Asus K51AB and K50AB with the HD4860 with 1GB of memory GDDR5

Why are we even having a debate on resolution? It's a personal preference no? I mean, some people tear their eyes off at anything less than 1900*1200 while others think 1680*1050 is hurting their eyes >_> It takes all kinds of screens to satisfy all kinds of people. If nobody wanted low resolution screens, the market would've phased them out by now(no matter how cheap they cost if they weren't making money out of it).

Anyways, I'm sure a "higher end" model with a higher end screen & CPU will eventually come out.

 

Depends on the screen really. My old M1710's screen looked grainy and pixelized when I lowered the res to play games, even with AA on. The Alienware M9750 I got after looked better with a lowered resolution. Now, I think it's more myth than anything seeing as screens are getting better in this respect.

The issue with these Asus models is that low resolution gaming tends to be more CPU bound, which makes it look wasteful mating a GPU like the 4860 with a relatively low resolution screen.

 

I agree on the CPU bound part. But every notebook and PC monitor I've used for gaming, mine, friends, or otherwise, scaled well. So I never understood the issue with scaling. Larger resolution gives you nice desktop space, and can always reduce for gaming.

 

Despite the low resolution and whether the GPU is wasteful or not - if the price comes true (notebookjournal.de made an interview (german) and the ASUS-man claimed that the price would be about ~700 € price/performance would be awesome.

 

i'm having a hard time believing that, 700euro for that monster?! no way.

 

If that thing costs €700, they will sell a whole bundle.

Heck, I would buy one, and i've just complained about the screen-res. I will believe it when I see it however, no point in making predictions until we have a firm price

 

700 euro is considerably lower (i.e. factor of 2) than what I was thinking of. In the past, that caliber of GPU alone would cost you at least three fourths of that. At that price, it becomes reasonable even given the awful screen (worst comes to worst, you can probably take it apart and buy a better screen. Did anyone ask them whether they're planning a slightly more expensive model with a better screen and/or CPU?

 

C'mon, there's no way a cards that's supposedly as powerful as the 4850 and 4870 comes out in a 15" for less than $1,000 US dollars.

 

But if you think about, there is nothing other than the GPU in that notebook that is expensive. Here's the original poster's list:

We've discussed the screen at great length and it is most certainly not going to cost much. The Puma platform is not top of the line stuff and AMD knows it so it keeps the prices down. DDR2 is dirt cheap nowadays and the hard drive is decent, but not all that expensive either. The graphics card is the one and only "premium" component of that notebook -- if not for that, this would be one of those notebooks that are on sale at Best Buy for $650. I'm kind of surprised that they put something so powerful in such a mediocre machine.

 

it can 999 but it will not be as powerful as a true 4870 with ddr5 the asus ones do not count

 

to me the only that is disappointing about this laptop is the looks on this, its too dam plain. They gotta make it look like the g50 series lol

 

actually i am thankful that asus went with a relative understating design.
i'm quite angry at how laptops are getting more and more shiny/glossy, it's disgusting.
bring back the good old black boxes!

 

Mhm maybe thats the reason it might be that cheap: the PUMA platform never performed that well and the Mobility 4860 only has a 128 Bit interface. Still it should be very powerful because the clocks are almost double to the Mobility 4850 (or something like that so it acts in the same performance).
The more of it ASUS said something about 5 hours of battery life.

So we have now:
a) A gaming rig
b) Advertise it as "IceCool" - claiming it stays calm and cool even under load
c) Long battery life
d) Very low price

Really, I'm eagerly awaiting its release, though it almost sounds too good to be true. It would almost be an "Uber-Notebook"...

 

Or maybe they use Puma to take advantage of switchable graphics (to get that battery life) and the 128-bit combined with GDDR5 (4860) is equal to 256-bit GDDR3 (4850) but cheaper due to the 40nm manufacturing process.

 

Hey I'd love to be wrong on this one. The lower the prices go, the better is for all of us. But $1k? That's just hard to imagine, in an "I hope it's true" kinda way.

 

Yeah the looks of the laptop are a bit disappointing, but you can't expect Asus to refresh the design of each of their model lines I guess lol

Still, this design was one I was never particularly fond of >.> So glossy and brown >_<

 

Puma I think is quite underrated as a mobile platform. Before I got my Asus, I had bought a floor model HP dv4z with an AMD Turion Ultra ZM-82, and it had a very fast start up, faster than my Asus in fact. However I do believe the Asus G50s are equiped with DDR2-667 and not DDR2-800 like the dv4z was. Problem with that HP of course was the graphics but it did have sound 'gargling' issues too. I really liked the HP, nice small and compact yet still pretty capable, but when this Asus G50 went on sale for $1050, I had to just return the dv4z and get the Asus.

Also on the note of screen resolution, I think 1366 x 768 is a happy medium between clarity and cost, better potential resolution than almost all console games. The 1 GB of VRAM will be beneficial to those who may connect the laptop to a full HD monitor or HDTV.

