Zenbook U500 Announced: 15.6" HD IPS, GT650M, Quad-Core i7...

Not necessarily. The resolution of Retina is not practical in real world as there is very little that is optimized for that kind of resolution. To be able to play games on it you need much more powerful hardware, websites look ridiculous and any older software looks horrible. And considering neither Windows or MacOS have very good DPI scaling, FHD on 15" is plenty. I find the whole race to not being able to see individual pixels completely unnecessary. I can't even see individual pixels on my 24" desktop monitor at FHD from a regular working distance. How would I be able to see them at 15" with much higher PPI?

 

Remember the GHz scam by intel back in the day with the pentium 3/4? And AMD eventually beating them by releasing quality products like the 939 socket? Goes to show that bigger the number is not always the best but intel had the brand name.
Same situation here. Apple with there Retina display, that we humans can't discern at a regular distance compared to that of a lower resolution panel, but like intel, Apple is a cult following. Anything Apple makes people will buy even though it's crap or absolutely unnecessary.
Eventually people will find Asus has matured over the years into a company that releases quality products that people actually want to buy.

 

So are you in one way or another implying that 1366x768 tn panels ARE the way to go?! Everyone supposedly (at least those that know) wants IPS this, 1080p that, but the majority of consumers simply don't know, don't care & don't need it! Wow! What a revalation that is isn't it. Hence why the "standard" reigns supreme. But, things change & we have options & choices.

Sent from my SPH-M580 using Tapatalk

 

Im using a 15.4 1920 x 1200 screen and i actually notice how much more pixelated my sister's 15.6 FHD is even tho the difference isn´t that much.

If your implying the higher resolution is not necessary (at least to you), maybe, but it sure is better.

Same history with 60Hz and 120Hz panels, you have to see it to understand the difference.

 

Im used to setting my windows 8 vm to 1920*1200 this is in a mbp 13. DPI settings in windows are... problematic, usually the coding of the programs is far less than ideal. OSX dont even use the same DPI system that windows does.

the GHZ race was a stupid thing from the part of AMD, not from intel. The longer pipeline designs that they used in the p4 arch NEEDED the higher frequency, otherwise it would fall really short in performance. This was done based on the RISK arch developed by IBM.

 

I understand what the difference is. And in an ideal world yes the higher the resolution the better. But like I said before almost nothing is optimized for resolutions beyond FHD and that's not necessarily a bad thing. If websites were optimized for retina resolutions it would essentially double / triple the size of all images, considerably slowing down browsing experience. Similar thing with gaming; mobile CPUs and GPUs are already quite a bit slower than their desktop counterparts and it's already hard trying to get a thin enough laptop that's capable of gaming at FHD. Push it to retina resolution and you get unplayable frame rates.

But the biggest problem is that even if mobile hardware improved a LOT and 100 mbit connections became standard the difference is so negligible with resolutions that it's just not worth it in my opinion. I'm all for pushing technology to its limits but only when there is a noticeably visible difference with few trade offs. And that's just not the case with resolutions. I'd much rather see IPS panels becoming standard with above Adobe RGB gamut and even better viewing angles than what we're seeing now. That's not to say that resolutions don't matter of course but there is a certain point after which it's not that important anymore. It's like that whole megapixel race with cameras...

 

If you were expecting 4 lbs then you really were dreaming. I don't think they could reach that weight unless they used some crazy material like the LaVie's Lithium-Magnesium alloy and even then it would be a challenge.

The S15 and rMBP are both 4.4 lbs. 4.7 is very reasonable to me, I was expecting high 4's. Most other 15" laptops with these specs are over 5.5 lbs, even the VIZIO CN15.

 

I believe that certain point is called retina display

Windows does need to improve is dpi scaling, lets see what windows 8 brings with all those 1080p tablets.

 

I really wish somebody would invent LCD panel without native resolution. As in being able to switch back and forth as you please like back in the CRT days.

 

I think most of the Asus notebooks do come with their 2 yr warranty. I have only had one experience with their Tech support and RMA process on my G54 notebook. It is not as quick a turnaround as the Dell process where they send a tech to you. However, they do send you a prepaid fedex shipping label by email to send to the repair depot. I had about a 1 week turnaround total on my repair. I have read some people not having great luck with them but my process went well and the notebook was repaired.

 

I agree that 4.7lbs is very reasonable too. As soon as a laptop is under 5lbs, I can feel the difference and it feels a lot easier to carry on my body. So, 4.7lbs is perfect for this laptop imo. 2GB video ram on a gt 650m + Quad Core i7 + up to 12GB memory + USB 3.0 + Ethernet port + more usable display area compared to the UX32VD, AND it's a PC, NOT A MAC-attack. I like the specs and design so far :thumbsup:

 

Ill definitely buy this if there is at least 4 and a half hours of battery and a decent trackpad.

 

The samsung series 9 15 is under 4 lbs. But has no discreet graphics card. So I was hoping....

