*Official ASUS W90Vp Owners' Lounge*

Well 3dmark for me is to know that my computer is performing around the same as the other whitebooks. and i would compare it to the same components(ati vs ati, nvidia vs nvidia, intel vs intel, amd vs amd)
what are your scores? ichime in those games.

 

yeah if you look at the specs it really shouldnt. there scores should be making us not post here again
hopefully asus fixes this.
4870CF
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4870-X2-Crossfire.14406.0.html

3870CF
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-3870-X2.14242.0.html
i know notebook check isnt always right. but these specs seem right to me(for the 4870)

 

nah, i didn't add that one.

 

Should be a lot more of us in "the fray" soon if the A1 comes out on the 24th like I heard.

Man I cant wait, I know I have a review to do for it first before I can really tear into it but I miss having a laptop period My EEE has been holding me off for now and its find for net surfing but I miss my photoshop.

Sad thing is I can type faster and browse faster on the eee due to its multi touch gesters enabled touchpad. Its faster & better than a mouse in a lot of ways.

 

ViciousXUSMC what do you mean. i thought all laptops have that mouse setting. i can changed the four corners of my laptop to do stuff.

 

...and then you have to add memory, a hard drive, WiFi, an Operating System...yep, nice try. Lucky I didn't get you for talking about a price tag in the past tense that probably isn't even accurate.

well, according to your technicality with drivers, it is.

Probably the Vantage system is too complicated with the Hs and Ps and Xs, but it still valid in the sense that it does suggest how powerful the entire system is all around (CPU + GPU).

 

Wow! Doesn't that sound familiar! Has anyone even tested the ATI Stream Processing that were unlocked with the 4k series cards and recent drivers? That was the "big" news about the 4k cards.. anyways, I agree with john.. drivers are immature.

Gimme about 15 minutes and I'll post 9.3 modded for these cards.

 

no, that was the total system...this aint dark smiley this is rjtech barebones system starting at 1299.00
65.00 hard drive
25.00 bluetooth
230.00 second vga
40.00 wifi
300.00 t9600
looks pretty close to me.

they dont price like eurocom. dont need to do the math, been done it already. and as far as price performance/ratio. and out of them two, it's the whitebook.
now if we go by the current alleged pricing of the m980nu then the w90 would be the clear winner.


we heard all this stuff before E. very true indeed. kind of why i stated it in big bold print.lol. some still tend to miss it though.

yes, lets get the 9.3's into action. see what they bring...also..anyway to mod it to say
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870
so orb picks it up?

say E, you know if the whitebook is allowed to run the 4800 series, they will probably come pretty close to the w90
but the down fall or draw back could or would be...
fsb at 1150 instead of going up to 1600
x8 pcie slots instead of x16

 

very true.. the x38 mobo makes a huge difference.


Ok.. here's the NEW 9.3 ATI HD4870 mod with some of my performance tweaks.

these are for 64bit Vista and 64bit Win7.. just download the ATI Drivers from here(not the CCC & driver full suite):
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?driver=VideoCard/vista64-components

Download the CCC seperately from the same link..

Uninstall ATI drivers via device manager - dont use driver sweeper or safe mode.. extract new ATI drivers and throw these 2 .infs inside the \9_3_vista64_win7_64_dd\Packages\Drivers\Display\LH6A_INF folder to replace the ones currently there.
64bit Vista & Win7 infs

Reboot

Install driver using have disk method and point it to the CH_76829 driver for Vista or the C7_77072 for Win7, then check device manager to make sure it installed properly. Now install CCC without rebooting.. should all be there as 9.3 now! Hope it works out

Oh, also..you can try downloading the full driver/CCC combo package and just replace the .infs - not sure which method is better as I no longer can test. Feedback plz?

 

ah, that's why it wouldn't take. i was using the wrong inf for windows 7...

 

Did you try modding 9.3 or 9.2? They changed it up in 9.3 seperating the infs. Don't know why they never did that in the first place.

So who has a W90 and 15 minutes?

 

did the 9.3 from ati to mod them for my ati card. and it didn't want to take, but i think i see the error in my ways

 

Eh.. it's hit or miss. give it a try now and see if it works.. actually, your green light turned gray so I assume you are.

