ASUS Vivobook U38N

From what I can tell with CPU-Z and MSI Afterburner the only thing throttling is the GPU. The CPU is constantly at 1800 mhz when the Laptop is on high performance mode.

PSCheck doesn't work, it doesn't show a window. In the taskmanager it uses 30% cpu and fills up the ram slowly.

 

That's not a good sign, there are similar reports of it not working on some Windows 8 machines.

Did you try running it compatibility mode and as an administrator?


If it still doesnt work, AMD Overdrive is the only alternative I can think of, though I'm not sure how much control it gives you.

http://download.amd.com/Desktop/aod_setup_4.2.3.exe


You also may not want the CPU constantly running at 1.8ghz, as it may cause the GPU to throttle.

 

With this A8, we only have a 19W power "budget" for the CPU/GPU. This also makes the A10 version, with it's 25W envelope, significantly more flexible.

If you get a U38N with the A8, be very careful about your CPU speed settings. I suspect locking the CPU at a high frequency forces the GPU to throttle itself.




Still, SC2 on low should be easy... I suspect there's some software issues here.

 

I'm posting here too much...

Taken translation from Asus italy on facebook:

Someone said the S400 costs about the same. The price seems too good to be true.

 

AMD overdrive starts and reads all the stuff perfectly. Because I have no idea about this stuff I am leaving to the next one getting this Laptop to figure out what is possible. I also have a very strange problem with the autostart, the Laptop keeps starting programs up that are not in the autostart and the option in their settings to autostart are disabled. Very weird but I guess that is some other software issue..

 

I just received my replacement U38N.. it's also going back.

This time the backlight bleeding covered about a third of the screen from the left and all the way along the top also.. I know that some backlight bleeding is to be expected with IPS panels, but this is not even close to "i can ignore it" when it is this visible and takes up this much of the screen.

 

Sounds Asus needs to get their quality control under control. That's very unfortunate.

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk 2

 

Yeah, I'm hoping this is just a really bad batch.
The 2nd one got distorted colors when using the touchscreen just like when you press any old monitor without glass in front of it. The first one didn't do that.

I'm trying for a third unit now.. if that one also turns out to be bad I will just look for something else because it's a waste of time although it's a nice laptop except for these problems. Casing and general build quality is great.
Goggling for problems about the Zenbooks with the 1080p screen also show that there's been plenty of problems with especially backlight bleeding.

 

Update: A collegue got the same laptop now and immidiatly installed a SSD and swapped 1 RAM module for a 8 GB Kingston module with the same speed. Everything works well, the RAM is still running in Dual mode according to CPU-Z (I thought different size of modules would mean no dual channel?!). The SSD runs at the same speeds as in stock benchmarks. The 3d Mark 11 scores are a little lower than mine (might be because of the RAM since someone pointed out the APU is strongly RAM dependent) but he has some driver issues, the windows pc score is also slightly lower for some reason.

He also has a little more light bleeding than me but not as bad as some of the zenbooks I had before. The build quality of the rest is as perfect as mine though. I hope Asus figures these issues other posters are having out, then they really blow the competition out of the water. And lose the annoying bloatware. Man it is so annyoing, some program keeps switching the energy option I chose back to "Performance" unless I spam click for about 5 seconds. Also for some reason EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM automatically puts itself into the autostart, even though in their options the autostart is disabled. I already tried the task manager autostart but there are no programs listet. I guess I will have to go to the registry to solve this which is really annoying. Examples are Steam and Spotify.

I will clean install windows 8 when I put in a SSD though so it is not bothering me too much (or wait, yes it is).

 

Hey guys!
Been lurking here a while, this laptop is seriously interesting. But considering that Kabini and Haswell are around the corner and I would really like a hybrid (tablet with keyboard dock), I'm staying away from it and saving my money. Still, not bad value: 1080p touchscreen, Quad AMD, 1.55kg for 800€. My 11.6" Core i3-330UM 1366x768 Acer laptop cost 650€ at the time.

Current CPUs (where the memory controller sits) allow for such an asymmetrical installation. 2GB of the RAM is used in dual channel and the other 6GB of the one stick are single channel. 12GB with 4/8GB would have 4GB in dual and 4 GB in single. Not every manufacturer takes advantage of it, but it seems Asus did. Good for them (and those of us who purchased the device).

 

It's been issue with PSCheck since Trinity's introduction, sad newer versions are not exist. High performance mod lock CPU cores and makes GPU throttling, therefore I call it bad performance mod. Balanced what recommended to choose for Trinity.

