Asus N56VZ-DS71 first impressions

Sadly what you don't want to hear is that the 7200RPM drive is faster, and the 5400RPM uses less battery

 

did anyone measure their gt 650m idle clock? i'm getting pretty high ones, 1670 mhz for shader, 835 for geometry and 900 for memory clock. if i run something explicitly using nvidia, the clocks may go down and up, depending on load, eventually settling at lowest when there's no gpu load, but as soon as i close that program, the sensors stick to high again... i've checked with gpu-z 0.6.4 and hwinfo64 4.02. the driver is oem version 296.67

 

Hi guys, I've read part of this long thread in hopes of finding out wheter or not I should buy an ASUS N56VZ-S4066V. I know the laptop being discussed is the DS71 version, but I can't seem to find out what the difference between the two models are, can anyone tell me??

It seems like the people that own this laptop or have reviewed it disagree alot!! Some say they can play "demanding" games for several hours without the laptop getting hot or noisy. Others say it gets quite noisy and hot at the left palm rest, after only one hour of playing a "demanding" game.

Can anyone of you guys that actually own this machine tell me how it behaves under stress?? Does it get very hot and noisy?? And what about when you are just surfing the internet, does it get noisy and hot here?

Maybe the reason for the different experiences that people have had, is due to the fact that many choose the swap the stadard HDD for an SSD??

Hope someone can help me deside if I should buy an ASUS N56VZ-S4066V

 

@MilanT: Take a look at GentechPC's n56vz review on youtube. It's measuring the temps after having run the system on full load for a while.

And yes.. if there's no heat-leak in the assembly, the system will reach a surface temp at slightly warmer than your fingers, and never go above that. Palm-rest, like the surface elsewhere, will cool down completely when idling or on light load (such as web-browsing, etc), even in "high performance" mode. Instead of collecting heat, etc. So on a working system, it's no problem playing The Witcher 2 and hitting 87 degrees on the cpu, 80 degrees on the gpu, and still have a lukewarm surface. It gets hot around the exhaust, though. So the keys on the left side get a bit hotter than the rest, from the vented airflow..

What happens when you get a heat-leak is that-- the material on the surface has extremely low heat-capacity, so it will instantly get hot. About the same as tin-foil, basically..

The same problem turns up with a hdd that will stay at over 50-60 degrees when it eventually heats up (which the 7200rpm drives tend to do.. wd black, scorpio, seagate momentus, etc. Same problem - they're noisy, they're hot, they use a lot of power, and they don't run particularly much faster anyway). And since the hdd is on the right side of the palm-rest, basically right under the material, it will get hot, at about the same temp as the hdd underneath.

So either pick a standard drive, go for an ssd, or buy something like the Spinpoint drives. The difference between 5400rpm and 7200 rpm also isn't actually max transfer speed as a rule, or random access time. Instead they have a tendency to have a slightly higher peak transfer, in trade for a lower start on the curve because it takes longer to rev up. Which again is something that causes inconsistent access times and transfer speeds on random reads and writes.

In any case, on a laptop, this isn't going to make much difference anyway. Peak speeds is also going to be less important than random read and write consistency. Where some 5400rpm drives (such as the spinpoint drives) have actually been big winners. I.e., you have a test where the difference in max throughput on the disc is 80 against 95mb/s write. But when you run a test with random writes, the slower drive has comparable throughput thanks to better seek-times and random access speed overall on smaller files. So the 7200rpm drive lucks out slightly in the synthetic test, but stays at the same speed in practice..

Not that marketing cares, or are about to launch huge campaigns saying: "Generally silent and inexpensive drive that has reasonably good throughput on average!!! Buy now!"..

@captain.abstract: that's the standard clocks when some 3d context happens on the nvidia card. Aero in windows, or some of the system files, tend to want to be run by the intel graphics. But you can tweak it so they run on the nvidia card. And then just the desktop is going to prevent the card from idling with the window stacking, and so on. Anything else that runs on the gpu, some sort of opengl effect, etc., could be doing the same.. It's supposed to idle at 135Mhz/405Mhz. ..I think that some of the testing apps could be forcing it to run at full speed as well. MSI Afterburner doesn't do that, but I know there was one program I tried a while back that made the graphics card run at max clocks for some reason.

