Some actual USEFUL C90 info (example build)

1 January 2008 is very much confirmed!

 

Geez...no confirmation yet.
asus put the C90 series at their website,but it shows nothing

 

Yea, The retailers' "estimates" have been very accurate in my experience. The latest part of mid June is probably the 20th or 21st. It should be out by then.

 

Well ordered more parts... sort of

In an attempt to get away with the cheapest c90 possible I went to ebay.

I have an offer out for 250$ on a e6700 for the cpu and 50$ for 2x1gb of DDR2 667 ram

If my offered are turned down there are still a few "buy it nows" that are cheaper than retail to save some money so I can do that too.

I suppose the other good thing is I boost my ebay rep.

 

So your getting the c90? I remember you were still iffy about getting one.

 

Ordering parts, not the machine yet because even if I decide to wait for a better model or get a diffrent notebook I can use the parts, and the cpu I will put in my desktop to upgrade from my AMD Opteron 148.

So I cant really go wrong with that.

 

That was fast... I got approved for my "best offer" on the 6700 already. So its on its way 250$ + 10$ s&h thats a pretty good deal. Close to what the 6600 would have costed retail.

 

ohhhh, EBAY!!! Why didn't I think of that? Sweet deal Vicious. Seriously, when I was shopping around for parts I did not even think of eBay, it is usually my first instinct too. Oh well, sometimes your brain has a 404 error.

 

Yeah lots of hot cpu deals on there, not so much with 2gb+ ram tho. I ordered some but I think its gonna be like super generic stuff. But since I am not overclocking the ram it should be fine.

With the quad core price cut next month, and the 1333mhz fsb cpus on the way your sure to see a mass supply of c2d on ebay cheap.

Alex's brain -->

 

Yes it could have something to do with how Data beats the hell out of me constantly.

 

My build is all done, came out to be more than I orginally was budgeting (1500$) but I upgraded everything.

So heres what we got:

The Base C90S with all the fixins that come in it + 50$ for the wireless card. 1000$

E6700 cpu 250$

Western Digital Scorpio 250gb 5400rpm HDD 200$

2x2gb OCZ DDR2 667 5-5-5-15 ram 170$

So total is close to 1620$

But that is a pretty significant upgrade from my original 1400$ plan on the first page of the thread.


Now I know that in the specs it says it only supports 3gb of ram, it also says it only supports up to a 160gb HDD. I guess I will be the risk taker (funny since im probably the one with the lowest budget) and see if thats true or not and let everybody else know.

The chipset it uses supports 4gb of ram on several desktop motherboards, so the only reason it should support it in the c90 is because of a bios restiction. I woulnt be supprised to find "hacked" bios to allow 4gb tho.

I figured hey may as well get 4gb even if I cant use it all because its so cheap right now and down the road if I move to a diffrent notebook I can just transfer it over. The HDD being limited to 160gb... I have never heard that before so I am not sure where they get that from. (more the reason I dont think 3gb is the true ram limit)

 

thank you

My purchasing decisions will be hinging on your experience

 

I'll accept paypal donations for my trouble


All the parts will be here in a matter of days, the c90 itself may be weeks from what everybody says tho. So dont get too enthusiastic.

Lucky for me I have alot of downtime at work so this will give me plenty of time to bench the heck out of it and review it.

I also plan to do a vista x86 and x64 dual boot so I can see if there is a performance diffrence and allow people to choose what OS to install better.

Maybe even put XP on there as a triple boot but not sure on that.

 

The computer can handle 4Gigs of ram, the reason they don't suggest more than 3 is because laptop drivers CAN (not are), but CAN be harder to support than desktop so to get a 64bit OS running on a c90 could be a pain. I got mine from agearnotebooks.com and they even said that themselves, the reason is mainly because of how a 32bit OS handles 4 gigs of ram = wasted. Hell some is wasted even at 3gigs of ram with a 512MB video card. Read up on address space in 32bit, its all over the web, not a new thing.

(note their bad english lol)

Ubuntu I will test that tonight. Let me know if you want me to run benchmarks too. Also the webcam drivers are hazy. It seems when you initialize it, it might show a black screen (but is functioning)....maximize it to see it properly and then you can swap it back to normal size again...its a known glitch.

DO NOT skimp on the arctic silver 5, the thing heats up rediculously. I'd suggest getting a laptop cooler in addition, even. I can't even run the 10% overclock (I got a 6700 as well) because it will reboot due to heat.

However, components being what they are, you can use such things as the 8600GT Mobile drivers and other things...you just gotta look into the info at http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14359 that was where I found and selected the drivers to use (since the ones ASUS provided via agearnotebooks was like an 86.12 nvidia driver, this one is the 162.50 driver).