 

Assuming you can get it to run, is it still possible to undervolt all the PStates without locking the CPU cores?


Also, I called Asus asking for a release date. The support guy on the phone told me the U38N should be in Best Buy/Amazon now since they already have a US support page for it, but then I got him to look online, and he saw it wasn't there. He said it should be relaseased soon, but they've been saying that for awhile...

Based on what Asus Italy said, I guess we're still looking at mid-February.

 

Yes it is possible to undervolt all the PStates without locking the CPU cores. However did not worked well for me because the program caused 20-35% CPU work and I had to uninstall the whole program to get back my good CPU performance. I'll see again the program with my new upcoming Trinity machine, maybe possible to work around somehow and get it work right.

 

That's unfortunate, sounds like we need an update or a new program. I'm in computer engineering now, maybe I can look into this...

Undervolting and cost effectiveness are the 2 main reasons i'm looking at s Trinity laptop. If I can't even undervolt... Why not wait for haswell?

Have you tried running it in win7 compatibility mode? Have you tried FULL compatibility mode that comes with Win8 pro? Or does this actually happen in w7?

 

I don't know if it has been reported before, but there was recently a review for the U38N's brother with discreet graphics, the U38DT:

Review Asus VivoBook U38DT Subnotebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

Although this one does not have an IPS screen, they still gave it a positive review, but the CPU throttling was rather severe and renders the machine useless for the reason it should be bought for (light gaming). Too bad, unfortunately. So far, the UX32VD remains (unfortunately) unbeatable. Let's see if we'll soon see the 25W A10 version around...

 

While I agree on your points on the 38DT; the point of the 38N is not gaming. Even if its only for work (even with the throttling I get some benchmarks higher than HD 4000 laptops..) this laptop gives amazing value for the money. Opting for the non full hd panel makes no sense though.

I just tested the throttling with prime95 and it does throttle. Mine does not go down to 900 but it drops from 1800 (which is the clock most of the time) down to 1300, 1400 and 1600 sometimes. I guess that is why in some games you get the feeling "wow, this will run easy" and then suddenly it starts stuttering. The throttling highly depens on the performance plan though, it was worse on windows performance mode, the amd power plan with "gaming" activated in the vision center gives a slightly better result. I uinstalled the power4gear from asus so I can't test that one. Still hope this will be resolved somehow, would be amzing if this thing could run sc2 decently. There was a driver update over the asus service yesterday, they fixed something in the OEM installation, dunno.

 

So I received my new U38N after sending back the old one that had issues with the touchscreen (it stopped working, they couldn't fix it either, at the support).

On the new one I noticed that the touchpad was a bit weirdly placed/mounted. The bottom right corner of the touchpad had a noticeable big gap and you could feel it and it was annoying as hell, especially when you used the gestures to get the five charms to pop up at the right of the screen. The left side did not have this. Can anyone confirm that they don't have a little gap on the bottom right side?

I sent the new laptop back and according to the support they said that it should be like this. Apparently they contacted Asus and they said this is perfectly fine. Got pissed. Got the money back as they didn't want to send a new one.

Good thing the price went down from $1250 to $1090 in another store (the A8 version) so I purchased it again and saved money on it.

Few things are unclear to me though:

• Swapping the HDD to an SSD (it should be 7mm and not 9mm) (?)
• 2GB soldered on it, what is recommended to get if I want to add in more RAM? What speed should it be?

Thanks in advance.

 

Yes, the HDD is of the 7mm variety. Other than that it is, by all accounts, a normal HDD. So any 7mm SSD should do (new Samsungs are good, M4 has 7mm version, Intel 520, Sandforce if you want to risk it and they are specified for 7mm).
The 2GB soldered on is 1600MHz, so the free slot should be populated with 1600MHz RAM as well. You can either go with 4GB (=6 GB total) or 8GB (=10 GB total), for most usage scenarios it would not make much difference. I personally would go with 10GB just so I don't have to worry about upgrading any time and the price difference doesn't worry me. 4GB will be dual channel RAM, 2/6GB will be treated as single channel RAM.

 

Thank you for the information. Cleared some things up!

So what you're saying is if I upgrade to 6GB it will be dual channel (2GB + 4GB), else it will be single channel (2GB + 8GB)?

How is the performance (single channel (6GB) vs. dual channel (10GB)) in this scenario?

