Asus N56VZ-DS71 first impressions

Best guess - it's switching between modes, but the mode-switches aren't fast enough to avoid breakage.

Probably possible to lock one of the modes, though..

 

Sergo - could you check your windows experience index graphics scores post clean-install? I'm still trying to get WEI to see my 650m without success.

After doing some reading, I specifically added the windows system assessment tool in my nvidia control panel, as a program directed to run off the discrete chip. Unfortunately, WEI is still coming back with a 6.7 for graphics and showing, in the details, that this is based solely on the performance of the integrated graphics.

My nvidia gpu activity monitor shows that the 650m is running while I'm playing games, but the lack of control over which graphics processor is active is not making me love optimus.

Ginold - I have also experienced brief stuttering in games when running off batteries, but this was much improved by setting the nvidia control panel -> manage 3d settings -> global tab to the discrete card. I *think* auto mode was actually attempting to jump back and forth between gpu's when on battery (at least in diablo).

 

Escapist - it didnt help neither. I've tried it before, and now after factory reset, it still persists. I really hope its a driver problem and new ones will be released soon, because on nvidia.com there is still no drivers for the 650m and others, only from the manufacturer.

 

Is the optical drive accessible and easy to remove? I've seen pictures of the laptop without it's bottom cover, but I want to know if that's all you have to remove to get to it. I would like to replace the OD with an SSD in a caddy.

 

Is the ivy i5 going to be any slimmer by chance. I know some asus comps are this way such as the N55SF. And, based on your best speculation, how will the battery life be with 650 + ivy i5?

 

Ginold - sorry to hear that didn't help! I certainly share your eagerness for a new 650m driver. Here's hoping it resolves both of our frustrations.

As to the question of thickness, this notebook is pretty thin as is, and making it thinner would almost certainly negatively impact cooling - which is really well done on this model. It is not a change I would welcome.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk 2

 

Same thing here. I don't think it is intended to deliver that much juice on the run, it is a multimedia laptop. Have you tried recommended settings in the game you are playing? Recommended on power in MW3 gives about 150-180fps :-D but with everything on max, I have a min. FPS around 30, avg ~65fps. Haven't tried recommended on battery though...

Unplugged I get ~80Fps avg. with recommended settings...

 

Yes it would impact cooling but an i5 should require less. Thus a thinner notebook would be possible. Plus they did it for the other one i linked. It might not be an issue for most but for a college kid anything helps portability wise. Also... any idea if it would help on battery?

 

I just bought an N56VZ-DS71 and for the most part it has been a great experience (great screen!).

One thing Ive noticed though, is that it tends to have some graphics glitches and it sometimes crashes when i run programs that use the Nvidia card (running with power plugged in; such as Photoshop CS 5, Civilization V(constantly crashing) or Diablo 3(only minor glitches). I even recieved this error message once saying the "opengl driver lost connection with the display driver". Are anyone experiencing any similar problems?

So far I've only tried to update the driver, but there doesn't seem to be a new one available yet. I think I read somewhere that the 650m card isn't fully supported by the nvidia drivers, because it is so new - is there truth to this?

 

Probably not too far off base. But I'd guess it has more to do with Ivy Bridge/Intel hd4000 getting new instruction set support over Sandy Bridge.

Anyway, I'm.. approximately 99% sure that you will cure all of those issues for now by:
- disabling automatic physx/cuda switching
and
- picking the 650m only in the 3d/optimus setup.

edit: by the way -- nvidia does have a fairly active support group, who pick up on bugs and problems reported by users. Over to nvidia.com. If you register a report, they tend to both respond and help you with a workaround if it's a common problem, as well as incorporate fixes soon enough..

(Funny thing, really. This is something that worked perfectly with the apu/crossfire setup on the n53. Didn't like the gui and some of the functions on the ati drivers. But context-switching, stability with 3d apps - multiple 3d apps, with one app starting without launching the discrete card, and then another opening a new port that did. Turning it off while the program was running while it wasn't needed, etc - all of that worked really well. Could even put the computer to sleep while in a 3d context, or just flip between a game and back, etc, quickly and with no issues. Too bad that those apu setups didn't come with a better screen and hdmi out options..)

