K53TA.. The best deal ever... could be!

I don't guess anybody has tried adding a Killer Wireless-N 1102 card or any new card for that matter have they? I know there are only 2 antennae's on the k53ta so I figured the 1102 would work.

Might order one tonight unless somebody else has tried with no luck.

 

Do you think it's worth it to rip an image of my HDD and exchange my K5T3A for a new one after all the BSODs i've gotten from overclocking and maybe get a unit with better voltages?

 

Question for those overclocking/undervolting.. is it possible to set B0 to do tests? I can set P0-6 no problem, and run prime95 or intelburntest or whatever, and see my voltage & speed in cpu-z. I have "boost" selected in k10stat but it never seems to go to the freq/voltage that I have chosen for B0...

EDIT..forget it I just realized I can set P0 to whatever I want to test, and once that is validated use that for B0...

 

Any DX10 or DX11 game will handle A-Crossfire.

I'm going to try Dirt 3 next. I played that at 60-80 FPS @ Ultra @ 1080p with 4x AA on my 6970m, I should be able to do High @ 40-60 FPS @ 1600x900 with 2x AA on this beast.

 

what are you trying to accomplish with that? The K53TA already has Wireless N.

 

This laptop looks like an amazing deal, I just have a few questions (and I really don't want to read through 51 pages).

1. According to PassMark, the A6-3400M APU would be superior to an i5 2410M and many other CPU's in laptops upwards of $800 (possibly more), correct? I'd also like just a small explanation as to how it performs in general, since I'm not very familiar with APU's.

2. How exactly does the GPU work? The A6 has an integrated GPU (I believe), then this laptop has a 6650M. Can they crossfire and/or work separately?

3. The RAM is dual channel, correct? And is there a spare RAM slot in the laptop when you get it, so you'd just have to buy a 4GB RAM stick and put it in for 8GB RAM?

4. I'm also curious about more gaming benchmarks, since that's one thing I'd like to be doing a lot of on this laptop.

Thanks for your time.

 

These questions are actually all answered in my first two posts in the Owner's lounge for this notebook. First post has a short review at the bottom that answers specifically these questions. Second post has benchmarks for half a dozen games.

K53TA owner's lounge

 

Thank you, the only thing that didn't answer was the APU's performance as far as compared to other CPU's in terms of general performance (unless I missed it).

 

Oh, right. For benchmarks at various settings, check this topic throughout, but overall yes the performance of the overclocked A-6 is equivalent to a high end i5 in most applications. For games that are optimized for more than 2 cores, the AMD is superior.

There isn't really a reasonably priced Intel-based machine to compare this to. Anything with a 540m (fairly comparable to the hd6650) is likely to have an i7, which will beat the A-6, but the laptop will cost twice as much.

 

Right. I think the A6/A8 AMD CPU's fill the gap nicely between Intel dual cores and quad cores for price and performance.

 

i haven't found anything that this A6 could beat the i5-2410m at.
that includes both 64bit and 32bit benchmarks.

it easily beats the core i3-2310m when overclocked, but doesn't quite reach i5-2410 levels without getting hot.

if you wanted a fair comparison, you'd have to run both the A6 and i5 at the same temps. Both are spec'd to 100 C.

 

.... which is really stupid. dunno what the OEM's are thinking.

in the US, we can't find any core i3-2310m paired with gt540m. This combo could easily hit the $450 price point, considering that basic core i3-2310m laptops now sell for as low as $380.

other countries have the i3+gt540 combo in abundance. All we get are core i3's with HD3000.

 

Alright, thank you. So basically, the thread title isn't lying. I can get relatively amazing performance for something so cheap.

 

Benchmarks tend to be heavily Intel optimized. If you look at games, the A6/A8 run basically clock-for-clock vs. i3/5/7.

For example, check this article:
AMD Fusion: A8-3500M A-Series Llano APU Review - HotHardware

A stock A8 can nearly keep up with a Core i5 + 525m. OC'ed, only the Core i7 would be marginally faster.

 

While I believe passmark is somewhat overblown in its rating of the A6, I've done my own testing (as have others here) with more accurate benchmarks like cinebench 11.5, and after overclocking the cpu it can OUTPERFORM an i5-2410. Still, when it comes to single or dual core apps/performance, it'll lag behind the i5. Expect that difference to become less significant over the years as everything becomes optimized to use more than 2 cores .

 

Right. Quad core is where it's at and where it's going. You won't see much of a performance hit with 1 or 2 threads, but when you go to 3 or 4, a dual core can't come close to having a dedicated core for each, even with hyperthreading.

 

do we know what the max heat spread for the GPU is? I'm hitting around 75c and 86C, discreet, and integrated.

