W3J or A8Jm for new laptop?

Hi,
I am in the market for a new laptop. I use my laptop mostly for work (word processing, spreadsheets and adobe illustrator) but I would also like to play some graphic intensive games such as Oblivion. I am currently deciding between A8Jm and W3J. These two laptops seem pretty comparable to me in terms of mosts of the specs. So I am not sure what exactly distinguishes between them. Supposedly W3J is a gaming powerhouse. What does this mean? Is A8Jm not a gaming powerhouse as well? Any help in this area would be very welcome

Moreover, when I was browsing pcmilestone.com on Asus laptops, they offer A8Jm at $200 cheaper than W3J.

http://www.milestonepc.com/canada/index.php?cPath=187_87_82

The only significant difference I could detect (apart from XP pro and XP home) is in the GPU. A8Jm comes with 512 MB NVIDIA 7600 while W3 J comes with 256 MB ATI 1600. Considering both the GPUs are somewhat comparable in terms of quality ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=39568), I cannot understand why the A8Jm with more vRAM can still be cheaper than W3J. Can someone please help me here? Thank you!

 

The A8Jm's made out of a cheaper material.

 

The W3j has more bling in the design and materials, but the A8jm is very solid too. If you search the forums, you'll find lots of people that have discussed this issue at length.

 

The A series is Asus' budget, entry level Ensemble line, all plastic - although still high quality construction and workmanship. W/V series are their premier lines, and is composed of higher quality materials (carbon fiber, brushed aluminum, etc) and components, that explains the cost premium.

There are also some differences between the port and video connectors between the A8j and W3j, which you can get from the spec pages.

 

Is there any difference in the performance or graphic capabilities of the two graphics card with their differenct respective vRAMs?

 

I have seen the 7600 go 512 be about 20% faster than a x1600 in a possibly biased test.

the actual 7600 go is slower than the x1600 go but the extra ram will make its 3d score 06 much higher even about 50% higher.

actual applications will be different speeds for each card. I would call a 512 7600 a better gpu all things considered.

 

How many percents???? 5,maybe, but not 50!!! On that case gf7600 should reach about 3500 marks in 06, I've got 3400 on Sager with 7800gtx non-OC.

 

I dunno about 3dmark06, but based on the benchmarks posted on 3dmark05.. an ATi x1600 with 256mb gets slightly better scores than the A8jm with its Nvidia Go 7600 with 512mb dedicated.

 

We got the both video's performance test by 3D makrs 05 before. They have the similar score such as 38xx for A8j and 39xx for W3j. Only A8j comes with a DVI connector, but W3j is not.....

 

Price difference is in the brushed aluminum and carbon fiber alloy casing.

 

don't forget, A8jm has 5 USB 2.0 ports (3 for w3j) and has a webcam, too

 

Don't forget the A8Ja, with X1600/512 MB, the GPU seems to be the only difference from the A8Jm. Dunno about availability though.

I'd really like to see those two in a review.

 

W3J does have the swappable optical bay for a second hard drive or battery that is a very nice feature.

Waiting for my A8JM to come in now.

 

for all a8jm owners out there; why didn't you try out portableone's MX?
Any particular reason? it seems like P1's MX is winner all around..

 

I think most of the A8jm owners here are Canada based and P1 MX is US based

 

P1 is out of the bluetooth atm, so they're shipping mine without it...unfortunatly 2 day doesn't apply on weekends so mine comes monday :/

 

The 7600 Go 512MB gets around 200 points less in 3dmark05 than the X1600. I would say its around 5% weaker, but it might be better for other apps that require a lot of video memory.

 

If we're continuing the nvidia vs ATI comparison: doesn't the 7600 use less battery power?

 

Given the choice between the two, I'd go with the A8Jm... substance over style. I'm an admitted nVidia fanboi (show me a linux user who isn't ), but you won't find many 14" notebooks featuring a GPU with 512MB dedicated RAM... the DVI port is an added bonus too.

Oh, if we're going to lapse into another ATI vs. nVidia debate let me start by saying that ATI eats babies...

 

Not sure about that but the W3j does get more battery life. It has a bigger 8 cell battery and can get over 4hrs with the screen turned down. The most I have heard the A8jm gets is 3.5. Not much difference. The A8jm uses a 6 cell battery.

TedJ - lets not start an argument. We don't want to start a flame war

 

I said it before and I'll say it now :
A8 - performance
W3 - performance AND STYLE

 

my two sources of the 7600 getting higher scores are zepto and a foreign place selling the a8jm, chinese language

because both of these sites just show the scores and cards and not even the machines i have no faith in their numbers, even to relate them to you.

but that is what i said when i said i saw the 7600 having higher scores, that i saw them from advertiser sources not a real source. Im not quite sure on real sources yet which is faster. i think youre going to find the 7600 is faster in practice and will get more speed down the road as applications change.

 

I thought in 3dMark 06, with stock drivers, the 7600 gets slightly higher marks than the x1600?

Mastha: Kinda biased here aren't we ?

Question: doesn't the W3J have 1280 x 768 instead of 1280 x 800 (for those who care about the extra 32 pixels) ?

 

I am somewhat ignorant on this. But how noticeable is this difference in terms of gaming?

 

Can you please refer me to the appropriate sources for the 3dMark06 test results?

 

Depends on how picky you are on performance differences - close benchmark numbers don't always translate into obvious practical effects between items. In most situations, all things equal, most people probably wouldn't notice anything. Certain game engines can run better in ATI vs NVIDIA, so here it's always possible that you might pick something up.