 

Nipsen - you did a clean install right? Does your windows experience index register your 650m? This is the one nagging issue I'm still having following putting in my SSD and my clean install.

The two changes you mentioned have everything else working, but even specifically setting the windows assessment tool to run off the 650m, in the nvidia control panel, still does not have the index reporting correctly. Asus managed this somehow on their stock install. I just can't figure out how to do it.

 

No, I just had an n53tk a while.. and I'm polluting this thread with complete guesswork while I'm waiting for the mail to arrive..

But it's probably running off another component... explorer.exe, maybe. Winsat.exe? Perhaps they had profiles/registry settings for some of those files in the asus standard setups. (I can imagine that this has been high up on the concerns sent to support.. And they would, you know, just add those programs in the registry, etc).

 

Hey, Hi Guys. My name Is javier and i bought ths laptop on the 25th and got her on the 1st because of the holidays. I bought it from Gentechpc for 1349 ( 89
+ for the 750GB 2700RPM). The specs are the same as everyone i guess its a N56VZ
1920x1080
750gb 7200rpm
8GB of RAm,
Gefore GT 650m
windows 7 home premium

Ok . Well my impressions are this computer is one of the best i have, and i think it will last me long considering the built quality and if i solve the problems its starting to give me. So i'll describe what i see in this computer.


Sound- Well first of all, its louder than my previous g60vx one. Although the sound quality isnt much to brag. I know most people and videos show that the sound quality is top notch to be honest i dont feel it, the subwoofer doesnt really help much, although i might have gotten a defective. (since the delivery method was horrible) I feel it to be kind of half-done quality compare to my Sister's computer which is a dvt2000 limited edition which is like 4 years orld or something. It is loud, just not loud as i would want.

Speed/Perfomance - Lets be honest, is a new computer and as every new computers they are...well fast. I did have some hiccups, youtube videos sometimes dont buff or play at all in google chrome. In IE the keyboard locks it self or something because everytime i try to type in the search engine or the address it wont do anything. I haven't done any clean install as most of you have, well because i don't know how to and im scare to do it wrong. If any of you could let me know how to do it il do it.

Quality- Well this is my 2nd laptop...and to be honest i love the quality, it feels nice, it feels durable and best of all it looks Awsome .

Weight- well considering that my old laptop was a gaming computer and used to weight around 7 pounds this one is extremely light (in my opinion) it does weight normal. The thickness of the computer is well..thin.

Battery- Well i haven't tried much or test it but i seen that i gotten around 3-3:20 hours on battery save. 2:40 on Entertainment and around 2:30 on High Perfomance. I find these times to be exceptional since my old latop me max 1:40 of battery life. Some have said that you get around 4 hours.. And well since i havent tried iti can't really comment on it, although it is possible.

Other- It is quiet it doesnt get hot. The display is awsome!, it does look a bit small for me. I am 20 years old and i guess cause im blind its hard for me. Im old lol.

Gaming/ Video - Well to be honest i havent tested any good games.. But one that i did test was Ace of Combats. And the heat was quiet, and the heat was relatively low. I am not an expert but i guess the temperatures are low on normal surfing or low demanding games. Videos, Well i been watching alot of youtube, netflix, and other video sources and i can say, it looks extremely good. The video buffs fast, and hardly any stops ( considering my connection is top notch) HDMI sure works.

Now to the issues
Some of the bloatware is rather useless or needs upgrade that to be honest i dont care for. When using internet my keyboard does lock itself. Anyone has suggestions??
The Music distortion- Well this has been an issue since this morning. I updated all the drivers (i think, i need help with these) but everytime im playing music from itunes, or any other playable software the music disorts or laggs however you say it. I open a window and if the window takes time, the song laggs and sounds screechy and weird. It also happens when i opena program, im not sure what the problem is.

