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

It has a link to a guide on the first post.....



And I am running 2.3ghz @ 1.085. I updated the drivers to 11.8 and now it does not overclock, but I'm not terribly concerned about that at the moment. New drivers will open that option down the road. I do have the B0 state (turbo core) running 3ghz @ 1.325, since that was the voltage that it started at. So far, so good. I tried 2.4ghz @ 1.1 and it failed...


Oh, and for some reason I cannot get 3Dmark11 to finish. It passes everything up past the CPU test, but then just stalls while loading the last test. It passed it the first time I tried it when i first got the computer, but now it just stops even at stock speeds. Anyone else seeing this?

 

I keep getting my system locking up playing Bad Company 2 @ 2.1GHz at 1.1V. I can play for a solid 20-30 minutes, then it just locks up. One time it actually recovered and I could keep playing. Otherwise, lockup and then have to hard shut down. I'm going to keep boosting voltage, but it just seems odd that 1.275V is normal for 2.3GHz with boost, but then again, maybe it just needs more power!

 

2.4 running 1.1v and did intel burn in. 11.8 update and can't overclock. going to play some games to see how she does.

 

I can overclock the GPU but maybe that's part of my problem and cause for hangups.

Also I did a full clean install on an SSD. Installed the video drivers from Asus's site and then installed 11.8 on top of that, but it showed the drivers were already up to date, so they must be using 11.8 now.

My system was running great with Prime95, but maybe combination of GPU + CPU and other stresses is making it fail.

 

when u guys say you updated to 11.8 and can't overclock, do you mean the GPU or the CPU? and by update, I'm assuming not just the software, but the display drivers as well to 11.8 release. the most recent DD drivers on the ASUS website are factory stock ones at 11.6 drivers, not 11.7 as someone else said.

 

Fantastic thread & forum that I just found today!

I actually picked up my K53TA last Monday from Staples Canada ($599) to use up a $325 gift card from a warranty settlement for my broken Acer Extensa 5630-6561.

It's even a better deal now, since it's $50 off starting this Weds. So with Staples' 14-day price protection, I promptly got some money back!

If anyone is experiencing slow file transfers over gigabit Ethernet - just upgrade to v7.0.46 from Realtek's site to fix. The USB3 port works great too. I get over 100 MB/s peak transferring files from a USB3 HDD dock over Ethernet.

I've also upgraded to 8GB RAM with a stick of Kingston 4GB 1X4GB 1333MHZ DDR3 NON-ECC CL9 SODIMM KVR1333D3S9/4G in the single free SODIMM slot. The factory memory is from Hyundai - a mismatch, so no dual channel? And, the memory cover is a bit tricky to get off. I used a credit card as a wedge between the cover & the case to pop-off the tabs. Don't just bend it up from the screw-side end!

I didn't really notice the screen banding issue, but I updated the BIOS to 206 with no problems.

Some snapshots from CPU-Z:

 

When I use trixx it says that it can't overclock because ULPS is not disabled but its checked marked in the setting menu as disabled. Also can't get k10stat to start automatically on startup even through scheduler

 

That should be perfect, that's what I was planning to order for mine.

 

Whew, I think I finally got a good stable working machine with reasonable overclocks. Nothing spectacular but definitely an improvement in gameplay altogether. I'm most interested in Bad Company 2 and hopefully will be an indicator of Battlefield 3 performance.

Here's my setup:




I'm able to get a solid 45FPS in Bad Company 2 with medium detail at 1366x768 and Crossfire on.

I will work on getting it better, but this is a good start. I'm thinking I can get the CPU up a bit higher if I take baby steps. I'm thinking 2.4GHz shouldn't be a problem.

Running < 80C for both CPU and GPU and no throttling going on that I can tell. I set up my K10stat profile like I did with my P6 state so high because previously I was getting throttling over 80C no matter what I did, so this at least seemed to keep performance high enough.

and about SSD, my Vertex 2 60GB seems to do ok with performance.

 

I thought you OC'd your memory clock to over 1000?

