The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    W3A and W3N

    Discussion in 'Asus' started by zamolo, Jul 14, 2005.

  1. zamolo

    zamolo Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    3
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi, I'm looking for new notebook and I'm trying to get more info from users about the Asus W3A and W3N the differences between them and the resulting difference in performance (speed, battery life and heat generated)

    Am I right in saying that the major difference between the two is the chipset? The W3A has the newer second gen Centrino and the W3N has the older Centrino? Would this significantly affect the performance of the notebook? I read on another site that generally in reality the Sonoma notebooks performance isn't significantly better than the first gen Centrino and that the Sonoma requires more power hence lower battery life.

    Second point is about the graphics card for the W3A and W3N. The W3N has an ATI Radeon 9700 and the W3A only has an inbuilt graphics card? I'm thinking that because the W3A has an inbuilt card it wouldn't consume as much power so the heat generated would be less and the battery life would be comparatively longer than the W3N for identical tasks. Is this actually the case? If I play DVDs, would the integrated graphics card be sufficient?

    Other points:
    -I'll be carrying and using the notebook around uni
    -Probably not playing games on it
    -There's only a AUD$40 difference between the two (the W3N is more expensive)
    -The W3N comes with 60Gb, 256Mb ram
    -The W3A comes with 40Gb, 512Mb ddr2 ram
    -I think everything else is the same: hard disk speed, optical drive, ram capacity...

    I'm caught in two minds atm: on the one hand I'm thinking that W3A would be good because I probably won't be gaming, but on the other hand I'm thinking that I probably wouldn't be utilising the full capabilities of the Sonoma chipset and if I got the W3N I'd get an ATI graphics card and a bigger hard disk as well which would be a bonus.

    Thanks
     
    zamolo, Jul 14, 2005
    #1
  2. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

    Reputations:
    7,197
    Messages:
    28,839
    Likes Received:
    2,162
    Trophy Points:
    581
    Your assessment of the difference between the two models is correct.

    I've been using a W3A for the past 3 months and find it fine for my needs, which are running normal software applications and playing DVDs. Maybe the 9700 would do a slightly better job with the DVDs. I previously had a Sony S series with the 9700 GPU and haven't felt worse off by now having the integrated graphics.

    Regarding the power side, I don't think that Sonoma uses significantly more power, but there is no big reduction compared with the previous chipset. DDR-2 RAM is said to use less power than DDR RAM because it runs at a lower voltage.

    With undervolting (there's plenty of discussion about that elsewhere on the forum) and the 8-cell battery, I can comfortably get past 4 hours of normal use. The fan runs continouusly but quietly and the hottest component is the hard disk.

    Hope this helps,

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Jul 14, 2005
    #2