*Official UL30VT-X1 Owners Lounge*

Gulp! you installed a $650 part in a $700 laptop? I think I'll wait until a 256gb SSD drops below $100.

 

I got the SSD for a nice deal. At $400, it was too hard to pass up

 

That's a great deal! I paid a little less than 300 for a 128GB indilinx based SSD, and I would gladly have thrown down another benjamin for twice the storage capacity. Although I have found that with regular transfers to an external HD free storage never fluctuates far from 40-50GB. The performance gain from the SSD is quite remarkable. Highly recommended.

 

Downloaded and installed. Didn't really see any improvements or even any sort of apparent change from the previous versions...
Still having the problem of not keeping my GPU setting after restarts though. Hope that gets fixed really soon.

 

Yeah, I'm also using a SSD with a Indilinx controller. They are much superior to the notorious Jmicron ones.

I think you mean 40-50MB/s? Those speeds are limited by your USB connection and the other non-SSD drive. If you use an eSATA port, you'll probably see an average of 150MB/s with up to 300MB/s bursts.

 

Do you guys know what programs you need/should keep after doing a clean install of windows? I'm referring to ASUS programs.

 

I just clean installed Windows HP 64-bit from the OEM installer DVD ROM, but installed the drivers from my own carefully structured DVD-ROM with the best, not necessarily the newest, drivers and utilities for the UL30Vt, and I haven't found an Asus program that interferes with the workings of the computer in any significant way at all yet. :smile:

I think the key is getting the drivers installed correctly, and restarting a LOT during the driver installs to make certain the Registry and keys are placed correctly in the Windows 7 bootstrap alignment and Registry. I also use two Registry tools: Registry Mechanic, and Glary Registry Cleaner, one followed by the other during installs, and at least once a day, especially after heavy or constant use...and I have no issues with things in general, be it in this Asus notebook, or any of my PC's, including two OEM Core i7 920-based custom built PC's for my studio running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, multiple hardware RAID systems (Areca 1680IX-8 based SAS RAID Controllers in each), which are fairly complex systems in and of themselves, and yet I never (knock on alloy and wood) have serious system or OS problems with any of them. :yes:

I am not trying to pat myself on the arse right now, just giving some general advice regarding not only this notebook, but PC's in general. In fact I've found most of Asus's utilities in this notebook have a value or use of some kind or other, each and every one of them, so I don't recommend dispensing with any of them unless you have a specific issue with them that is detrimental to the operation of the machine...and I've had none of that with this notebook, not a one yet of any significance.

Are you having issues with any of the utilities and if so, what are they? Are you simply wanting to pare down the size of the system itself, and eliminate a certain genre of utility? In any case I am not trying to put you on the spot, just asking a logical question or two.

As for SSD's, I had my choices when I bought one for the UL30Vt, and I went Intel X25-M all the way, after a long, exhaustive study of the market, the players, the devices and especially the controllers and interfaces, and I am 100% totally pleased with my SSD after having it installed for just a couple days now. It's not the fastest writer of the bunch, but that's not what a notebook does most of anyway....notebooks spend most of their time reading and searching for data and application specific interpretation of corollary data...and this X25-M is very, very good at that type of intelligent reads. :wink:

I've posted an ATTO Tools Benchmark of my SSD just for grins and general banter, in case anyone is curious about just how these do perform in general, with a decent utility to showcase their potential (I don't recommend HD Tune Pro, for example for SSD testing, although I do have it it's not that great of an SSD tester...and there are others that are either inaccurate or not appropriate with an SSD), and you can see for yourselves in the key areas it's especially strong...up to and higher than 270MB/sec with larger data chunks.

Mine has been properly scratch Aligned and it has Parity, it was clean installed not Cloned, it's been optimized with the Intel SSD Toolbox, and is running the most recent firmware, the latest Intel RAID ACHI driver, which I applied upon installation in the UL30Vt, no problem there at all, easy to do. I am running the Page file @ 0MB, since I have 8GB of RAM so it is unnecessary to run a normal Page file unless I am doing a lot of PS CS3 and modeling work. If doing that I run a minimal Page file @ 8192MB, ie equal to the RAM size.

