Asus C90P due out in June 08

Hi all,

Just a FYI, I spoke with our product rep today in Cali who said that the C90P will be released in mid to late June. Not sure if it was already posted but the GPU will be a 8600 GT DDR3 256 & 512MB.


Regards,

Scott

 

Hmmmmm 8600gt we already have, and it was discontinued...

If they dont offer the 8700gt (9650 or what ever its supposed to be now) the c90p is probably not going to do so well.

 

Thats what i said. He said they chose that because of the cost and the heat issues. But I think he was holding back a bit as he did say they are seriously tight lipped on this one.


Regards,

Scott

 

Can't be an 8 series. Thats like shooting yourself in the foot. Its going to be a 9 series, if not thats a shocker. Thanks for the heads up though.

+Rep.

 

The 9700M GTS should be the best compatible video card.
http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/Nvidia_55nm_Mobile_Graphics_Cards_Unveiled/5705.html

 

What about the G70....!?

 

That doesn't even make sense, they announced it with the 8700M GT. All official news of the C90P says it's going to have an 8700M GT. I'm sure it will be whatever equivalent 9 series card by the time it releases but having another 8600M GT card doesn't even make sense.

Plus, those fancy all copper heatsinks should have helped a bit with the heat. I wouldn't believe anything until Asus publicly announces the exact release date and specs.

 

No it doesn't make sense to me either but thats what was said. However, I wouldn't put to much stock into that as even with the C90S Asus came out with several GPU cards that worked (nVidia GeForce Go 7700 256MB / nVidia GeForce 8600M GS 256MB DDR2 / nVidia GeForce 8600M GT 512MB / and the nVidia GeForce 8600 GS 256MB DDR3- but that one was yanked pretty fast.).

My guess is that they will come out with a few different GPU versions to make it more attainable for more people (Just a guess).


Regards,

Scott

 

Lets all get serious here. Lets all start a petition that we will all eat no less than 20 puppies and 20 kittens each if Asus does not manufactur a gpu that is faster than the 8700M GT for the C90P.

BTW: I am not serious. Its a joke.

 

Didn't ask, but I will.



Regards,

Scott

 

We could all have a drink in down at the PUB.......


Thats not a joke......heheheh

 

I'm hoping for the best. If it has one of the new card (like the 9650M GT), of course they are not gonna tell us since Nvidia hasn't confirmed them yet.

If it's a 9650M GS, it's still better than what we have and maybe we won't even see better than that in this gen's 15'' (except from Alienware o'course)

@Vicious: Yeah the 8700M GT is now the 9650M GS. According to the datasheet, there are the 9650M GT & 9700M GS/GT that are based on a 128bit bus too, so they are options for a 15'' maybe. The 9700M GTS & 9800M GT will be the mobile 9600GT

 

hi, on nexus13.com their are pre-announcing the C90P with nVidia up to 9600M GT 512MB. And RAM up to 4GB.

http://www.nexus13.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=351&idproduct=1319

 

Oooh nice find. A 9600M would be a nice step up from the 8600.

 

They seemed to change that from 9600M back to 9500M.

 

No its lower down. It says up to 9600m in the detailed specifications.

 

oops my bad

 

Great find shriek.

The page has some very bad inconsistencies....so many I dont even want to list them all. QX9775???

 

Tis a mystery. Biggest mystery of all with the C90P even be worth getting? As in will the bugs be fixed.

I don't think it would be worth the money (probably near 1000$) to buy the c90p barebone and just transfer my things over just to fix my problems (Mostly RAM, but I do get BSOD once in awhile) so I hope there is some way to just swap mobo's and that would be really cheap.

 

A mobo switch would be absolutely great.

 

Yeah I am hoping I can do something like that. I am just guessing but im sure its a strong guess that the C90P will be identical to the c90S with:

The case, the monitor, the optical drive, the keyboard, touchpad. Basically everthing except the mobo and any new internals you give it (gpu, cpu)

If its MXMII you should be able to transfer over your 8600gt, and its still socket 775 so our old cpus will work.

