New G51VX-RX05 owner

First ever laptop, just picked it up from best buy here in nyc. So far I'm really happy. It's certainly a step down from my desktop but zero dedicated space is awesome in the city.

Couple quick questions as to its upgradeability.

Screen: I had read that someone thought you could pop in a 1680x1050 but i don't know if this was ever confirmed. If so what model and I'm there.

HDD: I wanted to set up a raid 0 array, is there anything other than a 2.5" hdd that I need? Like housing or some such?

Any other advice would be great, thanks a ton!

 

I installed a second hard drive in my, but didn't have the tray, so had to snung it in with foam from an old Toshiba... A tray would be ideal, but they are apparently always out of stock and very hard to actually get... list for $18 when they are in stock. Mine has worked just fine, I popped in a WD500GB drive, plugged right up, just added a touch of foam to keep it from moving. Temps are reporting the same as the stock drive.

Also, quick question for you... have you done any gaming yet? And if so, have you run into the "Display Driver has stopped responding errors"? I get it several times a day, in games ranging from Band of Brothers Hell's Highway, Call of Juarez, and even 3DMark06... trying to figure out if it's a driver issue or a hardware issue and mine is simply defective... very annoying issue, the screen goes blank, then comes back a minute or so later after "recovering" from the error.

And, to add a new question, I'm curious as to CPU upgradability.... are quads (ie Q9100?) supported? Have been told both yes and no on this model.

Do love the laptop, and good luck with yours!

 

There is a patch for 3DMark06 on the ASUS G51 on the ASUS support site.

The G51VX does support Quads (see my sig). However, all bets are off if you have the Best Buy version.

 

Why are all bets off on the BB model? That's my question, which is what I have... a G51VX, but I randomly read that the BB model doesn't support them... anybody successfully upgraded to a Quad?

 

all bets are off because people have tried and failed to install a quadcore CPU into a bestbuy model of G51VX.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=403860

 

What the Jigglypuff guy said.

Anyway, to do RAID it has to be the same size and speed HDD, which is 320GB @ 7200rpm. Newegg has a wide selection.

Be77, have you tried tried different drivers?

 

Hey, thanks for that link! Some good reading! Not sure why I didn't run across that thread in my search, but thanks again!

Only possible solution may be a reinstall of Vista after the quad is installed.... but that's a big chance to take by buying the CPU first!

Curious, I do have a T9300 2.5 laying around, would that be any better than the one that came in it from BB? Not sure if it's a newer or better revision than when I bought the T9300 a couple years ago.

 

Yeah, tried stock drivers first obviously, then updated to the 186.81's, then the latest are the newest ones on Windows update which show up as 186.31's... Used driver sweeper between each update. Very confused. Here's a screenshot of what it does:




And, I now promise to stop hyjacking this thread!

 

The RX05 can accept any T- or P-series processor, plus the X9000 and X9100.

And if you have a T9300, then you have yourself a nice upgrade. Faster clocks and bigger L2 cache. Higher TDP, but the 44 TPD in my X9100 hasn't given me problems.


As for the display issue, I've had that error come up... but only when I tried to overclock too high on a GPU undervolt. Get a second opinion, but it doesn't look good for your laptop.

 

ok cool, so the T9300 would be faster? I didn't know if since it lists an 800FSB, if that would slow things down.... knew the clock speed was better, but didn't know if the P7350 was better overall.

Thanks!

 

It won't slow anything down.

The only thing that the P7350 beats the T9300 at is a cooler TDP. But you can undervolt/underclock to fix that.

I rarely run my X9100 at full voltages and clocks anymore.

 

WHY! Make a cooler broman. Mine never goes below 3.4ghz but I did undervolt it a tad bit.

 

If I don't have a reason to run it at full speed, I'll err on the side of cooling. Full clocks are one click away, anyway.

 

Yea true, I just crank mine up on start up and leave it in case I play some gta for a few minutes.

 

I know when the display driver error happens with me, it seems that it happens because it overheats. So you might want to look into that if you haven't already.

 

My thread was hijacked!

 

Well the temps that he had been getting are low enough to rule out overheating.....

If you have updated your drivers already, then it may be that your G51 is a lemon

Edit:

Someone has tried upgrading the screen, but I don't remember who off the top of my head.

There is no HDD bracket for the 2nd drive but there is foam so its up to you whether you want to order a bracket from the Asus eStore

 

For a small cash sum, your thread will be returned to you unharmed. Instructions will follow.

 

HA, I promise to give it back now!!