N53tk/apu setup (random review + couple of tech/tweak questions :)

So I was actually looking for a smaller laptop, since I had given up on getting a notebook sized computer that would work as a media-top/gaming rig, without ending up with 1h battery-life and replacing my oven, even on "power-save", etc, when the graphics card kicks in (for desktop effects, or video-decoding).

And thought I would find a 13 inch i3/e-450 of some sort for a model I could jam an oversized lithium polymer battery into.

But I became a bit curious when I saw this new laptop with a newer fusion mainboard, and a 7000 series embedded card. Specially when that 7670m card has so low power-drain.

So I gambled on that the "notebook" wasn't a mobile motherboard in a heavy laptop chassis, and that it had fans designed for silent running, and ram timings for low and stable effect, and so on. And bought it even though the specs in the store were without a doubt completely wrong, and I didn't know how the thing was put together, how well the crossfirex/dual graphics work etc.

Besides - a pretty good middle of the road laptop for 600euro. Not too bad, even if it turned out to suck terribly.

So I bought the n53tk and an ssd. Put everything in, installed things, booted up, and everything works reasonably well (in spite of bloatware and annoying animated "you are now on battery - and look at the wave eating it away" waves.

It runs about 1500 marks in 3dmark2001 on standard settings when the catalyst drivers set 3dmark to "high performance" (or dual graphics). The processor is clocked at 1500Mhz, and runs at about 31 degrees after running the test twice..

Put the clockspeed up to 2500 and locked the p-state (with k10stat). The test runs above 1700 marks - no difference in framerate, the cpu-intensive tests run better. After running a burn-in test with the secondary gpu+apu running, and the cpu at 2.6Ghz (same volt), the cpu is stuck at 51 degrees. This is where it ends up on gaming sessions as well.

More practical tests:
-The Witcher 2 in 1366x768, high detail preset - 24fps, dips to 21. Playable but choppy. Lower the resolution slightly, and we have a stable 30fps. Note: 51 degrees.
-Heroes of Might and Magic VI (ubi, 2011) in 1366x768 - full detail @60fps stable. Power-saving mode (only the apu), medium detail runs 30fps.
-Nexus: The Jupiter Incident - 100fps+ on power-saving.

Another comfortable thing - switching contexts/alt-tabbing is fast and does not typically break the game, etc. Mode-switches, power-saving/performance is seamless.

I imagine that with good cooling, you could run this laptop at insane overclocks..

Hdmi out works as "well" as any other computer with an ati card and catalyst. It's not easy to set up, and you have little control over how the image is mirrored, or how things work if you use only one display. Colour correction is terrible. It seems to be possible to run 1080p output while transferring the display to the external screen only. But low quality and the ati smear and bloom saturation makes streaming to a box a better option (though it works in a pinch, and will play that blu-ray movie reasonably well - not completely sure if it actually works with hdcpi - haven't checked yet. Doubt it, though..).

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The meter in hwinfo seems to be broken for the second gpu (monitoring software sees just the a6-3460m probably). But it had no impact on the heat in the chassis at all until I overclocked the ram timing. At standard timing, the surface and back of the chassis is cool, but the fan goes up one level. I could run the bus speed up to what seems to be the limit at 667Mhz (there's some sort of two-way bus with effective speeds at 2x the bus-speed) without any impact on the heat or watt-drain. Increasing the ram timing just a couple of Mhz increased the heat very quickly, though (at least the heat dispersion is good..).

What seems to happen with the memory timing is that the internal memory speed is locked higher in the boost state, and both the dedicated and onboard graphics run at the same clock speed. Apparently the apu and the dedicated board share a channel on the memory bus. Not sure how this is done - I haven't opened it, but the ram pieces (the gpu says: 2Gb) are stuck in the same port. The timing seems to have been made with that in mind, with a bit too high volt on the ram for a netbook. Presumably because of the mode-switching. The high volt probably is what makes the bus-overclock have no impact on the drain.

The box underclocks just as amazingly well. Comfortably runs at 450mhz/0.6375v (standard minimum is 800Mhz/0.9375v). In a pinch this means that if you lower the brightness, remove any external drives, and turn off the camera and the blu-ray drive - the drain while running a 20% cpu task while wifi is active is between 12-14w. This isn't as good as the 9w my Eee idles at in the same conditions , but still.. not bad. Not bad at all.