There is no need for a new case, optical drive, screen, ect. Asus needs to find a way to say "I am sorry" for the C90S and let us upgrade to the C90P somehow eather via a trade for a cheap cost, or some sort of upgrade.

I love the idea and hope it becomes a reality somehow. EVGA does so great as a video card company because they have the step up program. Basically you buy a video card from them and for like 3-6 months (forget the window its been awhile) you can use your card, and when a new card comes out and if you feel like you need an upgrade, you can send in your old card for FULL value of what you PAID (not the current market value, but what you actually paid for it) and have that cost taken away from the new card.

If Asus could cook up something similar for the C90P I will be so happy, but in this case you dont need to replace everything, I bet is possible to just "upgrade" with the proper tools and knowledge.

 

yeah, their website have some inconsistencies. I went straight to look there because that's where I ordered my C90S back in january. wish i could get the 4GB with mine...

 

What bugs did you have? I had the E6700 in it and had the mobo capacitor issue but that was fixed with a trip to the service center. As for the BSOD, what ram are you using? I have tried several, We mainly used the Super Tallent at first but to many errors so we switched to Corsair & Crucial in all our builds along with the Seagate Momentous 7200 rpm HDD's. With swaping out the ram to Corsair / Crucial we have had no issues.



Regards,

Scott

 

Right now 2x1gb of Nanya one of the ones specifically on Asus's "OK" list. I cant even boot from battery power with 3gb of ram (and I have tried 3 different combo's of ram)

 

I'm 2x1GB of Corsair Value 667 and sleep/hibernation often BSOD on battery power + AC combo. I mean, if I enter sleep on the battery and wake up on AC, it will BSOD but ONLY after 15-45 minutes. lol

I hope for a step up, change the mobo & give us the copper heatsink. At least give us the option of buying the new heatsinks.

 

I'll second JCMS on that one.

 

A petition of sorts I say! Can't wait for the c90p to come out to settle this issue.

 

I dont think they will care for a petition, a boycott of sorts would make them think tho. However they already did that to themselves, if the c90p doesn't deliver and have the C90S problems fixed nobody is going to buy it.

I say the majority of the C90S experts and owners are all members of this forum and anybody searching for information or reviews is one way or another going to get led here.

A new buyer may luck out and get the new machine problem free, but those of us who pioneered into being the original owners of the C90S are probably going to get shafted.

I am not interested in new copper heatsink upgrades or anything like that, its not going to do me any good to make things run abit cooler, because heat is not a problem now. I want stability, more ram, and maybe in the future a faster cpu/video card.

With luck the C90P can do all of that, but the upgrade is not significant enough to warrant the cost of an upgrade. So thats why I just hope there is some middle method to get the upgrade without a full purchase cost and the trouble of having to sell off an old unit that NOBODY is going to want.


I hate to cry "WARRANTY!!" but it may be my only option, because point of the matter is, my machine does not work so it needs to be fixed. Even that tho would only net me yet another C90S unit not one of the C90P units unless Asus themselves take a hand in it and say, well rather than send you yet another C90S that will probably have problems too, here take a C90P and see how it goes. That would be great ASUS guys if you are reading this.

 

I had 2 c90's sent out and can say for sure the battery boot problem is not ram related.

one worked and one did not, utilising the same ram.. i sold the non working one on and havnt heard from the guy since, lol. But mine still runs from boot to internet explorer on battery.

Not trying to point out my expertise, however there has been a lot of speculation about ram incompatibilities resulting in boot fom battery problems, but i can say for absolute sure there is another issue.

 

Vicious you are absolutely right. You can do a yahoo or google search and this forum comes up. The vast majority of C90S owners have been to this forum and know the issues. I wouldnt even put it past Asus to cancel the C90P entireley or do a limited country release. Marketing marketing marketing! Why is dell so popular? Why is HP so popular? MARKETING!

