Asus UX31 Ultrabook

Just upgraded my OS from Win7 Home, 64 bits TO Win7 Pro, 64 bits.

So far so good

 

Good... but what is good ?

General system performance ?
SSD performance ?
Boot speed ?

I plan to do same so I am asking.

 

I installed win 7 pro from scratch, so I can't really comment on the upgrade.
I haven't seen any speed/benchmark improvements, though there is definitely less crap ware (as expected).

 

Go to Microsoft Website to see as what is the different between both OS.

regards

 

you should do a clean install instead of upgrade. Remove all the crap (bloatwares from Asus) There is no performance different when moving from home to pro via upgrade.

 

I am not asking about operating system differences. You said its good and I am asking WHAT IS good, that is all.

I know ALL details about differences of operating system versions of Windows 7.

I got most of system performance benchmarks, I will clean install W7 Pro, test the system again and let you know all.

Cheers.

 

OIC

There is no different in terms of the UX31 as a product. I have 2 issues initially on Win7 Home but is resolved. I did run the WEI after it is on Win7 Pro and is still the same results. Lowest the Graphic: Desktop Performance for Windows @ 5.6 and the Highest the HDD @ 7.9

In summary this is a upgrade of the OS. You know the different between them.

I did not do a clean Win7 Pro upgrade. I do it from the RUN command with "Windows Upgrade Anywhere"

So far so good no screw up

Hope this is clear now

regards

 

My 2 days old UX31 just finished a massive Windows update batch of 26 and I need someone to tell me it's normal for this kind of machine to take no less than 2.5 hours to perform this.

It started after I clicked restart, and I thought "should take no more than 20 minutes" since this happened before, and it was able to do about 8 updates within 6-9 minutes.

Is it normal for the first update batch to take this long? 2.5 hours for 26 updates?

Besides that I'm quite satisfied with this one, not ecstatic, but satisfied. The keyboard is subpar, the fan is a bit noisy, but no major problems.

 

There was some discussion a while back about mHDMI cables that will work with the Zenbook.

I just bought this one off of Ebay for $7.99 that works with my UX31E and my 5yo Samsung TV.

The only "gotcha" is that the cable must be inserted fully and not allowed to hang off the end of a table.

 

Yes, its normal.....

 

Mine stutters even for local 480p video (haven't had that happen in many years), so hitches in web videos are expected. In this case, it seems to be the SanDisk SSD causing trouble.

 

Oh come on now. 480p video isn't all that much. I've played many DVD ISOs on my UX31E without any stutter whatsoever.

What other crap have you installed on your system that could be causing a problem?

 

I've cleared out most of the extraneous Asus stuff, but it hasn't helped too much. With these specs, even 1080p shouldn't be a problem.

Issue here is the SSD absolutely dies when multitasking. Videos will generally play fine at startup, but I usually have Outlook and a browser (IE/Chrome) with 10-15 tabs open. Even MP3s sometimes stutter in Windows Media Player, and 1080p web videos will often freeze then play back at 2-3x until caught up. Replicating these same circumstances, my $200 Acer netbook with a 1.0 GHz AMD CPU (and obviously no SSD) performs completely smoothly, yet the UX31 is failing.

Looking at the ATTO benchmark scores (attached below), the reason for this is pretty clear-- the machine would probably be better off without an SSD than with the SanDisk 256.

Been trying to work with Asus support for the last two months to resolve this, but (beyond the fact that it's the least responsive company I've ever dealt with) there seems to be no solution. Unfortunately no aftermarket SSDs available in this form factor either.

 

A 5 year old computer will run 480p without sweat.

most likely something else running.

 

I've gone through all running processes-- there's nothing of note. The problem here is that multitasking with relatively light apps (Outlook, browsers, etc.) usually leads to a bunch of small-sized reads and writes to disk, which is where the U100 SSD seems to perform horribly, leading even MP3 playback (let alone video) to stutter at times. Otherwise there's no reason the UX31 with i7 shouldn't blow away my C2D MBA (on Win7), but in doing anything more than a single app (or doing anything I/O-intensive), it's actually a heck of a lot slower.

My Atto scores are similar to what someone else with a 256GB U100 posted earlier, so it doesn't seem to be limited to this particular unit.

 

Then its likely a faulty SSD.

Even the slowest SSD is going to provide sequential read speeds several times that required to play sd video.

The sandisk is fastest as sequential reads and even the 4k/512k number are dozens of times higher than minimum data rate required.

Look in performance monitor of what happens during playback.

