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

At least from a feel stand point, picking it up and poking at it in the store, they definitely feel far nicer than anything else in under $600 and even nice than some of the $800 ones I was checking out.

 

The build quality of the laptop is good and on par with a 800$ laptop easily. The keyboard also is pretty good. The extraordinary overclocking capability of the CPU is the icing on the cake.

My only gripes are with the iffy usage of the standalone GPU and the dismal performance in LOL. Other games seem fine though. AMD needs to step up on the driver front imo.

 

If you're going to do any type of gaming, I would avoid the HP. I was reading user reviews and it can't even handle the latest fallout game on native res.

The K53TA on the other hand can handle the majority of current games on high setting (some medium) with great frames per second scores.

It's not much more money too, so don't gimp yourself if you plan on playing current or future games and grab the K53TA

If you're keen on size, the Acer 3830 (i3/540m) is 13.3" and can handle gaming on medium/high. The only downside is the CPU will bottleneck Battlefield/SC2 performance to medium-ish settings. It's currently 599$ CDN (@Staples) and probably cheaper in the US since the K53TA is -150$ less over there (449$ vs 599$)

Edit: Oh, and the Acer's battery is 9 hours too (prob 7~ if you're browsing)

 

Weird, I tried editing the config but it says "access denied"

 

Copy the file to your desktop (or anywhere), edit that file, and replace the original file with the edited one.

 

R3d noted that there is a K43 in the works:
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Notebooks- ASUS K43TA

Only thing is dimensions can't be right because they are identical to the K53
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Notebooks- ASUS K53TA

But it does show it as 0.5kg lighter, that's pretty significant, about 1 lbs. Same specs otherwise. Only question is cost. I'd rather tote the 14" around than the 15".

Differences I noticed (K53 vs K43):

Chipset: M780G v A70M (edit: the M780G is probably a typo, A70M is the Fusion chipset, M780G shows HD 3200 as the IGP and we know that's not right)
Networking: Bluetooth v no Bluetooth
Weight: 2.6kg v 2.1kg

Other question is pricing and availability. $450 for a laptop of this caliber is awesome. I'm thinking the 14" will cost the same. Maybe will surprise us with a $400 laptop. lol. I doubt it.

 

I don't know about the i3 version but the i5 version of that laptop which is all I've seen this side of the border most people are saying the battery's about the same as this with about 3-4 hours of normal use.

Edit: Ya know looking at this K53 is making me feel a lot better about this laptop since it seems like they really haven't changed out anything other than the chipset and if everything I'm reading is accurate it's going to nip at the heels of the i5/540 combo. Now I'm super eager to find out how well it does in things like 3ds Max.

Edit Edit: Forgive me if it was mentioned earlier in this thread but does the GPU on this have issues with openGL like I've seen mentioned on some other Radeon powered laptops?

 

hey guys new to registering but have been lurking around for the best bang for buck laptop and this was easily classed at my top list.

for any on the edgers, im not a hardcore user nor a gamer. but i run on average 10-15 firefox tabs with about 5 pages worth of loading videos since im doing online classes and no hiccups so far. on top of that, i have a ton of music im uploading onto the lappy and no dropped frame rate....while watching pron? great deal! at 450!!

i do have a question about upgrading RAM though. would any ddr3(667) work? or if any of you guys upgraded RAM so far, which did you guys go for? im looking for the cheapest but most efficiant.

 

K53ta has usb 3.0 and I think it isn't even mentioned in the nominal spec.

that acer 3830 is $640.... illustrating the point of the thread

 

Has anyone actually put an SSD into this? I have a Vertex 2 that I pulled out of my M11x and put in this and something is definitely not working right. Huge delays in loading anything. Is there some special procedure I should be using?

When I pulled it, Ioaded an OEM copy of Win7 Home Premium and deleted the partitions and let windows format as needed from that point. Any input would be appreciated.

 

Make sure you have the AMD SATA / AHCI drivers otherwise it will use whatever Microsoft drivers Windows sees fit to use, which isn't always the best.

 

Thank you for the reply... Looking for them right now cause this is just way beyond unacceptable performance. Seriously like 3 minutes during windows setup between each screen. Not to mention stuck at "Preparing for first use" for like 30 minutes..

So just to verify though, I'm downloading the AHCI drivers from here then?
AMD RAID/SATA Drivers

 

USB 3? I haven't seen that mentioned on any K series model, would be a nice bonus though.

