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

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Asus has used a proprietary connector for SSD (Sandisk):

If Asus has used this solution even on U500VZ and it throttling then I'm definitively out.

 

Now this doesn't bother me. When companies (Asus, Apple) make it harder for consumers to upgrade their SSD it is unfortunate. For me, if the storage is acceptable (256gb ssd is perfect for me today). If they had an HDD that was glued in there with a proprietary connector I would be upset. But today, the only realistic better choice is 512gb SSD. Which you can buy, but it doesn't bother me. And to be upset that they don't use the best SSD's will affect you in very minimal ways. I could not care less if my laptop had 15MB/s slower transfer rate, if the transfer rate is at 270MB/s !!! This is nothing to complain about in my books.

Of course most people will be out if it has serious throttling problems. But it is the same issue with the disk drives. If you put Skyrim or Crysis on the one that is below the best resolution, it will still look amazing. And then the throttling would go away, maybe... But what are the alternatives ? Chromium netbook and a gaming desktop ?

Hopefully, this will not throttle and the "horrible" write speads of 270 MB/s are acceptable, and we will all be happy.

 

Totally, agree. It is a real shame, because on paper this looks to be a great machine. The naive, patient, hopeful side of me thinks that they have some flaws in the design (throttling, WiFi, overheating, orangegate, ... something ?), and are stalling and delaying to fix it for lunch. If you add in the inconsitency and hesitance over touch screen and no touch screen that might also factor in. Hopefully they don't cancel this product.

 

Proprietary connectors would affect my buying decision. The more internals a laptop has that cannot be upgraded, the sooner I'll need to replace the machine, and this matters when the machine is so expensive to start with. 256GB or 512GB storage is not really a lot if you have games, music or videos to store, or even if you use large applications. So buying a machine with that amount of storage today, I want to know that when the prices of SSDs come down I can expand the storage. Proprietary connectors make that difficult or impossible, at which point I think I would feel more comfortable with a machine whose internals are more standard.

The possibility of upgrading or replacing RAM and storage was something I hoped would differentiate the U500/UX51 from the Retina MacBook Pro. I'd also hoped the price would be significantly cheaper than the RMBP. The price is a little bit cheaper but really not cheap enough, particularly for the 512GB version. So the upgradeability question becomes significant.

 

I agree, totally. But it comes down to, what other alternatives are there vs. adaptability. External storage and network accessible drives, along with streaming and for example Steam makes it very easy for me to adapt to a lesser space on my laptop. I don't need to have 5 or 6 30GB games installed at once. And that would leave you with 76 GB for your other media. As I type that I realize that it isn't "a lot" but remove one or two games and you've cleared up 60 GB. So, of course upgradability is important and it would be better to be able to do it. But I personally am willing to lower its importance and be more adaptable.

Also, in my experience, when you keep a single copy of important data on your laptop (with no backup), you're going to have a bad time.

 

not to mention that every manufacturer managed to refresh their lineups with Windows 8 versions and new processors

 

If you've read Paul Thurrots site or any other MS insider you will see that Windows 8 is the most significant change to the Windows Internals in a long long time. So 7.5 is totally inaccurate

 

What? It must be exactly like Apple, or it sucks!

For example: before Apple, Smartphones and any other phone, or mp3-players, etc. came with sd-card slots. So you could buy a new piece of memory when the existing one was full.

After Apple, you now can buy a 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64, and... Ladies and Gentlemen I give you... 128GB!!!! version. And this kind of thing SAVES THE INDUSTRY FROM GOING BANKRUPT! I HAS SEEN IT!

Therefore: upgrading your device (rather than throwing it in the garbage and buying a new device every year) is evil. And if you could upgrade the device instead of buying one with an ssd that cannot be changed (unless you dislodge it from a styrofoam-frame glued into the chassis with super-glue) - then that unit would have to cost even more money. And not be the cheap and reasonably priced device you see we are presented with now.

That is just how the industry works. Get in tune with the choir, zoot. Or do you hate the industry and want it to wither and die, so Steve Jobs' successors can't get a new Ferrari? Really!

 

I am most terribly sorry. Just tell me what to buy and I will do as I am told. Sorry. Those poor execs.

 

The excuse for being unable to upgrade laptops like the Retina and the Zenbook is the manufacturers sacrificed the ability to upgrade in exchange for the slim profile and small size. While there might be some truth to the excuse, I'm sure Apple and Asus could make a larger version of their laptops capable of upgrades. But of course they would rather us buy a laptop every 1 years instead of once every 2 years. I know upgrading the GPU and CPU is a difficult process, but RAM and HDD/SSD changes should be straightforward, as with most laptops.

