*Official ASUS W90Vp Owners' Lounge*

Isnt that what this already showed?

Jamiee's FSB was not as high as mine, but his cpu speed was higher and eve still it fit very linearly into my test pattern.

I already know the FSB has nothing to do with the score, its just common sense.

The FSB is like SATA II for a hard drive its the interface for the system but its incredibly fast, much faster than what the system needs, no matter what you cant saturate its bandwidth meaning making it faster wont do anything.

I think some of you are getting the system FSB confused with the PCI Buss.

 

Does Xotic charge sales tax? I'm very hesitant about picking up another X1 now, it looks like there a few RMA'ed unit floating around, I dont want to do another RMA.

 

As long as your not in the same state as them then no sales tax.

 

Any idea when Xotic will get some stuck on these? Agearnotebook.com has them in stock right now, anyone heard of them?

 

Gentech has em in stock now, minus one... bwaaa ha ha ha

 

I dont think it was directed toward you striker or atleast thats now how i took it . Funny thing about paradyne64 is, he takes reviews from newegg and pastes them here , from what ive seen there usually negative, yet he is an owner of one and says he is happy with it lol /so confused . I could not be happier with mine so /shrug on all the other bologna but i will say stuff like hadis where he got someone elses machine is not a cool thing at all . We dont know how many companys do this because its not like there going to tell you any way , but atleast have the decency to wipe off the fingerprints and fix the tape around the bezel before selling it as new .

 

Agreed Quad, I've never been in situation where I didn't know where to spend my $2400, not to mention be afraid of getting second RMA unit. So really considering taking quad over better performing p9600, simply because I don't think Xotic would send me previously returned unit.
Edit: The only problem is I need to get a new unit within a week max, or I'll leave to Europe without one.
Sigh... maybe I should get MSI GT725 and get over it.

 

hadis was there anything wrong with the machine aside from it looking like it had been opened ?

 

When I called they said, not to power up the unit, or no RMA, for refund, which was the only option because they had non in stock, which is also lies, because I called right after and asked, and was told that they have around 140 units, but no ETA exactly when to be sold. Go figure.... I just don't want one that was even slightly used before.

 

Ya i hear ya , i just might have kept it because of how hard they have been to come by not to mention the 2 year warranty, so if there was something wrong it would have been fixed either way .But i understand how it would feel .
My friend just got a MSI 725 the 1680x1050 one and not a bad machine for someone on a budget, but to me there not even in the same league . if your in a hurry its by no means a bad choice either.

 

Quad so after comparing quad and p9600, how much am'I loosing in performance? I'm thinking maybe getting A1, or else it waiting game again.

 

Just get the A1 the performance difference is nill pretty much because you can overclock with Setfsb now . If i had to do it all over i would go that route for sure . Your getting the extra HD space (whether you need it or not) + bluray(again whether you need it or not ) for not much more money . Vicious is pulling 2.7ghz all day long on his and thats awesome . Later down the line you decide you need more CPU speed then toss in a Qx9300 or what ever. I never thought i would get the Setfsb thing going as fast as i had and thought it would be months down the road before someone discovered it TBH but that was not the case and i was looking at the faster of the 2 out the box experience but that all changed once you could overclock it.

 

So, is the manual online? I have searched but no joy. Was looking for something to tide me over while I wait out the shipping.

 

Im surprised too, he responded to you and send you the program like an hour after you asked for it lol.

Im 2.75ghz fully stable and think I still have more left to go on the cpu but my ram cant handle any more fsb with the current divider it uses.

I feel this cpu can do 3ghz+ but would require me investing in new ram.

 

do it then !!!!! just get 1 stick and test the theoryy first

 

Im RMAing my unit sometime this week, cant do anything until I get the new one, and I am flat broke right now

2.75ghz is stable
2.85 is shaky

but those are without the voltage increase from turbogear with that .1 volt more that should be enough to easily break 3ghz and I dont even know what the limit on stock voltage is yet.

