*Official ASUS W90Vp Owners' Lounge*

Hey, the review you read was definitely not SLI right? there is a review of the clevo 980NU, but its not SLI!!! The review I read, in some case, one GTX280M peformed better then 2 4870s in one of the cases, I don't think there is any benchmark on GTX280M SLI yet but if there is , please post the link. Thanks. I'm still not really sure if I keep it or not the W90, I do think the NP9850 looks better then the W90 and about the Nvidia Physics thing, that is B S for me. Every graphics card and CPU would prossess that.

 

I can't stand those stupid Aspect ratio used the Dell and Alien ware computers, I really like 16:9 because its standard plus, my camcorder records in HD only the stupid Hollywood still 2:3 I think. its about time they also change it.
And by the way buddy, The M980NU on xotic PC, if you don't choose a massive storage, it goes for $2700.00 with SLI GTX280M and Blueray, I configured one there.

 

I said with all the warranties intact and 6gb of ram. I'm looking at it right now, 3.2k.

I didn't add in the bag and mouse, either...

 

we need to bust up this thread and start working on some overclocking and driver modding threads!

 

Still tagging along...

I agree any cost tally of competing products would have to include the cost of 2yr warranty. In fact I'd like the comparison of the extra year available from asus as well.. compare 2yr to 2yr and 3yr to 3yr. 6gb ram to 6gb ram. And dual gpu's in both configs of course.

The only thing I personally could see not being mirrored in both price configs is the hard drives as those aren't as crucial to me as far as deal-breaking, and 2.5" hdd's even of larger 500gb capacity are pretty cheap if you wanted to add one later.

In my case I had been considering the newegg model so I would be comparing that without the bluray drive and "only" one 320gb 2.5" hdd.

---------------------------------------

I would never buy any $1K + (let alone $2.x K!) fragile electronic device with a high probability of flakiness/failure again without minimum of 2yr warranty, 3 yr if possible.

As I reported before, I had a $1600 hp dual core notebook with go7600 die on me .5 yr out of warranty at 18months and its now a paperweight vs the $400+ and my ship to them cost of repairing it. In a related story, I had a 4yr warranty on an early model $2200+ 50" 720p HDtv from bestbuy years ago, which I had to use the warranty on 4 times over the term. I chose to roll the dice on the hp notebook.. never again. So please include 2yr -> 2yr (and 3yr -> 3yr if possible) in price comparisons.

 

Hi everyone, I will be joining the club tomorrow when UPS delivers my W90Vp-X2. I've been disappointed to see that there are some issues with the unit, hopefully the one I get turns out to be decent. Whatever the case is, it looks like there are lots of knowledgeable and very helpful people on this site which is really great. Thanks for everyone who's spent a great deal of time already trying to sort through some issues with these computers. I'll let everyone know how my experience goes.

I've noticed in the past that people have asked about graphics cards or bios #'s or whatever to try and evaluate where Asus is at with this thing, if you guys want me to post any details on my system, just let me know where to find the information and I'll let you know bios, etc. Whatever I can do to maybe help with figuring this stuff out.

I'm upgrading from a Dell Inspiron 9400 which I bought almost 3 years ago for around $2,400 (WUXGA screen, 100gb 7200 rpm hd, geforce 7900gs, 2 gig ram, 3 year cc warranty), so as for value the Asus is way more machine for the money than this thing was at the time. During my course of ownership Dell replaced my speakers (which malfunctioned) and then the entire motherboard since there was a problem with the headphone jack. Great service from Dell though not a perfect product.

I was considering not purchasing the W90 after reading about the problems on this forum however when I looked at the other options I could afford for around the $2,500 mark, there was no contest. I looked at the M17x however being in Canada, by the time I equipped it with 6gb of ram, the core2 quad chip, 320gb hard-drive, sli 260, and 1 year complete care warranty the price came to a whopping $3,678.00!!!!! Dell is absolutely taking the boots to us in Canada. I don't even have a great amount of confidence in the nvidia cards for laptops either, as basically all of the 7800 & 7900 series cards are prone to heat issues and it seems to just be a matter of 'when' not 'if' the cards will get fried (I've had good luck with my 7900gs however many many people have not). That also turned me off of looking at older XPS m1710 as well as some almost new m1730s as I read about some people frying the 8800 series cards. Therefore I think the W90 is still a better bet even though it has some known issues as well. The 2 year warranty is a huge bonus as well as the 1 year CC.