 

I've got a feeling that merely running monitoring software alone makes the gpu run high clock, because the gpu core temp starts at about 40 and climbs steadily while gpu-z or hwinfo is running. There just could be no other reason for that.

 

Looks like Asus just announced a more portable version of the N56's internals & Keyboard/Trackpad...

ASUS 15-inch Zenbook U500: Ivy Bridge, optional NVIDIA graphics and a full numpad (update: hands-on) -- Engadget

Not too keen on cooling but I certainly do like the IPS screen!

 

Hello, I have a little problem on my laptop. When I run any game in DX11 and try to lower the resolution from the native wich is 1920x1080 I get black frames from sides, top and bottom, it's not stretched saying in other words. With DX9 everything is alright , it goes full screen when lowered. Btw I reinstalled directx and gpu drivers , still not good. So maybe anyone can help me to fix this? Thanks

 

You can set that in the Nvidia Control panel .

 

More info please?

 

Oh man. I Just bought an N56VZ, with upgrades, coming in at a total cost of $1800. Hopefully that wasn't a bad decision.

Any guess as to when the U500VZ comes out?

 

I feel your pain, brother.

Since it's running Windows 8, the *earliest* it could be released is October 26. It could well be much later than that.

 

Are there many variations between VZ model numbers? Excluding HD size?

I want to try and pick a more recently made model to hopefully reduce my chances of receiving one with defects.

I've found two:

N56 R501VZ-S4177S

&

N56VZ-DS71

The second is far cheaper but in America, I wonder if it's worth it? I can get the cheaper one & a Crucial M4 512GB + shipping for the same price as the R501VZ-S4177S from Australian retailer MLN.

I guess I would have to pay tax though...

 

Why?
You'll have a recent (2012) laptop with great reviews, with a slightly faster CPU than U500VZ (if confirmed the latter has a i7 3612QM), expandable both on RAM than with SSD, whose only "fault" could be some throttling just in stress test (and that could be just a fault cooling system in the unit tested by Notebookcheck).

U500VZ seems to be a really sexy machine but at the moment we don't know how much it will cost, how well it will perform, how well it is cooled, if RAM will be upgradeable, if there will be immature BIOSes or other troubles, etc.

I suppose the only "bad decision" you could have taken is if U500VZ arrival will cut N56VZ price very soon!

 

Meh. They really should release a trinity version with an ips 1920x1080+ panel, optional/no dedicated card, and a lithium polymer battery. Place the components slightly differently, and use the extra depth on the current design to put a monster of a battery in there.

Then have some cooperation with canonical, (or better yet, Fewt with Fuduntu or something), to get all the acpi functions working under linux - and then ship the lowest cost full-sized IPS laptop on the market.

But hey - no one wanted to hire me as their managers, so Win8 it is.

I think it's a setting on the intel driver. Can probably reach it on the taskbar icon under "keep aspect" or "prefer scaling"..

 

Just got my N56VZ-RB71 from Fry's. Everything is well except for the subwoofer..

It makes this consistent "popping" sound the moment I plugged it in. I'm pretty sure it's defective. I will probably return the unit to get a new one. I called Asus and they said they have to service the whole computer.. Sigh..

 

I got my N56VZ-DS71 a week ago, so far so good, but I have a problem. When the Notebook arrived Windows Rating gave to both Graphics and Aero Performance a rating of 7.1 (the same as notebookcheck). After updating the BIOS (revision 204) I did a clean install and I installed all the drivers found in the ASUS N56VZ page, except for the Intel HD Graphics 4000 and nVidia Physx.

I installed an updated version of the Intel HD Graphics driver, this one. And the lastest nVidia Physx from the official webpage.

The problem is that now, Windows Experience Rating is giving me 6.8 on Aero and Graphics performace instead of the previous 7.1.