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

I need at least 4 hours of battery life with moderate use.. otherwise no deal for me!

 

Would also like to see a small bezel, manufacturer should take more attention to that too

 

It depends where you live... There Dell doesnt send anything to you. But Asus notebooks almost all do come with three year warranty. So, it depends where you live...

 

Very often small bezel means low quality display, I like small bezel too, but if it comes with low quality display then I prefer Big bezel

 

(Sorry for the wall of text but something like this sadly have to be refuted in order to not mislead people).

It's RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) and while IBM did some "early" research they didn't develop it - just look at the CDC 6600 for one RISC-y early architecture released in 1964. Not even that is the first RISC-like processor even if what is considered RISC varies greatly.

The GHz race was initiated by AMD but unlike Intel they successfully produced a high speed processor that not only had a high clock frequency but also had high performance per clock, that's the K7 also known as Athlon.
Compared with Intels Pentium Pro it was much less RISC based as it treated most CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) instructions as one internal operation, the Pentium Pro up till the Pentium M had an almost purely RISC internal architecture.

The Pentium 4 was made for very long pipelines _and_ very high clock frequency as per Intel research. Intel wanted to get as much performance as possible and the research strongly hinted that very deep pipelines (>50 pipeline stages) would be the best solution.
The architecture was build upon that and that alone, at one point in time it even was intended to be a in-order design just to get that high clock frequency.
While the resulting Pentium 4 architectures (and yes the differences between different P4s are large enough to be considered separate architectures) had to scale back on the depth and add width (=parallel execution resources) to get acceptable performance it still was designed exclusively for extreme clock frequencies.

 

I dont know where you got your info, but its wrong. RISC started development in 64, and never stopped. Otherwise there would be a problem, the ps3 and the servers that IBM sells around the world would be without a cpu. Also apple/ibm powerpcs would never have existed.

The problem here was that while the RISC and its variation in the end were and are still great (people build supercomputers with these chips still, the newest that I know is for the DoD, which was made using several ps3) it needed a long pipeline, and in for that it needed speed to counter the length of it. The thing that IBM did and intel couldnt do was to make the cooling system work for a chip the needed such a high frequency to be good. The new RISC based cpus operate at 4-6ghz.

Now the thing about adding width to the pipeline is that the FP calculator gains benefits from the out of order design.

AMD was successful not because of their clock speed, the arch was extremely good, it was the first AMD to put a full x86 instruction set and some goodies like a longer pipeline (still didnt need the clock since the k7 tops out at 2.3ghz) an improved floating point calculator, and the list goes on. They fooled people with their nomenclature actually to not lose the market trend of higher frequencies, naming their cpus Athlon 2000+, 2200+, the clock speed of the said processors wasnt 2ghz or 2.2ghz, it was in fact lower, they named it like that to demonstrate (how is the speed of a intel cpu at the time) and to fool consumers.

 

That's not possible because of the way LCDs work, it would need to be some new sort of display tech to allow something like that. At some point they're just going to get to a point where they are so high DPI you won't see the pixels and everything will scale to the size you want it to be.

 

an extendable display would also be nice
Imagine open the notebook and extend a 30 inch display out of it

 

I know it's not possible with current LCD technology that's why I said "invent". It was more of a hypothetical request

 

There already is one like that. Not that it extends to 30" but it essentially extends into a dual screen. Here's a link. Hardly an ultrabook though

 

that would probably be more like an ultradesk
was thinking more like one big screen, maybe with the flexible display technology oled could be near if not limited by cost.

 

any more updates on this Asus?

 

What information are you looking for? Most questions from the community have been answered by mike several pages ago.

 

I've got a few:

- Will there still be an HDD + SSD configuration? Will that run in the $1600-1700 US price range? Will both slots be 7mm for sure?
- When exactly will this be released?
- Does it throttle when under full load?
- Are we able to take it apart (with a special torx screwdriver I assume) without voiding the warranty to change the drives, install more RAM, etc..
- How much better exactly is this GDD5 variant of the 650M in this than the DDR3 version in the N56VZ and will this throttle so much that it won't matter?
- How long will the battery last on the release model?
- Will the palm rest still be cool under full load (CPU+GPU, something Mike couldn't do)?

etc....

Definitely hoping more details will be forthcoming soon...

Peter

 

GPU performance compared with GT650M with DDR3 are practically equivalent, because GT650M DDR3 has higher clocks core than GDDR5 variant, so in some cases GDDR5 model could be better, for example with large use of GPU memory, while if GPU memory it's not used so much DDR3 variant could be faster than GDDR5 model.

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

I'm enough sure that only 7mm hard disk will be used in this machine, but it's just a deduction from the possible configurations announced.
Raid0 indicates twin hard drive and the possible configuration with only 500GB HHD indicates some kind of limit, and for me it's 7mm bays.