Anyways, only 1 more day then I'll receive the beast. Hopefully I don't get any nasty surprises like a previously opened unit or bsod on initial boot, etc. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

Ryan

 

Add the zero bright policy to the list as well... Xotic wants $200 extra for that; AW doesn't even offer it. I know if I got a $2000+ laptop and it had a dead/stuck pixel and couldn't exchange I'd flip out.

It's utterly indisputable that the w90 is the best value -- and offers features Sager, AW laptops etc. don't have (18.4 screen, out-of-the-box OC-ability, surround sound...). If you configure everything equally, you're looking at $3200 or more to get to the level of the w90 from Sager or AW.

And as for the GPUs, once drivers are straightened out, 4870 x2 mobility and 280m SLI will no doubt offer very similar performance, with the scale leaning towards ATI. To get an idea, look at the comparisons between desktop 4850 X2 and 9800 GTX SLI.

 

It was SLI and an insanely maxed out unit too with SSD's and a QX9300

 

You chose... wisely.

 

Just a quick question, I've seen the odd mention in reviews and other areas that the w90 is being discontinued, or EOL, etc. Do they maybe just mean initial versions like the x1 or certain configs? I called Asus and asked them about it being discontinued and they told me it wasn't and it was a great seller. I didn't have a problem buying one either... Any clarifications?

 

Doubtful it will be discontinued, although they may come with upgraded models in upcoming months. There was some confusion in reviews on that a while back and some people throwing around misinformation (e.g., "I was talking to a level 4 tech at Asus and they hinted this and that..."). Most of the confusion was around a firingsquad review, but they were refering to the A1 or X1 SKU being discontinued, not the entire model. Compounding the rumors was a delay in which there were no shipments for a while -- whether Asus was correcting a defect of some sort or they just had sourcing problems, we're still not sure.

I think ASUS has a big winner with the w90, both from a revenue-generating and marketing perspective. Technical/driver hiccups notwithstanding, they have nicely placed the w90 in the space between lower-end gaming laptops and ridiculously priced boutique builds.

 

Well after not posting forever, I return with my first problem with my W90vp-X1...the problem is I tried upgrading it lol. I tried updating the bios to 0601 and now I hang in the bios just after the ram loads. BUT!!!! It seems I can still get into the EZ-Flash utility before it hangs...so heres my problem...

I NEED AN OLD BIOS ROM FILE!!!! The 0502 File on the Asus website doesn't work for me, incorrect boot file or something. I can load the 0601 again and again and still same hang after the ram loads. Anyways if someone could pm me with links or I can send you my email that would be much appreciated...I really don't want to rma this pig.

 

Try connecting to the FTP server of the ASUS support site, there should be a history of all the BIOS files there.

 

If I recall correctly, ASUS had a bad 0601.bin file on their download site. Give ASUS Notebook Support a call, and they can send you a working file.

 

Only review i have seen thus far was from that notebookcheck and it didnt have SLI , Can you point me to that review that you read ?.

 

In fairness, a dead pixel warranty can be had for $99, and this covers for a full year..... not just for 30 days. Also, the Sager NP9850 is in fact an 18.4' dual bulb (I believe the W90 is only a single bulb) display.

http://1toppc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=Sager-NP9850

Furthermore, " out-of-the-box OC-ability" is somewhat of a misnomer with the W90. Yes, folks can say, "Well at least ASUS allows you to OC their notebooks", but this is mild at best, and marketing fluff. TurboGear only allows minumal OC'ing, and as we have discovered, the bios is locked. To achieve a meaningful OC, SetFSB must be used, and even such, the QX9300 is limited. The bios is not locked in the AW or Sager, and AW has announced this in regard to the QX9300 processor.