Conclusion- Im really Glad i bought this computer, is top notch quality, on all its aspects. It might have problems like any others, but problems that are easily solvable. My issues is the Music distortion and keyboard lockdown on Internet problem which i will solve and update. Weight, Battery life, and perfomance is something that i recommend this computer on. Any questions you have please let met know and il answer as best i can. Please note i'm not that much of an expert but i do know one or two things about computers. peace




P.S. Can anyone help me solve the music lagging and the keyboard problem please? Thank you!

 

Well, sure that if I put on low or medium settings it will run ok, but i dont want to change the settings each time i play on battery, in addition when i see that it run like 60 fps on super ultra mega high on battery for 4 seconds and breaks down to 10fps for 6 seconds and 20 fps for another few secods...so it is able to play and give enough juice, but it's undecided, like a girl.
I've read on another forum that someone put a 9-cell battery into his laptop (not n56vz) and it solved his problems that i experience.

 

#115 Well... Maybe it's the turbo boost that doesn't go well with smaller batteries yet.
...girls nag for no reason, get use to it, you can't live without them anyway!!!

 

*geek* the same, i would not be able to live without my nagging n56vz <3 lol

ive made a little video showing how it looks like, maybe not too noticeable due to the video quality, however you can see. Maybe anyone will have a miraculous solution.
On battery problem - slow down, throttle - YouTube

 

So it does have optimus? it was said it didnt have it.

 

I got my N56VZ yesterday. I'm really impressed with the build quality of the machine. The screen is great as well. Keep in mind though that I'm coming from a 2008 C2D MacBook, so my reference might be a bit dated

The one thing that bothered me though was all the pre-installed bloatware. The system was horribly slow at first, but I did a clean install and it runs smooth now. Performance scores are 2650 in PCMark 7 and 2381 in 3DMark 11.

I was wondering whether you guys used a separate Windows version for the clean install? I still had a Win7 HP 64bit lying around and used this to do a format and fresh install. It does mean though that I'm not using the Win7 license offered with the laptop anymore. Is there a possibility to do a clean install while still using the license that came with the laptop?

 

lol.. I thought the core duo Macbooks were extremely sleek. 1280x..800? resolutions, solid colours, good viewing angles, small screen frame, that kind of thing.

Goodie. Seems we have very consistent results on standard clocks. Going to be interesting to see how far I can underclock the cpu while still getting good 3d performance on this one.. I have a suspicion that it might be possible to get pretty good OpenGL performance out of this on 60-80w drain.

..question: How is the more... subjective feel in terms of responsiveness and so on when using a 3d application? Any flickering, does it stall before initialising the resolutions, any scaling problems, artefacts, that kind of thing..? Difficult resolution forces, problem switching via the taskbar menu..?

Tried the hdmi out yet? Do you run into weirdness of some kind when extending the desktop with Optimus enabled?

...by the way - can you disable Optimus in the bios?

*nods* You can install any oem install, and use the key on the back of the laptop. The default install doesn't actually have the product key entered on beforehand either - it asks you to enter the code after a couple of weeks.

 

I'm almost convinced by this laptop but I have a couple of questions:

1. How many disks does it have room for? Can I install an SSD and still have the HDD internally as a second drive?

if not...

2. Can the optical drive be swapped for a bay adapter? I'm not sure whether this is standardized or not.

I think the 750 GB would be useful to have, but I'm also eager to jump on the SSD wagon without paying too much. I was thinking about getting a 120 GB SSD to supplement the included 750 GB.

Thanks.

 

OSmoen - I think it has 2 if im correct.

2. NO it can't not as far im concerned.
3. Well in gentchpc or in xotopic they give you options to upgrade the SSD, but be in mind that its SSDR3 not 5.


Anyone know how to do a clean install on windows 7?? using the windows 7 that was pre installed?