 

No, I didn't explain that right.
You have one 2GB RAM "stick" (soldered) in the laptop. So with any new SO-DIMM RAM stick that you put in that is >= 2GB, you always have the first 2 GB of those 2 RAMs (= 4GB) going in dual channel mode (asymmetrical dual channel, supported by most new CPUs). Now, if you get a 4GB RAM stick together with the 2GB soldered on the mainboard, you have 4GB in dual channel and 2GB in single channel. If you get an 8GB RAM stick in there, you will have 4GB in dual channel and 6GB in single channel. Performance will be the same in both cases, only with 10GB total you can have more programs open without running out of RAM and having to close them / move to the pagefile. I have had windows warn me of low RAM with 4GB systems, but I always went straight to 8GB, so I cannot tell you how likely that is with 6GB. Either way, my guess is that in 95% of what most people do, they do not notice a difference in Windows behaviour between 6GB and 10GB. And the dual channel is the same with both as well.
I hope that cleared it up.

 

Thanks again for explaining it to me, really appreciated.

I'm going to buy a stick with 8GB, as the difference in the price is minimal.

So if I'd rap it up as simple as possible: You always have dual channel with 4GB, 2GB from the soldered stick and 2GB from the other stick and the rest out of that stick is single channel. I'm assuming I'm correct now?

Again, thanks a lot for taking your time and helping me out.

 

You have got it right now. HF with the laptop and maybe give us a little review (couple games, cpu bench, battery test)!

 

Can anyone share with me if their backlit keyboard has uneven light?
Looking straight from the top it seems to be fine but when looking at it from a regular sitting position I can see the LED's from the half left side of the keyboard and the top row.
The right side seems to be "just lit up" without the actual LED's showing.

 

The viviobook is like my zenbook UX32VD with a touchscreen, and i would like to buy it if id wan'nt have my current laptop !

 

Despite my chat with Asus support, I think a US release is pretty unlikely.

The Richland APUs, Trinity's successor, are supposedly already shipping to OEMs like Asus, and availability is supposed to be around Q2 2013. If we don't see the U38 by early February here in the US, launching it with an almost previous-generation APU wouldn't make much sense... it would also explain this obscene delay.


In other words, Asus might just hold off in the US and release the updated U38 with Richland instead.

 

I'm hoping for a U38N as laptop/tablet hybrid (read: Asus Transformer style) with a Kabini low power APU.
And for those who don't want tablets, they can get the updated U38N with a Richland APU.

 

The Asus Transformer Book is very close to what you are asking for except the cpu. It's for an Intel cpu instead.

In other news, I sent back my 3rd U38N and are now looking for something else. All of them had bugs severe enough to not ignore :/

 

That's horrible. Sure doesn't make me want to buy an Asus laptop (at least not the u38 series).

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk 2

 

Sorry to hear that. I had 4 Zenbooks U32VD last year, I was so upset with asus, especially because of the price of 1100€. That is why I am so happy with my U38N now, it was 300€ cheaper and actually delivers more. They should really get their quality control in order.

 

Asus Transformer Book and the Lenovo Helix are both pretty much what I want.
But when the Surface Pro will cost ~1000 bucks I cannot justify 1400/1500 for those two. And with Haswell around the corner, buying Intel right now is not much of an option either. And I would like the Kabini instead of an Intel one because of better price and battery life and I don't expect to be doing a ton of compute intensive stuff (my i3-330UM is still pretty okay for my laptop use).
But that's enough OT for now .

 

As far as I have read we won't be seeing any Haswell tablets until the next holiday period?
Or did I read some bad info?

 

Haswell will launch at the start of June, coinciding with Computex.
So we will see the first Haswell tablets in 6 months. Shipping will probably commence around late summer/early fall. Considering the major enhancements specifically directed at mobile and tablet use (first Intel Core SoC for example), that is a very short time to wait. Especially since I'm very interested in the enhanced iGPU part.

Edit: But I'm really more interested in Kabini at this point. I hope they don't cripple the tablets with budget screens for a budget SoC/APU. And those should launch at the end of Q2.

 

http://kakaku.com/item/K0000460735/
Investigated ordering the A10 version from japan for around $770 (converted to USD), but I'm worrying about these QC issues. Seems like most people had to return theirs at least once, which pretty much rules out ordering from an overseas site.


Come on Asus. You make a good computer and market it, put it up for sale in every country from Japan to Romania, but won't even sell it here in the US, and can't get your QC under control elsewhere? It's just sad.


All the alternatives I have in mind seem overpriced or underwhelming, but I need a new laptop soon...

