Official Waiting for N82JV Thread

The old Sony CW was a bit slower with the 230M but had almost an hour or so more battery life. To be a peer you don't have to have identical specs...good grief...really dude? Don't turn this into a discussion over semantics because I'll gladly bow out.

 

I web browse like crazy and have multiple docs open constantly and LOVE having two windows open side by side.

As far as games, thus far I can play with Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 at native resolution. I'm sure you can't do Crysis @ native resolution but I don't care for it. Modern Warfare 2 runs fine at native resolution as well.

Obviously it is about priorities. For me, I use this for work more than gaming so having two windows is more important than playing 99% of the games out there at native resolution. If I have to settle for playing 90% @ native resolution, I'm golden.

 

Lol npnp not about semantics, just saying. ASUS has traditionally put good video cards in their 14inch laptops, that's all. And ya, it has always had bad battery life till the UL80 came out. On the IGP I'd imagine the power draw to be not much higher in the N82, so it should have good battery life also.

And no, I'm not defending one brand over another, look at my sig, lol

 

In any event, both the 230m and the 4650 had tdp's of 23 watts.

 

I will not argue with personal preference. Each to his own. I'm sure the Vaio is a fine piece of kit. I can just say that for my part (I'm a bloke), my brain doesn't multi-task. It's single core, single-threaded, so just one window at a time. And I'd develop myopia from reading the tiny text in that res.

 

Me too! I can't stand my 15.4" WSXGA+ screen. It got so bad I went out and bought a 23" LCD... I'm just trying to avoid having to buy more glasses!

 

Well, TDP is a useful measurement for "how big does a laptop have to be to accomodate this card?" but less useful for "how long does the battery last?". It all depends on how well the card can throttle. The ASUS notebooks with the HD 4650 cards have had significantly longer battery life than the ones with nVidia cards like 9600M GS if I recall correctly, as the latter tended to have just about 2 hours versus the 3-4 hrs you can squeeze out of the X83.

 

well my weigh in is high res small screen is a good thing.

i wish they would release a 10" netbook with a 1366 resolution.

 

I'd love a high-res screen. The 1680x1050 in my G50Vt is not so good for gaming at native res, but it's great for work (which I seem to have too much of these days).

 

Interesting. Everything I had read about the X83/N81 line was that they were below 3 hours in standard use run time (WITH wireless on etc based on Newegg reviews and a few online ones etc). This was my basis on my stance on my hope for the battery life of the N82.

If they run at 3-4 hours then I suppose we're looking at a gaming, battery beast. I'm in. 5 hours +, I5, 335 and PLEASE, PLEASE a high res screen and I'm in.

 

Well, one can expect something like this from a 8cell battery with Nvidia's Optimus technology.
I only hope that the display is not a complete fail...

Man, waiting all the time and getting no new infos/material is getting quite annoying.

 

With CeBit only a couple of weeks away, i would expect that you won't hear anything until then.

Bronsky

 

From overclocker.net:

That's the X83 with a 6 cell. 4 hours idle on a balanced mode (not battery saving) and 2 hours constant looping of 3DMark06 is VERY impressive.

 

So still no firm ETA for availability?

 

love to see the prices released.

 

Of course, same here. well, it will be, eventually, right?

 

So it's confirmed that the N82 is going to ship with nVidia cards and not Radeon 5000 series in North America?

 

If it has the 335 I need one! That would run ME2 great and be portable enough to take everywhere.

 

Yes indeed! Would slot in great for my N80 that's going in the kitchen :-D

 

Not confirmed, per se, but it's practically impossible for a Radeon card to be in it, not without ATI releasing their automatic switchable graphics technology.

 

I don't see why that would be necessary. The manual switch is on the laptop, too after all.

In any case, at least one variant of the N82 is confirmed to have a nVidia card (N82JV). Asus could always put different cards in different variants. The N82JV is the only one we know anything about at this point, though.

 

One problem is the way they'd market this. Hyping optimus, then offering a model without out is reckless. While I'm not saying that they couldn't, I can't see them doing it.

The other problem is the way Optimus works. According to the Anandtech article, there's no additional hardware. The ATI switchable graphics solution still relies on addition hardware/motherboard features to get it to work. The costs of changing the motherboard wouldn't justify offering ATI cards.

What do you mean by manual switch? You mean the laptop chassis has a switch to change from discrete to integrated, like a wifi on/off switch? I haven't see any clear pictures of the N82, but even were there such a switch, it'd have to be linked to software, due to they way Optimus works.

 

The way it worked before Optimus is by pressing F* whatever button manually.
Optimus does it automatically.

 

That's assuming the motherboard they put in the Optimus model wouldn't support the manual switching anyway. It's not out of the realm of possibility that they put the hardware necessary on all the N82 models and then just let the Optimus models not use the extra hardware. (Or they could perhaps allow that if they want users to be able to choose between managing the graphics manually or letting Optimus do it)

Simple fact is that this subject is still an unknown. It could be as you say. It could not be.

http://www.engadget.com/photos/asus-n82-0/#2674732
That switch in the upper left has the power4gear symbol. Not certain what it does exactly, but I thought it might be for graphics switching.

 

I don't deny the possibility, though I do believe that it is extremely small. Even if the hardware was originally capable of doing it, I'd have cut it out before mass production for the simple cost savings.

Also that switch looks exactly the same as the power button on the other side. Probably to switch from Quiet office -> Entertainment -> Overheat modes, etc. That's what Power4gear is originally anyway.

 

so the base model will be a similar price to the cw27?

