ASUS Vivobook U38N

Good, with Haswell coming in 2013, they need to get this machine out the door.

When they say second half, I hope that means before christmas...

 

Supposedly Haswell will only arrive in Q3 2013 so this product still has time to be successful.

 

Fudzilla

From cyberport austria/germany:

Also listed for pre-order on amazon.de

Excluding the German Tax, it's around $880 converted straight to USD. It could be less (or more) here, but that's a nice ballpark price.

 

Nice find! I want to the u38 in the wild already! I hope they've fixed some of the issues discovered in mike's review here. I gotta say I'm excited to see this notebook come to market. Pricey, but nice package overall and better graphics than a lot of other notebooks in this similar class.

Sent from my SPH-M580 using Tapatalk

 

There were rumors the 2nd graphics of this Asus model is a re-branded old model, but actually Radeon HD 8550M is a brand new 2nd generation GCN model. More readings here.

 

Finger's crossed for GDDR5 VRAM but most than likely Asus has chosen DDR3. Anyone know?

 

Ehh, if you're gonna have an A10 in a laptop, it's better of standing on it's own (as dual graphics shouldn't work with the 8550M anyway). I'd rather see and i3 in this body with an 8550M, which would probably be a better combo, but that defeats the whole purpose of the A10.


The 8000M series just got officially released... maybe this is why the laptop was delayed?

 

This seems to be an AMD "Nexus". AMD APU and GPU in one super-atractive notebook.
Also I believe the A10 is for the U38N only.

The review made by MikeTLB seems to me to have worked as a test to see the maturity of the drivers and the device when subjected to a thorough testing.

 

Actually, the only thing this announcement has done is increase the chance of 8550M to be a GCN GPU, but the fact is nothing is stopping AMD from using GCN for 8570M and 8590M, while rebranding 7550M into 8550M. The fact that AMD has confirmed that the top 8600M is the 8690M isn't helping eather.

 

Yes, it seems that AMD is replacing their low/mid range 40nm mobile GPUs from the previous architecture with low/mid range GPUs with GCN architecture.
It kind of makes sense. The GPUs from the architecture that will replace the GCN GPUs will probably be release in Q2 or Q3.
But these HD8000 will most likely crossfire with the GPUs on the Kaveri APUs (although not with the Trinity APUs).

 

Good news, ASUS has posted A10-4655M in the spesifications of U38N.
ASUS - Notebooks- ASUS U38N

 

That is great news Link4! I'm saving up my pennies. This can only mean were getting closer to its release. I noticed the BIOS file is available too, so I might take a look inside for any other interesting details.

I like how the two available APUs are both quads. Sick. It'll be interesting to see how each does with battery life.

 

There are a few tests of a10/4655m setups out there already

..What will be even more interesting is when the apus with power-gating comes out. Then we should be seeing something like 2-3w draw on normal tasks, while still having a slim semi-gaming capable laptop. Would be pretty neat as a jukebox or a video-top, right? A tiny laptop with a touch-screen..

Btw - all of these processors can run, with perfectly good results, in crossfire with the 7670m class cards or above. The GCN thing is what they sweep together with, among other things, a few new methods for transistor increases, the power-gating features ("zero-core"?), and a rebrand, etc. Basically, the software layer doesn't truly care about the differences, but the hardware will have different interfaces and better performance in a few different ways, such as because of.. transistor increase without temp increase, and therefore increased amount of cores. (Don't tell Anandtech, though, or the entire premise for all their AMD articles fall apart).

The apu, and apu systems with a dedicated radeon card in crossfire, also use system ram. Which is why the setups have the ridiculously high OpenCL performance. That both "gpu" and "cpu" have access to main ram through the embedded memory controller. So you don't want GDDR5 ram on these cards, period. You want a system with an as high bus-speed as possible, with the best and lowest-latency ddr3 ram money can buy. No dedicated cards with their own ram.

(Whether Asus actually knows this, and if they won't lock their bios to the settings of their standard ram chips remains to be seem, of course..).

 

They've also corrected the "128GB SSD" and added a download section for Windows 7 64-bit drivers.

I want to see battery comparisons for this specific model(s), Asus claims "Battery life up to 7 hours (Battery life is measured under power saving mode, playing 720p video playback, Brightness:100 nits, default volume with headphones.)"

Wait a minute, I DON'T want GDDR5? Really? But I was always under the impression that that's the way to go when it comes to discrete GPUs, especially those running on high resolutions like this native 1080p panel in the U38N. I hope you're not going to tell me next that I also DON'T want 128-bit, 256-bit, or above bus-width for my discrete GPU either (that I need or want 64 or 32-bit bus width and 512MBMB VRAM or less)!? Can't GDDR5 be "low-latency?" Or does Low-Latency only apply to DDR3/GDDR3? How can you have a dedicated card without its own VRAM? Aren't they all suppose to have their own RAM because they don't share system RAM? I'm confused.

