M50Sv: Review & Owners' Lounge

Actually, I might be wrong in my previous statements regarding the smaller die of the 9500m GS. Let me just confirm that the 9500m GS 512mb DDR2 is the EXACT same card as the 8600m GT 512mb DDR2 but with better power utilization. This may be the reason why the 9500m GS scores slightly better in 3Dmark06. So just to reiterate, the 9500m GS in the M50Sv is in fact a 80nm.

I think this is a software issue related to your OS or media player. Try updating and see if that works.

It should come with Nero, but I use AVS media since it's also free and IMO a better media player

Welcome to notebookreview!
Wow... looks like the M50MV is with the penryn refresh and comes with a slightly better GPU. The 9600m GS is the exact same card as the 9500m GS but with a 65nm die instead of the 80nm. It should be a bit faster than the 9500m GS, but probably won't surpass the 8700m GT in terms of performance.

You can try reinstall the drivers for your fingerprint reader from the drivers CD. Let us know if that works out for you

 

It's only available in Australia though. There is also a toshiba with a 9700m gs. Ayayay! Technology is really fast.. I havent gotten the chance to be with my notebook and now faster and beefier products are surfacing

 

Thx 4 d reply... On idle, my temp is 65~70 .. On load 70~80...

 

Those temperatures are perfectly fine
I was just gaming earlier today for a couple hours and my GPU peaked at 79C

 

Is that stock or overclock? do you do anything to cool it? like cooling pads or mods?

 

That's actually with the CPU slightly overclock (about 5%). No mods.. using 174.31 drivers and on XP.

 

What are you using to monitor those temps? I am using nvidia monitor. I'm using the 174.82 drivers and played team fortress 2 for about five minutes and alt tabbed and the monitor said my temps were 82-84 C and thats with nothing on my pc overclocked. Maybe its just the firmware?

 

I'm using EVEREST to monitor temps.
Yes, it's very possible that different drivers can produce different temps too. 82-84C is still in the normal range and I wouldn't be too worried. As long as it doesn't get above 90C I would say you're in the safe zone (GPUs are made to withstand temps up to 100+C, but even at temps in the 90s, your BIOS will automatically downclock your GPU so it won't overheat and kill your GPU).

 

Hey,
Did anybody try to update Bios in M50sv? Does it give a better performance maybe?

 

i have the -A1, i bought a little notebook cooler, doesn't do much, because there are hardly any vents to intake cool air on this notebook, but it doesn't really need it.
i use HWmonitor ( www.cpuid.com)to monitor temps, it uses CoreTemp as its core to get the actual cpu temp from the die itself.

cpu idles 42-44C
vid idles 58-60

cpu max while rendering xvid, i saw 56C
vid max while gaming mass effect 1440x900 maxed out, 85C

**however! when I remove the back plate over the cpu/vid, the temps all drop by 6C. that is with the cooling pad on tho. without i think its only like 3-4C even still, if you aren't movign it around, its worth it. doesn't hurt anything

i'm trying to figure some creative ways to better cool this bad boy, again not that it NEEDS it, but i like things running cool.

that is overclocked tho, i dont' bother with stock vid card settings, why? my 9500m gs is clocked faster than the 9650.
675mhz core, 500mhz mem.
using 177.41 drivers, which also have an option to disable powermizer, which is nice! finally.
and reported actual freq's by GPU-Z also temps.

i did however experience my first hard shutdown overheating, on a hot day here 29C running mass effect full OC just shut off after about 20 mins.


anyone please try NIBITOR 4.2 for me, see if it does the same for you? i've tried i and it always reboots my system, in vista or xp sp3. anyone else?

 

I don't see any Bios update from the Asus website. It's still the same 207 version.

Are you looking at the Bios version 3.01 for the M50Vm on the Asus website? I haven't tried that but it's most likely just an added support for the new montevina CPUs.

 

Is anybody here using ati tool to overclock their 9500m gs? I like how simple it is but was wondering if anyone had problems with it over something like riva tuner. RT was a little confusing for me.