 

I did, but then I started getting lockups so started backing off on everything. I know I can't get much more than 650 on the GPU, but can probably get well over 1000 on the GPU mem, just have to inch it up a little at a time.

 

i would lower you p6 state down to 700-800 with a low voltage of like around .750. what you have now will use more juice while idling causing lower battery time... you wont notice a difference in performance at all as when doing a task the computer almost always shoots up to p0 state.

also its good to see that your SSD is performing well as i just bought a kingston 128gb V100 so im kinda excited about that and cant wait for it to come in.. so how does the notebook feel with the SSD in it compared to stock?

also i bought some of the 1x4GB G.SKILL memory so ill let everyone know how that turns out when it comes in. i know some of you were thinking about purchasing it as well.

 

The K53TA at Best Buy comes with a 1 year warranty through Asus. If your laptop breaks down, you'd have to ship it to either their Indiana facility (East Coast) or the California facility (West Coast). If in Canada, it's in Ontario.

With Square Trade, you can buy additional warranty coverage that would start after the Asus warranty expired if I'm not mistaken. If you choose to go with Square Trade, make sure to google discount coupons. If you're a gamer, you'll want to keep warranty coverage at minimal (1 year Asus + 1 year Square Trade); beyond the 2 years, playing current games will likely be quite problematic.

PS: Never buy Best Buy warranties; they're grossly overpriced.

 

I actually bought this machine intending to return it, just thought I'd give it a go as I wait for my HP DV6z to be shipped. But the more I play with it the more I like it, especially for the price. Only the screen drives me nuts with horrible viewing angles, and the battery life is sub par. My battery actually came with 5% wear already Although seems I can get a solid 4-5 hours with web browsing, but was a bit disappointed with Netflix performance, less than 2.5 hours of use when streaming netflix. Wonder if there's a larger cell battery for this machine?

I use this K10stat profile for gaming, and another for general use with lower clocked P-states and voltage while I test. I will probably end up going with a single profile and lower the lower P-state speeds once I get things ironed out. I was just doing it because the system was throttling down to the lowest P-state on its own (P6) when temps exceeded 80C. I seem to have that working now though without that issue.

I put in 2x4GB DDR3 1333 G.Skill I had and it works fine. The stock RAM was Samsung, good RAM. I guess I can try using the stock RAM with one of my G.Skill sticks. Unfortunately the A6 CPU apparently won't run with 1600MHz RAM, because it seems to give the integrated GPU a decent boost in performance with the MX CPU's.

I posted this SSD just because someone else was having an issue running theirs. Once I decide between the HP and this machine, I'll be using a 256GB Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue SSD I have.

But for the price, you can't beat it. If I did end up keeping this machine I would probably swap out the display if I can find a decent 1080p for < $100.

 

yeah i had a dv6zqe myself with the a8 with the 1080p screen but i actually like this unit better for the price.. yeah the screen kinda sucks on this one so when i replaced my first k53ta at best buy i bought myself a HP 2509b for $172!!! (get one now while you still can) so that i can do some light photoshop work while at home with the laptop. dual screen works very well and this is an amazing LCD for the price.

and yeah if you could test out the gskill with one of the samsungs that would be great i appreciate it.

as far as overclocking yeah it takes a while to get a profile that will work for everything... but i honestly get the same amount of battery life on this laptop as i did with the dv6. im also able to hit all the same overclocks as well but this laptop needs slightly more volts.

 

Just curious, how much improvement in battery life is possible with undervolting?

Saw this laptop in Staples today, pretty good for the price. Hate the keyboard layout, especially the shape of the enter key. But I like the travel of each key.

 

You can probably eek out another 20-30 minutes if you underclock and undervolt an appreciable amount. For basic web and windows desktop apps and such, I'd say 5 hours is pretty reasonable. Although I couldn't run in power saver mode to play netflix, had to run at balanced and it consumed max resources and BatteryBar about an hour into a Netflix movie was showing about 2:20 total life. I'm sure with some tuning I could extend that another 15-20 minutes. I was really looking for a laptop with blu-ray and 1080p, but at this price and performance I may just have to stick with it and wait for something better to come along in the next 6-12 months.

