90s beats the g1 and g2 in the following areas
1. cpu
2. system memory bandwidth
3. hard drvie throughput
It does not beat it in 3dmark scores which liek you said is heavily dependant on the gpu. Consider the facts. C90s is a faster machine with a slightly weaker video card

 

3995 was attaned with a lower resolution. atm it means nothing. I dont know what the g1s got with that same resolution but from what i remember it was also just under 4000 points. i dont know what it means.

 

Since people keep asking to confirm... here you go.

G1S (1280x1024)
Stock: 3630
Overclock: 4221
G1S (1024x758)
Stock: 4746
Overclock: 5411
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=125246

G2S (1280x1024) Very similar to G1S as the only difference is processor & screen size.
Stock: 3632
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=127196&highlight=G2S+score

C90S
Can't say... people need to provide 3dmark picture of score and resolution/clock used to allow comparison.

 

no cpu overclcoking
525/500 , 1280x1024
3dmarko6 :3515
The conclusion is the video card here is simply weaker. overclocked or not.

 

was that max Eddie? Reasonable. Once you overclock processor to gaming/overclock mode which boosts cpu by %20 it should be on par.

 

so the G1s gets a higher score that the C90 with Stock compaired to the C90 overclocked? I didn't realize that GDDR3 made that much of a difference. Thats around a 800 point differnece

 

would overclocking the processor force the gpu to come down at all. i know it would not have much of an effect in a desktop but what are we looking at cooling wise in a laptop with an overclocked gpu and cpu.

 

No the two run independent of each other and do not influence what each others settings are. Respectable score. So g1 stays true to being a gaming notebook but yeah c90 will have the edge in most other tasks like Eddie said its alot faster in pc mark. Still its not like the c90 is that far behind. We also have to sett in game results. The extra 256 mb which doesnt help much in the 3dmark should help more in the in game performance further shortening the gap.

 

Once you use the asus oveclock util and set the gpu to 525/500 (those settings are reasonbly safe after a few loops you get just over 3700 points. Its conclusive the gpu here is about 20% weaker. it is not underclocked too much. raising the clocks provides modest improvement by about 10% as expected. I would not recomend raising the clocks much higher then that as i did encounter alot of instability.

 

Wow great work Eddie. I am not disspointed. Thx for all the patience and work. That score can only get better with new drivers and firmwares. Consider me a happy c90 owner .

 

pehaps you may be right. I published the base score in my review. We will uphold our policy in the warranty about overclocking. Any notebooks sent in for rma which have been found with overclocking software not made by asus will be declined for warranty.

 

I think it is reasonable to assume that the c90s in terms of gaming performance is 20% weaker. g1s can be overclocked just as well. comparative tests should be on stock settings. Asus did not underclock this model any more then they underclocked the g1s ot g2s. 475/400 are the default clocks and should be left that way for anyone that does not want to void their warranty. We have a clause in our warranty about overclocking.

 

Vicious is right it was too good to be all true (lower price with better specs)

If asus does release a better GPU then in a year or two (Im already way over my budget so most likely in two) i'll upgrade it

 

Have some more very unfortunate news.
Atm the c90s has a severe software defect where power4gear or the new variation causes the notebook to hault and bsod. Trying to work it out now. I dont know if it is related to our windows install or what but i hope there is a simple solution to this. Between the missing screws, faulty wifi, underpowered gpu, not such a great touchpad and faulty power4gear i am not a happy camper and atm all our order will be delayed

 

Anyone of the other computer builders had this problem namely GenTechPC

 

i now belive this is a serious bios issue or hardware. It is not just in software. All orders should be held from all responsible dealers until a solution is found if this is present accross the board

 

Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn. This is my first new notebook since my ibook g3, and i would have liked to take it on a camping trip on Saturday. And I have ~40 gigs of games in steam thats going to go on it. Damn

 

Wow, thats sad news, especially after bragging about their individual quality check being the cause of the delay.

Is there any chance that its just an anomaly with your system and not a systemic problem across the C90 line?