Runs well, but when the MSAA is kicked up in CS:Source with 32 people at 1680x1050, it starts to dip into the upper 30s on the FPS. Going to test ubuntu later.

If you have any questions email me -> [email protected], or here.

Also does anyone know how to select boot devices/access the bios?

My ASUS c90 as purchased:

1. Display = 15.4 inch WSXGA+ (1680x1050) Glossy LCD w/ 2.Webcam
2. Processor = 2.67GHz Intel Conroe/Core2 Duo-E6700 w/4MB Cache-1066FSB (+$130.00)
3. Thermal Paste = High Density Artic Silver 5 CPU Cooling Compound Paste (+$20.00)
4. Video Card = NVIDIA 8600M GT w/512MB DDR2 VRAM, MXM II V2.0(+$55.00)
5. Memory = 3.0GB DDR2-667 Memory (1x1GB+1x2GB-Dual Channel)(+$225.
6. Hard Drive = 120GB 5,400 rpm SATA/150 HDD (+$30.00)
7. DVD-RW Drive = Dual Layer Super Multi DVD-RW/CD-RW Drive w/
8. Wireless LAN = Built-in Intel Wireless-N 4965 802.11AGN LAN(+$45.
That was all the optional stuff yadda yadda.
Subtotal 1869.00
Shipping 55.00
Total 1924.00


Sorry for the enormous post, hope it helps.

There was a driver disk that came with mine, I will post it online (since all the drivers were compatible and it would make a nice reference)....anyone have a place they suggest?

Oh, and mine took 3 days to build. Which was what they estimated "2-3 days for processing".

 

Is that US dollars!?!?!

Because that's freaking high for a C90!!!

 

Actually someone on the forum (it might have been ViciousXUSMC) bought a system and 4GB of RAM and was unable to boot the system with all 4GB installed.

(Although if it was ViciousXUSMC he did also have RAM problems that Ken at GenTechPC troubleshooted for him around that same time, so I suppose someone could give it a try with two 2GB that are known to work on the C90 independantly with 64-bit Vista. It seems like it would be unlikely to work given everything that has been noted on the forum. Anyone with 4GB feel like giving it another shot at testing?)

 

Look at what I copied. I included what increased price. I added 3GB ram, a 8600GT 512MB, and also might be going back to the laptop maker to whoop some ass since it looks like I could have done a lot more just on gentech for $250 less. Why does gentech's website run really slow? Are they hosting from dialup in eastern asia or something?

Well yeah as my little reps were saying would indicate it should post to bios. if it gets there then the problem wasn't the ram.

 

I definitely had trouble with heat issues last night. I had it on sleep mode and threw it into a bag to go to a friends house. Got it out, and it was quite HOT to the touch. I immediately grabbed a fan and a cool piece of wood laying around. Let it sit for 15 minutes after shutting it down. Learned my lesson quickly. Thinking of getting a laptop cooler for sure.

Plays EVE beautifully!

 

Not sure what everybody is going on about with the 4gb of ram, it wont work period, I dont care what you say its a 945 chipset wich does not support 4gb of ram, so it just wont happen.

As for heat in sleep mode... that was a bad idea. You never put a notebook in sleep mode and put it in a bag... Even a cool running one. If you need to go from one place to the next and have it in a bag, use hybernate.

 

Yeah, didn't even think about it at the time. Girlfriend's mac book does just fine in any temp or bag, but of course it isn't as beasty as my machine.

 

Vicious I want to look into the 4GB thing. Where do you get your info? Both because I don't want to misinform people and also so I can understand better myself.

Sleep mode, vicious is 100% correct. Lappies are meant for hibernate (which shuts off everything)...sleep mode the lappie's hard drive (and other components) still run = not a good idea. You can always make your HD turn off after enough inactivity if you choose via power saving.

Also I'm just checking what is the native clock on proc and memory of the 8600M GT?

 

That's an question for someone that knows what they are talking about.

I still need to do some tweaks to get the comp to run like I want it to. I do really love Vista Aero though.

 

Well I hate to go really into depth on it since I have already done so (so if you search around in my previous post im sure you will find the details) but the 945g chipset only supports up to 4gb of ram adressability, for the system to see or use 4gb of ram it needs MORE than 4gb of adressability, because it has to readress all the reserved ram space for the system to a portion higher than the 4gb part for windows to see/use it.

So it is impossible for windows to ever see/use 4gb of ram on this chipset. I knew that before I ordered a 2x2gb kit of ram, I however had hopes that it would still post and run with 4gb and just let me use only about 3.5gb of ram.

At this time tho it wont, and I dont think it ever will... however it should be possible with the right bios. Untill I have somebody with a 945g chipset on a different product say they ever had it happen tho I cant know for sure.