 

I'am just asking. I saw some bios update at the Asus website but i didn't know which is for M50sv model.

 

Haven't tried ati tool, but riva tuner isn't all that difficult.

Under the Main tab, click the little triangle next to Customize in the Driver setting section. You will see 6 icons.

Click the first icon (system settings) and under the Overclocking tab, it will show the clock speeds for your GPU. Make sure you check the "enable driver level hardware overclocking" to enable overclocking.

Select performance 3D from the drop down menu and start adjusting the clock speeds 5-10mhz at a time. Each time you apply the new clock speed, run 3dmark06 and see if it's stable. Do this until you see artifacts and go back 5-10mhz. That should be your stable OC speed.

Oh, my bad In that case, then no, there's no new bios for the M50 The M50Sv only has one bios available - the 207 version.

 

Hi Ken,

Regarding the M50Sv you wrote.. Everything works under Windows XP except the ITECIR Infrared Receiver, most of the stock drivers works for both Windows Vista and XP except the some hardwares and utility, the links below are the drivers you'll need to download if you are going to install Windows XP:

Question: The machine came with Vista installed on it? If so, how were you able to install XP after the fact? Did you create a partition? I was under the impression that it was particularly difficult to install XP if Vista was installed apriori by the manufacturer.

The reason I ask is that my experience with Vista was not very good. I purchased a re-furbished Gateway GT5428 last November with Vista Home Premium installed. I felt like it was a resource hog and I wanted to *go back* to XP but was told that finding the drivers would be a problem even if I was able to get my OEM Win XP OS to install successfully (which I was not able to do). Fortunately, as the case may be, I came up with a bad sector along with the fact that the built in memory card reader failed. Under extended warranty, I shipped the unit back and got a refund.

Perhaps with the Intel® Core™2 Penryn Processor T9300 2.5GHz 6MB 800 FSB, I might *expect* that Vista will perform better than it did on the GT5428?

Or, can one purchase the M50SV-A1 without an OS installed?

Thanks. Great review.

PS. Would you consider running wPrime and posting the scores?

Dick



Thanks,

Dick

 

to rmcarner:
If you buy from ken at gentechpc there is indeed an option to buy without the os installed and to buy xp along with it - this is exactly what I did and now windows boots up to a usable state in just over 30 seconds. I got everything working except of course the IR receiver which I just decided not to bother with, I'm sure there is a driver out there somewhere


To anybody: does anybody know how to get manual fan control on this laptop?

 

Wprime scores are posted in my review (in sig)

 

Difficult to miss unless you have a talent for that sort of thing

Thanks. Good review. Dunno. Close call between the M50Sv & the Sager 2092 with the same processor.

Dick

 

Thanks.

\D

 

Hello everyone,

I just ordered an M50Sa-AK023C from Newegg.com w/ the Radeon HD 3650 in it (the only significant change in the specs from the M50Sv.) I was wondering, since this thing doesn't have an S-Video plug, what is the cheapest way to port the video to my 27" Panasonic old-as-dirt TV? I've seen a couple of options, one of which I know will work, and the other I'm not so sure about.

Option #1 (pretty sure this'll work):
http://sewelldirect.com/pc-to-tv.asp

Option #2 (much cheaper):
http://www.amazon.com/NEW-CONVERTER...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1215724376&sr=8-1

If anyone knows for a fact whether Option #2 will work on my M50Sa w/ the Radeon HD 3650, please let me know. I'm looking for the cheapest laptop-to-old-as-dirt-tv interface humanly possible without S-Video quality loss (I know S-Video stinks but it's all I've got!) Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks a lot!

 

I did talk to the folks at gentechpc. For a price, they will wipe Vista and install XP. Now, I am wondering if with this processor - the T9300 2.5GHz 6MB 800 FSB, whether having Vista on the machine will have a negligible effect on a) boot time & b) running programs? Anyone out there using Vista?

