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Hi Wodgy,
As Ken mentioned in the above post, the main pros in the G70Sg is the 9800M GTS graphics card and the ability to set RAID 0 or RAID 1 for better hard drive performance or security. Both the G70 and G71 series provide exceptional gaming and multi-tasking power, and will probably last a few good years with proper maintenance. On the cons side, the appearance of the G71 notebook may not appeal to everyone. Feel free to read my G71G-A1 review as that will provide a better idea of the what the system is like. The only difference between the G71G-A1 and the G71G-A2 is the hard drives and optical drive.
I have an A2. I love it - but here are my gripes. Most of these issues are experienced by all:
1) Fan module seems to be factory defective. It tends to rub against its housing until warmed up making an annoying clickity sound. I'm used to it though.
2) The microphone hole is on the OUTSIDE of the lid. This causes my voice to sound muddy in game at default quality (CD). Playing with the boost turned up helps but chaning the quality to the next level (DVD) makes it better though there is still muddiness. Raising the quality higher progressively removes the muddiness but once you hit the 3rd setting, noise reduction is not available. Weird. A headset mic sounds clear as day.
3) There is a second headphone jack that provides Virtual Dolby Headphone or, when used with a mini toslink adapter, true 5.1. I had thought this was a 7.1 system based on the Intel Chipset P43 specs but I must have misread them. The system volume control doesn't seem to work this jack and when this jack is used, the other headphone jack is disabled. It would be nice to have both of them running at the same time.
4) The sceeen is very sensative to pressure from the lid side which leads to what appear to be "clouds" of white on the screen. This is removed (strangely enough) by wiping the screen with light pressure either duing a basic dust removal or standard cleaning.
5) The RAM only runs ar 667MHz if you want overclock capability. I believe others have had problems turning off the overcloock and actually upping the RAM to 800MHz.
6) No RAID - and there are 2 drives. ?!
Even with the above issues, I still love the machine. I'm not sure how people rank the games Left 4 Dead and BioShock in terms of graphics requirements, but I've run both at the highest graphics settings since I got the machine - at th default CPU speed of 2.53, and had no issues at all.
I'm on the fence between a G71g-A2 and a G71g-Q2. Will the quad core be the better buy since it's a newer platform and will presumably be more upgradable in the future?
thanks for the replies...im on the fence between so many atm its quite fustrating lol xD...but the G70sg appeals to me the most out of the 3 other models....however have been looking at the g50vt, novatech, kobalt also
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