Of course defragmentation and backup are both turned off also, and this 160GB/149GB formatted SSD is running @ about 110GB free space, so it's got some licensed program weight and necessary things for my work installed, but no large iTunes or other media files reside on it, as mine are all networked in my studio with a PowerMac G5 Dual Core server running a RAID 6 with a 4TB Apple iTunes/AppleTV movie and music library. If I want to watch a movie in this one I carry them on an SDHC Class 6 16GB/8GB media card, same with music, and that seems to work out pretty well for me...using iTunes, WMP, VLC, and/or Asus ArcSoft Theater, which I've got a copy of for upscaling to HD movies.

Anyway, this is a very capable machine, and the SSD has just made it that much more so enjoyable and adaptive, and it's rocket-fast by any estimation in all respects, cold boot, wake from Hibernation, program launching, whatever it is the SSD just vaults the performance into hyper-speed numbers. I am 100% pleased with the final product I've come up with, for work and pleasure both.

Comments are always welcome, don't let me hold back any questions about anything I've written tonight, but those recommendations above as far as Asus programs hold good for me, and my UL30Vt and its performance, as I don't see any Asus program being an "offender" that needs banishment.

I apologize for taking this post so far off topic that I need to stop about now, but I did want to preface my comments about Asus programs with a mention of the SSD situation with this computer, now that's running 8GB RAM and the fast Intel X25-M High Performance SSD. It is truly the perfect small form factor computer at this point, and I wouldn't change anything about it now.

 

I'll have to disagree on this comment. There are numerous Asus programs that should be immediately uninstalled/deleted as it serves no purpose and puts unnecessary load on your system. Since you performed a clean install, you may or may not see these bloatware, but for those who didn't I'll list a few that should be removed: trial flash games, Asus live update, Trend Micro 2009, Virtual Camera Utility, etc...

 

Oh, that sort of thing...sure I don't use the Asus version of Trend, I use Trend Micro Internet Security Pro, which I have a site license for all my computers for; as for the others you mentioned, I don't run those either, no games, live update, Virtual Camera Utility, none of that...

I thought he was asking about important things like the major Asus utilities for example Fast Boot, WinFlash, the ones that you need to make the computer work...there's a bunch of "junk" that needs dismissing I'll agree with that of course, David. But for the majority of Asus actual utilities there's a purpose for them and they don't screw up the computer, they help maintain it.

 

anyone tried the new vga patch driver from asus download website?

 

It's not driver, it's a kind of fix, which removing some device (intel igp)
and it's quite old fix

 

have had the ul30vt-x1 for a whole day now, and the keyboard is far inferior to the UX50v in terms of quality. I'd recommend a keyboard upgrade to the backlit model of the same size. It's far more comfortable, even if you don't do the soldering mod.

 

No. I was talking about absolute storage capacity in reference to your 256GB vs my 128GB. I was trying to make a point of that although I would prefer the larger capacity drive, I can manage at current levels by transferring data to an external drive.

 

Hi - Asus UL30vt-A1 newb here.

Just picked one up last week shipped from J&R - so far very happy with it.

I have 1 question so far that brought me here - since there seems to be very little documentation about it.

When on battery only, should pressing the graphics boost button do anything? Mine doesn't seem to do anything.

thanks.

mitt

 

Did you change the keyboard to backlit model? Can you control the on/off light ? I'm looking forward to have backlit keyboard on my UL30vt, any tutorial available ?

Other topic : What the vga patch do actually? so we have to uninstall nvidia first, install vga patch and reinstall nvidia?

Anothe topic : Anybody using nvidia forceware mod from dox ? any good ?