About the only game I'll play on it regularly will probably be Battlefield 3, so I'd rather spend $450 and have it play like crap than spend $850 and have it play like crap! And since I have no clue how well it will run, I'm sure I could sell this machine for $300 in 3-4 months if I decide to buy something more powerful.

 

I lowered the p6 state by .03v, and got an extra hour idling time.

 

Any particular reasons compared to wingnuts impressions? I really like the $450 idea but I'm still worried I'll need a slightly faster processor and the hp uses gddr instead of ddr. The ability to go up to 12 or 16gb sounds delicious but I can't even find any laptop sticks over 4gb and not paying hp $500 for it. There is also a 9 cell battery available which is tempting but still no bluetooth and it's got the god awful trackpads hp's using. I also lack the patience to order it from hp to get the bigger battery anyway. Is the extra weight of the hp noticeable?

By the way has anyone used the webcam on either of these yet? I'm sure the one of the asus isn't great but is it ok enough for some skype?

Edit: Wonder how the base screen stacks up to the Asus since most people seem pretty happy with it.

 

Here's my setup Fast, responsive with the SSD hehe
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/6513/unledkay.png

 

ok guys so i worked out all the voltages tonight for my notebook hopefully this will help some of you to find a good starting point



EDIT: also i added this to the first post

 

Download AMD Catalyst Drivers 11.8 Vista - Change Log - FileHippo.com

Seems like they disabled overclocking in 11.8.

 

What kind of temps are you running @ 2.4GHz? I have been stressing my system with Kombustor and Prime95 simultaneously so it bumps the temperatures more realistically. Running the CPU at a lower speed leaves me a little room to overclock the GPU. With my GPU at stock and CPU at 2.1GHz 1.000V my system runs about 82C (with Kombustor & Prime95 simultaneous) after about 15 minutes, but if I overclock my GPU to 650/1000, system runs at about 86C. Bad Company 2 is about 82-85C with that as well.

I think they mean overclocking through the CCC. They can't control what K10stat does.

 

Holy cow! That was amazing! I bumped my volts to match yours with small exception (less aggressive from P5 to P1) but most importantly I matched my P0 to your value from my old clock of 2.3GHz.. I went from max temp at 73C running 2.3GHZ (1.075v) to 69C at 2.4GHz (1.1v) and picked up an extra GFlop in the process... Used IntelBurnTest. I can't really explain that because it's the same room, same temp and same setup that I tested yesterday.

Thanks for sharing your setup!

 

Okay.. Used CCleaner to zero out free space, then ran Crystal Disk Mark. The benchmark is better than it was, but I still feel like write speeds are a bit off.

 

One thing to keep an eye on is to run HWInfo32 or HWInfo64 and watch the CPU speeds. I would recommend running Prime95 Large FFT's as it will stress your system harder and indefinitely until you turn it off. I've had things stable and lower temps with IntelBurnTest only to have it throttle down when actually gaming.

If you really want to stress your system best to run MSI Kombustor (comes with Afterburner) at same time as Prime95 and it will run pretty much max what your system can handle.

I spent more time with adjusting my K10stat profile and this one is rock solid stable with each state running 20 minutes in Prime95 Large FFT. And also stable running Prime95 + Kombustor with GPU @ 650/1000 with temps at about 88C. About the limit I'd like to see. Bad Company 2 runs about 80-82C so it's acceptable in my book. If just running IntelBurnTest, my temps are <77C running the 2.2GHz.

Keep in mind that this is an AMD system and drivers and/or hardware may not be as developed as the Intel stuff. In any case, it really won't even matter in real world scenarios.

 

I'll have to give it another test using Prime95 and Kombuster to give it a better scenario usage test. I'll be sure to shoot back the results. Also going to OC the GPU for giggles. Did you pick up much performance from your GPU OC? Like how many FPS in say Bad Company 2?

Followed your settings and tweaked my voltages for the low end a bit lower.. Always love more battery life. Thanks for sharing!

