*Official ASUS W90Vp Owners' Lounge*

Does anyone know when GenTech is getting their next shipment of the W90VP-A1?

I ordered on Jun 1 and i'm wondering how much longer until it ships

 

You did turn shadows off right? For many computer users not just the W90 the new mesh shadows is the main thing that made the game hard to play.

 

Another thing I've done which I'm not sure if it will make a lot of difference is disable the paging file. With 6GB RAM on your side, you are fairly safe from running out of memory. If you are doing massive editing or something else that is a memory hog, you'll want some paging as a security blanket. Forcing things to live in RAM and not page to disk takes physical io's out of the picture. As it is Vista seems to chatter the disk constantly which I'm not sure why. My experience in enterprise databases say reduce physical i/o's and perform logical i/o's whenever possible for best performance.
Removing the page file has not shown any ill effects yet (*knock on wood)

 

Disabling shadows alone didn't provide a boost in Dalaran. The real difference was when turning off "Full screen glow effect" Never liked the looks of it anyways and always have it disabled but was enabled due to the new install. After disabling this, the FPS hiked almost double in Dalaran.

 

Thanks for the reply....so should i backup my current GPU flash incase ATI posts drivers for our notebook?

 

Hey Johnksss....both of the GPU came with the updated FLASH type.
So i dont know if i hae to flash BOTH cards with teh modified stuff from vicious guide

 

See now confusion has started.

The bios on the new cards is exactly the same bios as the very first cards, the bios has NEVER changed, just the flash type.

The actual flash hardware on the card, the new type seems to be much safer to flash with the modified bios on ATIFlash.

If you want to rip your own bios just to be safe, gpu-z is the best program for this.

 

me.. personally....im never going to assume anything when it comes to flashing anything. because a "im sorry" ain't gonna cut it if my system we're to get messed up from in accurate information...
with that said...

1: how can they be new cards with an old bios?
2: or are you saying the changed a part on the old cards?
3: or they flashed a new bios by a new bios maker which uses the new flashing tool?

sort of lost here my self vic

 

Contacted Asus RMA service today... and learned that Asus is not said like "ay sys." Haha, I got it set up though, ETA 1 week. Per Ken, I asked him to run a stress test / QC... and told him my issues. Got the label, will send it out on Monday..

Odd conversation with the rep though, she said I'm going to let you talk to the tech, because i'm not sure if they will be able to fix it...

 

And what did the ASUS tech say?

 

suprisingly, nothing important. he just reiterated most of what i said... and that was pretty much it. he said send it in, and we'll try to get it back to you in a week.. he said they are going to run a stress test + evaluation, and check out the GPUs...

i didn't expect much different, but it would've been nice for them to talk about the problem.. i told the tech i think it might be due to the 2d/low3d graphics, and he didn't say a word.

the customer service lady, asked if i installed the latest drivers...


edit: despite the low chatter during the call, i really enjoyed how fasst and seamlessly this process was... honestly, 1 week is not that much, and it is great they ship overnight. all and all, the phone call took less than 20 minutes with waiting.

 

1 week may be optimistic, they've had mine for a week already and not a peep yet. I guess I don't mind if it takes a little extra time if it comes back working. But ya you might have to reset expectations on how long it's gonna take.

 

have you called them henceforth? i'd call and ask whats up..

 

I'll call them Tuesday see if I can speak with a tech.

 

what center did you send it into, anyways? the indiana one or the california one? mine is going to indiana...

 

Mine went to Fremont, CA
So Indiana might have a smaller queue than CA.....!!

 

Ok guys, I am back. The damn thing decided to start working again ??? I have no idea why but at this point Im not asking questions. I noticed something though, you know how everyone was complaining about stuttering due to low memory, well I dont think that is the culprit at all. I completely removed my secondary card for a day and noticed that at the same settings whith a lower FPS I had no stuttering. So I am going to assume it has something to do with this crossfire. If you experience the stuttering try disabling A.I. and notice that it is gone. Also if their is someone not expereincing any stuttering please share. I can play Crysis Warhead Maxed and get a good 25-30 FPS, but about every ten seconds it stutters randomly.

