U30JC discussion thread

thanks !

 

So EVGA Precision allows the shader clock to be raised, but these drivers still have everything locked down, I increased the shader clock to 1850 and ran it again.

3919 O
1520 2.0
1449 3.0
2296 CPU

This thing stays really cool all the time, would be interested in some hacked drivers for bump the core up a bit, but its probably locked down in the gpu bios.

 

I dont own a ul30 but can tell you from what I have seen at local retailers the screen on my new U30jc seems much nicer and sharper. The viewing angles seem a little bit shallow but not to bad.

 

UL30jc is a typo. No express gate button to be found, but who needs it when you are fully booted to windows so quickly.

 

Watched 2 movies and still have 43% battery left on battery saving mode. About 3 hours and 20 minutes total movie watching time and still that much left this thing is awesome.

 

If you don't mind my asking, is that using the DVD drive, or a video file stored on your hard drive?

 

Can anyone confirm whether or not the sides of the laptop (where the DVD drive is, the USB ports, hdmi, etc) are made up of an aluminum coating?

On this picture, it clearly shows Al coating: http://hothardware.com/image_popup.aspx?articleid=1481&image=big_u30jc-misc250-4.jpg&t=a


although on this website, it appears to be plastic: http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/asus-u30jc-a1/4505-3121_7-34043767.html?tag=content;col1
(third pic in gallery. direct link http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/sc/34043767-2-440-SD-3.jpg)

thanks

 

Can someone comment on the quality of the webcam, or perhaps upload some photos (you don't have to be in it, don't worry). Also, how are the speakers? Is the volume muffled since they're on the bottom?

 

Sorry, that's just light reflecting off of the black plastic. The sides are definitely plastic as is the rest of the molded plastic underside. Only the top of the lid and the palm-rest/trackpad are brushed aluminum:
http://hothardware.com/image_popup.aspx?image=big_u30jc-side250-2.jpg&articleid=1481&t=a

 

thanks for the info

 

DVD drive. I did have the brightness almost all the way down.

 

3 hrs 20 min MOVIE playing on the DVD drive and 43% battery left??! Oh wow. That's really encouraging.

 

my Power4Gear doesn't seem to be switching to Battery Savings mode. (gotta reinstall it) but I'm getting 6+ hours on with continuous youtube browsing with 60% brightness. Nvidia chip likes to kick in cause I've put Flash 10.1 RC.

For 5 days straight I've left my power adapter at home and going to 4 hour classes has never been more simpler.

Palm rests and the rest of the system kept cool unlike my old HP DM3-1030US(AMD) and whole thing is just sturdy. Max temperature reading was around 51*C recorded by SpeedFan on the GPU (while playing Call of Duty 4:MW2)

 

No kidding! That's pretty incredible, and I think you may have just pushed me over the edge on this. I'd been holding out for the UL30JT, but the more I read about the 30JC, the more I think I'd be fine with it. I'll miss the few extra hours of battery life on the 30JT, but it'll be a small price to pay for the DVD drive. That, and the ability to buy it right now.

 

Found this video while poking around ... Pretty nice looking machine ..

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So the Asus website says that the GPU is 1GB. That's probably an error, right? Amazon has it at 512mb.

http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=IZfJRyRqVpStMi76

 

Thanks, that is the best video i've seen.. really close inspection of the product, and nice to see the BIOS and hear it play music. I wish the camera went up and down to see how the display angles are.. they didn't look bad from the video. I wonder where the best point of the monitor is.. 90degrees, or pushed slightly back (how I like it) ?

 

Is it possible to upgrade the 310m graphics card in the u30jc
to a better nvidia card? It's possible in some laptops.

The 310m seems to be considered a "low end" card so it would suck
for something like GTA4. Seems like with the optimus and integrated
graphics, you could have a higher end card installed and not pay the
price in battery life unless you actually needed it.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html

 

GTA4 is a bad example.. It's not optimized at all and actually runs very poorly on my i7/GTX 260 computer

 

Yeah Gentech always makes some great Videos ...

Im sure that panel has a sweet spot though it did not look to bad from the top looking down... You can see it washing out abit but thats pretty normal...

I like my screens angled back a bit instead of at 90 degrees as well ...

 

Yep. ASUS have perhaps just cut-and-pasted that from their other UL models.

It's a mistake. Look at the U30jc's specs on that same link under the specifications tab: 512MB

 

Speaking of mistakes, I noticed xoticpc has an option for adding a vidock 2
external graphics card when configuring the u30jc for purchase. However, the
vidock 2 requires an expresscard slot, which the u30jc doesn't have.