Yeah.. That's what I've been reading too. I know I'm being a stickler for this and honestly I'm pretty happy with performance now. I think I just bit too hard when I had FW incompatibilities earlier, now I'm hellbent on maximizing what I can. Not sure if it means anything but I'm running the most recent AMD AHCI drivers from AMD's website. What are you using?

 

Question: Has anyone done a teardown on one of these units yet? Could we improve our thermal numbers with some arctic silver or ic diamond?

 

To be honest, I think the CPU makes a bigger difference than the GPU. I'm now running GPU 650MHz/1000MHz. If anything I feel like it smooths out the framerate more than improve it much. I get 40-50fps and rarely dips below 30fps. I'm running all medium, shadows low, hbao off, no AA (or 1xMSAA), bloom off (too annoying in game). When I first start a game, it stutters a bit, but then once I get going it runs great.

Just be sure to test your clocks. Click each of the four cores and select apply, it should lock in those speeds, then run Prime95 for a while (3-5 mins is usually good) and see if it gives an error on any of the four cores.

I am running whatever 11.8 CCC installed.

If I keep this over the HP DV6z I will be sure to do it. I can almost guarantee it will drop peak temps by a good 5C if not more. Factory goop always sucks.

 

I just got done running 3DMark benchmarks on my machine.

Also, my YouTube quick overview: http://youtu.be/bPipYDCh5rA

I don't think these results do it justice just how well it actually performs:

Spoiler

 

Got blue screen twice running Prime. Wonder what I can do differently? Also, while it did the blue screen it said my windows wasnt validated, called and got that fixed. Just want a nice running stable machine with a some big juice .

 

Well here is what I've pretty much settled on. I could go further on the CPU but already pushing about 75C when stressing it. The power/price ratio of this laptop can't be beat. I really want to take this thing apart but will look at the manual first to see if I can do it without breaking it.

 

I used your clock speeds and volts, hopefully no blue screens! I have K10STAT running through windows scheduler at start up, what happens to it when you put your computer to sleep and wake it up again? Is it still running?

 

yeah that just means you have to bump up the volts up a bit or lower the clocks a bit.

today i actually had to up the volts on each p state because its pretty hot out as it was only 70F out when i prime tested these states vs the almost 90F that its out today. though i did run prime and kombustor at the same time today with the cpu at 2.4ghz 1.1125v and GPU @ 650/1000 and the tempts were around 88C after an hour but i had no throttling issues or errors. with just prime running it runs around 83C. im gonna have to see now what tempts i get while overclocking the gpu at the same time.


i think it looks like my chart will need a tweaking.. ill try and update it with something that most people should be able to run.

 

I don't have mine set to run at start up yet. Last time I tried, I couldn't get it running, but I noticed that when I put the comp to sleep after enabling K10STAT that my clocks would revert when I wake it back up. Have to relaunch the app and start em again.

 

I cannot seem to get it to run at startup well but if you follow the guide (just google k10stat startup) that someone posted you'll see step by step how to setup the task. I followed that, and it goes at startup now, but unfortunately it doesn't display in the task tray like it's supposed to.

The critical point of my post is that to avoid losing settings upon sleep you must run K10Stat with -StayOnTray (add to Target). This will stop it from losing speed settings upon sleep.

 

Did some messing around today on a few games. Happy with the results. 31 AVG FPS on Eve Online in the Commander rooms with all settings high and antialiasing low, all without having done anything to the GPU yet. Will be curious to see if that bumps it any.

 

By the way, my 3DMark06 and Vantage results are at 1280x1024 using an external monitor. I'll run it on the screen res which I think defaults to 1024x768

 

i believe the default is 1280x768

also have you seen that on kombustor that it only uses the integrated GPU for some reason regardless if crossfire is on or off?

another thing i would like to mention is that i was doing some testing to change my p0 profiles to something i would feel more comfortable using everyday regardless of the weather. what i notice is that if i use 2.3ghz instead of 2.4ghz while using prime 95 and kombustor that it brings my temps from 88C to 83C so i think i can give up the extra 100mhz for some peace of mind.. i also like the fact that i can run 2.3ghz stable at lower then the default voltages in p0 state so its a win/win situation

 

Oh, so 1280x768 on the 1366x768 screen? Default is 1280x1024 for 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage.

