He's a gamblin' man - F9Dc ordered and due Tuesday.

Seeing as how we have virtually no idea of the quality of this notebook, but unable to resist the possibility of a killer deal, I went ahead and ordered an ASUS F9Dc from NewEgg. Since I live about an hour and a half south of their warehouse, shipping is quick and cheap.

I'll let you guys know how it is, then do a full review of the unit.

 

Thanks!

It looks like an awesome notebook. Moreover, for the price, you can't really lose.

My only concern would be battery life -- an area in which Asus has been very weak lately.

 

Nice choice. GOod looking notebook. Another gig of ram possibly and you'll be good to go.

 

Just arrived today, been playing with it.

Really beautiful screen. System runs warm, but not too warm, which is surprising given the components. This thing is really top shelf for a budget notebook.

The 8400M G is especially interesting: the memory clock runs 200MHz slower than spec, the shader clock is 400MHz FASTER than spec, and the memory is on a 128-bit bus! At least, this is all if Everest AND PC Health 2008 are to be believed.

ASUS doesn't have Windows XP drivers for it on their site, but I've been able to patchwork most of it and I'm working on that right now. The native install of Vista is dog slow and my feelings toward Vista are well-understood around here.

 

I salute you Pulp. Much respect


That sounds great, and yea, the all black build makes it look very very sleek, but what you've mentioned only makes it sound more sweet. Looking forward to your review if you choose to do one!


777 posts, jackpot?

 

how about the battery life?

 

Could we see the GPU section of the Everest report please?

 

Hi Pulp,

Very interested in this series of notebook and I have a couple of questions to ask you about it. Congrats on the purchase btw

How hot does this thing run? Hot enough for the fan to be on all the time? Is it loud?

How long does the battery last? Is a smaller battery also included? (3cell+6cell?)

Can you post some pics of the machine?

I am getting either this or the F9S, tomshardware says the c2d is significantly faster but it's also 350 bucks more expensive, may not be worth it as all I'll be doing is web/word processing, and some Autocad.

Finally let us know more general impressions!

 

Hi pulp, could you post some picture of the laptop and size wise comparison if possible. i am interested to get one. thanks a lot.

 

lol am i the only poor one here? like seriously..

 

Hmm, how does the F9 GPU compare to the one in the W7S?

 

just bought the Asus F9S-B1 which is the intel verison (t7500 2.2ghz), shipping tomorrow, gna have it next week i suppose.

gna have 64bit vista ultimate on it - but a fresh install, not there version and putting 4gb ram on it too. excited since it has so much power for such a small package - and a cheap price, plus asus warranty is quite nice


anyone else get the intel version? and also pulp, is the heat fine on a lap? just during web browsing i mean, not gaming or anything.

 

You guys are demanding.

I won't post pics for one very good reason: the F9Dc pic thread already exists, and it looks just like that.

Everest's report is kind of useless on the notebook, it has hardware Everest doesn't support yet (!). The chipset, for example, isn't recognized (nVidia MCP67/68). That said, the information it could provide was what I already posted: 400MHz core clock, 1.2GHz shader clock, 800MHz effective memory clock, and a 128-bit memory bus.

Battery life under XP using Notebook Hardware Control was dismal. Two hours at low brightness with wireless on.

Only the 6-cell battery is included, but at least it came with a Targus bag and Logitech mouse.

Lid hinges are flimsy, but that's how the A8Jm's hinges were.

Heat isn't too bad and the unit doesn't run the fan that often on the battery (of course, the unit doesn't run that often on the battery) (of course, the unit often runs out the battery).

Honestly I do like the laptop. The battery life is the big killer and the build quality is mediocre, but everything else about it is fairly swanky, and it's always a nice surprise when you get a little more video card than you thought you would. When you factor in the fact that it comes with bluetooth and an HDMI port, and at the price it's at...I mean something had to go.

Sidenote: I'm reinstalling Vista using a clean 32-bit OEM copy to see if I can eke out more battery life using Power4Gear. I also upgraded the RAM today by tossing in another 1GB stick of DDR2-667. Brand doesn't seem to matter (I endorse Patriot), it appears to be running dual channel good and proper.

 

Damn, that's one strange GPU. The shader clock ratio of 3 is higher than any I've seen on an 8m card at stock, and it has a bandwith of 12.8GB/s, which is pretty high for only 8 stream processors. If you ever get the time and/or inclination, I know of many who would appreciate benchmarks or informal gaming reviews of this laptop.

The battery life does suck though, that kills a really awesome budget laptop. Does the TL-56 downclock at all on power saving mode?

 

It does downclock.

In 3DMark05 and 06 I've found the 8400M in the F9Dc to bench between 100-200 marks higher than the other 8400M Gs that have been reviewed here.

Now what I've found that's interesting, is it looks like the MCP67/68 chipset that this computer might have...that's a single-chip solution and it's also an IGP. I wonder if that's not what's sucking the life out of the battery. I also wonder if the weird Hybrid SLI nVidia had been talking about months ago might be waiting to be exposed in this hardware. I can dream, right?

 

2hrs battery for a 12.1incher. Y asus y I like the notebook though. That 8400GS plus HDMI is a big plus

 

8400M G, not GS. The G is really crippled, it has half the unified shaders the GS does. But yeah, it performs reasonably well, and the HDMI is frigging neat.