Laptop memory is a different size/pin count from desktop and you want to use the same speed which is 1333 or it will all slow down to the speed of the slowest stick.

 

Yep. This model has a lone USB 3.0 port. It's the blue port on the left.

 

Seems like the WHQL ATI 11.8 drivers have been released. Anyone checked them out?

 

Ahh thanks a lot. Should I keep the overclock module thing to 1 or 2?

 

Ugh. Still no luck with the SSD load. Can't seem to get the AMD AHCI drivers to load for Win7 64 bit either. Tried the AMD drivers from here but Windows pretends the 64 bit directory doesn't have any compatible drivers. Then I checked the ASUS site here but none of the ZIP's contain any AHCI drivers.

Sigh. Wish I could get this Vertex2 to work, it's the last thing I need to configure to be happy with this purchase.

 

Well, I just picked up the K53TA and I plan on trying it with an SSD so will let you know what I find out. I have a 60GB Vertex 2 I could try.

My initial impressions on this machine are pretty good. Solid machine, thin, lightweight. But the screen. Oh the screen. The viewing angles are HORRIFIC! I'm not super picky about a screen, but it needs to have greater than +/- 30 degree viewing angle for crying out loud. It seems pretty bright but until I take it outside I won't know for certain.

Touchpad is a little strange. Sometimes it moves fine, other times it moves at like quarter speed. Maybe just takes a bit to get used to, I don't know. If I can replace the RAM and HDD without showing any evidence of doing so, so I can return to Best Buy without question, I will. I think dual channel DDR3 will improve performance of the IGP by a decent amount.

That's about it for now, If they offered a better screen I'd be a little more impressed, but as it stands, it's horrific. We'll see how it performs though. And if it does well, and I can find a decent screen for < $100 I may stick with this machine then.

 

I'll look forward to your experiences with SSD. With regards to the screen it's a small world. Coming from my M11X this screen is miles ahead of the old M11x screen (you dont know horrible angles until you see that.. sigh). I got a Samsung panel though, so not sure if that really makes a difference.

 

Well as long as you don't use high explosive to open the panels up I can't imagine they would even look. I worked at one for three years and even when something was completely destroyed they wouldn't take it out of the box. The stories.

 

I had an M11x R1, just sold it actually, was a Samsung panel and thought it was quite good actually, much better than this piece of crap. This one in this Asus is a Samsung SEC5441.

I'll be sure to report back with my SSD, probably sooner than later because this HDD super slow mo speed is driving me nuts!

Oh ok, good to know. Maybe I'll scavenge some parts out of this one... j/k.

edit: I just realized that the system doesn't even come pre-installed with service pack 1! What's up with that?

 

Okay... So Expanding files goes quicker with AHCI set, but then when it reboots into the portion of installation where you configure a user, computer name etc it crawls. I mean like with input lag and all. You can't type into the username field immediately, then on every screen when you press next it takes about 5 minutes for the next screen to load.

So I got tired of that since obviously that wasn't going to work for me. Not to mention that you would have to wait at the "Preparing system for first use" screen for almost 30 minutes. So I went into BIOS and changed AHCI to IDE.. Results: Expanding Files took about 20 painful minutes, but then everything else worked as anticipated. I'm finally in the OS so now I can see what sort of read/write's I'm getting. I still don't really think this is an acceptable solution, so may wind up returning the ASUS.

 

What are the specific display drivers we should be installing? I installed a 7200rpm hdd and now I'm looking for the drivers. Are they part of the chipset drivers or something?

 

Okay.. Applied drivers, windows updates, etc and did the SSD tweaks. Then I ran AS SSD.. Atrocious benchmarks.

Read / Write
Seq: 139.29 / 57.78
4K: 10.53 / 27.34
4K-64Thrd: 15.75 / 54.80
Acc.time: .297 / .443

Basically like 2/5 the score I should have at 149 total score.

So then I figured I'd try and pop it over to AHCI mode with the installed OS.. No go. Flipped the registry switches, rebooted and enabled AHCI.. Login screen came up but after login just sits at a black screen. So much for that.

I think I'm going to take this one back tomorrow since I'm already committed to my Vertex2. I wanted to like this ASUS laptop and it's definitely a performer, just evidently not with my SSD.