A little help will be appreciated. Cheers

 

Damn.

Got my N56VZ today. First thing I tried was to create backup disks so I could reimage, but it won't get through that process without freezing.

When it freezes the background goes all funny with little blue squiggly lines (see image)
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/31697322/frozenN56.JPG

Eventually if I leave it on that long enough, it reboots.

First I blamed the RAM - I ordered it from the retailed with 16GB which they added themselves. They added DDR3-1330 instead of DDR3-1600
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/31697322/CPU-1.png
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/31697322/CPU-2.png
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/31697322/CPU-3.png

But I ran memtest86+ and it passed OK. I'll probably still ask to get it changed though, as it's not what I paid for.

Any ideas on whether it's worth bothering getting the RAM swapped from a performance perspective, and whether it's likely a cause? If not, what might be?

 

Hello guys, I already enjoy my N56vz but i got a little problem...

I deleted my recovery partition... is there ANY way to restore it ?

thanks in advance

 

The other day I finally decided to go for the MSI GE60, but apparently the i7 version is out of stock in my country and will not be sold anymore.. which puts me back one step again.

They do still sell an i5 version of the GE60, but my eye has also fallen on the Asus N56VZ. I know it has been mentioned in this thread before, but they both have a Geforce GT 650M, only the N56 one is GDD3 and the GE60 GDDR5? Now, personally I don't really know the difference, so a bit of help would be much appreciated.

I plan to use it for travelling, but also want it to be decent for gaming (mainly Guild Wars 2) and some photo/video editing. I'll post the specifics of the models they sell in my country below.

For that cash, which of the two would you pick, and why?

Much appreciated!

MSI GE60 0NC-072NL (= €899,- / $1128)
- 15.6 inch / 1920 x 1080 / Matte
- Intel Core i5 / 3210M / 2,5 GHz
- 6 GB RAM / SO-DIMM DDR3-1333
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M / 2048 MB
- 750 GB SATA / 5400 rpm
- Wi-Fi / 1000Mbit/s (Gigabit Ethernet)
- UBS 2.0 (x2) & 3.0 (x2), Numpad, (multi-touch) Touchpad, VGA, HDMI, 3,5 mm Audio, 3,5 mm Mic, SD Card reader, DVD-Player/Burner, Bluetooth, HD (1280x800) Webcam
- 6-Cells Lithium-ion
- 2400 gram (= 5.29 lbs)


Asus N56VZ-S4044V (= €999,- / $1254)
- 15.6 inch / 1920 x 1080 / Matte
- Intel Core i7 / 3610QM / 2,3 GHz
- 8 GB DDR3 SDRAM
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M / 2048 MB
- 1000 GB SATA / 5400 rpm
- Wi-Fi / 1000Mbit/s (Gigabit Ethernet)
- UBS 3.0 (x4), Numpad, (multi-touch) Touchpad, VGA, HDMI, 3,5 mm Audio, 3,5 mm Mic, SD Card reader, DVD-Player/Burner, Bluetooth, HD (1280x800) Webcam
- 6 cell 54 Wh Lithium-ion
- 2700 gram (= 5.95 lbs)

 

Well, a ddr3 card is still on the top of the 3dmark11 score list.

Was some talk about the bandwidth on the bus, and so on, but it turns out that there's no performance difference from gddr5 to ddr3. Might be that the gddr5 modules actually draw more power, become hotter, and are less likely to survive overclocks.

Anyway, you really shouldn't buy a laptop based on specs alone. Find the range of performance you want. Then it's the heatsinks, and the way the heat affects the computer. Whether heat is led into the chassis, etc. Battery. Noise. Screen, etc.

The samsung laptop with the same specs doesn't survive full load without throttle, for example. It gets hot and then stays at maximum temp. Same with the msi setup - you need to either have good heat-transport out of the system, or the chassis is going to start absorbing heat.

And if you don't actually need gaming performance, buying something like this is a waste of money. Go for a dual core apu system, get twice the battery life, etc. Or, go for a larger gaming laptop, and have even more effortless cooling in exchange for higher weight, that sort of thing.