Another clear test is to run multiple file copies at once and see how this affects performance.

 

Plus, boot into ubunt from a usb stick and this will rule out a windows issue.

 

With nothing else open, a 480p SD video will generally play back fine. The problem is mainly that with a normal load of apps open (Outlook, browsers, etc.), the machine slows down considerably.

Looking at Perfmon when the machine slows down (can't look at it when it stutters, because even Perfmon is frozen then), load on CPU/RAM is usually well within bounds. Issue seems to be purely I/O-based.

Transfers of a bunch of small files (e.g. decompressed website backups) are very slow (in line with the benchmark results), roughly 2-5x slower to a USB 3.0 HDD than my MBA is (and that only has USB 2.0). I occasionally do a 15GB backup, during which time the machine will often lock up (mouse frozen, etc.) for at least 10-15 seconds at a time, several times during the transfer.

I don't spend a lot of time watching videos-- the real impact is that the machine is unusable for what I used to do on the MBA (usually 2-3 browsers open with 20-30 tabs, Outlook, Skype, Office Communicator, OneNote, Acrobat, Visual Studio, FTP, SIP client, Word/Excel/PPT, etc.). The UX31 slows to a crawl well before I can get all those things running. I figured the i7 (vs. C2D) and 4GB RAM (vs. ~2GB) would make it better at that workload than the Apple, but apparently not...

Most embarrassing bit is when I'm projecting a PPT and the machine takes forever to open the file, slows down while saving AutoRecover, etc. I have to come up with many creative excuses as why my i7-equipped, $1,400 machine is so slow

 

Hello all,

I'm a new prospective buyer and I have a few questions. I read the last 20 pages of this thread and I'm a little confused.

1. I know the ADATA drive is much faster...is there a 256Gb Adata drive available or are they all Sandisk?

2. Which track pad should I be looking for and is there a big difference between the two of them?

3. I currently have a 1st Gen Samsung Series 9 laptop but I'm looking for something faster. My WEI scores are: CPU 4.7, RAM, 5.9, HD: 7.4. Will I notice a speed increase if I go with the UX31E-DH72?

Thanks!

 

1. All 256GB SSDs in the UX31 are the SanDisk drive. The only other 256GB SSD currently in that form factor seems to be the one from Samsung, which is found (besides Samsung's own machines) in the Dell ultrabook and others. Asus seems to be sticking with SanDisk though.

2. Asus has mostly switched from Sentelic to Elantech. Elantech is generally deemed better, though with some tweaks (see the thread on UX31 touchpad tips), it's possible to get the Sentelic in the same range. Neither is great, but they're on par with most non-Apple buttonless touchpads.

3. My DH72 gives: CPU: 6.9, RAM: 5.9, Graphics: 5.4, Gaming graphics: 6.2, HDD: 5.9

 

1. all 256gb are sandisk

2. i find no difference with latest drivers

3. i7 is significantly faster

 

pr4424, your best option is to load ubuntu. if its still an issue its a hardware fault. No SSD thats working correctly will perform like that. Even a gen 1 samsung which were known for sub 15MB/sec sequential writes would cause this issue.

If it works in ubuntu then something is wrong in windows, maybe a driver or some setting.

 

Hey guys I am looking into an ASUS UX31 sold here locally in Kuwait. Now the problem is I am not sure if its the one with the new touchpad or not? This is the model number they list it as.

ASUS Laptop UX 31E DH72

Is there a specific way to tell whether the laptop is the one with the new Elan touchpad?

 

Nope, just luck of the draw.

That said, the Sentelic pad is about on par with the Elantech one if you tweak it-- here's what I did: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/635461-ux31-ultrabook-touchpad-tips-tread.html

Neither will match Apple's touchpads, but with adjustment, they're livable (especially if you're coming from a non-Apple machine).

 

Ah I see, thanks for the reply. Also after reading through a few posts in this thread, the sandforce SSD seems to be very bad, causing stuttering and so on, and all 256GB SSD's are sandforce, those are the only ones they sell here. Should I hold off on purchasing this then?

 

How long does it take your UX31 to fully charge? I am not wondering if theres something wrong with my notebook. I had 29% and when i started charging the ux31 (while its on) and its 4 1/2 hrs later its reach 96%. Is this normal?

 

Can anyone recommend a slim USB DVD drive that will work with only a single USB connection?

All the ones I see require 2, which will not work with the Zenbook which only has 1 per side.

 

should take less than 2 hours to get to 60% and upto 4.5 hours to full.