I could just rip out all my ram but one stick and try each of the 3 sticks on there own, chances are that one of them can go higher than the rest, and I guess its possible I just hit the mobo FSB wall but I think it should go higher.

 

o so the 2 card is RMA material huh .... i guess there goes the good wishing that is was software related

 

Another question, does anyone know if it has a hardware raid controller or is this a software implementation?

 

Yeah I installed Windows 7 and it was there still so I know its not software.

I would assume driver/crossfire related but not everybody has the problem just some of us, so must be some bad cards out there.

Id almost just deal with it, its only in game menu's no in the game and not in windows or anything, but I noticed non high 3d games like Warcraft 3 can suffer from it in the actual game so that was what pushed me to RMA.

I really hope the one I get back has a CPU & GPU that can overclock so well and nice cool temps, and a perfect monitor.

 

hardware intel

 

Ok I guess it's time to talk to Justin again, or maybe I'll get from Gentech, they have them in stock atm.

 

K, I was looking at the device manager pictures on the xotic forum that Justin put up and Im not seeing a hardware raid controller. Could be I dont recognize it. On the other puters I have had with hardware raid device manager showed multiple controllers and the raid was labled as a raid controller.

I understand you are not running raid on your lappie, Im wondering if anyone else who has enabled raid is seeing something along the lines of "initialing raid array" when the computer boots? Cant remember now exactly what its says, been a few puters back since I had a hardware raid controller.

 

FYI - W90Vp review on HotHardware.com

Probably everyone here already has their mind made up, but I'll share anyways.

http://hothardware.com/Articles/Asus-W90Vp-Gaming-Notebook-Evaluation/

Enjoy!

 

I'm probably off topic again, but Striker was buying an X-25M so I'm taking this opportunity to illustrate what johnkss and I already have figured out; SSDs rock your storage world.

Check out this application loading time video (Make sure you click "Full Size" just above the video to toggle the unscaled version)

I wrote a batch script to load the following 15 programs at once:

Camtasia Studio 6.0
Everest Ultimate 5.0
GIMP 2.0
HDTune
Internet Explorer 7
Media Player Classic
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Power Point
Microsoft Word
Mozilla Firefox
Nero 8
Spybot Search & Destroy
Winamp 5
Windows Media Player 9
Winrar

All 15 load in just under 11 seconds.

 

Umm..it definately uses a Software intel raid controller. A hardware controller wouldn't fit in this machine, would be too costly, and create too much heat. All laptops use software controllers to the best of my knowledge.

-1 pt for jumping the gun.

 

There are a couple rare birds that have had it, was just reading about it on another thread which led to my question. Was thinking with a frame this big just maybe...

Kinda takes the wind out of my sails for switching to raid 0. I have done it on a sager a couple laptops back and I was able to benchmark our a slight difference in load times on a few apps but in real world clicking around I couldn't tell the difference.

 

Eh.. Raid on latops using spinning drives doesn't offer a huge gain. But it's a gain nonetheless. The rig supports raid, so thats a start. If ya want true speed go SSD.

 

Justin W is a good guy at Xotic PC. he answered my questions well and is courtious. Now im waiting on it to get here in Delaram.

 

The x38 chipset is a raid controller...at least according to the intel site.

http://www.intel.com/Products/Desktop/Chipsets/X38/X38-overview.htm

 

I need to make a comparison video

I think it would only take a few seconds longer to do that on my HDD and the thing is when are you ever going to open 10 things at once?

 

That would be a good comparison.

 

then try it with 15 adobe products windows.

 

Only problem I dont have some of those programs

 

I do know that loads about a thousand times faster than my 100Gb 7200rpm drive. I gotta get me one.

 

E Wrecked - I think I may have a problem with your modified 9.4 drivers.

i just got photoshop cs4 and noticed lag in using a lot of the tools like typing for instance. I googled up on it and found that its the new opengl stuff and the prim fix is new drivers.

however in this case even though they are new they are modified, I need to install the old drivers to see if the problem is there. So can you look into this?