 

5 GHz capability for one thing. I'm going to pick up this notebook tomorrow, and it would be great to see if the stock one can be changed.

 

A lot of times the BIOS has to whitelist the card. If not there then no go. I wanted to put an Intel wifi 5GHz N in my HP, but it's not whitelisted. Hopefully one day.

 

Well, that's HP. It's pretty well known, at least on this website, that upgrading a wireless card on most HP notebooks is impossible without a modified BIOS.

If you look at the Asus notebooks on XoticPC, you can upgrade the wireless card in pretty much all of them. I see no reason why this particular one would be any different.

Someone is going to have to be a guinea pig, though.

 

Keep us informed!

 

Not that anyone asked, but WH40K Space Marine (the demo) works very well on highest settings. I think 11.8 is required, according to Steam at least. But it is a AMD game so it's no wonder it plays well. I averaged about 30fps.

Also, if anyone knows, is the A6 series just a crippled A8? If so, would it then be possible to unlock the extra 80 cores that are going unused?

And one last question. In GPU-Z (yes I know it isn't updated) it states that the buswidth of the 6650m is 32bit... smaller than that of the APU. Is this a misread or is it true? Notebookcheck says it should be 128-bit.

Thanks!

 

I went ahead and bought one off Amazon earlier today. I'm getting a new one because I hate Atheros cards. wifi has given me problems and wanted to see if I could get a better performing card in here.

Got another 4gb stick of ram coming as well. Add an ssd in it eventually and you got one monster power machine.

Hopefully I won't have wasted $40 and the card not work in it.

 

How exactly does the Turbo Boost work? I've never used anything like that before.

Also, is there a simple guide to overclocking the CPU? I'm hoping to get this laptop eventually, but I don't know anything about how to safely overclock.

 

I have had my K53TA for just a few days not overclocked as of yet but plays older games HL HL2 all of the source games flawless.

Even fully ran crysis benchmark (all settings low no AA)

8/28/2011 11:08:16 AM - Vista 64
Beginning Run #1 on Map-island, Demo-benchmark_gpu
DX10 1280x720, AA=No AA, Vsync=Disabled, 64 bit test, FullScreen
Demo Loops=3, Time Of Day= 9
Global Game Quality: Low
================================================== ============
TimeDemo Play Started , (Total Frames: 2000, Recorded Time: 111.86s)
!TimeDemo Run 0 Finished.
Play Time: 49.47s, Average FPS: 40.43
Min FPS: 24.95 at frame 606, Max FPS: 62.34 at frame 106
Average Tri/Sec: 20182368, Tri/Frame: 499228
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 1.84
!TimeDemo Run 1 Finished.
Play Time: 43.18s, Average FPS: 46.32
Min FPS: 24.95 at frame 606, Max FPS: 63.37 at frame 90
Average Tri/Sec: 23345564, Tri/Frame: 504053
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 1.82
!TimeDemo Run 2 Finished.
Play Time: 43.05s, Average FPS: 46.46
Min FPS: 24.95 at frame 606, Max FPS: 63.85 at frame 85
Average Tri/Sec: 23410056, Tri/Frame: 503928
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 1.82
TimeDemo Play Ended, (3 Runs Performed)
================================================== ============

Completed All Tests

<><><><><><><><><><><><><>>--SUMMARY--<<><><><><><><><><><><><><>

8/28/2011 11:08:16 AM - Vista 64

Run #1- DX10 1280x720 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality: Low ~~ Overall Average FPS: 46.39

Just Cause 2 plays at 35 fps

TheHunter at 30 to 35 fps

3DMark06

AMD Radeon HD 6520G video card benchmark result - AMD A6-3400M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics,ASUSTeK Computer Inc. K53TA score: 6267 3DMarks

$449.00 well spent

 

Good to know! Great performance

It's CPU performance is 1.4-2.3GHz wher A8-3510MX (3530MX no longer available) is 1.8-2.5GHz. Both overclock AND undervolt well, fixed at about 2.2 GHz. The integrated GPU can't be overclocked nor can you unlock the additional cores.

That's because ULPS, a power savings feature, is enabled. See my video here on a way to get the full results. Basically run an app as high performance, then open GPU-Z. In my example I opened GPU-Z set it as high performance, then opened another instance of GPU-Z. Be sure to set YouTube resolution to 720p or 1080p full screen so you can see/read it.

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ttb5qbT0kYQ?version=3&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ttb5qbT0kYQ?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width='560' height="345" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed>

Alternatively, you can enable or disable ULPS completely with a registry edit. I made a registry file for it earlier in this thread.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/601808-k53ta-best-deal-ever-could-49.html#post7861621

If you disable ULPS in the registry, this will consume more power meaning less battery life.