 

It has one "hdd" bay under the back panel. It's easy to take off and switch. It probably only supports sata 2 (300Mb/s), and not sata 3 (600Mb/s). Which.. is still about three times faster than a ridiculously fast hdd. But if you're shopping for an ssd, pick a sata 2 drive for half the price, etc.

Of course, the mainboard does support sata3. It's just been disabled in bios for some reason.

The optical drive is also connected to a sata port, and you can buy a bay in that size and change it, yes. Works. I don't know the speed of this port. It will support sata/udma of some sort, though, so not sure if you're really going to see any difference if you put an sdd in either port. Presumably it's sata2 on both, limited by the bios.

To above.. the graphics card has gddr3, not gddr5 ram, yes. The performance difference is.. small, it seems. Possibly this will change with later kepler cards.

If you want to make a clean install, you can use any oem disc. Just make sure you haven't used your product key on the oem boot, or you need to call in to MS and swear it's still your own computer and cross and stab your heart with a knife, and so on.

 

Wish I could report that I was getting 3dmark11 scores as high as cdrd's graphics score of 2381.

....

EDIT - I'm actually measuring a lot closer to this than I thought. Was reading the graphics score line instead of my cumulative score of: 2374

Interesting that per notebook check, this means the N56 actually benchmarks faster than most of the ddr5 650m machines: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.71887.0.html

 

I just ordered one, should be here Wednesday. This will be my first Asus notebook. I was put in a bind by waking up to a dead computer yesterday. Ivy Bridge notebooks are still slim pickings. About the only choices were this, the Sammy Series 7, and the HP DV6. The Sammy has a crap screen and the HP shoddy build quality. I love the 1080P screen in my Dell and just couldn't see myself downgrading in both resolution and viewing angles. The HP threads are littered with complaints about the build quality. I love the looks of this thing and I can keep a nice screen.

My one question is does this thing have Optima or any way to disable the GPU? I don't game at all. The Intel HD graphics are more than enough for my needs, just video playback. I want to maximize battery life and keep heat to a minimum.

 

did anyone aprove this thing with the speed of the SATA bus? Ist it definitly SATA2?

greetz

 

hey guys i bought the N56VZ-ES71 from amazon,and it runs smoothly ,only one itty bitty problem ,i got very small static shocks from the Lid Cover and near the right corner of the laptop,this only occurs while charging the laptop,taking in consideration that its connected via extension cable taking from a 2pin outlet.
(im from outside the states).
i hope european users can give me some feedback.

 

None of the models come with an ssd..

 

Basic version. It fits great!
And I just finished changing my Optical Drive for and HDD Caddy with the original HD.

 

Which HDD Caddy did you get?

 

I got mine from XoticPC with a 120gb SSD and a 750gb HDD installed in the optical drive bay

 

Yes, it's quite easy... just look for a tiny rubber cover with a CD symbol. Then remove the rubber cover and unscrew. Then just pull the optical drive.

The 12.7mm from HDD Caddy – Add a 2nd HDD to your laptop or Macbook!

Delivered 2 days after ordering.

 

If i understand correctly your problem i think that it's the same "problem" that me and other people(in Portugal) are having in some electrical outlets(i don't know if in english this is the correct word because i direct translate for portuguese) but it's normal because the laptop is alluminium. We don't have sure but we think that the problem is with ours electricals outlets. Some of the houses(usually the oldests ones) don't have earth conection and we can feel static with some electronical advices (people who have macbooks complains about the same thing) when they are connected to electricity. For example, in my house i don't feel it but in my vacations house i feel some static in LOG asus when i shut down the laptop and put the hand to close it.

 

It's... interesting, isn't it? I'm really hoping we're going to get some "professional" insider input on why this happens. Really curious if it's got to do with voltage stability like I thought.

 

yeah pretty much, if your electrical power outlet doesnt have the 'ground', then it is normal you will feel static when you touch the aluminum. Make sure the outlet(the one on the wall) is 3 pin. Even if your extension is 3 pin, but your wall outlet is 2 pin, you will still feel the shock. Happened to me 4 years ago as well

 

does the SSD run with Sata 6 Gb/s or with 3 Gb/s ?

greets

 

Hey Guys Can anyone help me with my problem?