 

I had actually originally heard the c90p was not going to happen, now information says otherwise.

I guess we wont know what to believe until it happens.

Despite it all I still like the c90s and it was the best laptop puchase I could have made at the time. Only the really cheap M50SV that just recently came along might have been a better buy, but the c90s was out way before then. So you cant be upset that new and better technology comes along, but I think we do have the right to be upset slightly if they released what is borderline a defective product and they don't try to do something to take care of us.

What Asus needs to understand is the value of loyalty vs money. They sure may well lose a good chunk of change if they recalled all of the c90s's and then sent us c90p's in there stead. However imagine the praise we would all be singing in Asus's name? Every person there would become a faithful Asus buyer for the great customer care, and that praise would spread to friends and family, and threw our great forum as well and ultimately end up making them more profit in the long run.

 

Vicious...you should pitch that to Asus

 

Its very tried and true.

I work at Hampton Inn right now and thats the method we use. Any Hampton you ever stay at has what we call 100% Hampton. Its our guarantee that if ANYTHING is wrong with your stay no matter how minor if you feel that you can not leave happy we wont make you pay for your room.

A/C not cool enough? Free Stay
Housekeeping forgot to bring towels for the new day? Free Stay

You might think thats insane and we would lose money but it did the opposite, we make good money because we have a very faithful basis of regulars, and those regulars bring family/friends. Also it take just 1 person upset from a bad stay to make you lose potentially hundreds of future sales.

Plus our customer care is rated so high that even Hilton recently adopted Hampton not long ago as a part of there hotel family.

It also kind of goes hand in hand with sell more cheap than less for more.

Meaning if say your retailing a product and sell just a few of that item for a very high price, if you make X profit, then somebody else makes a similar product and sells more of them cheaper they also make X profit.

The 2nd person is going to do better in the future because even tho both retailers made the same profit guy #2 has a better image for value of the product and also more of the product in the hands of people meaning advertisement.

Average Joe out there probably doesnt even know what Asus is as a brand, let alone a DIY notebook like the C90. If you had 1 person in your school with a c90 everybody around that person may inquire as to what brand it is and what it is and possibly become interested, then later become a buyer, or just share that knowledge next time in a conversation where it becomes viable.

But if you had 10 people in a school with a C90 imagine how much more wide spread the knowledge would be? No matter how good a product is or a company nobody will buy it if they do not even know its there in the first place!

So right now Asus is not in good standing with the C90S many people have already sold there units and moved to a different brand and maybe wont come back to Asus. Thus reducing the number of products out there to self advertise and the people to back them up (and maybe even go against them). But if Asus looks at the big picture and then makes up for the mistake, they get good feedback from there current buyers and then many more new buyers from the good feedback thus more advertisement and a bigger growth for the company. There is nothing to lose IMO if they do something and help us out.

Heck they could maybe even make money off of it by say letting you send your C90S in for a Free C90P but then offer upgrades at a nominal cost like upgrade the 8600gt to a 8700gt or upgrade the cpu/ram. If they are smart about how they do it and find a way to set it up we can both benefit and it becomes a win/win situation.

 

Correct....I solved the online with battery problem by replacing the 4965 card....no more probs....warranty.

 

ViciousXUSMC, your comment is very insightful. Will report to ASUS.

EDIT: I would like to do a little comment on this following quote:

That is very true. However from ASUS's standpoint, by giving out free upgrades for C90S users, ASUS does lose a bit of their potential revenue and profit from C90P sale. And here comes the question: what are they going to do with the returned C90S? They can't sell them, and end up competing poorly against C90P. They can't just toss them away, because it will also cost them money. They also can't store them, because storage also cost money.

Of course, I'm just pitching out some ideas what ASUS's motive might be, and not necessarily arguing against your point.