 

???

As we see with the W110ER, even modern discrete GPUs have a nasty habit of drawing power while powered down. The best thing about the U38N is that it doesn't need a discrete GPU... that's the whole point of the A10.

I'll admit, I don't own such a setup, but I do own an A8 and a desktop with a crossfire setup. But from what I read, dual graphics are a mess. Crossfire with identical cards can already be a major PITA, but dual graphics usually do more harm than good, and only work in a handful of games. For that kind of performance, you're better off using a dual core Ivy Bridge with a 28nm GPU.

If you CODE it that way, yes, shared memory can be great for OpenCL applications. But GPUs haven't yet come that far (as far as I know, the APU/GPU simply have a block of system memory reserved for them). Memory bandwidth, on the other hand, is already a huge bottleneck with a single A10 APU. Dual channel DDR3 simply isn't enough to feed 2 GPUs and a CPU: discrete graphics cards are always better off using their own dedicated memory.

Also, all low power APUs are limited to DDR3 1333. You might be able to change the timings if the BIOS lets you, but no OEM is gonna do that.

 

*shrug* caveat irato, I guess..

Look. A system with 1. An apu, with a graphics card instruction set embedded on the cpu die, and 2. with that instruction set having near equal write and read access to system ram as the processor - has been available for over a year now. The next iteration of this is a system with power gating, so inactive cores - on the processor die - can be disabled.

This is interesting if battery life is interesting to you. Otherwise, please go with "28nm intel", read more Anandtech "analysis", and be happy with that.

Add-on cards that fit on those apu motherboards (note, I'm talking about the add-on cards now - please follow this) also typically don't come with ram-modules on their own. Instead - on the high level - the add-on card simply adds more "cores" for the graphics operations - that initially are running on the APU. You don't slow down the system by adding some intel cores to the rest of the graphics context here (like you would on an intel system) - you run the graphics context on the internal "embedded" "graphics card", and then shift operations back and forth to the graphics card add-on module.

These cards, as far back as the n43, can be physically turned off when not in use. Then nothing happens on these cards, they don't draw power.

The 3d performance on that system also then is significantly dependent on the system ram performance. This ram only comes in ddr3. So I'm saying: you want the best ddr3 ram in that system. This isn't opinion, or some far-fetched curiosity, or a weird unexplainable phenomenon unfit for comprehension of mortal minds. It's simply fact that the system doesn't contain gddr5 ram - and if it does you're not going to use it because it will be a waste, and it will be significantly slower.

(And yes, the individual addressing registers being a fraction of the size of a texture shorter or longer doesn't matter in that context. Not in the least since any PCI card has a 256B (byte) "bus-width", and pci-e has 4kb - 4 thousand byte, rather than 256. Got that? A pci-e bus can ship individual memory pages in 4k at a time to a ddr3 memory module, while gddr5 ram is limited to 256 byte. GDDR5 ram is designed for one thing only, and it's the cheapest possible ram-module for external cards. It's not designed for speed, it's not designed for overclocking, it's not designed for error checking, it's not designed for proper redundancy, it's not designed for the broadest bus-transfer throughput - hell, PCI buses aren't designed for speed either - but gddr5 was not designed for anything else than to serve as add-on ram to external cards. Period.)

So what would you choose? Have ridiculously high internal addressing width and speed? Or low speed and small addressing space? I mean, I don't read Anandtech, so I don't know what I'll chose! It's such a freaking mystery to me, you see, because I don't read Anandtech!

..anyway, and yes, trinity systems ship with motherboards that support 1600Mhz ram. The question is, like I said, if Asus will lock the bios somehow, and flash the p-states to some crazy setting or other that they believe was "recommended" by AMD, so that the bus-speeds will start tumbling. And thereby cripple the entire line of laptops with amd's apu processors.

Just like Asus did with sata 3 support, and ram-speeds earlier, for a large amount of systems. I.e., locked the settings to some curious factory default, and made sure it's impossible to fix afterwards. The n56vz is just like that as well - I don't run the bios updates any more, because I worry they've programmed in something that will crash my system or make it unstable.

I wouldn't trust asus to accidentally do stuff right, frankly. And that's really what has to happen.

 

Nipsen, you know some stuff that's way out of my league. But thanks for sharing. We learn something new everyday.