 

Glad I waited on buying a laptop. The night before I first found out about the N82 I was / / that close to pulling the trigger on another 15.6" with similar specs but was troubled by the "just slightly too big" size. Ended up falling asleep and good thing too. Guess I'll get in line for the more info on price/release lol. How exciting!

 

Was that the Acer AS5740G or the Gateway 5926u, by any chance? I'm in the exact same situation as you, basically.

The Acer/Gateway is a little too large, and I don't like their warranty (I need a proper international warranty), while the Sony CW is more expensive and has a significantly weaker graphics card combined with higher resolution, which isn't so good for game performance. The Alienware m11x is awesome and has switchable graphics, but the CPU just doesn't cut it.

On the other hand, ASUS has a 2-year global warranty, and the N82Jv ought to be portable, with great battery life due to an 8-cell and switchable graphics. I'm hopeful.

 

Can somebody confirm if all laptops with discrete graphics and Arrandale chips will have the option to switch between GPUs?

I just want to be sure the only thing special about Optimus is the automatic switching; if I can manually switch graphics with an ATI chip, I'll definitely prefer it over the Nvidia.

 

I can confirm that it's not true.

The only thing special about Optimus is the fact that it's all software based. No additional hardware needed. Which means for all other switching methods, it costs the manufacturer something to enable. So they don't enable it.

 

I'm pretty sure that's not true. Minimally, they would need a bus to take the rendered images from the discrete GPU to the integrated one. (I think it's PCIe?)

I think it is an easier hardware implementation than it is for traditional switchable graphics, though.


The answer to the question of whether all Arrandale + discrete laptops have switchable graphics is no, though. The laptop manufacturer needs to build in support for it.

 

What you mean a chipset? Since when was that additional?

 

According to the Anandtech article,

 

ASUS N71 with Optimus is up for sale already on newegg Canada:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220706

 

And now for them to roll on out with the n82!

 

@lackofcheese
It was the acer. How odd that I was also very much concidering the Sony CW lol but found it to be lacking on it's vid card, and also the m11x but found it lacking (for my tastes) on it's processor (don't get me wrong though it's still a top notch nice laptop/netbook, whatever it is, for it's size before someone glares at me for that saying comparing apples and bananas). Looks like it's almost here maybe with the newegg canada sighting of the other model!

 

According to the HotHardware article,

 

@Hamsterkill
Indeed, but the point is that all of this extra hardware is built into the GPU and not anywhere else.

 

Bah!
Who cares if it has Optimus, as long as you can switch it manually it's good enough for me.
Maybe this new software/hardware has me leary I don't know but I'll have to test it myself to get a better feel for it.

 

You're right. Us customers don't care. However, the manufacturers do. Optimus' great advantage is not that it's automatic, it's that it costs the manufacturers nothing to enable.

 

also, there's one big advantage: the transition is instantaneous, no waiting time for driver switch, the process is totally transparent to the user.

 

Automatic or not, the whole issue with blocking programs and the long delay of Gen2 switching in the demonstration video is something we should be happy to be rid of.

 

After reading how Optimus works, I *don't* want it. I just want a fully separate GPU that knocks out Intel's horrible graphics. What Nvidia did is very clever, but it's not something I want, and it'll almost certainly hurt performance at least a little.

 

no, it doesn't hurt performance. it just produces positive stuff, no negative side.

 

Actually...there are a few. Since the IGP is on regardless of discrete graphics, you'll get LESS battery life when using the discrete GPU (when compared to the same laptop with only discrete graphics). Hopefully you'll be plugged in when using the discrete, but it's something to be mindful of.

Secondly, in the case of the N61, it's 325M vs 5730. So, it hurt performance. But that's not optimus' fault, just Asus making decisions.

 

Plus it's you're still using system memory as video memory for part of it, and having the added step of the Intel graphics ultimately displaying the image

I can't believe that could be as good as using the Nvidia GPU for everything (and too, I don't know if that'll hurt image quality as all my Nvidia GPUs look better than all my Intel ones even for the basics).

And these chips already have worse memory performance than the real Nehalams, and having to use the Intel graphics makes it worse yet.

 

Tell you the truth I'd rather not have Optimus.
It's not a selling point to me, the CPU and GPU combo does, doesn't matter if it comes with a ATI(5730HD) or Nvidia(335M) GFX card both will be a pretty potent combo.
All wrapped in a nice looking package=WIN to me.

 

But wouldn't it be even more potent with a 5730 given that it has a lower TDP and would thus provide a better battery life via graphically demanding tasks?

 

Let's clarify a couple of things here. First of all, only a single complete frame is stored in the frame buffer. The IGP doesn't touch this data; it just gets displayed. Consequently, the quality will be controlled by whichever GPU is active; if the Nvidia GPU is doing the rendering, you'll get the Nvidia GPU's quality. Secondly, because this is only one frame, it takes up barely any space. At 1366x768 with 32-bit colour, one frame is 4MB.

At 60 FPS, that becomes 240MB/s, which isn't much bandwidth either, so it shouldn't have much impact on the memory performance.

If it's just the CPU and GPU that matters, why not something like the Acer AS5740G, then? The HD 5650 is almost the same as an HD 5730 or GT 335M anyway, and the AS5740G is only $750 on J&R.

 

You're really starting creep up there in size with the AS5740G.

For me personally, if I'm stepping up to a 15.6" platform, no ifs, ands or buts. I wouldn't settle for anything less than a high res screen (minimum of 1600x900) and the graphics card better be at minimum the 5830 in the Envy (capable of ~10K overclocked 3dmark06).

It's not just the cpu/gpu but the cpu/gpu in a 14.1" package. At the moment there's the CW and the N82 for this year's lineup.