Needless to say, I'm returning the Asus to Best Buy tomorrow (Monday) because I opted for the HP DV6z with the 1080p matte screen, blu-ray, 9-cell battery, and better GPU for about $250 more. If the screen wasn't so crappy and had a larger capacity battery, I would have kept the Asus and added my own blu-ray player. But as it stands I felt I would have to add a new screen (~$120) and Blu-Ray player (~$80), and still have the lesser capacity battery.

 

I know they can Mine is running @2.2. I was just wondering if the possibility was there to someday flash it to the higher model ala an Athlon X3 to an X4.


And I was looking at that one too, but I couldn't justify the money. Once I calibrated the screen it wasn't bad and I never use blu-ray. The only thing for me was the performance, but once OC'd (GPU too once we get new drivers that can) it won't be much. I can live with 10% less (if that) for 30% less money

And right now I have it powering my 2048x1152 monitor, so I've gotten over the lack o' resolution.

 

Eh, K53TA is a better deal, especially for people like me that use an HDTV as an external monitor. The only thing the 6750M has over the 6650M is GDDR5, 1080p isn't that great on a laptop of this caliber for gaming, and it's an HP. :\

For the money, K53TA blows everything else away.

 

There is one other thing to contemplate while chasing the mythical Core i7 beast. From what I've read, the Core i7 is particularly susceptible to throttling. Anytime the CPU hits 85C, turbo is essentially disabled.

So in benchmarks, Core i7 + 540M/555M looks really good, but during sustained gameplay, it probably never gets above 2 GHz.

IMHO, this is about as good as it gets at the moment.

 

I agree. Especially on the negative that is the HP brand, which is currently a sinking ship... This laptop works wonderfully with a good HDTV, and really makes me appreciate having one in the house for the first time . You really are much better off saving the $250(?) and using that cash towards upgrading system performance even more with a solid state drive and more ram. Much much better value in the Asus from that perspective. The bluray is a gimmick, especially considering how much I download/stream movies, in the highest quality possible now that have the power to do so. Plug it into the tv and enjoy (because I surely wouldn't choose to watch it on a small laptop screen of any quality if I had a choice). In fact I'm very much looking forward to kicking out the DVD drive and popping in a ssd. I really don't need an optical at all, never even used it on my desktop. The only advantage the DV6s have is the ability to choose the mx model APUs with their 1600 ram support for a great performance boost.

I'm surprised there haven't been any pro reviews of this laptop yet. I did find one fairly good review here though:

http://bleedingedgegaming.wordpress...gaming-market-part-2-the-cheap-gaming-laptop/

Speaking of which, who here has put a ssd into their Asus? Did you swap it out for the original, or did you use a kit to place it into the optical drive bay? Also, would you think 128GB is enough space? I was loooking at the 500gb mommentus xt, but for around $100 and only 4gb of ssd in there, I figure I might as well try looking for a ssd that can hold all of my programs and OS at a minimum for a few dollars more. I saw a 128gb SSD on craigslist for like $120.

 

After EVERYTHING, my cpu will ALWAYS throttle down to p6 if the temps hit 82C+, the only way to stop it is to make all the P states that clock. I disabled powerplay and have Windows High Performance at Min@60% and Max@100%...Also did a fresh install so I don't have Power4Gear or whatever...This should be noted lol

 

Y know... Simply having a little 8" blizzard fan from walmart blowing iin the general area around my laptop (for my personal comfort) usually brings my temps down considerably, like 5 degrees or so. Was playing Deus Ex for over 2 hours on 2.4/2.9ghz turbo (which I don't usually use with games due to heat), and never broke past 73C . I think mine must have a good paste job, but make sure you're undervolting as much as you can too. That;'s what keeps your temps down.

 

Along with this, I'd also like to know if there's a major problem with just setting each P in K10stat at the same setting to eliminate underclocking. Someone, I believe, had said they had theirs all set at 2.8Ghz and it ran safely. Would this be a feasible solution, starting at a lower clock (such as 2.2Ghz) and working up a bit and adjusting the voltage as well?

 

Adjusting power4gear or amd vision works the same way. If you set your minimum and maximum cpu power to the max, it wont go below the P0 state unless you're laptop is getting hotter than it should be, in which case you'd be better off figuring out how to keep it a bit cooler than ignoring the temperatures.

 

Yes, this is the ideal way to do it. I have all of my P-states set to 2.8 Ghz and it works fine.

