Asus w7s-B2B preliminary review

Hey guys,

I've had the W7S-b2b for about 2 weeks now, and I have some preliminary impressions. Wrote this quickly and it's grammatically horrible. I intend to rewrite it and add pictures, as well as some tips for running apps/games, and installing XP within a couple of weeks.

Here goes!

65535's Quick n Dirty W7S-B2B Review:

This is a very capable laptop. Purchased for $1550 tax and shipping included.

It has a Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz CPU that just cuts through complex tasks. It is massively more powerful than the AMD equivalent.

Video is handled by an 128MB NVIDIA Geforce 8400M G (NOT GS OR GT!!). This card is much, much more powerful than what you normally get in a compact laptop. Usually have Intel GMA950 or the newer X3100, both of which are useless for 3D. However, the card is not powerful enough to run recent games at the native screen res of 1280x800.

You pay for the performance in terms of heat. The CPU temp is high at 60* regardless of load, and i don't know what the vid card is at. Most of the heat is attributable to the video chip. The laptop runs much cooler on battery, where the video card runs at half-speed. There is no way to force half-speed on AC. The result of the heat is that the wrist rest gets very warm, and there is hot air blown out the right side basically constantly. (gets annoying).

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Graphics performance is marginal, and it may be a driver issue. As of driver version 163.xx, strange things are happening... See below:

UT2004:
One driver version, at a specific point of a given map (core room in ONS - Arctic Stronghold), one driver version will give 25fps. Another driver version will give 37fps, at identical settings.

Lowering detail settings and texture size has NO EFFECT on framerate! Only lowering the resolution has an effect.

Half-Life 2:
DM-Overwatch- Framerate at all settings max, no AA is 25.4fps. At the exact same scene, same settings but with 2x AA enabled, framerate DOUBLES to 52. Again, lower texture detail and settings have no effect on framerate.

You CANNOT install drivers from NVIDIA's site. only ASUS drivers or hacked drivers.

I have tested the card in Catia (3d design program) and it gives very acceptable results. Lightyears ahead of GMA950.

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At full steam, the CPU fan comes on quickly but turns off immediately when returning to idle. The wrist pad is always warm.

The fan is reasonably quiet even when running.

The plastic of the casing attracts fingerprints and skin oil. Doesn't feel very nice, but this is a minor point.

The top case is magnesium with significant flex, but this does not affect the screen. I think flex is intentional.

Battery life is good at 2.5 hours (I've never owned a laptop that gets more)

Wireless range is excellent.

DVD writer is very high-quality and is lightscribe compliant.

Base Windows Vista image is terrible. I don't like vista, but i was ready to use it. ASUS applications consume ridiculous resources and the machine is very slow. I installed XP and just the necessary drivers and it's much faster.

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Display:
-Very sharp.
-It is a TN panel with a glossy face.
-View angles are very bad vertically, so this is probably not suitable for photo editing. Significant gamma shift. -Colors themselves are very vivid, but only at certain angles.
-Response time is very good. No ghosting in games.

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Hard drive is a Hitachi Travelstar.
-This drive is the same design as the IBM travelstar (was bought by Hitachi).
-Travelstar drives have TERRIBLE reliability track record.
-Drive is SLOWER than the Seagate 5400rpm drive in my old laptop. Seeks take forever and file copy is very slow for small files.
-Drive is NOISY. Very audible at idle and seeks are as bad as a desktop drive.

As a result, I am replacing it with a Seagate or Western Digital model.


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Overall, the price is hard to beat for what you get.
Fast CPU
Decent Video

Main issues are the heat and undesirable hard drive.

I think this is the best you can get for the price at the 13.3" size mark.

If you need the portability (which this laptop is... very portable) and can live with the heat, this laptop is great.

If you don't mind another inch in length get a 14" model. It will run cooler and be cheaper.

Overall, I'm satisfied.

 

For modded recent video drivers see http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

That might improve on the video issues.

 

Already using latest 169.04

UPDATE!

Framerate weirdness resolved.

I was using VSYNC but without triple buffering. Basically when framerate drops below 50, VSYNC forces the card to drop to the next lowest multiple of 2, which is 25 FPS.

Solution is to enable Vsync + triple buffering (aka triple filtering), or disable VSYNC completely (which will introduce tearing onscreen).

UPDATE!

Stock clock for 8400M G is 400core/400mem

Using latest version of Rivatuner, I was able to overclock the card to 650/530 and the core can probably go a little higher. Temp difference is negligible. Have yet to perform benchmarks.

Stay tuned for an update.

 

Thanks for the info, 65535.

For me, I cannot overclock the core/mem more than 470 when playing FiFA 08(1280*800 & Medium)..

And where can I check the temperature using Rivatuner 2.06?

Is it the core temperature from Hardware Monitoring?

Sorry as this is my first time overclocking

 

Some more info coming soon....