As far as your statement," It's utterly indisputable that the w90 is the best value", I think this debatable. I would say you are absolutely correct, IF the technology were working..... but given the lack of driver support, and massive RMA's, it is hard to see the 'VALUE' in this.

Your premise is valid, IF ASUS provides us with up to date working drivers, and IF ASUS works out the bugs in the 4870 cards. Sorry, but for me, brand-loyalty can only extend so far. Since 19 FEB 2009, ASUS still has not provided updated drivers, and RMA's are still prevalent..... and no sign this is going to change in the near future.

I spent the money on this great value you speak of, and two RMA's later, I am reluctant to see it this way anymore. For the W90 to be a great value, the technology needs to WORK, and it needs to work for EVERYONE.....not just a few.

I sincerely would like to buy into this great value, but if ASUS does not do something soon, I will be buying the competition. Sure, I may pay more, but if the Sager NP9850 test well..... at least this time, I will be buying into a WORKING technology.

We shall see!

 

Also, that review was with the C2D X9100 processor.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Hands-On-Clevo-M980NU-Notebook.14554.0.html

 

yep, where is this review at as well... a maxed out 280 sli test rig?

 

I knew it just the other day but now I have no idea where it was at, soon as I see the site url I will remember it. I may be able to find it by reading the threads I was in but advanced search being gone really sucks...

Its on the tip of my tongue though so I will probably remember it later.

Edit: found it got lucky - http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=782

They have a QX9300 and SLI GTX280's and I was not impressed at all by the benchmark scores.

I can pretty comfortably say I prefer the Dellienware to the Sager though at this point if I had to choose.

> A real full keyboard (omg yes!)
> Higher resolution screen
> Smaller form factor
> Really cool lights
> Not super glossy

The Sager only has IMO

> A 3rd HDD slot
> A Larger Screen

 

I'm getting delivery of my W90-x2 tomorrow and I ordered an extra 320gb harddrive for it. Has anyone here installed a 2nd harddrive in their W90 (I suppose there might be something about this in the forums but at 800+ pages it could take a while to find)? Could someone give me a quick step by step of what to do so I don't miss anything or screw anything up or point me in the right direction? Thanks.

 

Does anyone know where I can get a working rom file?

 

Thanks for the link Vicious!

The review of the pre-production model looks very promising! Furthermore, I wholly agree with your assessment between these two models. Looks like I will be taking a closer look at the AW M17X.

 

Strike, u seem to have a good opinion, if you had the money now, between W90 and the new Sager NP9850 with SLI 280M wich one would you purchase. The sager with my configuration will cost only 400 more and that incluses Blue ray. I appreciate your opinion. Thanks.

 

m17x FTW

mxm 3.0 and lights ftw

 

Right now, I have to say the jury is still out..... but if ASUS does nothing, and the AW or Sager test & evaluate well, it will probably be one of them. I am still awaiting more data.......

 

Well the numbers for Farcry 2 were takin at Maximum and none of (or atleast not me ) ran it with 4xAA so those numbers are strong with Antialiasing on, thats for sure.

Crysis Warhead @1680x1050 on enthusiast settings 38fps should bring it to about 31fps at 1920x1200 where as my W90 at 1920x1080 was some where inthe range of 23 fps .

Seeing that this is a preproduction model and we dont know about what drivers etc were on the machine im going to say those numbers are very strong for a preview model, And bound to get better.

John if you would be so kind as to give us your benches with those exact settings it would be a better indication of if its better or worse then the 9800GTXs .

Also someone with a W90 and those games run those same exact settings etc and give us theres as well.

 

im liking that alienware my self..things are looking good for them...if they have a smooth launch and no 500 plus rma's.... things will go over well...


humm...it looks better than a w90 at stock...here are some game play w90's...you know..before everyone gets to putting in their tweaks and mods for performance on a all high quality setting...lol
cant see why your not impressed though...that AW is running stock and under the hands of a reviewer...and not an enthusiast....