 

True enough but think about EVGA and there step-up program with video cards. What do they do with the old cards? I have never found any "used" EVGA cards on sale from the company just from personal owners.

With luck tho, they can take the old c90s and just swap the mobo out and keep all of the old parts if they are the same. (monitor, case, keyboard, optical, touchpad, ect) so the actual cost to them would be little more than labor and a motherboard.

Also if its possible I would be more than happy to do that myself and eliminate the labor part, some good instructions on how to do it if its a simple tasks that doesn't involve any special tools or complicated tasks like soldering. I would be glad to make a step by step picture guide and walk the c90s community thru it, and then the c90 retains its reputation as a tech enthusiast/modders notebook.

I think I semi disagree about the fact it would hurt there c90p sales tho because I pretty much think if they do not do something to help move the c90s owners out, there will be almost no c90p sales. Nobody is going to be brave enough to pioneer into the 2nd generation of the c90 when the previous one flopped and none of the past owners are going to support it.

But the flip side is that if we all moved to the new platform and it does work right, many people will join us and become first time buyers. Thats what I think anyways.

 

However, consider this: while in EVGA's step up program, you typically can only purchase a stronger card within a limited time frame, but not its replacement. To put it in perspective, for example, you can only "step up" from a 8800GTS to a 8800GTX, but not 8800GTS's replacement, which is 9600GT.

Same thing with ASUS. While EVGA can repackage the cards for sale as "new" cards, ASUS cannot repackage C90S and sell them as new, since its replacement C90P will make its debut.

That's true. However, the differences between C90P and C90S are much more complicated than a simple motherboard swap. C90P has PM965 chipset, while C90S has 945 chipset. Therefore C90P may have different board layout than C90S, and some of the output socket (VGA, USB...etc) may shift around.

If this is the case, not only the motherboard needs to be swapped, the entire lower case also needs to be swapped, along with other components. This may present too big of a cost.

That is definitely true. I'm thinking of getting a C90P myself, due to its endless possibility of modding and upgrading. Therefore I'll definitely try my best to relay your comments to ASUS (thank you very much for your contribution.)

You do have a point. However, from ASUS perspective, even if one group of enthusiast is gone, there will always be another <= poor thinking.

I definitely agree with you on this one. However, there are some logistic problems that needed to be figured out. I'm sure if ASUS determines that the costs of "upgrading" current C90S users are within the acceptable range, it will definitely jump on this opportunity.

 

Thats a great point and quite possibly true. Lets hope somebody at Asus took the time to look into the future tho and made sure they kept the layout the same. In doing this not only would it aid in what I want to do but it would be a really good idea in general.

Why? Well because if they kept it the same it would allow them to use all of the c90s parts that have not been sold or used yet and I am sure there are a lot of them. It would also allow them to essentially terminate the c90s and start producing c90p's at the same sites. It would save them a lot of money in not waisting goods.

Its not a new idea, thats why when you go to a junk yard you can pull a part for your car from the same model thats 3 years older. They share the same parts to make replacement, availability and manufacturing of parts cheaper and easier for all.

 

Your issue isnt a ram issue. It sounds like you have a E6700 CPU with one of the first motherboards that came out with the C90S.


We bought 50 or so C90's when they first came out and one of my customers and I had the same configuration (E6700, 3 gig Super Tallent DDR2 Ram, 160 gig 7200 RPM Seagate Momentous HDD, 8600 GT 512MB GPU, Intel A/ B/G/N wireless card & TV Tuner). My C90 always stayed on my desk and I never took it out or used it on battery, but my customer did. He couldnt use it on battery due to blue screen or when it came out of hibernation it would crash or freeze. Mine did the same things when I tried it. He contacted Asus who stated that there is a known power issue with the C90S with the E6700 CPU (The mobo couldnt handle the power) so thay had to replace the mobo or just add a extra capacitor. My mobo was replaced and I havent had any isses since. Trust me when I say....I pushed mine when I got it back and tried to crash it, but it never failed. They have since fixed the iussue with all the newer C90S's. But if you have one of the earlier models just take it in or call the service centers, dont mess around with it. You will only get yourself frustrated and want to toss it out a window.