 

Why do I have the feeling that your next system might be a W90 once things are sorted out?

good luck trying to boot that system without memory ($70) and play games without an operating system ($90 For Vista Home Basic). Which comes out to a total of....$2100. That's a Far Cry (no pun intended)from $1800, $1900 or $1959 or another number you want to choose. That $100 difference could be factored into the W90's ability to OC non-extreme processors and ability to OC the GPUs via overdrive.

Speaking of which, apparently one can extend the OC limit in overdrive with a program called Radeon Bios Editor (RBE) from techpowerup. One guy in the MSI section already tried it apparently. Only thing though, you'll need to reflash the GPU, which should be done at own risk.

 

Qusetion:
with the bus at x8 when CF is enable, how badly would that effect performance. the whitebook is the only notebook to use 3870CF so we cant test this with another system.

the fsb limitation, is it the chipset?

i thought the x38 chipset wasn't a big difference compared to the p???

 

It isn't as if the 4800 core is something new to ATI. You would think they would be up on their game a bit more at this point. Even Nvidia is offering universal mobile gaming GPU drivers now.

In the end, with SLI/Xfire I don't think you're going to see a huge difference between GTX 280M and 4870's. In addition, I don't exactly see a massive leap in performance gains between last generation's 9800M GTX SLI / 3870 Xfire versus what we're seeing now.

If you own a Whitebook or a 9800M GTX/GTS SLI system, I wouldn't even bother upgrading this time around the way it looks so far.

I guess it comes down to what you want to play and how. WoW is lagging with all details to max @ 1680x1050 (shadows = off) and raiding is down right chunky in a lot of spots, so I will definitely be getting a 14-15k+ 06 baseline system of sorts.

I'll be stuck with the fam, er going on mutually agreed vacations, this summer and fall and I'll need my me/gaming time

Only systems that will hit those numbers are the Whitebook, 9262, W90Vp and most likely the M98. Are there any others?

BTW, you can track down uber cheap ($55) copies of Home Vista Premium Retail Upgrade edition (which can be installed new easily). Only catch is you need to add SP1 which is easy as a stand alone download.

 

you forget the m1730 and the aliewware version. and the msi gt725

 

Has anyone taken pictures of the naked 4870 GPUs yet?

 

ummm, you could be right about pricing..i forgot..you deal in retail.

yeah. checked him out already (tester) 570/1150 or something close to that. so that's very encouraging. now if we had some people willing to embark on this line of testing...this would settle allot of other things as well...

nope.
and the one person that did take them apart and took pictures didn't bother wiping the compound off the gpus to look. which was pretty silly if you ask me...you already took the thing apart...guess he didn't have extra compound for the gpus..lol

 

I get Error 43 on E-wrecked's modded drivers.

 

oh.. dag - really? hmm.. wasn't that a problem a couple months ago for desktop 4k series?

when did it give you the error? And did you use the have disk method to install?

 

All these weeks and we still have no MXM confirmation? Well that's a dang shame.

Request: Some please open up the heatsinks and take some pictures of the 4870s.

 

yeah, without the paste on it though...

 

Well, I followed your instructions. Only when I installed the drivers through Device Manager, the screen went black. The system was still responsive, so I shut it down with the power button. Upon reboot, the screen went black a couple times, then went back to normal. Checked Device Manager, and the second one isn't working. Ran 3dMark and got 10,327, which means the new drivers aren't boosting perfomance very much, even on a single card...

 

All the back & forth about the different models cost & peformance. I think nobody mentoned the one thing that really pulled me hard enough to sell my G50V and move to the W90.. The looks & style.

I do not know what all the other systems look like but I am sure of them are about equal to a brick esp the sagers I have looked at in the past.

You had to admit for a big dual card computer the W90 is looking nice while not being all super flashy like most other gaming notebooks.

 

Oh and Quad Core capable. 725 is single GPU 4850. So that disqualifies both of those.

 

Was the screen black when you rebooted?

Well, before doing anything else, use the have disk method again as it sits. See if it installs.

Oh, one other thing.. you can try it without uninstalling CCC. Just remove the video drivers, then update with have disk..then run CCC install and upgrade the currently installed version of CCC. Throw me some details, and I'll get it working for you.

 

Best price I could put together for a Whitebook:

Barebones w/ DVDRW + Wireless Xfire...........$1575
OEM T9600 (Ebay!)......................................$ 350
320GB 7200 RPM WD...................................$ 80
Windows Vista Home Premium......................$ 59
4GB DDR3...................................................$ 72
--------------------------------------------------------------
$2136

That's complete with S&H.