 

Much earlier in this thread, I believe someone tried to do this, and for whatever reason, the SSD wasn't giving nearly the performance it should have. Don't know if he ever fixed it, but I personally would be swapping the standard hard drive for a 750 GB Western Digital Scorpio Black. I have Acronis True Image, so cloning the drive should be relatively straight forward.

 

I believe you will get a performance drop with an SSD if you overclock your APU, something to do with saturation. But HTWingnut didn't seem to have a performance drop with his is I may be talking bul.

 

Just out of curiosity, could someone post their WEI with the K53TA?

 

No you won't be able to.

Actually I'm wrong, performance is probably 20-25% more on the DV6z. Playing at 1920x1080 bad company 2, medium detail, at 35-45 fps! As far as the screen, yeah if you use an external screen, not a huge deal. Although my purpose for a laptop is portability and battery life, will never be hooked to an external screen. I actually just hopped online again one last time again to check framerates in Bad Company 2. With the HP I'm getting 50fps+ at 1280x720. With the Asus 30-40fps, same map same server.

Screen calibration won't get rid of the glossy screen or bad viewing angles, both of which drive me nuts. The color and brightness and contrast are pretty decent otherwise.

1080p is essential, to me at least, for doing productive work. 1366x768 is just too hard to manage multiple windows and apps. I can live with running at 720p for gaming if I need to, it looks pretty good on the 1080p screen with 2xAA. But so far haven't had to. Plus the GPU in the DV6z is overclocking like a sonofagun. GPU at 800MHz, GDDR5 at 900MHz from stock 600/800. Could only get 640/860 on the 6650m. CPU runs at 2.4GHz, can get 2100 3DMark11 all at less than 85C for CPU and 80C for GPU.

Yes i7 does throttle. I've gone through a couple laptops with them. But their raw speed is phenomenal. The i7-2630QM, the lowest end mobile CPU, blows away any first gen Core i7 DESKTOP CPU. So really I don't think there's a comparison. In any case, the AMD is still very sufficient unless you're doing a lot of video encoding or very CPU intensive tasks. The Intel's also have four cores with hyperthreading vs. only four cores of the AMD.

I'm not sure why HP is getting such a bad rap. Asus customer support isn't any better. Ever try to get your machine actually repaired under warranty? In any case I don't expect any level of support from either company. HP may be considering selling off their PC unit but that's a good thing. Look at Lenovo that took over from IBM. Improved quality and customer service.

I already have an 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM I put in the Asus. Worked like a charm. So that is a non-factor. I use my laptop for dvd and blu-ray movies since my kids hog the TV

The Momentus XT uses the 4GB MLC NAND (used in enterprise SSD's) as a fast read cache. It automatically caches the most commonly accessed files on it, and user has zero control over it. If you run only a handful of apps every time you run your computer, it will run quite fast compared with a traditional HDD. Otherwise write speed is same as regular HDD, and less used apps and data are read directly off the HDD too. If you use an SSD in the main bay and an HDD in the optical drive bay, it's the best of both worlds.

No noticeable performance drop with SSD even with overclock. Don't have any benchmarks to prove otherwise though.

To be honest, I am still struggling with the decision between the two. For gaming, I'll primarily be using it for Bad Company 2 until Battlefield 3 comes along, and then some Deus Ex Human Revolution. So productivity is more important to me personally. Plus after doing math, with discounts and rebates (30% off the top, eBates $80, calling HP $100), it's costing me $633! So it's only about $150 more which is worth a screen upgrade alone.

I agree 110% that the K53 is a great bargain, and I got lucky with good discounts and rebates on the DV6z. If it cost $800+ I would have not hesitated with the Asus.

 

Okay watching CPU-Z I can watch my cpu go from 1414 Mhz (1.4GHz) multiplier 14 x 100 bus speed to 2316 Mhz (2.3Ghz) multiplier 23 x 100 bus speed.

If it is using speeds apps and games needed I see no reason to overclock it, am I wrong in my assumption that I am getting full processor power when needed?

 

I plan on replacing the hard drive in the main bay with a 120gb SSD. On my desktop, I've only used about 60 gb. That includes the OS and many modern games. I figure I won't need that much on my laptop. Who ever uses their full 500 GB? If the time comes where I need more space, I plan on utilizing the USB 3.0 with an external drive. Having a HDD and SSD just sounds like it would kill your battery life.

Additionally, since I am a college student, having the SSD for quick boot-up times, longer battery life, less noise, and less risk of shock damage being carried in my bag are all ideal.

 

If you're thinking about buying one of these, you better act quickly. When I went to BB this morning, the display tag for the K53 was decked out completely in yellow. It was marked as a "special purchase" so this is very much a "while supplies last" sort of deal.