This laptop will have throttling and overheating. They are less of what I consider problems and more like realities one accepts when buying a portable gaming laptop. The Retina had both, and I believe Asus' computer engineering department is inferior to Apple's. Perhaps in the future, a genius solution will be found. But until then, I have to believe in what I have already seen. So to everyone who keeps complaining about those issues... stop already. Listening to people whine about the same problems is annoying. Just keep your money and sit quiet like the rest of us until more information is revealed.

 

Only problem is that people who buy upgrades like that tend to buy them on top of a new laptop every one-two years anyway. I.e., it's a way to make:
1. The original product have more value, and make the customer more content for the entirety of the lifetime of the device.
and
2. A way to make the retailers earn more money from returning customers.

...or, you could of treat your customers like crap and just raise the price and lock the unit down for no reason, and just not have as high profit margins.

To about the same degree as the MBPr

Why? Apple had the macbooks running without being able to idle for months after the last OSX launched, for example. And that's with one single hardware configuration over all their devices. They have a lot of issues like that now that they're on intel hardware.

It's more about just scaling the hardware for the task you want to use it for, right?

You don't need bullet-proof glass in your drink-glass, for example. Specially if it makes the edge plasticky and uneven, and the heat-capacity drops while the thickness increases. ..I mean, what else is an ultrabook that overheats, other than that..?

And it's not like it's impossible to do better either. In fact, Asus already has done better. Both with their Transformer Prime devices as well as the nx6-series. These are scaled almost perfectly for the use they're intended for.

Was the same with the EeePCs as well - they were well-dimensioned devices. And there are lots of options out there right now as well, in different kinds of "chipsets" and sizes, that would allow you to make an extremely slim "full-featured work-laptop" with a high resolution screen, or a touch-screen.. Nothing really stopping anyone from doing that over, say, copying a MBP down to the faults and bad details, and even ram and hdds practically welded to the chassis..

 

Was going to buy one until i saw the price, decided to pull the plug and get macbook instead, I'll just install windows on it and get a better laptop.
Didn't want to go the apple route (Don't like apple much) but the resell value of macbooks is so good, Asus wont ever have a resell value as good as macbooks for their asking price i expect to lose lot of its value in the less than a year specially the fact that windows get million laptops released, there will be a windows laptop that offer something similar sooner or later and will kill the resell value.

Would have jumped in if it was 1499$ or less

 

That seems to be how all previous Asus Optimus laptops have been, since they all exhibit the resolution limit according to some posts on forums. Also that's the standard Optimus configuration.

 

I'll bump this question since I'm having trouble finding confirmation that these new drivers actually deliver what they promise. If the UX51VZ will be able to output 2560x1600 to an external monitor I think this laptop has everything I could ask for right now!

 

Maybe this thread is not really monitored by ASUS. How about asking them directly on FaceBook? Or send them a twit @ASUS

 

I tried on twitter last week with no response.

 

..or I guess you could try in the comment section on Engadget. Or Apple's forums - they seem to be looking extremely closely there.

Of course, you would have to say things like: "My goodness, I am a typical customer who wants to spend 2000 euro on a laptop I will want to use for the next 1.45 years. And I wonder if I should get the version with 8 Gb or the one with 16. Also, should I buy the pre-locked SSD version, or should I buy the non-SSD version instead? It's all so confusing!". ..things like that to be noticed.

But hey, it's worth a shot, right?

 

Yeah, I did not have any luck on twitter either. Same with facebook.
I mean they have a million different products in the market. I wonder if they even have any sense of priorities at all.

 

According to marketing, they want to be like Apple in two years. That seems like a priority, at least.

 

Well, they've made a good start by releasing thin, shiny things that are quite expensive. But they have some catching up to do on marketing, communications and service. Oh, and simplifying the damn product line!

 

Can anyone confirm that the GPU has GDDR3 and not GDDR5?
There seems to be a lot of contradicting information out there regarding this.

 

^does it matter? The performance on the cards are virtually identical. Except the ddr3 variants will run cooler at somewhat less battery drain, while also having better overclock potential. But you're not really going to run everyday tasks on the 650m card, and very clearly not going to overclock the gpu in that chassis (more likely it needs to be underclocked so it won't fry your fingers).

So why would you really worry about that?

Other than that if the god-like Apple-hardware is copied to other laptops, it automatically becomes better than it was before, of course.

Right. One product, in 128Gb and 256Gb variants.

I'm also a huge fan of the entire "pick any colour, as long as it's black" thing. Very strategically market-oriented. When we have market-economic systems, then at least we shouldn't have too much of it (cookie for the one who gets the reference).

 

Henry Ford.
I brought warm milk along.