 

I saw a glimpse of the login screen, it went black for a few seconds, and then the screen came up in low resolution. After sliding my finger to login, the screen was 1080p, then it went black 3 or 4 times before settling down. I already tried uninstalling the second adapter and reinstalling the drivers - no dice.

 

I should note this is one of the original shipping units with the 0404 BIOS that can't be updated. Before we determine these won't work, let someone with a new BIOS test them. I'll be going back to the drivers off the disc. I should note that I still haven't had any problems or lockups since doing my own install of Vista. Just figured I'd help you guys out by being a guinea pig. I don't think the problem is the drivers. I think it has something to do with the VBIOS on the slave card. I bet if it were flashed as a primary card, they'd both "work", although you wouldn't be able to use both of them.

 

It's normal for what you just described to happen.. in dev manager it shows the one driver being disabled, correct? Let's do this the right way. Sorry..cut/paste from a walkthru I did:

1) Open Device Manager and Uninstall Old Display Adapter Drivers, also check the box "Remove software related..etc" when prompted to uninstall the display drivers.

2) Open Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel and remove the ATI Technologies Software Suite - device manager may have done so, but double check.

3) Reboot, and tap F8 like nutzo on boot to enable Safe Mode option

4) From Safe Mode admin account, check to see Generic VGA Graphics adapter properly installed..

5) Run Driver Sweeper and check the ATI Display box, then Analyze & Clean..I usually do it a 2nd time just cause. There may be one entry after you run it the 2nd time, and it's a registry entry. Ignore that.

6) Reboot - Check to see that Standard VGA Appears in Device Manager - It's ok if Vista reports they're not functioning properly. From this point, let's install.

-----
Ok, cutting off the walkthru.. from this point you can try one of 2 ways. Using the setup.exe to install, or by using have disk method. I'd say the Have Disk method. If this still doesn't work, then repeat steps above and then run setup.exe in the driver installation directory. One or the other will work.. I assure you.


EDIT: I dont think it has anything to do with the BIOS as far as this goes.. with the 3870s some people would report the EXACT same problem you're having. It even happened with me a couple times, and one resolution I found was to go into control panel, uninstall Microsoft C++ library, if you look in there now and see more than one entry then that is likely the cause. Anyhow, one step at a time. If ya wanna be the guinea, which I appreciate.. give the above steps a try. If that doesn't work, then you're welcome to remove the C++ library from Control Panel and try again. Just keep in mind, it's normal for the screen to flash. And even when installing, it can go blank for up to 2 minutes.

 

I'll give it a try, but I'm going to sue you for pain and suffering if it doesn't work.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but these things don't work. The install method does absolutely nothing, and the Device Manager method still results in Error 43. I even tried installing the drivers for the slave first. To answer your question, I had to install the generic VGA driver for the secondary, since it was installed as something else with an exclamation next to it. Also ran the cleaner twice.

 

Update on my W90, still works great...I did a crysis bench a while ago and got around 37fps average @1920x1080 Gamer settings no AA. So not bad.

I've been more focused with my big rig as of late and have found my mobo doesn't like the ram so, playing with stuff to make it 100% stable. Going for 4ghz stable for now, more shouldn't be a problem but I'm gonna make it 4ghz stable 24.7 OC

 

That's both disappointing, and confusing. Doesn't Asus have a download that goes in conjunction with the ATI drivers, their turbo gear VGA driver? What exactly is it used for, and how does it install? Over the ATI driver? Possibly it has something to do with it.

 

Hello everyone and thank you for the warm welcome. I will attempt to clarify the details as best as I can. Please if possible post your questions in an easy 1. 2. 3. Fashion to allow me best to go through the thread and see what information I can provide.

1. One question I saw was in reference to quad core support?

I have not read through the entire forum to see what are results in reference to support for the cpu but officially we list the max cpu support as the t9600 cpu. Keep in mind there are some tdw differences between quad and dual based cpus as noted below.


For both the q9000 or q9100
Thermal design power is 45W
VID Voltage range is 1.050V-1.175V

The t9600
Thermal design power is 35W
VID Voltage range is 1.050V-1.162V

Although the base microcode could be present in the bios for cpu support we have not validated this for the vrms or caps or other electrical components on the system as well as continuous heat output that is factor during the possibility of heat degradation. I will attempt to get clarification on whether it has been validated by our overseas dept.