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

in other words, it will be faster at lower res like 720p/ maybe even 900p but if u plan on playing native res 1080p, then the ddr5 variant will be faster (i think some places quoted average of 20% boost in fps between games). that may not seem significant but that is from 25 fps->30 or 50->60 which can make a difference between playable and not playable. I think this discussion has already been done before

 

^ That last quote, we had a big multi-page discussion on this topic in the N56VZ thread just yesterday - I didn't get much of a reply from that last post but does that affect anything or do people find it not reliable or?

My question was meant to be if with the power/cooling limitations (and throttling) if the U500/UX51VZ would even be able to reach the full potential of the GDDR5 for the advantage to even be there in any cases - that was my question more than anything else - and for that we'd need a release model with release drivers and someone willing to run a few games/benches at the different resolutions to test.

Thanks,
Peter

 

Yes, I think this discussion was already done before too
Not only resolutions are involved in GPU memory performance, but even the complexity of textures .

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

I was answering to specific comparison between Asus N56VZ with GT650M DDR3 and UX51VZ with GDDR5 variant.

Edit: even the Asus N56VZ has cpu throttling to 1.2GHz, the throttling not seems to be on GPU, so I don't have much hopes that UX51VZ hasn't throttling.

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

Thank you for the theoretical answer - I just meant it'd be great to have someone run the tests and get the actual one and know if the system can support it without either (a) getting too loud to want to use (b) getting too hot to want to use (c) throttling so that the performance is reduced.

Almost all my questions we can guess at - but I'd like to get the final answers - when we can

Thanks,
Peter

 

Release date: it's enough sure that is after Windows 8 release date that is October 26 2012.

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

the problem is that the asus N series has been notorious for throttling, this is no news

 

The $1999 price is for the dual 128GB SSD model w/8GB RAM

ASUS UX51VZ DH71 - Core i7 3612QM / 2.1 GHz - Windows 8 64-bit - 8 GB RAM - 128 GB SSD + 128 GB SSD - 15.6" wide 1920 x 1080 / Full HD - NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M - silver aluminum

There is also a model listed with 256GB SSD (no mention if dual or not) also with just 8GB of RAM for $2399.99

ASUS UX51VZ I7/2.1 15.6 8GB 256GB W8P 64 (UX51VZ-XH71)

Still no word on an HDD model - but I hope there is one - these are definitely out of my own price range.

Peter

 

the price is too steep but man I'm drooling over this

 

Agreed - ASUS was smart not revealing the price or any estimate of it over a month ago when they first announced it. For the past month so many of us have been drooling so much that we'll be willing to pay much more than we planned just to have it - like the frogs in the boiling water, they're hoping we won't know when to jump out - and they almost have me...

If I'd known the price from the start I'd have matrix'd it and probably have some other laptop by now - as it is, having waited a month already......

 

LoL, I can still jump out
If it's confirmed that the price in Europe is around 1800€ I'm out :hi2:

 

Wow, a $2000 model and a $2400 model?? *sigh* I was hoping for something like $1700 and $2100. I guess it's time for me to look elsewhere now.

The waiting game continues...

 

Asus is just being stupid with their pricing at the moment. The Retina retails for $2000 for students with a 256 GB SSD. And yet Asus wants to sell their 128 GB version for $1900 and their 256 GB version for $2300. I might have brand loyalty to Asus but I'm sure not going to buy something so overpriced. I'm expecting the 256 GB version to drop to about $1900 within a few months of release.

 

wait where ar eu getting this from? are u sure its not 2x128 gbs? and 2x256?

 

and even if it is with 2x128gb a price of 1900 is just ridiculous (an Intel 330 120GB SSD is just 90 euros nowadays)

 

There is no way those prices would fly, unless the battery life matches that of Macbook Retina. The reported 3 1/2 hours in the review by Mike, is just ridiculous in this day and age.

Match the battery life of the Macbook Pro Retina and it becomes a *real* contender to the Macbook. Otherwise it is would be a tough sell.

 

+1

Especially since there will be much competition among new win 8 notebooks. For example many will prefer the new HP Spectre XT Touchsmart at $1,399 with its IPS touchscreen and comparable form factor.

 

Wow, the HP Spectre XT looks very appealing. Plus the touch screen is a super bonus. But why is it not available in i7 CPU model?

Why do they always leave one or other thing out which is dealbreaker?!

 

For the price published here the mac is the better buy, but still the differences between laptops are so little that is a matter of personal taste and brand preference.

I know i would take the asus over the macbook everyday, even being aware that the MBPr is better in almost every aspect.

 

Would a refreshed Sony S15 with windows 8 and no orangegate be a worthy competitor? It only weighs about 4 lbs, it has the IPS display, dedicated graphics, plus its probably a whole $900 -1000 cheaper.

 

Well, the Samsung Series 9 15" with Full HD and i7 could become interesting. It's one of the lightest in its category.