 

Umm, right now I'm very confused where you come up with this. A 32bit OS can handle much higher amounts of ram it just won't be used. Thats why they did PAE for up to 64GB I believe it was, not that it worked well? I asked you for links.

If our mobo could handle 4gb per dimm you could do 8GB, but the 32bit OS will stop use at around 3.2GB (minus whatever ram the video card has). I know about address space. However BIOS and OS limitations on ram are directly independant of eachother. The BIOS might only see 3GB but if the OS is 64bit it could take advantage of the additional space. My desktop has exactly that situation, and laptops are not "special" motherboards.

Please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_address_space if you are not familiar and pay attention to that it has 0 to do with BIOS. The system should POST. Thats what I asked you originally, was if the system would post. If it posts with 4GB then it can use 4GB. If it doesn't post with 4GB then a BIOS update is lacking. Note the solution either way = if it posts to 4GB, then it can use 4GB. Just whether your OS knows how or not.
Also http://www.brianmadden.com/content/article/The-4GB-Windows-Memory-Limit-What-does-it-really-mean- is reference to same as above.

Additionally, please read here about using more than 3.5GB in Vista using the same PAE method: http://vistarewired.com/2007/03/29/how-to-enable-more-than-35-gb-of-memory-in-32-bit-windows-vista/

Chipset doesn't affect your OS. So I repeat, so that I can learn what you know that I don't here (I don't take statements at face value), can you show me where you get some of your information please? I don't intend to flame or pissing match with you. Give me some articles, some things to read to understand where you are coming from and to educate those new to the thread as well. I don't want to make statements that are incorrect or assumed wrong. Knowing wrong and thinking you're right is just as bad as giving out bad information especially in my case.

Can you link me (since I'm not at my c90 and I'm hoping/assuming you or someone is) the vendor ID, device ID, and subID for the motherboard please? I could do more research with that.

 

Your confused, very badly so.

Before your software could ever even hope to function with 4gb of ram, your hardware requirements must be met.

The chipset present does not support the use of 4gb of ram, so no software or operating system 32bit or 64bit will be able to extract the use of 4gb of ram. It will NOT post as of now, and even if they do fix it so that it post with 4gb of ram, 4gb will never be usable even in a 64bit OS.


I already did my research very extensive research on this subject, so if you dont take information at face value im sorry, but im not going to spend my day looking up the stuff I already looked up for you. I recomend you google for things like "using 4gb of ram" and also look into what memory remaping is and look up the 945g chipset white sheets to discover that it only supports up to 4gb of ram addressability.

Once you can put 1+1 together you will be on the same page as me. To say things like chipest doesnt effect anything shows your very far off base right now.

 

I will look, all I asked for was what to look for and/or links. Thanks.
945G? 945G says integrated graphics. So what is it I should be looking for? Please send me in the right direction, vicious. I am not looking to insult, I am looking to learn.

wiki 945g: (Lakeport-G)
A version of the 945P that has a GMA 950 integrated graphics core, supports a 1066 MHz bus.
Sub-versions:
945GZ - Same feature reductions as 945PL but with an integrated graphics core. No support for external graphics cards.

Is it 945P? 945GT? 945PM? Everything I see even @ intel says 945 = 4GB addressability (and yes I understand the addressability, thus why I posted above about 32bit OS's and PAE) as well.

I guess I'll hold till I get home and do some real research.

 

Your welcome, im at home now on my day off half asleep. If you didn't' find the answer to your questions by the time I go to work on sunday night I am sure I can find the material you need to understand why things work the way they do.

 

I wanted to thank you, vicious for the earlier responses. I still don't know if the 4GB address limitation is BIOS bound, or software bound (aka if it can be changed or not), but I understand now. Found some stuff on it.

Do you know anything about the bios flashing for the GPU? Every time I try to change the frequency, test it and hit apply (via ntune) the changes don't seem to preserve themselves.

 

The 945 chipset is hardware bound to 4gb of ram addressability, so no bios change or os change will make a difference.

To use 4gb of ram inside a windows environment, you need more than 4gb of adressability, and an option you will find in bios called "memory remaping" what it does is take the sectors normally reserved for system use that eat up the 500mb or so of memory out of the 4gb present and remaps them to a point higher than 4gb so that all 4gb is useable.

The actual gains from this method tho are not very large its more of a "epeen" thing, and its well known to cause issues with some software and hardware that have been encoded to use the default memory addresses, so when it goes to store data in that address it will crash or not function correctly.

here are a few bits of info to help you put the whole picture together:

http://www.asisupport.com/ts_4GB_memory_info.htm

also read this word for word, it quite clearly states you need atleast 8gb of ram adressability to see/use all 4gb of ram in a system:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us