..the n56 is a good compromise, though, because it is going to be cool and comfortable to work on, while also having some gpu grunt. But if you weren't actually looking for a combo system in the first place..

 

Hi all,
first of all, thank you everyone for sharing their experience. Nipsen: Special mega thanks for the excellent and very thorough review of this laptop.
I just bought it 2 days ago. So far, not disappointed. EXCELLENT from every angle and especially considering the price. The trackpad is a bit tricky and needs some get used to in order to avoid the fake clicks registered when the palm rubs against it while typing. The original hard drive is terrible. Replaced it by a M4-256G SSD (Crucial) ... it flies now.
After reading all the other posts, I'm still trying to open the bottom of this beast so I can access: the optical drive for replacement by a caddy (so I can throw the original drive back for slow archiving purposes) and also replace the wireless adapter by another one I had that can do 5GHz.
I can't find anywhere, and I even sent an request to Asus, how to remove the cover from the bottom so I can access all the components.
Has anyone figured out how to? I found that by the battery, there are tabs that clips. I was able to unclip them but then the other side of the cover won't come off. Frustrating.

Btw, I stuck 2x8GB Patriots ram sticks and no problem. 16G / disable paging file and all is flying.
Thanks in advance for your help!

 

Guys, what Nvidia drivers do you use?

 

There is a single screw on the bottom to remove. If you look closely it has a picture of a cd next to it. Once this is removed, the drive slides out.

If you have trouble getting it out, stick a paperclp in the hole to open the tray, and grab a piece of the metal frame with a pair of pliers and pull. Do not pull on the front plate as the little lugs could break easily.

 

Hey, thanks so much for your prompt reply. I indeed haven't noticed this special one. Thanks so much for the tip.
Any idea by chance how to get to the wireless adapter? I could possibly slide it out but the screw just falls under a piece of cover and I can't undo the screw all the way ... grrrr ...
Thanks again for your help!

 

Anyone have any issues with the build quality of the screen frame? Whenever I open my laptop I get a clicking noise from the frame as I lift. Also, the screw on the top left corner of the frame was not seated properly and as a result I had about a 5 mm gap. I popped open the frame some more and tightened the screw and now the frame is seated better. However, there are still portions of it that make creaking noises or are loose. I was expecting more from a $1000 laptop.

 

No problem of that sort with mine so far. After reading all the posts here, I looked very carefully at every angles and gaps ...etc.
So far, no problems. The most annoying to me is the trackpad that registers fake clicks while typing. I haven't found the proper settings in the "smart" pad options. There's still hope though until I fully get used to the keyboard.

 

Hello all. I am new to this forum and to the language of computers really. I am getting this model at the end of the week, and after reading the reviews here, I want to do a fresh re-install of Windows 7 plus all of the other recommendations. Can someone walk me through the process in a more digestible way for someone who is new to this? Thanks so much.

 

Hey everyone!

Just a quick question for the longer term users. I have the N56VZ and love it. My touchpad just doesn't sit totally flat in there. It doesn't rattle, but some edges are lowered while others are raised. It doesn't seem to affect performance and it works fine. I'm just wondering if they're all like this or if there's a defect. If it's just a 'physical' defect that won't affect performance, then I'm not really bothered by it, but if it's going to break in a month then I'd probably try to exchange it. Any advice?

Also, does anyone else have the issue where their dvd drive just spins up for a split second for no reason? Struck me as weird that it just checks to see if a disc is there if it has been closed for days... Seems to happen every so often without any set frequency.

Thanks for all your assistance. You guys are very knowledgeable!

 

Same problem here ridethecliche, my touchpad's left lower side is lower and it doesn't click right. Also GPU is probably DOA. It crashes when playing games, GPU clock stays like on 400MHz, drivers crash(have dried 306.2, 304.79, also the driver with it came at first). I have windows 8 RTM final but I doubt that makes any difference because had same problems in Windows 7.