Any news on the u38 series? I'm itching to know more

Sent from my SPH-M580 using Tapatalk

 

That listed Jan. 7 release date in Germany and other bits I've gathered from the web all point to some sort of launch during CES: January 8-11.


There's a good chance we'll get some info about the u38n / u38dt from Vegas around that time. Asus is always funny about international launches, but with the FCC info, an imminent US/Europe launch seems pretty likely.

 

Where did you get this info from? I preordered the U38n in Germany at computeruniverse and it says Jan 21.

The U38DT is already in stock at NBB ( ASUS VivoBook U38DT-R3001H 13.3" Subnotebook [AMD A8,4GB RAM,500GB HDD,HD8550G,Win8] bei notebooksbilliger.de) since yesterday.

 

According to this article Richland is already shipping to OEMs. Is there a possibility ASUS maybe putting off the U38N to put the Richland APU into it instead (assumg its pin compatible) of Trinity or making a similar ultraportable with one? I just think it maybe stupid for ASUS to release this laptops if thats possible. There is 20% to 40% gains for the GPU compared to different trinity skus, not sure on any CPU performance increases. With these advantages I don't see why ASUS shouldn't try to take advantage of them.

 

Nowhere really, most of that was just rambling . Looks like January 21 is the new tentative release date.

AnandTech - AMD CES 2013 Press Event Live Blog

Scroll down a little bit, and they seem to have a U38N at CES. I'll hunt down info and try to see what they said about it.


As for Richland, all the news about it is just a mess. I've read 2 articles that say it'll be a 28nm dual core steamroller, a few others that say it'll be a 32nm dual module chip with GCN 2.0. Some say it'll be 32nm with 1 or 2 trinity modules, someone said it'll be VLIW4, and Wikipedia (along with a few other sites) say it's supposed to replace low end A4, A6 parts (though that's close to Kabini territory).

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/6567/AMD-024.jpg

Alot of sites say it'll be a 2H product, but based on the slide and some news site, it sounds like Trinity 2.0, and it could come out sooner.

 

The U38N is already in-stock and being sold in Denmark.

Komplett.dk - ASUS VivoBook U38N 13,3" FHD IPS touch

 

I ordered this particular device for my girlfriend for pretty much everything. As I live in Europe, I'll receive the version without an SSD and the A10 processor.
One thing that worries me is that it won't be possible to swap out the current hard drive in it. Does anyone know if it is possible to swap hard drives? I badly want that SSD in it.

 

Congrats, you might just be the first person on this site that will own one. Your GF will be very happy once she receives this gift. Please let us know your thoughts on it. In order to change the hard drive, you need to remove the bottom panel by first removing some screws. Once you do and remove that cover, you should be able to easily swap an HDD for an SSD. There's a picture of the internals of the U38N towards the beginning of this thread so take a look there for clues.

 

The internal layout is very similar to the Asus Zenbook UX32VD.
Just make sure the SSD that you are using is 7mm and not 9mm.

I plan on ordering this device myself next week and will be swapping out the HDD for an SSD.

 

1: The A10 version uses the same exact same chip as the A8 version, but at different clocks, so, don't worry much about that. I think there's actually a spot for an mSATA ssd (correct me if I'm wrong), so you can use both at the same time.

2: I HATE YOU! Well, I really hate Asus, not you, as the lack of US availability is really getting on my nerves. It wouldn't be so bad if they actually listed a launch date... typical Asus. May I ask how much that U38N costs in Europe?

3: When you get it, could you see if PSCheck works and show us some results?

How to undervolt Trinity APUs using AMD PSCheck (Tutorial) - YouTube

This may or may not be the newest version
http://91.121.148.119/downloads/tools/PST_3_4_1.zip


Undervolting was the whole reason I went with a llano laptop, as it turned a hot, cheap HP machine with poor single threaded performance and battery life into a cool running monster that can browse the web all day.

Feel free to post or PM me if you want to try and need help. I'm foaming at the mouth for this machine, and check this thread way too often anyway.

 

Hey Guys.

I've had the Asus U38N with the A8, 4 gb RAM and 500 GB Hitachi Drive for two days now. I had 4 different Asus UX32VD last year which I had send back because they all had terrible build quality, massive screen bleeding, touchpad not fitting or issues with the fans running on full speed all the time. Now I can say: Asus can actually build nice laptops, since this thing has none of these issues (except for very minor screen bleeding). The build quality is absolutely amazing considering this thing is 300€ cheaper than the UX32VD. Okay, the performance is not as good but still, it is too close for this price difference.