 

nipsen, of course it matters.
Since i'm not going to overclock this GPU due to laptop constrains, I want every FPS I can get -
The difference between GDDR3 and GDDR5 is about +20% FPS, and sometimes that's all you need.

Also, for the price ASUS is asking, they should include the higher bandwidth memory. It's ridiculous.
(Not to mention all preview units had GDDR5...are ASUS trying to fool their customers?)

And why do you think GDDR3 is cooler/consumes less power than GDDR5? It's actually the other way around if I recall correctly.

 

GDDR3 should had been expected... It would be extraordinary for ASUS to put GDDR5 650m in that chassis.

 

..that's not actually how it works. A 650m with gddr5 or ddr3 ram, with stock clocks, will give you identical results. A 660m with gddr5 at standard clocks will give you maybe 20% boost over a 650m with standard clocks. A 650m and a 660m at the same clocks (which is very easy to do, since it's actually the same chipset), will run about as hot and at the same performance.

But the ddr3 variants of the 650m cards are on top of the 3dmark2011 tests, for example. Because they have higher overclock potential..

Since the higher bandwidth is internally on the memory module, and not towards the graphics card core, it doesn't really matter - the bandwidth to memory from the bus is the same.

If you wanted better "bandwidth", or better performance on bandwidth intensive operations, you would want more cuda cores and a broader bus internally towards the core and to the system bus..

I know that because I've tested it. I tested it because I suspected that would happen. Because I knew gddr5 ram runs at higher voltage with higher internal clock frequencies. And because it turned out very quickly that the gddr5 cards had lower overclock potential. It's not all that much, and it's not really significant compared to an i7 quad-core when it comes to the cooling and so on - then the cpu is hotter anyway. But it does run hotter, and draws a bit more power. While giving you, at comfortable clocks, the identical performance as a similarly clocked ddr3 variant.

I'm sure it's also cheaper, for both us and the laptop makers. Since ddr3 modules can be manufactured for practically nothing, and the gddr5 "stockpile potential"(the module can be fitted to many different chipset boards, and could possibly be manufactured in bulk) isn't really hitting home just yet.

So if you're really running it at half speed/adaptive clocks, etc., while trying to not overheat the cooling solution -- what would you choose, knowing stuff like that on beforehand...?

 

It has been confirmed many times, it's GDDR5 so no trolling about GDDR3 anymore, please.

 

No, the second part . I think the whole phrase was something like "one should only have as much market-efficiency as one needs".

 

I'm sorry but that's completely wrong! DDR3 against DDR5 gives you a fairly sizable difference in performance in favour of the DDR5. Take some of the benchmarks on the 640Ms for example, the models that use the version with DDR5 are a lot faster at stock (with the same, or even LOWER core clock speed) than the DDR3 versions, simply because of the extra memory bandwidth available.

It does make a difference, and it's a fairly big one!

 

Data, please. Source, anything.

 

gt 650m ddr3 and ddr5 are about the same in everything but potential.

The little performance advantage ddr5 gives is compensated by the higher clock of the ddr3 version (845 vs 735MHz)
the same goes for temperature, the higher power consumption of the ddr5 is equiparated to the higher power consumption of the overvolted and overclocked ddr3 version.

As for potential, you can overclock the ddr5 version to gtx660m levels but you cant overclock the ddr3 version that much as it already is bandwidth constricted.

You can check on notebookcheck that the performance is about the same for both cards.

 

So... are you speaking from experience? Based on any sort of actual data? A source of any sort?

I mean, you know the 3dmark2011 scores prove that idea completely wrong. That it's the opposite that actually is the case?

 

3dmark2011 also shows that the ddr3 version stock is better then the ddr5, and gaming wise we know that is not true.

3dmark 11 just favors more the core then the memory, gaming shows otherwise.

 

I tried Facebook and G+, but no answers Let's hope on Monday

 

Then where's the data? I've tried a few configs, as close as I can get them -- there are no differences on low or high clocks, as long as they're the same. I was certain that I would find something that worked faster on the gddr5 card, such as physx or aa or something that runs internally on the card. But there's nothing.

So where's the data? I'm genuinely interested.

 

Just look at the 3dmark 11 gpu performance on notebookcheck
higher score fo each card

gt650m ddr5 2130
+7%
gt650m ddr3 2276
+6%
gtx660m ddr5 2414



the performance difference between gt 650m ddr3 and gtx 660m in games is around 20% and in 3dmark11 is around 8% so where do you think those extra 12% came from?
the memory, which 3dmark doest take that much advantage in this card.

 

I don't have time to pull out hundreds of examples, and I'm sure you can look it up yourself if you're genuinely interested.