 

Okay so this is the third U38N my girlfriend has had.

The touchscreen stopped working, completely. This happened after the computer had been in sleep mode (which it has been in several times before). The touchscreen didn't work at all after she "turned on" the laptop again.

First one she had, the touchscreen completely died (suddenly too), along with screen bleeding, so we replaced it, second one had issues with the touchpad (which didn't seem to be mounted correctly, the bottom right corner had a little cap, compared to the left side) as well as screen bleeding (which every model seem to have).

And now the third, which is the longest she has had on her, about two weeks maybe and the touchscreen died.

Has anyone else had experience regarding this? It doesn't make sense that the touchscreen suddenly stops working. Perhaps driver issues, maybe BIOS? Or is it the actual screen?

 

Shame on Asus. It could be anything from a driver issue to a bad connection.

Have you tries re-installing W8? If the problem still persists, it's probably a hardware issue like a cheap wire or bad connection.

 

There seem to be a lot of people, especially with the popular computer "Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13" that have problems with their touchscreens (that they stop working). I'm sure I'm not the only one that have it on the U38N though, but this laptop's not as popular and has not been around for that long either.

If I try to search regarding on this specific computer, I only come back here to this thread.

Regarding the Yoga 13, there seem to be numerous of fixes to get it to work again.

• A common fix seem to be to shutdown the computer via the power button (by holding it down)
• Another fix would be to put the computer back to sleep and then later on turn it on again and restart
• Disabling the driver for Bluetooth
• Also some stuff regarding USB connections (which I'll try more tomorrow on and will write some more, specific fixes, else look in the thread below)

For the people that are interested, here's the thread.

I will look into this issue more tomorrow, as I don't have the computer available, only my girlfriend has tried some of the "fixes" for the Yoga, without success.

 

I had 3 U38N's as well, all returned and I am now looking for another laptop.
I wrote about the problems on previous pages, but to sum it up they had severe backlight bleeding (like half the left side of the screen on the 2nd one, it was really bad) and various other things.
The first one had a crooked touchpad like you mention with yours; there was a gap on the right side of it. Also the first one had a dead pixel, but I guess that's not Asus' fault.
The 3rd one also had uneven keyboard backlight which was really annoying to look at.
The third one I also experienced the touchscreen stopped working until the next reboot. Didn't know if anything else had that problem, but figured it might have been a driver that got updated since I was running Windows Update at the same time so didn't really read that much into it. But seeing as others have experienced the same, I'm positive that it was a problem and not to do with Windows Update.

So all in all; 3 laptops with severe problems. Shame, really, as the built quality seemed good. Thin but sturdy case, but all of these quality control issues are just too much.

 

It's a bummer to read that Asus is dropping the ball in quality control.
I use to buy their notebooks because they usually don't give any problems. I hope they can sort those issues out so that it doesn't affect the users of their notebooks and doesn't tarnish their brand.

 

Hello,

I have been lurking on this thread for a while and decided to register and post, maybe just to redress the QC balance a little. I bought a U38N in Japan 3 or 4 weeks ago and I haven't had any major problems so far, Once the touch screen stopped working though it started again by just put putting the machine to sleep and waking it again and it hasn't happened since (which suggest to me that it's might be a software rather than a hardware problem, though I am no expert)

I'm pretty happy with the machine for the price. I didn't really buy it for games but it can run some slightly older titles quite well - Burnout Paradise runs between 30 and 60 fps at 720p, Minecraft also runs really smoothly at 1080p, but it couldn't handle the new Simcity beta at all. It's fast enough for some light C programming which is what I did buy it for and I really like the screen. It is discouraging to hear that other people are having troubles with theirs, I hope mine stays in good condition.

I think I am gonna put an SSD in it next month and maybe add some more RAM.

 

In case anyone is interested in benchmark scores some of the japanese guys on kakaku.com, linked earlier in the thread, are posting comparisons: I'l update with more when i have time, but this is a Monster Hunter benchmark (higher is better I believe):

‰¿Ši.com - w‚±‚Á‚¿‚ÍU38NxASUS ASUS VivoBook U38N U38N-C40A10 anemone_coronaria‚³‚ñ@‚̃Nƒ`ƒRƒ~ŒfŽ¦”“Še‰æ‘œEŽÊ^u¡‰ñ‚ÍAMD....v[1441787] <- u38N A10-4655M score 3409
‰¿Ši.com - wŽ©ìƒ}ƒVƒ“ i7 3770‚ÌHDG4000xASUS ASUS VivoBook U38N U38N-C40A10 anemone_coronaria‚³‚ñ@‚̃Nƒ`ƒRƒ~ŒfŽ¦”“Še‰æ‘œEŽÊ^u¡‰ñ‚ÍAMD....v[1441797] <- i7 3770 HDG4000 score 3180

He says both were run at 720p, another guy gave these results for comparison:
Core i7-3517U : 2392
Core i5-3317U : 1869
Core i5-3427U : 2280　　　 　　　　　　　　　

 

Hi welfrod and welcome to Notebook Review, this laptop was the reason why I became a member too!