 

mkinasz isnt the N52 AWSOME!! I have had the original and tournament versions for about three years and just love it.

 

Absolutely love it..... I bought it to replace a Saitek Pro Gamer Command unit that started messing up on me. Wish I'd had a N52 to begin with.

 

i am very sad to see even the new shipment with problems. thats very sad.

 

Hmm that N52 thing looks interesting. I would probably play worse with it, but then after using it I bet its hard to use a normal keyboard.

 

I ordered May 4 and it just shipped yesterday.

 

Well since i reinstalled ewreckeds modified drivers my laptop just doesnt seem to be working 100% all started with disabling that card in bios. Ugh. Seems to have fubared some stuff because this machine just doesn't want to run the same.

By the wai, disabling catalyst AI drops me about 10-15 fps lol. Thats a no go in warhead.

 

Been more than one case where somebody lost 2nd card function after turning it off in the bios, system restore was the only fix they found.

I have turned mine off before but only to install Win 7 I have not booted into Vista like that.

 

In an incredible display of irony, I was just about to post a reply that there have been absolutely no problems with my machine and the screen went blank and locked up. The hard drive was chattering as usual and had to hard boot.

The event log didn't have have much except a ton of windows update stuff which it was processing installed packages. 100's of lines. I've cleared the logs hoping to isolate the problem again.

All drivers are stock and no OC. At the time of the crash, only Firefox was running and this forum was open.

 

LOL! There's nothing wrong with the W90 - it's this damn forum!

 

You going to RMA? Funny thing is, the only time my screen ever blanks out is when visiting the forum.

Also, the event log is going to say ANYTHING. I've checked each time after a hardlock. The only message you will ever find about an error is a forced shut down.

EDIT: May I also reccomend putting your CPU into hibernate, waking it up, and then come to the forum and browse? I've had great success in duplicating the problem through that process. In-game works fine, and there are practically no issues...

 

Where can I get the latest guide to get the W90 running at its full potential?
Where can we get this iso file from Ken at gentech? I have been waiting for a new guide for flashing bios etc as there seems to be new information since the original limit breaker guide??

 

Ask the creator of the thread, Vicious, or ask Ken; they'd be more than happy to help you.

 

No plans on RMA yet. This was a 1 time problem but if it happens repeatedly, then I might consider it. I'm fairly certain at one point, the lid was closed and went back online which is very normal for me. I open and close the lid all day long instead of shutting down and rebooting each time I use it.

I don't know a whole lot about Vista as this is the first machine that has ever had it, but historically in older versions of Windows, this has a signature of video/driver problems. Is your machine also running the stock ATI driver?

According to CCC, desktop is running 66C, GPU at 550 and GPU-Z agrees

Not sure why sensors do not agree, however

 

This is correct behavior. GPU-Z displays the default/bios clocks on the Graphics Card tab, so they won't change. The Sensors tab displays your actual clocks -- in this case, 350/200 is your normal 2D speed.

I've bumped CCC overdrive to 600/900 on both cards for example, but GPU-Z still shows 550/850 on the Graphics Card tab. However, if I run a game in windowed mode the Sensor tab displays the correct 600/900 clocks.

 

Strange thing unless you use that AMD clock tool posted back somewhere even though the new overclock takes it doesnt perform correctly.

615/950 on my card with CCC gives me 10300 in Vantage GPU score, with the AMD tool it was over 11000.

 

Ken updated everything on my unit prior to shipping. Thinking that it might have been a problem, we rolled it back with his boot disk. I was running E-Wrecked's 9.4 mod, but now am running stock drivers..

Yeah, it started out like that for me at first... It happened once, and I thought it was a fluke, but then it started to happen more consisently - and that is when I noticed when it comes out of hibernate and I visit NBR, the problem is replicated..