 

what games would be playable online atleast medium settings? For example would Bad Company 2, Modern Warfare 2 etc be playable?

 

Yea, I saw that as well. A funny oversight. Express card for a notebook with no express card slot.

Though XoticPC does seem to have the best price: $869 - %3 ($26.50) = $842.50 if you pay by Paypal, money order or some form of instant cash.

That's a good deal compared to the $$899 I paid on Amazon. But that's what I get for being impatient.

 

Does the U30JC even have bluetooth.....?

 

I found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module

I'm guessing the u30jc has an MXM-A slot? If so, it might be possible to
replace the 310m with a 330m, which roughly doubles the benchmarks and
goes from a "class 3" card to a "class 2" card, while staying in the < 35W
power band of the MXM-A slot.

 

+1 for that. Untill now the only thing that bothered me were the looks of this laptop, but after seeing this video I realised that the pictures which I saw at NBR weren't doing this laptop any justice. It looks 10 times better than I expected, so basicly I have run out of excuses not to buy this laptop. Comon Asus, ship those jewels to Belgium asap!

 

BC2 ran fine on low online, 32 player conquest was a bit choppy, but 24 player performed very well. MWF2 I tried out once online to see how it did, it felt choppy all on high, unfortunately I can't confirm whether the stuttering was from the laptop or from the netcode(listen servers 4tl)

Starcraft II plays very well on low(medium shaders and up apply shadows and it slows performance)

Dawn of War 2 will only let me choose minimum settings, but the ingame benchmark was 30fps average.

 

i think the model's sold in Asia include bluetooth. the US version does not have bluetooth included for some odd reason.

does anyone know if it's possible to install one yourself?


the lack of USB 3.0 (not a big deal, just would be very nice to have) and bluetooth is what's holding me back at the moment. and no, i don't want to use an external USB bluetooth adapter.

 

Can't be much of assistance here. I didn't pay attention to the screens while I had both computers at hand. I saw no difference between the two. Same narrow vertical viewing angles. And larger horizontal. This doesn't bother me, since I rarely need to show the screen to ten people at once. ) The screen is OK and nothing more. Surely you can't use it in the sunlight.
All in all, I was pretty content with both machines, the higher power of U30JC is offset by the great batterry life of UL80VT. Note: content, not happy. The last laptop I was happy with, had passed away 10 years ago )).
If it is true, that the US models have 84Wh battery - then I envy you. The machine should be nice. I got 3-4 hours with 48Wh battery.

I did some benchmarking, and results were somewhat disappointing. I wouldn't make a big picture of it, however. So:
Test systems: UL80VT vs U30JC.
CPUs: C2Duo [email protected] (ASUS Turbo Mode) vs i5 [email protected](Intel TurboBoost)
Operating system: same
Test task: MS Excel 2007 sorting out a LARGE (200MB) worksheet.
Results: U30JC is 30% faster.

Commentary: The test task was pretty specific. But I chose it because it was the only performance issue I had with UL80VT. The Excel's sorting algorithm performs the task by a single thread.
The clock difference between the two processors is 45%, and I expected the newer generation CPU to go even faster than that. But it was only 30% faster.
Possible explanation could go as follows: this particular task involves extensive memory usage. And 3MB of i5's L3 cache do not really help. On the other hand, RAM in ULxxVT works at higher clock. As far as I know, ASUS's Turbo Mode in fact overclocks the FSB to 1GHz. On the other hand, the RAM in U30JC operates at 667MHz.

Unforunately, I won't be able to experiment any more. Because my colleague took his ..err.. new UL80VT away. And I've got work to do.

There's another issue I've had with U30JC. The laptop was forced to hibernate by low battery alarm. On resume, it showed ASUS logo, then Windows Resume, and then black screen witn no response to the keyboard or touchpad. The problem needs confirmation though, and may well be resolved by driver refresh.

 

No. The U30jc doesn't have bluetooth. The UL30vt does as should the UL30jt.

But you can buy a tiny bluetooth USB dongle for $5-$19, so that shouldn't be much of a consideration.

http://www.amazon.com/IOGear-Blueto...2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1271000240&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Bluetoot...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1271000240&sr=8-1

 

Here are some screenshots for those who might be interested.
The UL80VT did show better graphics-related scores, and the lower scores here may be because Optimus is reluctant to use the dedicated GPU.