Comparing to the review of the A10 version this version is of course a little bit slower. All benchmarks I tested scored slightly lower than the A10 version. This is unfortunate for me because I was kind of hoping I could play starcraft 2 on this with a good framerate (its playable but not really enjoyable for me). Otherwise I am completly satisfied with the laptop, it feels really fast while working and the bootup time is even good without SSD which I will put in next month sometime. The A10 version is probably not coming out in the EU which is why I will probably keep this laptop. I am concerned with the power supply (doesn't feel very sturdy) but I guess you just have to treat it well.

Also the official chipset drivers from the asus website are corrupt and the display drivers can not be updated right now, which is kind of weird to me (doesn't matter which mirror you chose). Do you think you can overclock the A8 to the speeds of the A10 since you said it is the same chip? The laptop runs to a maximum of 50°C, which is insanely low. The fans barely turn on during gaming (Skyrim, Starcraft or benchmarking).

If you want anything specific from me feel free to ask. If you have any information about the A10 coming out in the EU I would be very thankful!

 

In Denmark it's currently 6395 kr. which converts to $1138 but with prices in Europe you have to keep in mind that everything is more expensive here.

 

Thank you for the kind words. But that's awesome news that it's possible, I'll most likely throw in a 240GB SSD in this one along with 4GB of extra RAM. Then this sexy beast will shine!

Thanks for the information, definitely handy. Will keep it in mind.

1: Oh okay. That's awesome then if it's possible to have two hard drives in it. The SSD for applications and games, the other one for storage. I'll have to do some more research or just have a look myself!

2: I'm sorry. I understand your frustration though. Hopefully you'll be able to get a device asap!

3: I can do that. Sure! One with the drivers that comes with it and one when I reinstall everything to have it clean with all the latest ones.

The price here in Sweden is around 7999 SEK.

P.S. Thanks everyone for the help. Definitely a nice community, this, that is.

 

What framerates are you getting? Is it running faster or slower than HD 4000 you've used in the zenbooks? If performance is the same or worse than HD 4000, it's possible that you might not be running dual channel memory.

Try updating your drivers from AMD
AMD Driver Autodetect

Also, open the catalyst control center and turn off any power saving modes. You might want to do the same under Windows power management



I think PSCheck (link in post above) is what you're looking for. With llano/K10stat, you could set the voltages/clocks to whatever you want, though I'm not sure it's exactly the same with trinity.

As for the GPU portion, you could try MSI afterburner, though changing it is pretty unlikely.

 

Do you know if you have dual channel memory? That severely affects Trinity performance.

 

Hey,

yes I checked with CPU-Z and it is running in Dual Channel mode. But it was expected that the A8 model is running a little bit slower than the A10 version so I think it is running properly. The autodetect of AMD unfortunately doesn't work and I can't get new display drivers which may affect the benchmarks (although the version from the asus page (which is corrupted) is just slightly more recent than the one installed on the laptop).

With MSI Afterburner an increase of the clock is not possible. Maybe I will look into the undervolting but I am not experienced in this and I don't want to damage my notebook. Since I had some software issues (I was not able to change the energy plan until I reset Windows 8 completly) if have to reinstall some stuff now until I can get some more tests going. Really annoying, I guess it was Asus crapware's fault.

Any specific benchmarks you want me to do or something?

 

Interesting report TrinityAsus. One would also expect the A8 to get a bit better battery life than the A10. What life are you getting? Do you have 3dmark for the A8/7600?

 

Hi there guys again,

I now have the U38N with an A8 at my hands. The first hour or so was awesome until the touchscreen stopped working. Like out of no here. Boom. Stopped working. Just like that.

I've tried for several hours to get it to work again, I've made a system restore (and kept the files) as well as a full restore that removes everything from the computer too. Nothing worked. Still not possible to use the touchscreen.

I've literally no idea what else I can do. I've looked through the ASUS support page too, I seem to have all the latest drivers. Been researching around as well. Tried most of the solutions out there, like "enabling" the "touchscreen". Though I haven't tried to flash BIOS but I'm not sure if I don't already have the latest BIOS (haven't checked). But it feels like that it shouldn't be needed to flash the BIOS as this worked before, fluently.

Anyone else experienced something like this? Should I just call the manufacturer or ASUS tomorrow to get it replaced?

 

Double post

 

Go to the device manager, and see if you see anything about a touchscreen.

You could try reflashing the BIOS (even if it's already updated), then burn yourself a Windows 8 OEM disk, write down the key on the laptop, nuke your hard drive, and re-install windows (though W8's built in re-install feature may do the same thing).



But if that doesn't work (or if you don't think it's worth trying... it may not be) I would certainly get in contact with Asus.

 

Received my U38N yesterday but sent it back today.
It had visible bleeding at the top of the screen, a dead pixel which was visible as soon as any bright colors were shown, and then the touchpad/trackpad was mounted wrong.