It isn't a big deal, in all honesty... you just have to restart every now and then.. it has little to no effect in-game, either. However, I don't think it is right to pay 2.4k for a half-working unit, so RMA was an easy decision - especially after talking to Vic and Mkin, as they had similar problems and it turned out it was a GPU problem... I sent it in for a stress test + quality control, so i'll update everyone when I get it back.

 

Clarification on this, I flew out of Dalaran and recorded the FPS. It was late at night and wasn't thinking straight.

I get high 20's in Dalaran, the 50's were in Crystalsong. Sorry for the terrible mistake!

 

You guys with low FPS in WoW try to overclock the gpu with the AMD tool and see if that helps, or overclock the cpu and see if that will help.

We should determine if its the cpu or gpu causing the limits.

Also if you have or have not updated the drivers did that make a difference.

I'll try to install WoW on my unit soon.

 

i think its the gpu because of the high res

it would also be the GPU if they lowered the settings and it ran better

 

I am looking to install catalyst suite 9.5 for this notebook, but not sure if it will work properly. Is there any other updated ATI drivers for this notebook or a way to make the latest 9.5 driver work on this computer?

Right now I only have the drivers that the Asus came with when I bought it. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

I play WoW on my desk top the two main limiting factors are the CPU and the Ram for ultra high settings in dalaran. Before I would lag with 2-10 fps, then OC'c my proc from 1.8 (e4300) to 3 GHz and it runs around 10 to 20 now. I have an 8800 GTS 512 (so the 4870M xfire should be faster).

A way to determine if it is the graphics card is turn down some of the shaders and AA, if there is a performance boost than the graphics card was working hard to render the higher settings, if you don't notice a change in fps, then the graphics card is doing fine, and there is another bottle neck somewhere else.

I think if you OC the proc to 2.5-2.9Ghz in the W90 it should handle dalaran on ultra high settings with 20-30 FPS

 

I'll turbogear to 15% and check real quick..

*edit Dalaran has mostly upper 20's with 15% OC and occasionally 24.

CPU-Z, interestingly is showing a varying OC from 6x to 7.5x. Is this expected of turbogear?
Here's 6x, core is 1830!!

and now 7.5x, core is 2287


This will bounce back and forth. Performance settings are set to full and running on AC power. It's as though speedstep or something similar is kicking in.

Here's CPU-Z with Turbogear set back to "Standard"
It is showing the core speed at 6x, core is 1602!!


Am I missing something obvious? The multiplier, FSB and voltages are varying with these speed changes.

 

Ok, Asus NB Probe confirms it is being underclocked.


I'm surprised this isn't running full 100% speed even with the power connected. I bought 2000 horses (Mhz), and don't want to leave any in the barn!

 

Yeah I got tired of the speedstep so that's one of the things I ended up disabling in the BIOS. One other thing I did was put a link to the power profile in my startup so each boot I picked the High Performance plan. I noticed the choice kept reverting back to the Asus standard profile and I meant to figure out how to disable that but never got to it.

 

Ya lol, its like the are trying to make the w90 look bad . I haven't heard anything bad about the w90 ( other than driver support ), until I read this forum .

 

To be honest i dont think CCC overclocks the cards at all. I get pretty much no boost and a stock run is about 10.4-10.6k with the qx9300 at 3ghz+ I gain pretty much a straight up thousand points going to 600/900, however one card is slightly unstable at those speeds -.-

I think i have one bum card thats really ruining the overclocking potential here for these cards. oh well.

 

Im thinking in getting the new Sager NP9850 with SLI GTX 280M. What do you guys think? How much more peformance I will get? Thanks.