 

Hi,
I have the same "issue" with the trackpad which is not completely flat. It's slightly above the edge on the top part. It doesn't bother me either for now. Hopefully it stays like that in the long run ...
I haven't notice anything with the DVD (which I plan to remove anyway ...).
Hope this helps!

 

My touchpad isn't what I'd call perfect using a MBP as a reference, but it works fine. Touch input is fine and the clicks register most of the time. I think I'm going to use an external mouse most of the time anyway since I'm going to hit the touchpad with my palm when typing.

As far as gaming, have you set your game to run only on the dedicated card? I've been playing HL2, which can run fine on the Intel 4000 chip, but I set it to run on the dedicated GPU and it works fine.

If this doesn't work, then maybe a swap is in order!

Yeah. I think I'm just going to keep this because I want to do a clean windows 7 install as well. It works fine and the pad is fine.

I think I'm going to disable the dvd if that acts up, then I won't have to deal with it. An SSD will be in order eventually. Maybe I'll use the DVD as an external drive!

Thanks for all your help everyone! I really like this computer so far. The perfect balance of power, performance, and price. Hope to have a good 4 years with the machine

I was just a little shocked at how hot the fan ran just on skype/web browsing, but no issue!

 

A quick comment here. That's funny you're pointing out the temperature/fan. I could not get mine hot. The fan spins quietly and the laptop stays cool all the time. I was even working outside in the sun and this thing would stay cool. I haven't any super intensive gaming yet though ...

 

Yeah.. even though the fan trips are set in an.. unstrategic way.. You still shouldn't hear the fan while just browsing or downloading something. Windows updates is going to make the fan rev up once in a while, but you really shouldn't hear the fan until at least one core is on boost, or the nvidia card has been running for a while.

I just found a way to make the entire palmrest warm, though. Step 1. Enable Bluetooth. Step 2. Transfer something bigger than a few MBs.

And the entire palmrest is toasted in just a few seconds. Maybe I can use the bt-transmitter to warm my lunch?

 

I'm disappointed. I just received the N56VZ from XoticPC, and it has the blown speaker defect.

The left (only) speaker crackles and scratches at even half volume when virtually any song or video with sound is playing. This is not the problem of a popping sound between clicking links or closing windows, etc. The headphones have no problem. As a soft attempt to fix it, I've tried playing with the sound and equalizer settings in the control panel, with no luck.

This must be a hardware issue right? The left speaker is cracked, or torn, or messed up in some way? I got this notebook so that it can be my only computer for home and work. Since I spent $1,800 on this PC (including custom upgrades), I can't justify accepting this as-is. So I have to return it, right? By chance, does anyone have a solution for me?

Hopefully XoticPC will take care of me. I'll update.

 

How much people are you getting on WEI? For graphics and Aero performance I'm getting 6.7, isn't that to low? I'm using ALL the drivers from ASUS webpage.

 

6.7 For gaming, and 4.8 for Desktop. But that's in Windows 8 (latest drivers from Intel and nVidia sites), not sure how comparable they are.

 

I'm getting 7.1 for graphics and Aero. I guess you did the analysis with the internal graphic card?

 

This laptop is about 1.2" thick. Is that bulky?

 

Well, initially I believe everyone had 7.1 for their WEI graphics. However upon re-running winsat it seems to use the HD4000 instead of the 650M, getting a score of 6.7. No one has really bothered finding out how to get it to detect the 650M again, instead.

Max temps during Guild Wars 2 for me were (standard clocks) 65-70C for the CPU and 80-85C for the GPU, 55-60C for the HDD, and 90C at the air vent itself.

 

Well, at least everything is working fine... Maybe this is something that I should ignore (It was driving me crazy).

Cheers.

 

Okay I'm a bit sick of this gaming lag when on battery issue I'm experiencing and so are lots of others too by the sounds of it!!

I'm on the latest BIOS 211 with the latest Nvidia drivers etc and when 3D gaming on battery there is major lag - the game runs fine for a few seconds then the frame rate drops significantly for a few seconds then fine for a few seconds etc - like 50FPS then 5FPS, 50FPS, 5FPS continuously. I've uninstalled Asus Power4Gear software, I've set minimum processor state to 100% in Windows Power Management, I've fiddled with the BIOS but nothing?