Issue- The music laggs and disorts often when im listening to itunes, or any other music program, or watching a video. I did notice that it happens when im opening a program or playing a game.. Like if my computer lags or freezes for 2 seconds thats when the music disorts... Also it does happen when im browsing only...

 

Probably the sound filtering layer. Soundmaster? There's a service running as system/admin while you're playing anything. Any program running sound feeds this service with data. And the sound is played back from that service once the filters are run.

This is everything from reducing the volume when you receive a "call" on skype, or when you have traffic on the mic, to changing the output depending on program and so on.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, this component spikes 100% processing power, and that's when you get distortion and hiccups. This component also has trouble with hibernation.. Anyway - you can and probably should turn some of these functions off anyway. So take a look in the sound panel in the config, and see if this changes anything.

This sounds like a support/technical issue Asus would be interested to know about, though. Could save the rest of us a lot of grief later as well, if you talked to asus now

 

Hey guys, ill ask again, does this notebook have Optimus? as someone asked how to disable it on the BIOS but i doesnt seem the listed battery life on resellers "match" what i would expect from an Optimus enabled notebook.
They say its around 3 hours, can you guys confirm this?

 

wee, no it does not have optimus....

nipseen- thank you for the answer, as doing all of that, im not really sure how to do it, could you guide me or show me where i can find how to do it?

Update- i called asus and i was transfer to technician which told me that i had a "65% of virus in computer". Which i find it surprise since the computer is 3 days old!!! WDF??...and that was the reason it was happening.
They cleaned everything about 20 minutes ago.. so far i haven't gone the problem when i open the browser. Supposedly the virus that came with the computer was like he said "good for nothing" but i feel that your response was more of a tecnician than theirs. if it continiues ill update and post the result.

 

As far as I know, it DOES have Optimus. Almost every re-seller states having it

 

WeeDv2 - the n56vz defintiely does have optimus. (See, e.g., the first sentence on ASUS N56VZ-DS71 - XOTIC PC - Asus 15.6" Notebook )

I've spent quite a bit of time toying with the optimus settings in the nvidia control panel, as discussed in my prior posts re the windows experience index, and unfortunately there is no bios level control over optimus.

If an anecdotal account of battery life is at all helpful - I would say that it seems pretty good, but not great, on mine so far, and I imagine my SSD may draw a bit less power than the stock HD. I have not run it from full to empty in a single active session yet, but I have been streaming music for the last 2-3 hours (with the screen often asleep), and my battery indicator is reporting 31% (1:17 remaining). ~4 hours, when running on the integrated gpu, is probably a reasonable estimate. Dimming the screen a bit would get you further.

 

n56 has optimus for sure

 

@javelasc: Well, they have to try to make things actually work for you. I can just waffle on about theoretical things while sounding like I know things, and that everything should work if you do what I say

No, er.. two things:
1. On a normally working computer, you won't get the distortion or the problems with the sound. So it's likely that you have a virus.

Or, you could be having automatic updates and background compilation of .net libraries, which can be much worse.

Point is, there's something running in the background as well as the sound component, that draws processor cycles. And it isn't going to actually fix things by cancelling the sound processing.. The computer should allow those things to work.

Anyway. The options is in the control panel under "sound", properties on the "device".

The background compilation of .net libraries can be forced to complete by running
"ngen.exe executequeueditems"
in the .net library folder from a command shell.

I managed to lower my processor use by many, many percent by tweaking these settings and finishing the .net precompile. But there is doubtlessly something else running on your system here as well.

2. The n56vz will support optimus. I don't know exactly why, but for some reason all the asus computers are referenced (from asus, apparently) with "effective" battery life. While HP and Dell for example will give you "up to x hours" estimates instead. They will have "up to 6 hours" on the battery they run with, though. If you don't use it for anything.