Anybody else with Photoshop CS4 do you use the new opengl features? I think I may just turn them off, this flick scrolling is plane annoying.

 

dont forget the OCZ vertex is awsome to .... if you want my times or anything lemme know. Give me a PM and tell me whta to run

 

Try the stock drivers, but if I recall correctly ATI and opengl don't get along well with some newer cards/drivers.

 

Just installed it on my desktop at home with dual 4850s and the 9.3's it works fine. But there are a few things I can try for the laptop. Adobe has a update for some speed fixes, and there is a registry edit for opengl I found on google as well.

I'll still try the old drivers if those dont fix it.

 

Preaching to the choir. I love solid state drives and I hope this will be my last laptop without them. Unfortunately the cost/value trade off doesn't fit into my laptop buying habits just yet. I get a new lappie every two years and like to keep the cost around 2 to 2.5k. This laptop is already there on price but if I had got different brand or unit I would rather have spent on better vid or cpu which help more in my primary usage, gaming on the road.

As to the raid 0 I keep a good backup at all times so the extra risk of raid 0 comes down to replacing a drive and reinstalling. The hitch is that if I cant realize a real gain that I can see and feel, I dont care. My last raid 0 laptop was just so, I couldn't tell the difference. Perhaps it was just that raid implementation? Have you ran raid 0 in a laptop and could notice a difference in actual usage? Anyone?

 

thats why u get a cheap 30 gig for OS and big secondary for storage

 

FYI...if you are interested.

It looks like Mark Mueller at KillerNotebooks has received HIS Asus W90.

You are never going to guess what I suggested he do with it.

However, it involves unscrewing, unplugging and inserting certain CRITICAL PIECES of his W90 into a Arima 840 Chassis.

Yes....we have in the making the worlds first 4870 TRANSPLANT operation.

Don't worry...the W90 will be kept on life support while its Video cards are testing in the Arima 840 chassis.

I wonder what will happen when Mark turns the thing on?



-Hack

 

ok, this is the main part of ssd vs raid people keep missing.
access time:
0.1 ms ssd
everything else including raid
17.0 ms

im at the finish line before you even got started.
guess that's why the new mac's are trying them out. mac's like to be on the cutting edge for business application world.(speculation)

and if you still cant grasp it.

it's like comparing RAM to RAM disk on stanard 7200 rpm hard drive. <---which is faster. and by how much

recalling information from your brain or going and looking it up in a book.<---this is how fast ssd grabs information

true, ssd's are not for everyone. but take this into account..

an hp 8230 centrino laptop out performed a dual zeon with raid 0 desktop when it came to doing every day multitasking.(word/excel/outlook/act/quickbooks/booting up and shutting down/internet explorer/ multiple windows/ saving files/moving files/opening programs/closing programs)

if you can't afford them, then that's cool, but do not go running around putting them down because they don't fit your budget or you cant afford them. ssd use to cost $3000 bucks. i'd say they came a very long way. and more and more buisness minded folks are switching to them. do they help in gaming? no, but not everyone wants to waste ones life gaming forever. they do do more import things than just playing games all day long. some people want an all around machine and that is a serious upgrade to say the least. and with over clocking, you can make up the cost..

 

lol looking at my C & D drives right now both 640gb the C: has 159GB free and the D: is full.

SSD isnt going to work for me

At the very least I would need enough space on C: for all programs & games, I would not install games on the storage drive since they are bound to the OS install, meaning if I had to reisntall the OS the game installs wont work anymore unless I install them again, so to that the best idea is to install them with the OS. Also you want to access your storage drive as little as possible so that it last longer.

Im sure if I had a SSD I would find reasons to like it and ways to show off the benifits and things, thats just human nature.