 

SandForce makes the controller in the better drive (made by ADATA). SanDisk makes the slower U100.

The SanDisk U100 is significantly slower than the ADATA (which is a pretty nice unit). As seen in the posts on the last page, I've had performance issues with my 256 GB U100- I'm going to try to secure erase and reformat to see if it helps.

There are some others who seem to be happy with their 256 GB units. I suppose in my case the problem is exacerbated by the fact that I've primarily been using SSDs for the last two years, so the fundamental advantages aren't new to me, and any performance problems are thus more visible. Basic issue on the U100 is low max IOPS.

 

I honestly don't mind the performance hit but stuttering is what worries me, I want to be able to watch videos, do my work, etc without any issues. And since they only sell the 256gb variant, its most likely the U100. What about actually swapping the SSD? is it possible to find those types of SSD's online? I have never seen the strip ones like the one in the Asus before, just your normal 2.5inch SSD drive.

I really need something light with great battery life asap lol. Need it for work, can't really take my m18x

 

I use an HP drive that works pretty well. Fairly slim, and with a pseudo-gunmetal finish, it even looks like something in between my UX31 and (earlier-model) HP Envy 15.

I had been looking at some cheaper stuff on eBay, but they mostly looked straight out of the 90s and almost all needed external power or two USBs.

 

Haha yeah. Even the Envy 15 became a bit of a pain to carry, hence the Air and now the UX.

I think there's currently only one other 256GB SSD in this form factor, which is a Samsung drive. Unfortunately that (like the SanDisk, FWIW) appears to only be offered to OEMs, not consumers. Haven't checked eBay and such though.

 

Okay after scouring all over the place I found an UX31 with an i5 and a 128gb ssd, does the fact that its 128GB gaurantee I get the ADATA one or is it still a crapshoot?

 

The 128GB drive can be either ADATA or SanDisk.

For what it's worth, I just upgraded to Win 8 CP, and it's far snappier. Partially of course it's a lighter, faster OS, but a quick Atto run shows the SSD performance has improved quite a bit too. Will post once I run a few more benchmarks and use the machine a bit, but so far no issues (besides figuring out how to use Win8!).

 

Just for the heck of it I figured I'd try multitasking. I had my typical programs running, outlook, Firefox (10 tabs), trillian. I started a scan with Avast and then started watching a 1080p digital copy of Harry Potter, 98 processes running, 61% memory used, CPU between 35 and 65% used. Everything was running fine which kinda surprised be only because of the virus scan. Then, with HP in WMP full screen, I clicked on Photoshop CS5. I watched HP run flawlessly even while the blue PS Splash screen covered the center of the movie.

From my perspective, for my multitasking needs, my I7, 256g UX31 preforms like it should.

YMMV
Bill

 

Thank you for all your help AMB but I ended up getting something else.

 

I just came by to see if any others were experiencing what seemed like ssd issues.

It appears i am not alone.

When i first got the ux31 i7/256gb it would play 1080p just fine
Now it's having issues with stuttering.

If i am downloading a large file vi ftp the computer lags like crazy, my browser will lock up and text will not display instantly as I am typing even. It is very poor.

I have emailed asus tech support to see what can be done about my issue.

 

I've been emailing Asus for the last two months, used the so-called escalation channel, etc., to no avail. Can you run the Atto benchmark and post a screenshot of the results? Disk Benchmark | ATTO

I just loaded the Windows 8 Consumer Preview-- much better performance, and at least so far, no lag. Let's see if it lasts

 

As mentioned before, rolling back the AHCI controller really made the difference for me in SSD performance. I'm still running on the old 9.2.0.1011 and even after 4 months of using this laptop as my primary computer, it's as snappy as the first time I turned it on, also when multi-tasking. When I updated the driver it suddenly became as unresponsive as users here describe. I'm having the i5 128GB U100. Give it a try, who knows it works for you even some others reported it didn't work. Good luck!

 

Yeah I had rolled back the AHCI driver. Made a small difference in benchmark numbers, but nothing tangible in actual use.

Windows 8 (or some component therein) has made a big difference. My 0.5 KB write speed in ATTO (which was a miserable 98 kB/s) is now 60x faster (6.3 MB/s- still not great, but much more workable).

 

Same is here...

After that message, I run 15 tab Chrome Tabs, run Avast full system scan, started to watch 720p HD video and started a 5 gb file copy drive D to D (copy speed was 55-60 MB/sec). While all these are running opened Microsoft Power Point and its almost instantly opened. System memory usage was 3 GB and CPU was between %45-60.