 

are you saying that you had it in 'compatibility' mode when you installed 7? i can't think of a reason to do that.
vertex got the last/latest firmware?
the gang at sevenforums has savvy members.. post something over there - quite a lot of traffic about SSD's. what you describe is way atypical

 

I'll throw a line out that way.. I was looking that way earlier and it looked like most of the "out there" SSD threads had 0 replies. Not sure about latest firmware, it has whatever was current when I got my SSD and updated it originally this February. I changed it IDE mode in the BIOS after like 4 tries doing AHCI mode.

Here's hoping it's the firmware on the SSD.

 

HEY GANG
could some of you others check your BIOS and tell us whether the default is in IDE mode or SATA/AHCI mode?

I rummaged through a few other posts on this subject with no definitive answers except I'm more suspicious now of something amiss with drivers or bios... I don't see the issue addressed clearly via either ASUS site or AMD...

 

get the "auto detect" from AMD's support/download site. run that and follow the script

 

I believe mine was set on AHCI right out of the box.

 

Just bought the laptop, think it's a great deal for the price.

Few questions:

1.)when I use "can you run it" to see whether I can run games, my video card comes up as AMD Radeon HD6500m series. Just making sure, this is the same thing as the 6650 as advertised?

2.) also from this website it says I have 3gb video ram while the card spec. says 1gb -> how exactly does that work out?

3.) Is there anything else I should do to speed/improve this pc up other then remove bloatware/update bios?

4.)Should I overclock my cpu? I've never done anything like that before and I want to know whether it's safe, what should I overclock it to? (can I set a max at like 1.8 or something), and what the expected increase in performance is and is it worth it?

5.) I'm probably missing something but is there an exterior volume control on this laptop?

Thanks for all your help and advice in advance, especially cause some of questions seem rather simple .

 

Anyone notice that the system throttles the CPU at 80C? I was messing with K10stat, and any time the CPU approaches 80C, it drops down to 800MHz for a second then back up to P0 state. I don't know if this is software or hardware though. I'm going to do a fresh install, and use the 60GB Vertex 2 SSD to see if I can get it working better than bschrib.

 

How does this deal compare to another one I saw in bestbuy:
Gateway NV57H26U Laptop for $480
15.6inch
Intel® Core™ i5-2410M processor
4GB DDR3
500GB Serial ATA
Intel HD Graphics 3000

Especially if I will only be doing light gaming like the Sims 3, Sims Medieval and Sims 4(whenever it comes out) and mostly watching videos online(youtube, hulu). Im stuck between this one and the Asus. Also, can the Asus handle 20+ tabs in forefox with videos loading in about 7 of them on average?

 

When I run the auto-detect, it keeps telling me "cannot find product or OS." I believe some others were having the same problem. Installed the latest ones from Asus' site but seems like people are getting newer ones from AMD. Just didn't know the specific ones they were using.

Somebody else noted the same thing a few pages back I believe. Sounds like a hardware limitation to keep the processor from overheating. I think they said the only way around that was to set your lowest level state on K10Stat to a high value and it wouldn't drop.

 

I'm fiddling with voltage and seems I can get 2.2GHz at 1.0125V and maintain 75C, so that might be the ticket for a bit. That's just with Prime95. Bad Company 2 tends to tax the machine the most, so may try that and see if I get temp throttling then.

 

yeah i found that 2.4ghz at 1.1v was the sweet spot and didn't throttle down at that speed regardless of the temp. though like said if you wanted to keep it from throttling you have to set your other p states to the same at p0.

 

The Gateway's CPU performs a little worse than the ASUS' and the GPU on the Gateway performs a lot worse than the ASUS'. I would recommend the ASUS based on your need to game.

Has anyone tried running a Linux distribution on this notebook?

 

That's a tad disappointing, was hoping to avoid that issue but it seems like it's just a reality to live with.

No idea if it will give you any better results but have you tried updating through Steam perchance?

+1

 

Alright so I was able to OC the CPU to 2.3ghz at 1.36v and OC the GPU to 700mhz/950mhz.

If anyone has gone higher than that with some good results, please post. Screenshots too if you can.

 

Hey just an update. I updated my Vertex 2 from firmware 1.28 to 1.33 and that got me into AHCI mode OK. Benchmarks are still disappointing but can't test to isolate the issue til tomorrow.