But since I do not have one I can think logical about it, there is nothing I would do that would need the faster speed of the SSD, the longest loading thing out there is a game, and you wont be able to put many games on a SSD unless you get a larger one, and even if a game loads faster its not a big deal.

The longest loading application I use by a long shot is photoshop, it opens in about 10 seconds or less. 10 seconds, 10 seconds, are you telling me thats slow and it needs to be faster? If you spend 30 minutes working on a picture that 10 seconds was nothing, and after its opened once its in the ram.

Cutting 10 seconds down to 3 seconds isnt going to help you make a deadline or give you the extra time you need to do something. Its just a "wow cool" effect.

 

lol, yes but I have already hit the wall on spending as is, I can only get so much out of the ol lady without undue grovelling and going over means I also get new appliances or god knows what with my new laptop. Its a place I don't want to go. Im old so I take a long view and two years is an eye blink.

 

SSD > Raid 0 in about every way speed wise, atleast a good SSD.

however the main attraction for raid and the only time it really has large benefit is for large continuous files, aka video rendering/editing. The seek is no longer a factor now, but size is. a 5 minute raw clip is like 5gb... just imagine working on a 30 minute clip, thats your whole 30gb SSD gone, now your encoding the raw video into a x264 file, you need more space open to save the new file.

Raid largest downfall is not the seek but the strip/cluster size filtering out many smaller files rendering it useless for a lot of computer work.

 

guess you missed the part where i didn't say encoding/trans coding or decoding for that very thing. and they do have 256 gb ssd's
and i use a 16kb to 32kb stripe size so i don't see those issues. it's still far slower than one ssd drive and it's main good point (raid0) is disk space.
i have 3 hard drives in my laptop (1 ssd and raid0 640 gb's) i know exactly which one does what and how fast.

also never said anything about serious video editing on a 30 gb ssd drive...that is just plain ridiculous! kind of why i didn't mention it.

so like i said before, if you cant afford one, cool. but when you can... you will see the light.

 

Way way way Waaaaaaaaaay faster:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs



-Hack

 

Not sure if your talking to me or not John but as I said, I am already sold. As soon as the price and capacity fit into my needs Im on it. I am fully confident the next one will be there.

Im a commercial fisherman and this is my work laptop believe it or not. I use it for everything, keeping my logbook, a have literally thousands of spare parts on the boat and keep a database of what I have. I also use it to create docs as needed and so on. On the play side this is my primary movie viewing device and also where my games get played. It boils down to this... The laptop I am replacing already opens up a word document in a couple seconds. It opens up excel in a couple seconds. It pretty much opens up anything I want relatively quickly. I dont actually remember when I sat looking at an hourglass like in the old days to open up various work apps that I use. The only thing that really takes time for me are staring games. Would I like better disk performance? Sure, but I have to make a value trade off and for this go around skipping the SSDs best meets my needs.

I however was not asking about SSD versus spinning platters. I already know I need to skip the SSDs this go around. I am trying to determin if it would be worth it to implement raid 0 on this laptop? Worth it is defined as a difference that is noticeable in everyday computing.

 

nah, was not talking to you. just a generalization on ssd technology. sorry if it sounded like i was directing it towards you.
and raid0 is faster than one hard drive, so it will help in some areas, but as for the .1 ms beat time....15 drives in raid whatever will never beat out one ssd drive. (access time)

edit: let me also say this before the confusion police get involved. raid0 is not the issue here. raid is great! it's the drives one uses for raid. that's what we're talking about.

 

No worries, One thing about not being able to afford a new laptop every time the next thing comes out is that its always a nice upgrade when the time comes. The SSDs in the next one will be just that. I am still interested if anyone has implemented raid 0 on the default platters as to what if any kind of performance increase they could notice in general usage.

Going back to the user manual which I asked about earlier. I have not been able to find this on the asus site or with a general search. Does this come on disk with the computer? Anyone know of a dl source? Someone wanna upload it? hehe