Has anyone managed to fix this problem or get acknowledgement from Asus on this issue yet?

 

same issue. Magic The Gathering 2013 is particularly bad because it has so many movies. Bizarre.

 

Hi! I just picked one of these up. So far so good, though I'll have to transfer my SSD from my old machine to the new, because I got too used to the speed of it. I notice the lag of the HDD now.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has tried the new 211 bios that ASUS released 2 days ago:
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download N56VZ

I saw it when I downloaded all of the drivers for the machine. It wasn't there on the first look, but was the second time.

It says the fixes are:
1.Fix boot from S4 still can enter in BIOS setup menu when fastboot enable
2.Fix when “External ports” is lock, plug a USB floppy device will show exclamation after resume from DeepS3
3.Fix SecureBoot will disable when BIOS is updated by Ezflash or WinFlash
4.Update Intel IvyBridge

I'm not too much of an early adopter, so I wanted to hear opinions of it. The last one is the most interesting to me....

 

What is everyone's experience with WASD-area heat when gaming?

 

Yeah I flashed it. No problems yet but I haven't done any benchmarks to see if its improved CPU/GPU performance. I still get the gaming lag when on battery issue which I was hoping it would fix because its likely to be a BIOS processor speed throttling issue.

I would imagine seeing as they jumped from 204 straight to 211 there would be some significant fixes so I guess the IvyBridge relates to that. It would be good to have a better explanation from Asus though but hey I'll take the update.

 

No problem. This laptop has excellent cooling and I game with a consistent GPU core overclock of 135MHz. I can easily gauge how hard my GPU/CPU is working by putting my hand just left of the WASD cluster to the exhaust vent and feeling the heat. Its never too hot for bare skin but can get pretty hot when running at 100% for an extended period on OC as you'd expect. Have yet to experience artifacting, freezing or glitches etc from the OC.

 

Hey sproyd,

Thanks for that. I don't really game, but I do video processing and such. I'd be really interested to hear your benchmark results if you get around to it.

I wonder if the WEI could improve at all with this bios... (I'm more interested in SOTP results though.)

It's possible too that the fixes they tried in 205 - 210 were just duds and they got it stable in 211... I used to be a software developer, and we'd have jumps like that from time to time when build after build didn't do as expected and we had to move on.

 

Awesome, trying to decide between this and the Envy 15. Envy seems to have epic cooling on the new unit but looking through the reviews of people with it, they are running into all sorts of problems, and the ATI graphics switchers apparently are terrible (I tried one on the envy 17 in a microsoft store and it completely failed to switch with microsoft flight) .

I'm not the sort that's going to do a clean install but I'd be willing to just go through and delete bloatware, what are the big ones to get rid of if I go this route?

 

..honestly, I wish the results were lower. That it was possible to underclock the ivy bridge thing so that it didn't use so much power. There's literally no reason whatsoever for it to run at the clock-speeds it runs at. And if it's actually used beyond aero or some desktop effects in compiz fusion, etc, it's getting really warm - and ends up using more power than just the 650m card when it runs at low core speeds..

Unfortunately, the Asus people have gotten it into their heads that they will sell more units or something if they lock the bios to overclock hardware-accelerated animated buttons on the screen..

I don't know.. Seems they're increasing one version for each of their different releases independent of the model. 204 was the n56. Then there's a bunch of new bioses for the g-series/g55 (209), new updates for the n76 (207). So I think they're just increasing one number for each new bios-release in the database.

 

Just to chime in with you guys and the WEI score for graphics - I find my results DIFFERENT depending on the resolution of the screen that I'm running the test on. For example - if I don't have my 1080p monitor hooked up my score was lower than was with it hooked up and set to the primary monitor. This may make a difference, but I'm not sure. Update your drivers over at NVIDIA. They just released some new drivers for the videocard a couple of days ago.