 

I suppose the WEI isn't really that important in that case. For graphics benchmarking & comparison, it's probably better to use something like 3DMark06 (which many do use).

 

The hibernate issue doesn't sound very encouraging. New machine. As you say, hopefully better drivers will address the issue. Not a lot of U30jc owners yet.

On the screen, lots of reviews of the UL80vt & UL30vt said that the screen's contrast seemed washed out with blacks not being really black and colors not that vibrant. The reviews on the U30jc have said the opposite concerning the screen colors & contrast. But the viewing angles appear to still be limited. But most of my notebooks have been pretty limited viewing because I didn't buy an upper-level machine. I'm used to that. I just hope the screen is somewhat improved on color & contrast, even if the viewing angle is the same narrow field.

My ASUS 1000HA netbook has a bright screen but very limited vertical viewing angle. I'm used to it, but would love not to have to adjust it so much if watching a movie or Hulu streaming. Sounds like the U30jc will be no improvement in that area.

 

Not that I really care about the WEI score but can't you add the executable to the Nvidia profiles thingy and force it to run with the dedicated GPU?
The exe it actually runs (I think) is C:\Windows\System32\WinSAT.exe and a little googling showed that to manually run it (outside the control panel) you do "winsat formal -restart clean"

 

A great suggestion! I was wondering if there was a launchable file to specify for Optimus outside of W7's Control Panel & WEI scoring. I figured there had to be a launching file as with any Control Panel function.

I'll be sure and try that. Thanks for the heads-up.

 

Sure thing

 

I'm tempted to buy one!

How are the fans during normal use such as surfing the web? Do they come on and off alot or just a steady low rpm? Are they high pitched during load?

 

I noticed Amazon's stock of the initial set of U30JCs are sold out already. I am basing this assumption on the fact that the status went from 2 left in stock to approx 2-4 weeks for delivery. I hope to see lots of unboxing and you tube reviews soon.

 

does anyone know whether the u30jcs' in Australia will have a 84whr battery or a 48whr.

 

Bear in mind, the US version comes with a Core i3, not the Core i5.

 

30% isnt much. i would have expected more

 

AFAIK, the only major difference between i3 350M and i5 430M is that the former CPU has no TurboBoost option. Which could grant 10% boost in performance for a limited number of tasks. I personally would gladly trade these virtual 10% for the larger US battery.

I must repeat, those meek 30% I observed were in a pretty specific task. Quite probably the performance was bottlenecked by the memory bandwidth.

 

To whoever owns this, I am really interested in this laptop but i'm worried the reviews say it's to thick and to wait for the jt's... ??? I can't wait any longer.. is the thickness a big problem? is it really that BIG?

 

Three Blind Men and the Elephant.

Who on Earth could decide for you if it is BIG or THICK or whatever else? Some people are quite happy carrying 17 inch 4kg monsters. When we compare the two computers, you got somewhat better performance, ODD, and no waiting on one hand, versus .5 kg less, .4 cm thickness less, better battery life and a couple of months of waiting on the other hand. I personally would opt for the JT if the waiting was out of the question. But with the waiting I am where I am. No regret, for sure.

Off-topic. I can't resist temptation.
The story of three blind elephants.
One day three blind elephants desired to find out what does the Man look like. One elephant touched the man with his leg and said: The man is something small and flat.
The other two elephants touched the man too and agreed upon that.

Forgive my English, I could not google the English version of the story, so I had to translate it.

 

It is really a matter of preference. I do not find it to be too thick. It isnt' much thicker then a macbook pro and is thinner then my old hp dv2000. Weight is about the same as macbook pro and lighter then my old hp dv2000.

I think the major factor is weather or not you want an optical drive. I decided I would be better off with one that is why I went ahead with the u30jc.

 

Finally waiting is over, I am the proud owner of a U30JC ordered on friday from amazon. So far it exceeded my expectations, looks far more better in reality, feels sturdy and is not that thick, at least not what I have imagined... man am I glad my UL30VT died on me and had to return it. Maybe screen quality falls a little behind the rest of the laptop... but for $900 this is one of the best options available on the market.

 

So in your opinion, this is much better than the UL30VT?

 

From my point of view, yes. Build quality and an increase of power + optimus vs 2h extra battery and roughly 15% less weight.
It depends on what you want from your laptop, I chose the UL30 because this one was not available and the other 13" options in this price range were the S11 from Sony and Y11, respectively. Both units overpriced in my opinion.

 

Thanks, your POV will help in my decision. If you don't mind what do you mainly use this laptop for?