 

Has anyone tried the Flash 10.1 beta? I didn't notice any CPU load decrease after 10.1, does this have to do with the Asus NVidia drivers? Or anything to do with Cuda? I play lots of HD videos, flash streaming and off the HD, and some of them stutter, so a good solution to offloading to the GPU would be a good thing...

 

Hardware acceleration basically lets your GPU do some of the processing work instead of the CPU. However, if your GPU isn't powerful enough, it can actually make PS run slower. This is also the case when watching videos on Hulu. Often times disabling hardware acceleration will help performance.

If you're talking about the top left button (opposite side of the power button), then it should work even when your system is running only on the battery. Try reinstalling ATKOSD2 and power4gear hybrid.

 

Yea I'd be interested in reading more on this too.

 

someone's already done this.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=465841

 

After doing a clean install of Windows 7 and reinstalling all the ASUS utilities I've noticed my graphics switch now has a third mode to click through called "Power Detection Graphics Switch". This seems to be a "null" state where it just leaves the laptop in whichever mode it was already in. Has anyone else noticed this?

 

My laptop had these three modes since I first turned it on. I didn't do any clean install or reinstalling basic drivers.

And you are wrong. The detection mode turns nvidia card on or off depending on whether or not you're running on battery.

Battery = Nvidia OFF
AC = Nvidia ON

So if you have this mode on.. and you disconnect your laptop.. it automaticly turn's the NVIDIA off.

 

I never noticed this: + rep for you!

 

Thanks for the reply-

Yes, the top left power-like looking button. There was a little arrow sitcker near it that said graphics boost.

I noticed, when the laptop is off, and that button is pressed, it boots into expressgate - so I am wondering, does that button do double duty for both expressgate and graphics boost, or is mine doing the wrong thing for some reason?

If I hit Fn and space bar, then I go into the power4gear and can select different modes. That only works when logged in as admin, regular users have to click the battery icon in the tray, then choose which mode to run in. I can choose performance and the nvidia card starts up. Also, when plugged in, the nvidia card is on as default.

Lack of documentation on the UL30VT series is frustrating.

mitt

 

The ExpressGate function is normal behavior. I agree on the lack of documentation; it seems a .pdf on the hard drive wouldn't be asking too much if a printed manual is these days too great a cost. I haven't checked the UL30 area specifically but some other ASUS models do have documentation available in their download areas.

 

There is a decent 80 page manual for the UL30 series "E4790.pdf", but it makes no mention of the VT graphics function.


mitt

 

I changed my battery profile settings so that the GPU stays on in Performance/Entertainment mode if I unplug from the charger.

Does anyone know how to set the windows theme to change based on the battery profile selected? I want Aero off in Battery Save mode and on in Performance or Entertainment Mode.

 

It's in the Advanced section under ASUS P4G Power Settings+Battery Saving Desktop.

 

Thanks, I tried that but that also sets the windows bar to auto-hide and uses the Asus background. I really only want to turn off Aero without enabling auto-hide or changing the background (I know where the setting is to turn of slideshow background).

 

OK, so my graphics boost button works when logged in as admin, but with the other users it does not. Weird.

mitt

 

Sorry, can't help you there; if anyone can it's probably David. Of course you can turn Aero off manually, but that's not very convenient.

 

Thanks Tallon, not a huge deal anyways. If anyone knows, I'd appreciate the help.

 

Just a quick question for every one who owns a UL30VT, since there is CPU scaling, do you guys always leave your computer in Turbo Mode, or switch it off sometimes. Because for example, right now I'm not doing anything intensive so the cpu is running at 1.0GHz. but im still technically in in "turbo mode". Just curious about what others are doing

 

It is a very subjective question; one that depends on what you are trying to accomplish (e.g. battery life v. performance). What I can tell you is simply what I have experienced: I keep turbo mode on and get excellent battery performance as a result of both my power schemes and cpu throttling .

 

I actually haven't the slightest clue as to how you could customize the settings when in power saving mode. This is actually the first time that I've seen a laptop automatically change its background and taskbar setting.