 

So, did you buy yours already? Are you plannimg to? Have you had one? Mine is coming monday but im serious thinking in changing it for a Sager NP9850 with GTX280M in SLI and blue ray, the only down side is that; there's no HDMI audio support, since im planming to connect this on the 7.1 receiver surround and a 42" 1080p samsung led HDTV. The Sager will cost me only $450.00 extra, I think the peformance must be at least 20% better plus it uses the new DDR3 memories. And NVidia drivers are way easier to deal with. What do you think?

 

i don't think anybody knows yet, but you are looking at a more expensive unit... i think when i did made a similar sager rig, it was around 3.3k (including the warranty that the asus offers). imo, if you are on a budget, it isn't worth it..

 

finally i cancelled my order because of the drivers support for ati mobile. i ll go for the m17x which has also 7.1 sound support and 1900x 1200 screen resolution even though 17inch.

the w90 is a great deal but i dont want to be afraid of the unexpected.

by the way the m17x i ordered costs 2400$ (the same as w90) with sli 280x full hd qx9000 which i will replace with the qx9300 i bought for w90 and blue ray. thus it has 4gb ddr3 1333mhz (i really dont think i will ever need more especially under win7) and i will install the 120gb vertex ssd which i also bought for the w90. i had also ordered the lg gbw-t10n for the w90 but as its not compatible with m17x, i bought an external enclosure to make it external and have blue ray writer too. The hard disks are two 160gb 7200rpm but i dont care of the storage as one fo the two hard drives would be replaced with ssd even if i bought w90. thus i use as external the hdds of my previous broken laptop.so i have too much storage already

so it seems that everything makes sense. however i wouldnt expect such difference with the 4870x2 of w90. only slight differences more due to the drivers and software support for nvidias. as i said before that was the main reason i changed my mind.

but i still like w90 and thats why i am sad to see the problems remaining and realy want them to be fixed with a new driver or something especially my friend kimdoocheol who just ordered a few days before me and has problems on the w90 he really expected for long time.

 

The review I read the other day they tested Crysis Warhead & Farcry 2 and in both cases (with a maxed out best equipment unit) I was not impressed at all with the FPS.

Crysis was a bit higher (to be expected it always has favored SLI over Crossfire) but only a few frames, and Far Cry 2 was not higher at all.

For the extra money the performance is not looking like it is there, and your losing a lot of the things you get on the W90 without paying a lot more for them.

I think both the 9850 and M17X have potential and will be good units but none of them are going to compete in the value category for sure. If it was not for the gpu issues the W90 would have been a no brainier, but due to the issues I know it requires some consideration.

I'll remind you though there are many people now with perfect units, so the W90 does work, and you will get a working one no matter what due to the great warranty & service, just there has been some bad luck for people.

I can not wait for the other units to come out, I want to see benchmarks, specs, thermal readings, bios options, but most of all I think I look forward to the problems posts

 

Yeah, I thought for sure ASUS would fix most of the problems after the 2 month delay... However, I have faith that eventually ASUS will fix the problem (otherwise I can't see them ever making a profit on this machine.) Also, ASUS has a great RMA program... overnight delivery on their dollar - so at least I can feel confident that I will eventually get a working laptop.

The main reason I bought the W90 is because it is a great value. If I were to buy the same laptop rig from any other company, i'm looking upwards of 3k... Not to mention, ASUS has a free 2 year warranty program... And every other rig I constructed (the m17x, and m980nu), cost around 3.3k... This is matching the warranty and components - Q9000, 6gb of ram, 2x 320gb 7200rpm hdd, 2 gpu, and a 2 year warranty... To me, the bottom line is this, w90 for 2.4k, or a laptop that is slightly better for 3.3k. I couldn't justify the cost. Plus, AW and SAGER have both had their fair share of problems in the past, so who is to say that there won't be any?

Even though it is stressful, I don't want a laptop that is super glossy, or that looks like a import race car.

Haha, you say that now, but if they are anything like me, they will be hitting up your PM box for advice...

Also, was the m980nu they tested stock?

 

Also, many thanks to people on this board, especially Vic and Ken.. they've been of great help - even though they don't have too..