Kombustor only uses integrated GPU if you have Open GL selected (GL2 or GL3), select DirectX 9, 10, or 11, and it will use both GPU's if Crossfire is checked.

I agree on the clock speed, that's why I stuck with 2.2GHz, gave me best combination of performance and heat that I was comfortable with.

 

thanks for the tip on Kombustor i will have to try that.

and yes 1280x768 is what it defaults to if you are using just the laptop with out a external display other wise like you said 1280x1024 is the default.

 

What kind of battery life is everyone getting with browsing? I'm lucky to get 4 hours and am surprised by that.

 

Staples (Canada) has a -50$ discount on this laptop until Sept. 2nd if anyone is interested (549$). If you bought it for the original price of 599$ 14-days or less from the discount date, you're eligible to walk into the store and get 50$ back btw.

Too bad as soon as the discount was applied, it was sold out the same day and stocks have yet to be replenished ...talk about a hot seller

(all other Canadian sites have it jacked up at 699$+, so avoid them)

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AMD Quad-Core A6-3400

I googled the CPU in order to compare it with the i-family but there's no such comparisons.

 

AMD Quad-Core A6-3400

I googled the CPU in order to compare it with the i-family but there's no such comparisons.[/QUOTE]

There's just not a lot out there period and what little there is has been about the desktop versions unfortunately.

 

Anand has a decent comparison here. The CPU performance is around i3 level but the GPU decimates the HD3000, probably around HD 5650 or GT 525M performance. You also should remeber that the K53TA has a 6650 dGPU so that should bring it up to GT 540M standards.

I'm looking to get a K53TA to replace my aging Clevo M860TU. From everything I've read it has better scores + battery life. The only cons would be the thickness of it and the shoddy screen.

 

surprised good or bad ?

 

It's not that thick. I was surprised by the thinness and how light it is to be honest. As far as performance, it's about i3 level but that's only with 1 or 2 threads, four threads these days is ultimately better than two. I don't care what those benchmarks say, I can tell you its performance is much better than what any of these synthetic benchmarks show. My M11x R1 had similar benchmarks to this machine, yet this Asus can run Bad Company 2 at 45fps with medium detail, where the M11x could barely manage 20 at low detail.

Surprised bad. I was hoping for more. With my four tab reloadevery script test, it garnered more like 3:30 battery. Four tabs with three using some flash on the site, and a third that's more or less text, refreshing at random intervals 30secs to 5minutes.

 

according to the reviewer, he said, "We don't need to tell you the CPU half of Llano is nowhere near as powerful as Intel's Sandy Bridge"

Not sure what was lost in the translation. I'm not sure how you translate that , but that doesnt sound like its " The CPU performance is around i3 level "

 

The reviewer doesn't say it is nowhere near as powerful as Intel's Sandy Bridge i3 CPU, he just says it is less powerful than the SB architecture. Look at the charts and you will see where I got my "translation" from.

While the CPU performance can't match what Intel is doing with Sandy Bridge (some of those i7 models are absolute beasts) 90% of users do not need that power, they want to watch YouTube, listen to music and check emails. Llano is perfectly suited for that. I have a P8400 Core 2 Duo and it handles everything I through at it wonderfully.

As HTWingNut says, benchmarks aren't everything. Play with one of these in store and you will see there is very little difference between Llano and an i3.

 

Very little between these and an i5 to be honest. If you intend on doing a lot of video encoding or massive Excel spreadsheets or serious number crunching in MATLAB, then don't get the Llano. But if you need a basic computing experience with occasional gaming, it's perfect, not to mention cost. $450 + tax I think it's the absolute best bang for the buck laptop. Also, if you need 1080p screen and blu-ray and longer battery life, the DV6z with the 30% coupon is a steal too. Otherwise get the DV6t. I've never been a big fan of HP, but I think they hit the nail on the head with the newer DV6 machines.