The other question I have is assuming that Gentec sent along the recovery disc for Vista are you considering creating a partition and installing Vista at some point done the road?

Thanks.

Dick

 

Vista runs really smooth on this Laptop. Not sure about XP.

 

Do you guys know what blutooth profiles this laptop has? I just bought an LG dare that has a ridiculous amount of profiles including file transfer but i can't figure out how to get the two to work with each other.

 

just purchased this laptop today

its pretty slick. damn vista and its consist allow popup is annoying as hell. i guess i really will have to disable via flamencos advice thread

 

I think vista is a fine os to run on this laptop (the laptop is really meant for it) and in order to get xp working i had to install a few drivers myself which wasn't that bad because a lot of them can be individually installed from the vista driver cd provided. I liked xp because I believe for the time being-however short it may be - xp is somewhat faster for things like games and certain apps although the margin is closing as more and more updates and drivers are released for vista. I also believe that more applications are compatible with xp at the time (again likely to change later on ) and i like that xp is less of a resource hog.All said I'm no vista hater and xp will eventually be obsolete, and to answer your question: it did indeed come with the recovery cd and a sticker with a vista key code on the bottom of the laptop - so yes i will consider installing it in the future maybe on a new partition maybe a clean install, it shouldn't be too problematic.
For now xp is screamin fast and getting faster as I get near brave enough to overclock a little

ps .I also really appreciate gentech's customer service helping me with the self install of xp as self installing got it mailed to me faster

 

Both Vista and XP runs fine on this notebook, however, on XP you will not be able to use the infrared receiver (but in all honesty, who really uses it anyways?). And like what others have mentioned, XP runs slightly faster than Vista, but it's nothing anyone should be too concerned about.

All the bluetooth profiles for the M50Sv-A1 are listed in the chart below.




Do you have the bluetooth manager program installed?

 

XP runs great on M50SV, boot faster and programs also runs faster.

When we installing WIndows XP we keep the Vista recovery hidden partition in the hard drive, so if you want to put vista back you can just use the recovery partition to load vista back without using the recovery disk.

 

I don't know exactly what the problem was , but every time I tried running XP on this notebook, I would get intermittent freezes, where my desktop background would load, but not my icons and task bar. I suspect it may have been something related to the fingerprint driver, more specifically the Asus Security software that is installed along with the driver. Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations for me? Am I the only one that's had this problem running XP on this notebook?

 

I think my post got lost in the woodwork. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks again.

 

quick question for all you m50 owners

i just purchased mine yesterday and decided to boot up some counterstrike just now as a light test. 5 mins in this wierd white bar appeared on the screen and whenever i pressed a,w,s,d asian language characters would show up. the pc also started lagging a bit, but as soon as i exited the program the computer was running normal

what could be wrong with the geforce 9500

 

I'm still feeling my away around being new to this forum. Would you please post a link to Flamencos advice thread? Thanks.

PS. The popups drove me nuts as well. It's as if with Vista *it* has more control then you do.

Dick

 

You wrote..

Oh, I wasn't aware that that (some) of the drivers that come with Vista are even compatible with XP.

Snip..

Sorry, If I sound a bit dense, but my *understanding* when I talked to someone from Gentec was that a) -defacto- Vista is installed on the Asus machines, b) they had to wipe Vista off and install XP if that is what I selected, and c) for the very reason that it was 'tricky' to install XP on a machine that came OEM with Vista.

Did I perhaps misunderstand what was being said? Did your computer arrive without an OS on it? Seems like that is confirmed in what you wrote below. Thanks.

Dick

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

 

Does this happen during startup when your system is loading the OS? If so, use bootlogxp to find out which startup programs is taking the longest to load and disable it.

You can also try a few more tweaks listed in the website below to speed up your boot time
http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/sgp-tweaks.ars

Not sure if your GPU supports TV-out. But it seems like option 1 is the safest choice

You have just activated the language bar hotkey by pressing Ctrl and Space at the same time. You should be able to deactivate it by pressing the same keys again, but it would be better if you just disabled the hotkeys from your Text Services and Input Languages while gaming.