However, in this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/677079-sony-vaio-s-bios-mod-gt640m-le.html there are a whole load of benchmarks on the 640M with DDR3; the highest result, with the GPU core all the way up at 950MHz, and the memory at 1165MHz was 2358 points.

This result NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3615QM Processor,SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. 700Z3C/700Z5C score: P2343 3DMarks is from my personal laptop, which has the 640M with DDR5 memory. The score (2343 points) is nearly identical to the one from the DDR3 version, however my GPU core clock was around 800, instead of the 950 that the DDR3 version needed. It's pretty clear that the extra memory really does make a noticeable difference to the speed!

There's plenty, plenty more example of this, many on this very forum. Out of curiousity, do you have any which show that the memory doesn't make a difference?

 

That just prove that the ddr3 and ddr5 version has the same performance since the working boost clocks for the cards are 835MHz for ddr5 and 950MHz for ddr3

So both have around the same performance, the ddr3 version is just clocked higher to compensate.

 

Guys, are you forgetting that DDR5 is "quad-pumped" and DDR3 "only" the doubled frequency? So (G)DDR5 has 2x the bandwith per clock in comparison to (G)DDR3. Of course that does not mean that the FPS are doubled also. The higher the resolution the more this benefit will come into play. In 1080p I would expect about 10-15% better performance with DDR5.
Additionally GDDR5 needs a lower voltage which reduces overall power consumption. DDR5 - 1,35-1,5V ....DDR3 - 1,8V

BUT it is still not that easy to compare. DDR5 has higher latency than DDR3 which makes DDR5 about 15% slower at the same clock speed. Now, start your calculators

 

^no, memory frequency would be 1100 on the ddr3 version, 2200 on the gddr5 version, etc. Seems.. very logical that something should go faster. But...

-------

I got to test a dv6 with a 650m. Ended up with the same gpu score on similar clocks.

..The modded bioses for the 640le seems to have a "boost" state... could that be it? I mean, like I said I was looking for something like that. That the memory somehow would give some very specific operations a boost (and that they would turn up with some stress-test, on lower fps or higher fps, etc). But I couldn't find it. Instead I got.. ten points different on the gpu score in 3dmark. No difference in fps in The Witcher 2, no higher peak, no higher lower limit, etc..

 

Again, that would be the case if the cards were at the same clock, benchmarks show that even at 1080p they are equivalent, go see notebookcheck results on ultra quality(1080p)

 

Of course...I only compared DDR3 and DDR5 ;-) If the GPU clock is not fast enough to make any benefit out of the higher bandwidth you will see noch change in terms of FPS or scores in benchmarks. Only power consumption will be still lower.

 

That is EXACTLY my point! The DDR5 version is faster per clock, because of the extra memory bandwidth! The argument was that the DDR5 card isn't faster... it is. At the same core clock speed, the DDR5 card has higher performance, that's the entire point of DDR5 memory, it's better than DDR3.

But what you posted there is wrong, the boost clock for the core of the 640M is nowhere near 950MHz for the DD3 version, it's more like 500 or 600MHz depending on what model it's in. Anything above that is an overclocked result. The 950MHz result is a full fledged BIOS mod to get the card to clocks that high! But that's beside the point.

What I've been saying, and have proven, is that at the same GPU core clock speed, GDDR5 memory gives higher performance than GDDR3.

 

We were kinda discussing the gt650m, so the boost clock is for them.

Before that i believe we were talking about a computer called asus U500 or something

 

..no. Whether it has boost or not depends on what the bios says. Seemed to me the mods used for the 640le used the 660m bios as a starting point. So ..could be it has 800 "stock", 950 boost.

 

I think that mod BIOS is a simple SONY BIOS with clocks changed, GT640LE and GTX660 are the same chip with different clock.

 

Stop trolling about memory!!!!!

If you have nothing to say about laptop itself then do not post. I don't care about memory as do most of the people in this thread.

 

I know that. But only one of the cards have the boost-thing.

I'm wondering - if Asus put out a version of this u500 chassis, with a 650m clocked down a bit (but having normal max clock), an i7 quad core clocked down to 4-800Mhz default (and dynamic bus-speed). That then would run hot, but still not so hot it would need to cut more than the "boost state" on the i7. With a lithium polymer battery, etc..

...you know - and I'm obviously taking this straight out of the blue here - like the successor to the Zenbook, just with more power and better battery life.

Would that be a neat purchase? ...obviously you would have to hack the bios and the thermal settings to get any of this. But still - wouldn't be too bad, right?

 

Adorama has dropped the price down to $1800. This is the lowest price I have found for the dual 128 GB SSD version. Some of the online merchants have removed their pre-order status, so you can buy them now.

 

Where? every website that lists this laptop says it has 650m with GDDR3.
Can you please give more details?