Also I've noticed after I did a fresh load (OEM Disc.. got branding etc for ASUS) that the ASUS specific software such as Power4Hybrid & Asus LiveUpdate don't work. I checked the eSupport folder and it appears to have the "batch" setup files they used for our laptops. Does anyone know which particular bit adds whatever we need so that the ASUS proprietary files will run successfully?

 

How is the sound on this laptop? A friend of mine just bought the ASUS - Laptop / Intel® Core™ i5 Processor / 15.6" Display / 6GB Memory / 640GB Hard Drive - Lake Blue
Model: U56E-BBL5 for $599.00 and the sound is terrible. If they would have looked at the reviews on the best buy website they would have been warned.

I read all the reviews and don't think I saw anything about the sound?? But by the time I was finished reading, my head was spinning. Wow, you people know a lot about computers!!! All I want the computer for is college work, surfing the web and playing online movies/videos. From a person who knows nothing about computers and felt so overwhelmed and confused, I feel confident about buying this computer now. Thank you so much!!!

 

Can everyone that has had successful Overclocks please post screenshots of their K10? I'm a noob to this and need something to compare to.

 

I'm running CPU at 2.1GHz at 1.025V just to keep temps low. I can get 2.2GHz but even if I set all P-states to same speed and voltage once it hits 80C HWInfo64 is showing the cores starting to drop speeds anyhow and affecting game performance. Seems above 2.1GHz, the temps and voltage required rises exponentically.

I actually ramped my p-states up from 1.8GHz to 2.1GHz, and thought my voltage was ok, but after playing for 20 minutes in Bad Company 2, temps were < 70C, but game locked up. I attribute it to CPU voltage. May bump everything up a notch and see if it helps.

I can get the GPU to 660/1070 max, but running at 650/1050 just to leave a little breathing room.

I've turned off Crossfire just to eliminate that variable, and plays rather well without it.

 

your voltages are way to high.. for 2.3ghz you shouldn't even have to adjust the voltage for p0 state. for instance i can run 3ghz in p0 state on 1.275v.. though heat at that point becomes and issues with stuff like prime 95 or cinebench.

i hope to be able to post up a screen shot of my p states this week for everyone so they can have a reference point to start OCing with.

also im on my second k53ta as i ended up returning the first due to the dvd drive not working right... on the new one the cpu uses slightly less volts for OC but the GPU does not go up as high on the core 670vs 700 but the memory goes way higher 950 vs 1040 lol. over all this unit performs better. so it seems everyone is gonna be a little different when it comes to overclocking.

 

it's weird how different units have different max voltages.

my first unit went up to 1.35v. my second one was capped at 1.2875 or something.

@unxpectederror- did you get any dead pixels ?


I returned my 2nd unit b/c of a dead pixel, but i also loaded the old bios back onto the unit, and used banding as a more solid 2nd excuse

since this is regular price, i am in no hurry to order again.

 

Thanks for your input guys, i'm definitely going to change the voltage a little bit. I figure I can lower it a bit since I do a lot of gaming, but not to the point where my games will lock up. I'm actually able to play SC2 on extreme with the native resolution, and so far the campaign plays very smoothly. Another game that plays very smoothly is Empire: Total War, with settings on "Very High" with "Ultra" sized units.

 

Well this is probably a reflection, and the sacrifice, of the low price point and getting parts with a much larger tolerance in QC and the best pieces are probably getting picked for higher end models by the company making the boards and chips.

Well any laptop isn't going to sound that stellar depending on how much you care, the best of them are really average at best in the big picture. You just can't produce amazing sound with dime sized speakers and a bad acoustic setup, physics and what not.

 

so just got this laptop and wanting to upgrade the RAM with another 4gb stick. would any laptop 4gb stick work perfectly?

i was thinking of going with this but wanted to get your guys opinion first:
Newegg.com - G.SKILL 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model F3-10600CL9S-4GBSQ

or is there any preferred stick you guys can say?

thanks in advance

 

gotcha, lol. thanks

 

Can anyone tell me what warranty to get with this? Someone said they got squaretrade warranty..is that what i should do? I thought I read that if you buy an asus at best buy you have to use thier warranty?? I'm sorry, I'm new to this and just want to make a wise purchase. After reading reviews about squaretrade it sounds like a great deal, i guess. Please help a confused female out. Thank you

 

Need help overclocking this laptop. What software should I use? any guides for this laptop would help, thanks!