I had some very short lags on the video while switching app to app. Other than that general system performance was quite acceptable.

And... I did all of these on the battery and ECO mode.

I believe that SSD and general system performance is more than acceptable. I think everybody complaints about their Sandisk SSDs performance because of A-Data SSDs higher performance.

Toshiba Z830 SSD performance was much slower than ours, its SSD performance benchmarks half of Sandisk SSDs. But if you check Z830 forums, you will see that almost nobody complaints about it.

 

Hi,
First, thank you all for useful feedback and information about the laptop.
I've been following this thread for a while - which was very helpful in my research prior to the purchase, now that I believe I can shed more light onto the Sandisk U100 SSD issue I've decided to give something back - register and post my findings.

First of all, have a look here, what Sandisk says about this drive:
Sandisk U100

The interesting part is this:

nCache™ acceleration technology is a large SLC non-volatile Write Cache, a unique feature in SanDisk SSDs that improves random write performance and ensures an improved user experience. Studies show that modern operating systems mostly access the storage device using 4k access blocks. The cache is filled during these small write commands and emptied during idle time when the host is not accessing the drive, with no risk of data loss. For a typical everyday use, the write performance that the users see is the nCache™ (burst) high performance, and not steady state (sustained) SanDisk U100/i100 SSD performance. Based on IOmeter 4K random write test.

This nCache basically is the reason why day to day performance for 99% users (me included!) is excellent, while in the benchmarks results and very, very specific and heavy usage it performs much worse.

Why? This is very simple if you think about it.
In average use, nCache works as designed - speeds up burst 4K random operations with SLC cache, providing excellent performance, better than ADATA at times - as it has time to empty it so to say "between the clicks":



If however, we benchmark it - cache will not have time to empty, causing very bad performance - this however is syntetic and rarely happens it real day to day usage - hence Sandisk's decision for the controllers design - and now I believe it is not a bad design, since will work fine for most cases.

It has its downsides, but so has the Sandforce (compressing).

Summary:
If you have the Sandisk U100 Asus - there's no need to worry - unless you're interested only in running benchmarks on it

Hope that can help those, who like me are close to pulling the trigger but also worries about the SSD...

P.S. Here's a short story how I made the "discovery".

I've been looking for an Ultrabook for quite a time, and the UX31E was #1 contender, slightly ahead of Samsung 9.
The only thing which made me hesitant, was the SSD "issue" - since I was coming from Intel's X25-M G2 160GB, I had high storage expectations and couldn't accept bad drive performance - this is what makes day to day use with SSD such a joy.

At first I believed U100 is indeed very bad SSD (according to various benchmarks) and will cause the UX31E to perform poorly.
Due to that I started looking for a replacement - but the only form factor / interface roughly matching and available in the retail are OWC's Aura Mercury Pro Express SSD's.

I tried to confirm whether they would fit in length, but physical dimensions were nowhere to be found, and my estimations based on photos of the SSD inside the laptop were indicating MBA's format to be 1-2cm longer than UX31E.

Lack of upgrade options led me to "deeper" research on Sandisk's SSD - and I'm happy I did.
Once I knew how this SSD work, I pulled the trigger and now I have a cracking machine - performance is fantastic, SSD does not seem to slow anything down - I'm actually using the laptop rather than running benchmarks and being worried about it.

U100 SSD undoubtedly have weak sides, but this are exposed only in the benchmark or heavy usage - for which machines such as Ultrabooks are rarely used, average user will be more than happy with it.

P.S. 2. Please note this is my interpretation of the issue based on available benchmarks, user's feedback and my own experience with the laptop.
Since the available information is not definitive, it is an educated guess, but I believe it is not far from the actual situation.

 

Chargers in the UK has started appearing on ebay.

Asus UX31E Power Adaptor - GENUINE OEM Asus Original | eBay

So I guess asus shop will have stock soon.

 

See the problem is that the Sandisk is abysmal at small writes. It's far slower than even the Z830's SSD at all write sizes from 0.5 KB to 16 KB. Looking at the numbers here, the Z830 is about 100x faster than my 256GB U100 at 0.5 KB writes (9.4 MB/s vs. 98 KB/s) on Windows 7.

The Z830's SSD is not so great, but the main thing is that it's consistent. Writes at most sizes are around 50 MB/s and reads are about 200 MB/s. So you get the benefits of an SSD and decent performance that's at least better than a hard drive. Keep in mind the Z830 starts at $899.