It's not necessary, I think, but I keep it at 700/slight volt reduction while I'm figuring out if there's any stability problems further down while changing to and from battery to mains, and so on.

It doesn't seem to affect the drain much at all either - the rest of the system is pretty much constant at low cpu speeds while not running the extra radeon card. Unless something intense happens (such as Windows deciding to scare me to death with how many security glitches Win7 has acquired in the last ten hours), the processor is stuck at the lowest p-state.

With the "standard" laptop battery, this means we get 4 hours at 700Mhz while:
-running spotify streaming off the net, output on the speakers.
-writing this in a browser, with e-mail open and checking.
-and with slightly dimmed brightness (not turned off for "testing purposes" - but dimming it two steps below the middle dropped the drain 1w).

This is practically speaking actually more than I get on my Eee901. So much for that project..

It also means that anything involving a graphics card of some sort or multicore doesn't actually draw any more power, or suddenly start to peak the power-drain. Running a mkv/720p in zoom-player gives you almost exactly the same results, with the processor running at the lowest state, 31 degrees, and no fan going off, etc.

Adding the ssd disk no doubt affected this somewhat. But since the margins upwards are so high, I doubt the difference is that critical. But there will be some higher power-drain, and some more heat in the chassis if the disc is constantly accessed. And since the low drain is stable, it might pay off to buy an ssd for this laptop more than for most..

Conclusion:
- overclocks amazingly well. From 1500 to 2600 with no volt change is stable and safe well within any sort of comfort margin.
- ram is set to slightly high volt. Seems to be no way to overclock the ram, or change the volt settings or timing - yet. Easy to change the ram sticks (like the hdd), but difficult to know how the system would benefit from it with the strange setup timing, 2x bus, etc).
- 3d performance is on par with radeon 6800 series dedicated cards, with less than half the power-drain. Making it a viable gaming netbook, without sacrificing too much.
- the "internal" apu graphics performance is also pretty good. Can run most dx9 games on high detail in "power-saving" mode. Also can run more demanding tasks in low detail, giving you real options you can easily switch back and forth. (Note: cold chassis while running the apu only)
- "crossfirex"/dual graphics scales surprisingly well, with few issues. Not sure if this is the 12.4 catalyst drivers, but neither the Witcher 2, or older dx9 and dx8 games had any issues running either on apu or apu+7670m, or switching between. There's no mode-change, etc, when going back to the desktop: the switch is transparent to the OS. Only issue is that automatic detection doesn't necessarily work, since the mode switch doesn't occur at the moment the test runs (i.e., the dedicated card is invisible while on the desktop).
- build-quality is: Plastic.
- keyboard: flat pieces, might be difficult to get used to if you're used to writing by feel. Palm rest is comfortable, touch-pad embedded in the material (rather than having seams and separate components).
- other things: 2x usb 3.0, 2x usb 2.0, gigabit ethernet, memory card reader, hdmi, analog vga, mic in, stereo out, physical switch for wifi if you want to use it. Media keys are idiotic. Other than that, blu-ray drive and memory card reader sticks out from the side slightly. Build is perfectly tight other than that.
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Couple of questions:
-anyone know if the setup supports Sata 3? The motherboard should support it, and it has pci-e connectors. But it only reports Sata 2. Anyone know how to change this, or want to help me pressure Asus to release an updated bios?

-usb-ports/driver/bus-solution. Had weird slow-downs while using a gaming mouse with 1500+dpi. Have something to do with the polling interrupt, I think. Anyone know if there's a way to tweak this so the rig doesn't croak with higher polling intervals?

-volt overclocks/underclocks - what are the limits on this thing? Stable underclocks?

-also, how does the bus-speed work. You can set multipler and bus-speeds -- 60-100Mhz.... Last time I did any kind of serious modding, we still had sdram and had bus-speeds up towards 450Mhz, and closer to the processor speeds than anything else. Volt modding typically exploded the chips, and politicians were honest and the weather was colder, and so on. Anyone want to fill me in on how this works now...?

- most important: any suggestions for laptop/kit-bags? Shoulder-strap, full side folding cover, needs pockets for pen and paper, that kind of thing.