2. For bios updates and issues in relation to bios updates.
We are currently aware that the bios posted on our support site has a corruption in the base rom and does not allow for a successful update. We will soon update a correct rom version that will allow for the update to be completed. I would advise until that occurs contact us directly if you are an owner and we can supply with you the bios rom file.

Be aware in my current testing that I performed on 5 w90vps that were all original batch models I was not able to duplicate issues on the units ( 1 model have the 400 series bios and the 4 others having the 500 series bios )

3. Issues with overall statements in relation to quality control and releasing the unit before testing.

We go through extensive testing to ensure your ship with base drivers and applications that allow for interopbility and stability. Additionally when we initially received reports of stability issues we attributed it to 3rd party software issues or adjustments to drivers or lasting issues with over clocking via the ati or turbo software.

To this fact we as a company and myself can state we have not had an active recall on a model in our current 2009, 2008, or 2007 line. Now additionally in a field such as computer there is always a reality the software issues can occur in relation to support for hardware and ensuring the best support stability and performance. We strive to continually ensure to what software and hardware functionality we are accountable for a functional computing experience on our notebook computing platforms.

4. Performance with 3d mark. Attaining max scores or high scores.

As a gamer I have no personal interest in a purely synthetic benchmark. I perform real world game play testing which provides drastic differences in playability and setting requirements. With that said I have tested 3d mark 05, 06 and vantage and pc mark 05 and vantage on the w90vp without issues with multiple settings and resolutions. So depending on how you choose to define your quality experience in game play this could drastically affect your score within 3d mark. In reference to scores the highest I was able to attain was 14600 approx. This was with a 10% oc (specific settings in CCC i will have to post at a later time).

If you have any additional questions please feel free to contact us. Additionally I would recommend creating a case for your and our reference.

http://vip.asus.com/eservice/usa_rmaserv.aspx

 

well...im thinking it takes a qx9300 because the asus's marketing rep (kinc) has one in his doing 20k off the first batch of w90vps.
or did that system crash and is now being replaced?

 

I think what is being said is, "We don't officially support the QX9300 at this time" <wink wink>

Then again, being a gamer's NB, I was kinda shocked they didn't have a model with a QX9300 in it for the, "ZOMG!! EXTREME GAMER MODEL!!!1111ONEONEONE" or something similar.

 

yeah, im knowing electrosoft. lol

 

May have found my first issue with my W90vp... while playing my MP3's at max volume (regardless of player), skipping seems to occur...hard rock seems to do the trick where as softer music not so much. How about everyone else? Hows your W90 play music on max volume (sub turned up to +10)...I will continue to play with it as I am off to work again for a week.

 

Good call, just loaded 25gigs lol...initially started up in VLC but I think a troublemaker was running in the background...grrrr....

 

another reason why quads are better than duals. rule number 11
lol

 

Well seeing as there shipping a model with a quad, albeit a lowly Q9000, there is little doubt it does support the quads and must be supported to an extent .
Also why would Xotic offer up to a Qx9300? and i know they will have to honor the warranty themselves if you opt for the beefier of quads, but they must know something that Asus tech must not have been made aware of, otherwise why would they offer it all ?.

 

Yeah but in this case it was probably the hdd not the cpu.

Its a sin to use Windows Player anyways, get Winamp

 

your probably right, but....it sounded good though! tell the truth..lol

 

im just accustom to assigning task to different cores...
but your call was probably the correct answer..i just took that opening to throw in a quad...lol

 

Striker i would have to say no and they come with a quad, for one reason mainly and that is because Xotic only offers quad CPUs(no dual core offerings) why i dont know . Gentech also has the same deal, only quads. So something is telling me they(Asus) maybe dont want them to sell this particular model with anything less then a quad ? Could be as to not compete with other models they may have coming down the pipe or the current Egg one.
(All speculation of course)

 

now that is a pretty good speculation there quad. and makes perfect sense...everyone gets a model to work with. so they can sell from all four corners giving a variety.

 

If they were barebone units you better believe they would be offering every CPU under the sun, thats why i think this machine from xotic is designated for quads only. Plus barebones would offer choices like a single harddrive and no blu ray as standard etc.

 

kind of why i never bought a q9000...so i feel your pain striker!