In any case, my girlfriend has not been able to get the touch back. I've tried both turning the laptop to sleep mode and waking it up, as well as the hibernate mode which didn't work either. Maybe it has something to do with the pre-installed Asus bloatware? As I've removed most of it.

What did you do exactly to get the touchscreen back?

Thanks in advance,
cable

 

I pressed Fn + F2 or F1 (whichever it is to put the machine to sleep) , then I woke it with the power button. It only took a couple of seconds. I haven't yet un-installed any of the Asus bloat ware.

 

Tried it, along with a lot of other methods (via the cmd, etc), did not work.

I'm really curious what it can be causing it. Software or hardware related? I'm super annoyed.

I've been trying several things such as removing Microsoft Lync (which the Yoga had issues with), no success.

Also tried looking through the Human Interface Devices in the Device Manager, which seem to be the actual touchscreen on the Yoga, but as the touch is already not working I can't really find it by disabling them one by one...

 

Hi guys,

Quite an update regarding the touchscreen issue... it hasn't been resolved.

I've tried several things since last time:

• Installed all the included ASUS bloatware that exists (it kind of hurt, as I had removed them already before)
• Restored BIOS settings (even though I had not changed them before, more on that later, as I decided to change a few things later)
• Tried to update BIOS to the latest version (but wasn't possible as it already was the latest)
• Tried to disable a few things in BIOS (under "Advanced") like Fast Boot, the touchpad along with a few others (not sure what they were exactly called)
• Disabled Bluetooth and then I uninstalled the Bluetooth driver (which I think was around 200MB)

Of course, all this, without success. The Bluetooth thing was related to the Yoga 13, which seem to have a lot of touchscreen issues.

Last time I had this issue on the first laptop I also did a system restore twice (one that 'resets' but keeping the files and the other one that resets the whole thing), without success too.

I'm guessing that returning the laptop is the only way. I will also call ASUS on Monday regarding this issue.

No one else have any ideas?

 

Have you not tried completely re-installing windows?

Microsoft's WIndows 8 Pro page

Heck, they even advertise the easy "fresh start" functionality. You should try that, or even burn yourself an OEM disk and just use the Windows 8 key that came with your laptop.

If that doesn't fix it, it's a hardware problem, which is on Asus.

 

I did that on the first U38N I had, which happened on the first day I had it. Tried both different kinds.

Now I have important software on it like Office, that takes time to install and I need to for every day use, else I'm not able to work on my computer.

Though I might have to do it again just before I call them, just to be able to say that I tried.

 

Slashgear review of the U38N

ASUS VivoBook U38N Review: AMD in a classic ZENBOOK chassis - SlashGear

Just when I thought it was dead in the US... this is just ridiculous. Asus, if you're gonna keep sending out review units, just sell the dang thing aready.

 

Why would you want to rush something that hasn't been all that great in other markets to begin with? I'm talking about these recent cases where some of the retail products were defective in some way (unresponsive touchscreen). The best thing that could happen would be if Asus is or would become aware of these issues and correct them immediately. Maybe these will have Richland ULV APUs, the supposed 40% better APUs. I dont know im just throwing that out there. It sucks to see Asus quality control go down,

 

Unless I'm mistaken, Richland is the exact same silicon as trinity. It won't be 40% better all round, it'll just idle more efficiently and have a slight clock speed bump. Kaveri is the chip where we'll see some big improvements.

I agree, but if improving QC/fixing bugs is what they're doing, they've been doing it for so long that the laptop is almost obsolete. They should've been doing that back in November, not mid late February.

 

Maybe becaus he needs a Laptop soon and not in a few month. Asus quality control has not gone down imho, some Zenbooks had issues from the start. Mine is still running perfectly fine. Going to install a SSD and more RAM next week like my friend did, his U38N runs insanely fast. And these are the A8 ones, I don't know what the price point of the A10s will be but if it is not much more they are a very good for their price.