The Czech website pctuning.cz have already published an extensive review of the Asus W90 with a Intel C2D T9600 and 6 GB RAM. The following gaming benchmarks stem from their review.

Test Drive Unlimited: 1920x1080, high: 47-72 fps -> fluently playable
Bioshock: 1920x1080, high: 67-207 (avg. 131) fps -> fluently playable
Call of Duty 5: 1920x1080, extra: 29-92 (avg. 53) fps -> fluently playable
Crysis Warhead: 1920x1080, Mainstream: 13-45 (avg. 32) fps -> fluently playable (single stutters)
Far Cry 2: 1920x1080, ultra: 21-55 (avg. 33) fps -> fluently playable
Flatout Ultimate Carnage: 1920x1080, high: 36-48 (avg. 43) fps -> fluently playable
Race Driver Grid: 1920x1080, high: 34-56 (avg. 43) fps -> fluently playable
Stalker Clear Sky: 1920x1080, Maximum: 16-39 (avg. 28) fps -> playable
Unreal Tournament 3: 1920x1080, max: 32-63 (avg. 51) fps -> fluently playable
World in Conflict: 1920x1080, high: 19-103 (avg 30) -> playable

 

The only thing I added was the processor, the video card and the price for the mx17 was 2,700, how come you got it 300 bucks cheaper ?

 

HAHA, based on this benchmark and the m17X I'm stocked with Asus budy! the HD4870 are built in decoder up to 7.1 audio through HDMI connection, I see some games, the W90 are better and others the GTX 280 so, Now, I'm really liking the W90 again.

 

funny thing is...my scores are all higher than those....
not sure about the 7.1 sound though..

 

student discount

7%

and you can have
Dell perfered account

4%

to save 11%

 

My guess is you have a working rom file but a corrupted bios.

I had this happen once when a flash did not finish or install correctly (it was a modified bios) when I flashed the bad bios to the machine even though I could boot into flash mode I could never flash a working bios back on the machine as before it erases the old bios to flash the new one it reads the old one, since the old bios was corrupted it always halted/froze on that step.

Also since you put the newest bios on there, I think in most cases it will fail to allow you to flash an older bios on there even if things were working properly. You would need a custom edited bios with a newer date/time for the system to allow you to update to it.

 

Dose anyone else have this problem, I seem to get stutters with high FPS in burnout paradise and crysis warhead. If I turn A.I. off this goes away. Is this a driver issue? I just want to make sure my cards arent actually having issues.

 

Did you try taking the battery out and using a paperclip in that little hole on the bottom of the computer with the arrow pointing toward it. It is supposed to reset your BIOS

 

Did that, no change.

 

And this ultimately equals....RMA. Damn and I thought I was gonna get lucky. Everything went well on the original bios install...dunno, ASUS' problem now...except I'm going away tomorrow for 10 days with no computer...yay for me.

 

This.

Value is the keyword for the w90.. plus, for my usage, I can't think of a situation where SSD would be more handy than the extra memory. I wanna use this as a multimedia machine, and having programs open "instantly" doesn't mean much to me. 12gb of ram is a little bit of overkill; I remember when 4gb of ram came out, people wondered would you need 4gb of ram for. And the QX9300... I am not paying 1k for it, end of story; that is basically 1/3 of the laptop cost.. and the Q9000 is easily overclocked to around 2.7ghz.

If you have extra money to burn, then go ahead and do it, heck why not buy a 5k laptop rig? I do not think I could spend that amount of money in components.. I mean, the ram, SSD, and processor upgrades = another laptop. I'd rather save my money for the next lappy I buy. Heck, we all know how fast technology moves, and how it ends up going down in value - just over 3 years ago, I paid 2k for a Vaio K27...