I've got Vista running now, we'll see how the battery runs in that.

 

really hope the f9s-b1 with vista will help battery life but then again having the core 2 duo will def help being a 65nm
but still, expected atleast 2.5 even with the amd

 

How is the screen? More particularly, screen size? Is it uncomfortable to use on a daily basis? My main gripe with the notebook is that it's too small for my liking.. but then again, I've NEVER seen a 12.1" widescreen notebook in real life. 13.3" looks real good to me, but 12.1" may be pushing it a little. What's your take on it, Pulp? (btw I have 20/20 vision, so small font isn't my problem.. it's more about screen real estate I guess)

 

Screen's crystal clear, very attractive. S'pretty comfortable and I have crappy eyes. Real estate is fine, but 1280x800 never bothered me much.

Definitely on the wee side, though.

 

Oh so it is "G" . i c. well, i dunno , but it is still a little powerhouse, considereing the fact that there are only integrated graphics for other 12 and 13" screen laptops. Good buy. It must be light(4 some pounds is pretty light)

 

128mb memory bus? Sounds too good to be true to me. Seems impossible to believe that they would make a 8400m G card with more potential power than a 8400m GS card. Plus given that cards hardware improvements to make the 128mb bus would make the card a slower version of the 8400m GT. I am not saying that it isn't but it seems really odd.

Plus making a GPU in a 12.1 budget notebook more powerful then their 13.3 WS7.

If this is true, maybe I should start thinking about trading in my Sony SZ680

 

I Don't think this card would really benifit from a 128bit bus. This has about the same power as a go7400 or x1400, right?

 

Yeah, remember that the 8400M-GS and -GT have twice the shading power of the 8400M-G, so even with it's 128bit bus, it'll never be as good as either the -GS or the -GT. It's more powerful than the Go7400/x2300, but not by much.

 

Hmm, I don't like the thick border around the screen.

 

Of course real life situation are a lot different that any benchmark, however its still difficult to believe that a 8400m G card is running faster or scoring better than a GS card. If it was due to overclocking, I would understand. Still it seems really pointless to give a card a massive bus rate and then reduce its shading power. Massive in terms of the difference between GS and GT is quite a large margin. Anyways I would like to know more about this new super GPU.

 

He meant higher than the 8400M-G's, as in the plural of an 8400M-G, NOT the 8400M-GS. That may have been confusing you.

 

Ok I see then. Yeah the Gs made me think he was refering to GS not G's. Anyways. 128 bit bus still seems overkill to me I would like to see well this thing acually runs. Now I am pretty curious.

 

Early tests have a 3DMark05 of 1942 in Vista using LaptopVideo2Go drivers.

Bioshock is playable at medium texture quality, low everything else, at 640x480. If you had an F9Dc you'd be able to play through it, but I don't know if you want to see it like this. :|

Guild Wars (at least through Nightfall) is totally playable at native maxed with 4xAA and Transparency Supersampling. ~25 fps.

Doom 3 (such a demanding game by modern standards, I know, but modern IGPs still have a hell of a time with it) runs at 1024x640, High Quality, 35.2 fps. (second run of timedemo1)

 

Any difference in battery life while using Vista? And I should probably be asking this in teh ASUS forums itself, but are there any extended batteries for the F9Dc?

 

There should be but so far no dealers are carrying it yet.

 

Hi Pulp,

do you have any experience with the W7 model? They say that one is a little blast furnace and I was wondering how bad the f9 is.

Does the f9 run hot?

 

As I said earlier in the thread, it doesn't run too hot. The air that gets expelled from the side vent is very toasty, but the rest of it doesn't feel that bad.

 

budget 12" notebook... good stuff to consider buying though.

Thanks for the information.

IMO I don't use HDMI much and probably you won't .... project the laptop to HDTV is something that i don't do though .VGA port is fine ... hook up to a 22" LCD is good enough.

 

You can get a HDMI->DVI cable for like $5. Its not quite as bad as it seems, though the lack of VGA is still kinda odd.

 

One question, please?

How do you find the touchpad?

Judging from pictures, it looks very much like the one on my friend's BenQ S41 Joybook, which sux pretty badly (lousy sensivity, buttons, etc) . . . thanks!

 

Pulp,

One final question for me..

Does the 6-cell battery stick out the back? like this picture


or is it close to flush

if it sticks out, can you measure how far?

Thanks!

 

Battery goes almost exactly 1" beyond the back panel. The touchpad is the most sensitive i have ever used(IBMs, Toshibas, Sonys}.

 

Thanks man. Too bad that's the case, it eliminates it from consideration. Seriously messes up portability (backpack carrying) and 1 extra inch of width makes it no longer a subnotebook in my eyes (significantly wider than 8.5x11

W7s it is I guess. I wonder what the lack of dual channel memory will do to performance

 

Little or nothing on the 965 chipset, as long as you don't run apps that use more than 1GB of memory at a time.

 

Dual channel memory on notebooks have a performance increase that is between marginal (at best) and negligible (usually). It really doesn't matter anymore. Though, I think on desktops it still can increase memory intensive tasks by a bit, but I'm not totally sure on whether thats true anymore.