There's really no reason to have Turbo mode switched off. By using Power4Gear Hybrid, you have full control over max and min CPU usage. Even with Turbo on, you can still limit your processor state, hence I usually leave mine on Turbo.

 

The general census is to leave it on turbo so you do not have to restart your computer to access the extra power. I scale mine back in my P4G options.

 

I have a UL30VT-A1. And every once in a while the screen flashes white for just a second. I think some people were talking about this earlier, but did anyone come up with a solution to this.

 

Mine never flashes white, but I do see a short totally black screen sometimes right after boot: just as the desktop pops up sometimes - but not always I don't think -a get a momentary blank screen. I've assumed it was the nVidia/Intel cards checking the screen or power settings and flashing accordingly, but I don't know.

 

Hello All,

Could anyone please provide a quick pros/cons list of reinstalling with Windows 7 64 bit versus 32 bit. I'm curious about the different reasons why one might opt for one over the other. Thanks! (I'm also still open for more opinions on GTA IV playability on this model!) Much appreciated.

Oh and also, Amazon lists one of their "used models" as follows: "Open box unit. Minor damage to outer box. Package factory sealed. All purchases eligible for Amazon customer service and 30 day return policy." Price: $702.99.

To me, package factory sealed seems like a good bet. Does anyone have any experience buying a used laptop from Amazon. From the description, I presume the laptop would still be eligible for the full Asus warrenty. Any thoughts?

 

Has anyone tried undervolting the CPU?

 

I'd call and ask. Most ASUS laptops come double-boxed, and you could read this as saying the inner boxes' seal has never been broken, in which case certainly it's just like a new unit in terms of warranty. However if it is actually used, and has been factory refurbished, there might be a difference. I'd call and get the specifics, for a new unit in a dinged box that's a great price, for a refurb somewhat less so.

 

Another option is to purchase it through Bing Shopping and get it (as of today, 3/28) for $707 from J&R (after the cash back). Then you know you are getting a brand new computer.

http://www.bing.com/shopping/ASUS-U...U7300-1-3-GHz-13-3-TFT/search?q=ul30vt-a1&p1=[CommerceService%20scenario%3d%22o%22%20docid%3d%2280466888B6AAE6C40001%22%20a%3d%22pa%22]&wf=Commerce&FORM=ENCA0

 

I had a really weird round of updates yesterday. I shut down the computer, and then closed the lid. Maybe it was going to install updates during shut down, because when I started up again, it was still shutting down, and doing updates.

Then during startup, it installed a lot of updates on the screen - I had never seen this before, but it was like 90,000 items it listed.

mitt

 

Hi i'm new here and I've been doing a lot of research on the Asus UL30vt and I just have one quick question regarding the longevity of the battery. I saw a YouTube video on John4Lakers channel and he mentioned that after having the ul30vt-x1 for several months the battery went from an average of 9 hours with medium usage to a sad 5 hours. As owners of this rig has anyone here experienced such problems? and is it covered under the warranty? Thank you for your replies.

 

doing it right now. it only lets you go down from .95v to .9v, runs perfectly fine of course. Not much improvement on battery life, but definitely runs a bit cooler.

 

Hm, I've got a new problem I haven't noticed before - whenever I'm on battery, the top right GPU button doesn't do anything in terms of switching the graphics. I have to use power4gear to change profiles to switch graphics settings. Anyone else seeing this?

 

Mine is the same way if I am in any account other than admin.


mitt

 

Can you undervolt to .9v in turbo mode as well?

 

yes, it's currently undervolting @ 1.73ghz at .9v. Using RMClock.

 

Finally join the community with VT-X1 version (because of better wi-fi)
made a fresh installation of OS and find a kind of bug
after screensaver display goes to the sleep mode and when it's wake up - taskbar dissapears

and it's possible to click through it and call context menu

Aero mode looks just the same

any suggestions?