The U100, by contrast, is fast in some situations but far worse than a hard drive in others. Having a modern $1,500 machine stutter under even moderate load is simply unacceptable. Especially given that it's pitched head-to-head against the MacBook Air.

 

See my post above, this explains slower random writes in benchmarks than ADATA for example.

If, however your results are in KB rather than MB, something is definitely faulty and you should RMA.

 

Issue is there seem to be at least several people experiencing very poor performance on these; this is borne out through both the benchmarks and real-world usage. I pinged Anand from AnandTech to look at the Sandisk drive- he said it was clear up-front that the controller is not in the same league as the ADATA's SandForce but that the numbers were still troubling. He's going to try to source a U100 to test.

Ultrabooks are designed to be powerful enough to serve as a relatively high-end user's primary machine, with the exception of graphics and heavily multi-threaded apps requiring more than two cores. A $1,500 UX31 with an i7 and 256GB SSD is clearly targeted differently from a $200 Atom netbook, where being able to just do browsing, email, and music is acceptable.

There's also a difference between a $800-900 ultrabook like the Toshiba, where an SSD that's barely better than a hard drive is fine (because it still gives benefits like instant-on, etc.), and a $1,500 machine, which is squarely pitted against the top-end MacBook Air. You can't compete with Apple when you have such fundamental performance problems (on top of incredibly poor customer service and no development attention paid to the keyboard and touchpad). Sad because otherwise the machine is ~80% there in matching Apple (in some areas, like speakers, it's better).

 

It's not just in benchmarks-- large transfers of small files in Win 7 often make the machine unusable, for instance.

It's in KB, and it matches ATTO results I found from another 256GB U100. Asus support also doesn't see anything wrong with it. Posted above, but I'll attach it again:

 

Don't know what's wrong with your SSD :confused2: but seems like something is faulty rather then general drive issue.

I have no problems with mine (128GB) and I use it for pretty much everything (including photoshop, 1080p playback and occasional video encoding) except gaming and blu-ray authoring for which I have desktop.

Friend of mine - Apple fan - has an Air (among few other Apple products ) and using it briefly couple times, I can't see it any better at all - if not worse, and because I prefer PC, I chose UX31.

Good to hear Anand is going to test U100 (hopefully!), maybe this will finally clear the situation.

To me this results is clear proof that something is wrong with your UX31 - and whether it's SSD, anything else in the hardware or drivers - Asus should sort it out.
Escalate your issue higher in the support if you're not getting anywhere...

 

SSD issues notwithstanding, the UX31 is fairly close to the MBA. I got the UX to replace my C2D MBA, and I'd say compared to the UX, the MBA has:

• Worse screen resolution - 1440x900 vs. 1600x900 in the UX (although the MBA's screen is slightly larger)
• Better screen quality - vastly better black levels, contrast, and viewing angles than UX, and color-calibrated from factory; UX has higher max brightness, at the expense of everything else
• Much better touchpad - more sensitive, accurate than either Sentelic or Elantech on UX
• Better keyboard - more travel; no keypress oddities (on UX, it's very easy to accidentally miss a key); media controls built-in (though no delete key!)
• Backlit keyboard - I don't care about this, but some do
• Better webcam - neither's great, but MBA has better low-light performance
• Better power setup - MagSafe is better than Asus' micro-plug, and Asus' Apple-clone power supply runs very hot, has no real cable management, and mine's peeling
• Worse speakers - UX31's B&O units are pretty amazing for this segment (even if L-R imbalanced on a lot of machines)

On a more subjective note, I like the UX's case design better, even if it's not quite as wear-proof as Apple's (my old MBA looks newer than my UX).

I've been using both the standard process and the escalation process for the last two months, to no avail. After getting no reply through the escalation process two weeks in, I submitted more requests to follow up. Finally received a reply about SSD performance variance being due to many different factors and the results being within bounds, then nothing again. Then after following up again, a month later I got another reply apologizing for being too busy to handle the request.

In parallel, the standard process (which is completely separate for some reason) resulted in a reply saying I should upgrade my Elantech drivers (on a Sentelic machine at that!)

Not quite comparable to dropping by the Apple Store for help haha

 

Nice wrap up, personally, i think the UX31 is a good first draft of an ultrabook for Asus. I'm interested to see what they'll do when it's time for a refresh, hopefully, they'll fix most of the issues.

Regarding customer service, Asus seem to have gone downhill recently. I'm guessing they hired some " cheaper grunts" who have less technical knowledge to answer the basic calls. They do have people who know what they're talking about though so it's kind of hit or miss. Did you deal with regular support or the customer care department?