 

My computer arrived without an os installed and that was my preference, having xp installed was an option and I do not think it would have cost any extra to have it installed before it arrived (however it did cost more for the xp disk) it just had a faster turn around getting mailed to me. I'm not sure bout them wiping vista off before it came that sounds very possible but it did not appear to cost any more installation wise.

therefore if you order xp I do believe you are getting both OS's shipped with the laptop so it would be possible to install vista at a later date

about the drivers from the cd that came with it- most of these work if you individually install them. (click explore cd instead of autoplay) navigate to the folder for each individual driver and click each specific setup it seems that most of the basic drivers you will need are on there. In fact that is the only way I could get the multimedia function on the touchpad working was by using the touchpad driver from this cd. Any other drivers you ost likely can find on this forum - page 77 I think has most

 

ooooh ok. thanks dude

 

I just recently received my M50sv and I am having a bit of a problem. I wanted to reinstall vista but now that I did I am getting invalid argument when trying to use my driver cd. I don't know if this was answered in some of the other pages and I am sorry if it was. If anyone could help me it would be very appreciated.

 

OK, I've noticed a problem with this notebook, which may be a common one. I'm getting strange high pitched noises through the audio jack when ever I have a flash drive or mouse plugged into one of the two USB jacks closest to the audio jack. Does anyone else have this issue?

 

So you already reinstalled vista and now you're trying to install the drivers, correct? Does the invalid argument occur when you pop in the driver CD? Do you think you can post a screenshot of what it looks like and when this error actually occurs?

Same problem here. It only happens when I plug in a mouse. Any other devices don't produce the high pitch sound. I asked Asus about it and they told me to RMA it. I wasn't really bothered with it, so can't say if sending it to Asus will solve the issue.

 

The invalid argument occurs when I insert the Drivers Cd its has now switched to:
Suitable OS for this driver disk:
32, 64 bit
Vistabusiness
vistaenterprise
vistahomebasic
vistahomepremium
vistaultimate

I do not have any way to post a screenshot.

I was wondering if it would be possible to download all the drivers if I can't get the cd to work. The only issue I would have with that would be that I wouldn't know where to get them and which ones I needed to get.

 

I hate to ask again but can anybody tell me or link me on how to get fan control on this laptop?

 

The fan is control by mainboard BIOS.

 

I'm sure that they all do it, I'm not sending mine in either. It seems that every notebook has it's own little quirks, some worse than others.

 

Update:
I fixed my problem. I called ASUS and they told me to reinstall vista using F9 on the start up screen instead of using the DVD. Now the driver Cd works.

 

Hi dougbrad, can you give me contact of the store in ratu plaza, i try looking this laptop anywhere but always out of stock. thanks

 

My Asus M50sv temparture is quite high I would like to ask if it is normal. CPU 53' GPU 62' HDD 45'.

 

Hi, can anyone tell me if I can use the recovery disk that comes w/ this laptop to repair ? coz whenever i go to task scheduler it comes up "task scheduler service is not available,verify that the service is running" ....something is wrong....

 

mine are (with a zalman nc1000 cooling pad on low): cpu: 37 gpu: 53 hdd: 34 room temp: 24

Your's does seem a little high, what's your room temp and is your notebook on a couch or a mattress or something?

 

Those temps are fine. I have similar temps myself at a room temp of 26C. The HDD might be a bit high though, but nothing to be too concerned about

You may find the answer in the link below
http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/24356-task-scheduler-service-not-running.html

 

Ok, so I'm attempting a clean install of XP b/c a month with vista was all I need to make me want to switch back and I get to the like third screen where it ask if i want to install xp, repair xp, or quit setup. I hit enter and I get a screen that says this:

"Setup did not find any hard disk drives in your computer.
Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk-related hardware configuration is correct. This may involve running a manufacturer-supplied diagnostic or setup program.

Setup cannot complete. Please press F3 to exit setup."

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!