 

Ginold - you may have picked up on this already, but FYI, the nvidia drivers posted on Asus' site (at: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download N56VZ )
are actually a different updated version from what ships with the computer.

Figured I'd mention this even if it doesn't solve the issue. I did some testing of my own, and at 1920 x 1080, WoW goes from being vsync capped down (when plugged in) down to 30 fps if I try to run off battery. Games are still playable, in my opinion, but performance definitely takes a serious hit on this machine when you are running on battery.

 

Hi,

i found this thread incredibly helpful for my decision whether to buy the N56VZ or not (i ordered it)
BUT
Javier, could you please stop answering other peoples questions ?!?!?!
I don't know whether you are deliberately trying to mislead the others or maybe you really don't have a clue about computers. But a constant misinformation from your side is not really helpful .
I hope this sound issue is really just a virus, clean win 7 will easily help. though it really sounds like a technicians excuse for "i have no clue". Hope its not a hardware problem, would be very nasty....

BTW how is the heat on cpu, gpu, and outside while gaming something more up-to-date?

 

To show how not much better the GT 650M DDR5 is compared to DDR3:

"So why an additional dedicated graphics card? This question is justified depending on the intended use. The system will first enable the installed Nvidia GeForce GT 650M in complex calculations or elaborate 3D graphics. A very significant field is computer games and Acer definitely wants to address these fans with its Acer Aspire V3 range.
Alike the CPU, the GT 650M is a brand new chip. A few weeks ago, Nvidia also released a new graphics solution. The GT 650M is a member of the Kepler generation and is manufactured in a 28nm process. The video memory is either the DDR3 or GDDR5 version depending on the configuration. In case of the present V3, the less expensive DDR3 memory is used (2 GB, VRAM) and thus the GT 650M's maximum power is not available. We will therefore also examine One's M73-2O that integrates the GT 650M with full-speed GDDR5 in the following comparisons.

The Aspire V3 scores well in the first 3DMark benchmarks. 12845 points in 3DMark 2006 reach the level of former premium gaming machines, such as MSI's GT 663R or Asus' G53JW – both equipped with a GTX 460M graphics solution.

3DMark 2011 virtually shows the same. Here, the Aspire V3 finishes with 1628 points. The newer GTX 560M in Toshiba's Qosmio X770 seems to be within reach: 1724 points.
As promised, a look at the GT 650M version with GDDR5: One's M73-2O (with a 3720QM CPU) achieves 1802 points in the same benchmark test. That is a plus of approx. 11%. When only looking at the GPU sub-score, which excludes the somewhat better CPU in the comparison device, the advantage is considerably lower with only 4%."

This is from notebookcheck.net

Review Acer Aspire V3-771G Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

I think you're really going to like this machine thegreyt.

Cooling is definitely a strong point, and the fan is relatively quiet compared to others I've heard. I don't play shooters anymore, but I've been playing diablo 3 at 1920 x 1080 for hours on end with the notebook sitting comfortably on my lap. As I mentioned a few pages back, my prior hp dv5t would have melted my pants, and then itself, if I tried that.

Also, fwiw, I have not had any issues with stuttering audio - probably due to my lack of viruses

 

I play 4.30 hours straight of skyrim today and i got(with occt) 82ºCmax to CPU and 78 ºC max to GPU. ambient temperature is between 25ºC and 30ºC. In COD(black ops and mw3) it usually never passes 80ºC(both CPU and GPU. in my opinion the fan is very quiet...

 

Thegreyt - I'm sorry if i mislead anyone, it wasn't my intention.

And the sound issue well its gone so far as i can tell, however i still find it difficult that a virus was a cause for it since my computer is 3 days old (now 4) i haven't browse that much.

 

nipsen or anyone, have you tried dualbooting with linux yet? Tried grub with both arch and kubuntu, but the system boots directly into win7. Has it got something to do with the new bios standard, can you not boot into MBR anymore