Striker - the w90 is a great deal, even with the faulty units - because of the warranty. I wouldn't talk so soon, as it is very unforeseen if the SAGER or AW unit will have any technical difficulties. Even then, if you compare any of these units stock, the w90 is far superior... if you upgrade the SAGER or AW to have similar specs, with a similar warranty, you are easily looking at 3k... I know it isn't much for you, with a SSD, Blue-Ray RW, 12gb of ram, and a qx9300.. but in that $600 gap, it becomes a little bit too much money than I wish to spend on a laptop.

 

Well I had a bad flash, if your sure your flash worked you maybe just need a new bios.

 

Well...I dunno what gremlin crawled into my computer but obviously I don't have a clue how computers work...geez what a noob. Either way, tried the paper clip...let it sit for an hour...start up again and it freezes again. Restart, go into my bios setup, look around, seems all good...figure what the hell set all defaults. Save, exit, reboot and now it posts...I have no clue how that fixed it but it did. Now I wish I hadn't reformatted my hd and got it ready for RMA. Ugh...stay tuned though, I'm sure she isn't done fooling with me yet.

 

i used a 10% discount code. and the qx9000 is default on Uk Dell customization. my final price without the coupon was 2600 but discount coupons are everywhere. anyway this an w90 thread.

ViciousXUSMC i agree with everything you say. Just one thing. i prefer not to have to rma my machine than having perfect quarantee for 2 years. just remember the days you spent away from the w90. and the bios modifications for upgrading the drivers is a pain on our necks for many of us. Except of this many of the people here bought it from Ken who is the best reseller out there and if someone has problems he can contact Ken who will do his best. I wouldnt have the chance to do so as i live in UK and i should contact Asus directly and i had not very hopeful expectations about their services here.

 

Glad it working out for you, but again, re-read that post!

I was not debating the prowess of the SAGER.... I was saying I fail to see the value in buying into failing technology..... and I also said, the W90 needs to work, and work for EVERYONE, not just a few.

I guess it's a Marine notebook...... the FEW, the proud, the Marines!

 

You guys are being rediculous. Remeber this is a users forum to help eachother out. All this arguing is doing is making the actual help harder to find in the pages. So please agree to disagree and end it.

 

cmon guys.............

 

Well I am going to repost an actual issue:
I am having stuttering in Burnout Paradise and Crysis/Warhead when A.I. is enabled. I have read about SLI and Crossfire having micro stutters, is anyone else having these issues. Is this normal

 

I know Vicious and striker are both pretty knowledgeable. Did or do either of you have micro stutters with A.I. or any other Multi GPU setup you have had?

 

I only benched crisis, I did not notice any of the micro studder issues however it is a well known problem for both SLI & Crossfire in where the dual cards are not syncing well or your fps is not fast enough.

Changing the rendering mode away from AFR should fix it, but I forget how you can force the other rendering type (other than turning off the CAT AI)

For now I would try to find your comfortable OC limits for your cards & cpu and see if an OC helps, also if you play in DX9 for me the FPS was WAY higher even though it looks 99.9% the same.

Id definitely be playing in DX9 for a more enjoyable experience.

 

When is the last time you defragged your harddrive ? What things are running in the background ? IE anti virus etc . There can be many reasons why a game stutters but i would take a look at your task manager and see whats going on or atleast start there . Burnout paradise ran fine on my W90 as did Crysis warhead (but depending on what settings you have turned up you could be experiencing some harddrive thrashing or thrashing from textures being swapped from video ram) .

 

Thanks for the info guys, I dont think it could be any background tasks, I dont have the stutters in bioshock or dead space or farcry 2 or COD4 or CODWAW so I think its just a syn issue. I just wanted to know if this was an issue experienced by anyone else. Also My main card got up 87 C when playing Dead Space for about an hour is this normal temps? What would be the temp threshold?

 

Its because your FPS is much lower in Crysis than those other games, if you get your FPS up to a certain point it goes away.

So thats why I said use DX9 and OC some as those things will raise your frame rate.

The other solution is to turn off AFR and that is probably going to drop your already low frame rate.

 

The cards can get a bit toasty , i saw highs of around 83 or 84 degrees before but depending on the ambient temp it can vary .