Now waiting for another one.. Judging by all the Zenbooks it seem that Asus QA it not all that well, even though things such as dead pixels are not their fault of course.

 

I looked through the device manager but didn't find anything regarding the touchscreen under display, etc.

I decided not to try to flash the BIOS because of warranty issues perhaps.

I also noticed a bit of screen bleeding at the top of the screen. The touchpad was fine though, in my opinion.

So I'm about to send it back and get it replaced.

 

You can just go to the bios and see what version you have.
The latest is version 204, which is what mine came with.

Just hold down ESC when you turn on your computer.

 

Can you get fps in diablo 3 and dota 2 please?
I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks!

 

So I did PC Mark 07 yesterday and got P1165, compared to the Asus ux32VD (P2200). It might be that the flash storage of the ux32VD influences this score since it uses storage tests. The 3d Mark 11 is 891 for the u38n, 594 for the ux31 and 1123 for the 32vd. So it seems like the A8 APU is faster than the core i7 in GPU tasks but slower in CPU tasks. The dedicated 620m of the ux32vd is faster than the A8 APU though. I will try to test diablo 3 later but I don't have DOTA sorry.

Sorry for anyone having issues, I went through the same thing with the ux32vd, I had 4 and none of them was ok. Now I am totally happy though.

 

@TrinityAsus

Thanks for the info. Are you also happy with the battery life?

 

Yes, coming from a 4 yo Laptop with no battery I am very happy. It runs at least 4 hours with pdf viewing/browsing on low brightness and energy saving mode.

edit: this got significantly better with use though. The first full charge only ran 3 hours. But I heard that this is normal.

 

Is there any news on when it will be released in Europe (Netherlands)? It hasn't been announced anywhere as far as I can tell...

 

Thanks a lot broski!

 

It's already in stock here
Ergebnisse mit Ihrem Suchbegriff - computeruniverse


Wider availability on Jan 21 (Monday) seems pretty likely.

 

I just noticed my laptop is running at 1.8 ghz on maximum performance. On the specification site of Asus it says it maxes at 2.4 ghz but I have never seen in higher than 1.8. I use CPU-Z to get these numbers. Can anyone explain this to me? I will try Diablo 3 soon (it just takes ages to install..).

 

That is turbo clock speeds. The processor will range from 1.8 GHz to 2.4 GHz. Only expect to see it bursting to the higher clock under lighter loads and under higher loads it will only stay at around 1.8GHz.

 

Okay I can now say there are definately some software issues that make gaming a problem at the moment. I just tried diablo 3 with the MSI afterburner and instead of just showing fps (which I did before for Starcraft 2 and the benchmarks) I also looked at core clock at core usage %. It looks like the core clock drops a lot from 423 mhz to 200 mhz or 320 mhz. The laptop is on maximum performance and I checked in the AMD vision center if I can change any settings (powerplay etc). What is weird is that you can change the processor clocks in the software also (for battery and plugged in) and the settings only range from 1100 mhz to 1600 mhz! If you set it to 1600 mhz it will stay at 1800 mhz consistently though.

Thank you for the reply xrmx89x but I have never actually seen a clock speed higher than 1820 mhz, so I guess it just doesn't happen at all or there is a software problem. The laptop also stays very cool so I guess its possible its running at very low clock speeds and can go higher.

edit: ah sorry I forgot to say something about diablo. I tried lowest settings on both 720p and 1080p and while at times I had acceptable framerates between 30 and 60 fps, most of the times it was stuttering a lot. For me it did not seem enjoyable at all. Maybe this is due to a software/driver problem with the clocks at the moment because sometimes it seems the laptop should totally be able to handle it. Also the IPS display is absolutely gorgeous, it would be very nice to play games on it. I was very suprised how much the colors changed the appearance of the game compared to my desktop TN-display.

 

So the even though it's running cool, the A8 is still throttling itself... not good. You really need high CPU clock speeds with these trinity CPUs to get any decent performance. Also, the CPU and GPU both have to fit in the same power envelope. So the if the CPU starts throttling up when you play Diablo 3, the GPU may underclock itself to compensate, and vice versa.


Have you tried using PSCheck?

How to undervolt Trinity APUs using AMD PSCheck (Tutorial) - YouTube

Undervolting all the Pstates of the processor may actually allow the CPU and GPU to reach their turbo speeds more frequently. The undervolting potential really makes these chips shine... but at stock, they're problematic.


EDIT: Also, my A8-3500M performs well in skyrim, so this A8 with a faster GPU should run Diablo 3 on low without a hitch. The software/drivers need to get sorted out ASAP.