Regards,

Scott

 

The C90P, from what I understand about it, will be backwards compatibable. They are making it to accomodate the newer CPU's with 1333 FSB. You would have to think that they did iron out the 1066 FSB CPU power issues in order to move up to 1333 FSB. Otherwise it will be a major diasaster and a marketing nightmare.


Regards,

Scott

 

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of issue does FSB 1066Mhz CPU suffer from?

 

That's definitely true, and I fully agree with you. However sometimes things just don't go the way we hoped for

 

WHOAAAAAAAA!

Evga is a great example of good customer service. Good point!

Also, your points about hospitality and customer service is a great point vicious. Circuit City comes to mind about that. They used to be tops cause of customer service and knowledge. But when the competitors came they got scared and in their flurry they got rid of the good associates and started money first customer second policies and covered it in the illusion that it was "helping the customer" now look. Blockbuster want to buy them....if not them then Carl Icahn. I hope Carl busy it cause he will fire all the idiots that have run the company in the ground but still get paid like kings.

Even though best buy is not too great either. They still hire young inexperienced people...but they are doing that even while making good profits. BB is a powerhouse...even though their practices are CC's new practices. I mean that %100 literally.

 

Sorry mate, maybe I didn't say that right. The C90S, when it first came out had a issue with handling the power of the E6700 & the E6800 CPU's on battery power. I spoke with Asus ( The C90S Product Mgr and tech support) about that issue and was told that the motherboard (for what ever reason) couldn't handle the CPU's when a user is on battery power and sometimes when plugged in to a power point. They were already aware of it and said that they needed to add another resistor or replace the mobo. They had fixed the issue at the production level so all newer units that were / are bought didn't have the problem. So I contacted most of my customers (that had the E6700 & 6800 CPU's) and told them of the issue and what to do to get it fixed. As far as I know all of my customers did send them in and had them repaired under warranty. All up it took about 3-5 days to fix and get back. The hardest part was finding somebody within Asus (at that time) that was aware of the problem and getting the right information. The service centers here in Australia didn't know about it, only the US (California) folks did. So I made it known to Asus US that Asus Australia was in the dark about it.


Regards,

Scott

 

Since the only difference seems to be the motherboard, mainly the chipset, they would just change the currentu nit's mobo for a C90P one and couldn't they recyle to old mobos to make new ones?

Mine also suffer from some BSOD on battery with a E4500 but it's following a strange pattern. Like, the 10 first time I go into battery after a format it BSODs but stops after lol. Will ask for a mobo replacement this summer I guess

 

Not so simple. Switching mobos on a laptop is not an easy task and very expensive. Assuming Asus does nothing to help us upgrade to the P and such would be to simply ask Asus to purchase a complete barebones, with no screen or anything other than the laptop and mobo. Even the screen which would save you a good couple of hundred dollars. Me, I mainly just want gaming prowess so would just be satisfied with a new card, but the lower tdp of the new processors, heat and such would probably allow better overclocking for the gpu which is very tempting.

 

To add to what The Forrunner says, PM945 chipset's pin out might also be different from PM965's pin out. Since both of them have different features (# of SATA for instance), it is inevitable they will have vastly different board layout.

Chipset diagram for 945PM
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/945pm/945pm_diagram.htm

Chipset diagram for PM965
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/GM965/gm965_diagram.htm

The physical difference between C90P and C90S remains to be seen.

 

The 965 is so much better, I wonder who decided to use the 945 on the C90S when it was already so outdated. However remember these chipsets are not standard in the c90's they are changed to work with the laptop.

 

Yeah well these are Asus manufactured boards, so unless they purposely built it differently, then they should be the same layout.