They've disappeared at many BB stores in the Chicago area. I got one of the last two in the store, and I expect the final unit not to last much longer.

 

Agreed, I got the last one after checking Vernon hills, Mundelien and Kenosha, I found it in Gurnee and they only had one in the back.

 

Yeah, in the NW 'burbs, it looks like only Schaumburg has them left in stock. Best bet right now is to check Skokie as the two BB stores there (Touhy Ave where I got mine and Old Orchard) as well as Evanston still have stock. Those stores are all within about 5-10 miles of each other so if you want to make a trip, odds are still good you'll find one.

 

BB stores near me say not in stock, but when I was in one today, they had four out on the shelf with the laptop front and center on display.

 

Maybe best buy reads this thread

I bought it based upon your you tube video HTWingNut

 

That's me and thanks for the press. I'll be putting up a Deus Ex review tonight too, I'm almost done.

I have a question for you HTWingNut: Is the Crossfire performance on the DV6z negatively affected by the bigger parity between the ram? The DDR5 in the 6750 should actually be a problem as the discreet card would be able to respond almost twice as fast as the integrated.

 

Been lurking on this thread after watching the SlickDeals thread and picking one of these laptops up about a week and a half ago. but...you're ALMOST talking me into getting the dv6. I'm really bummed about the screen on the K53TA as well (resolution or not, matte screens all the way).

How exactly did you get the dv6 for ~$630? I actually have an HP EPP account through my employer, so the base price on the dv6-6140us (I'm assuming thats what you have) is $698.79. What was the eBates discount?


EDIT: Actually, I see that is NOT the model you have...regardless, still curious about the exact way you the deal!

 

Maybe because HP sold laptops for years that had GPU's that blew out and destroyed motherboards and did nothing about it? HP is famous for having horribly unreliable, defective laptops.

Neither of these laptops will handle Battlefield 3 beyond Low-Medium settings, and certainly not @ 1080p.

If you want an all-inclusive, awesome gaming laptop, I bought my Alienware M17x R3 with 6970m for $1282 after tax and shipping. It's more powerful than both of these laptops combined. You can also get M18x's with 6990M's in Crossfire for $1900. Both laptops will easily run BF3 on high settings @ 1080p.

 

I can't claim anything personally about reliability of HP laptops, but I known from reviewing history they're no worse than other big name resellers like Dell or Acer. I probably won't keep this laptop longer than 9 months, a year at most anyhow.

I have high confidence that BF3 will play well at 1080p since BFBC2 will run at 40-45fps at 1080p with medium detail, and I'm ok running at 720p. I will be playing on my desktop 90% of the time anyhow. Based on feedback from the Alpha, BF3 was running rather well on lesser system requirements than the AMD A8 and 6750m. And alpha code is usually very very unoptimized and quirky.

I've run through a gamut of laptops, and I wanted something <$800 that could play bad company 2 reasonably well, had a 1080p matte screen, blu-ray, and give me > 4hrs of battery life. The HP is pretty much the only one that fit that criteria. The Asus was a crap shoot, and really liked it, but the screen drove me nuts. By the time I bought a replacement screen and added a blu-ray it would have cost as much or more than the DV6z.

Mine is the DV6z CTO (configure to order). It came with a 640GB 5400RPM HDD and 6GB DDR3 RAM (1x2GB + 1x4GB), but I replaced it with a 256GB SSD and 8DB DDR3 I already had.

The breakdown is like this:

after 30% coupon + taxes ~ $813
eBates 5% discount ~ $40
HP "cancel my order" discount ~ $50
HP "keep the customer" discount ~ $100

That's actually $623.

eBates is a delayed cashback program, but HP offers 5% cash back after 3 months, but you have to order online through the eBates site with a link to HP.
HP "cancel my order" discount is basically if you call HP to cancel your order when it's in production, they're usually offer you $50-$100 to keep your order
HP "keep the customer" discount is basically after you get the laptop and call and ask to return it they usually offer $50-$100 to keep your machine.

This is my second machine, and the first "cancel my order" discount came from my first laptop, which I ended up returning because of high heat, so that is really kind of free money not related to my replacement order. I just returned it and reordered due to a screw up on their end, instead of an exchange, which worked out for me because it ended up cheaper by a little bit.

The funny thing is my second laptop I have now, ran hot too, which is why I called to just return the laptop and they offered me $100. Then I decided to repaste the CPU and GPU and if it didn't improve things I'd just return the laptop still (and forfeit the $100 obviously) and keep the Asus. Well the repaste dropped temps significantly. The paste that was on there was thick and hard as a rock.