 

I think you are right. It would cost around $900. Especially by the Q2ish time every notebook price are dropping like like crazy. I mean you can literally pick up a Dell GTX with SLI 9800m GT for 1800. And looking at the specs everything in the notebook itself are quiet inexpensive part except the 4860.

Lol thats quiet obvious... Don't forget this is a 128-bit graphic card. However, thats also a strong point about this graphic card. Even being a 128-bit its stronger than a 256-bit like the 9800m GT, and it will use less energy and save power . It's going to be like a netbook!


Also were talking as if the 40nm makes everything cheap; however, the thing is that with graphic cards its more about the technology cost than the manufacturing cost.

 

No, the smaller process does make things cheaper. In one of the other forums (AW or Sager?), the 9800M GTX successor, GTX 280M is cheaper by about $400...

 

so is this HD4860 suppose to be better than the 9800 GT in g50 series or not.

 

Yes, by a good degree. Probably in the vicinity of 30%.

 

let's just wait for some benchmarks, my moneys on ati.

 

ooo man this laptop is getting me all excited, i just cant wait for it to be to release =p

 

It's hard to believe that changing from 65nm to a 55nm drop the manufacturing cost $400. Not only that, I highly doubt that is true.

 

hmm it will probably be about that, but yes the ATI will definitely be better.

 

Now if more games didn't favor Nvidia GPUs.........

 

Yes that is true but with all the games coming out now maybe the tides can change.

 

How much of a difference does this make? Does Nvidia games really preform a lot better in certain games?

 

I dont think so, if you go look at benchmarks on major hardware sites for multiple games I think its nearly 50/50 with some games working better on ATI hardware and other games doing better on Nvidia. In all cases no matter what card is "better" as long as both of them get enough fps to play the game at full speed thats all that really matters.

Example if HL2 gets 200fps on Nvidia GTX280 and "only" 180fps on a 4870 while there is a 20fps difference in the benchmark, the gameplay will be exactly the same.

What really counts and where you should be paying attention is in the ultra high resolutions or very demanding games that drop the frame rates into the 30-60fps areas. In those segments I think I see ATI actually doing better than Nvidia.

The final verdict though really is that both brands are equal in the final average and you should be looking at prices and performance levels of the individual cards and not worry about drivers or games running better on one brand or the other.

Plus no matter how big of a difference you may see now in a certian game, it can be 100% the opposite in a week when drivers come out. Driver optimizations just are something that happen too fast and too often to predict. So definitely focus on hardware not drivers.

Anybody at this point should be able to see easily that ATI currently is offering the better hardware.

 

If this could support a quad core I'd be all over it... Maybe I'm just dreaming too much.

 

My thought too, word is no quads in 15" this year its for 17" and bigger only. However next year I think you will see it.

W90 has the quad core but its huge, not going to be for everybody.

Waiting will probably do you some good though as the clock speeds on the quad cores right now are pretty low compared to the dual cores. Next series I think will be much better.

 

The new M860TU / NP8662 is the first 15.4" to support quads. Cutting edge stuff, out next month.

 

Sager? Yeah they make some good stuff, I was really looking at the 8660 and 9262 but I was worried about the heat issues and the 9262 is like a brick

the W90 that I am looking to get now may be big, but atleast its stylish.

 

16" or larger. ASUS VX5 will also offer a quad-core.

 

Ok guess that makes more sense I forget we have middle line stuff like that.

 

Now if they'd just start offering high-end GPUs in 16" notebooks.

 

Hey, for all you people that were disappointed with the screen resolution like I was: LG announced that they're making 15.6" 1920x1080 screens now.

It was on the front page news here just in case anyone missed it (part of the 120hz article).

 

I hope this is optional. In this case I'll go with the small res, because 1900x1080 on a 15.6"...too small for my eyes.

 

Well, I'm sure it would be. The notebooks are spec'd with 1366x768 (or whatever it is) screens.

This would probably be an after market upgrade. Still. I would be extremely happy if they had a 1600x900 option for this size.

 

Dell Precision M4400 and HP Elitebook 8530w are 15.4" and have had quad core option for a while...

 

I just looked at the M4400, its pretty neat. No stock option offers the quad but if you customize it you can add the qx9300 for a decent price. What sucks is that everything is like bottom of the barrel though.

Low default screen res, hdd size, ram, ect.

By the time you pick the options to put it where it should be it cost more than what they make it out to be. Not too sure how the gpu's it offers stand out. But its clearly not a gaming notebook so thats ok. I like how it looks but its just a tad to blocky if the edges were rounded off a bit I think they would have a winner. The HP cost even more than the dell and does not seem as nice to me, except its default screen is just right being 1680x1050.

 

I wouldn't want a quad core with this... Because I want a laptop that is cheap, yet has a really good gpu. Plus long battery life.

 

any updated on when the asus k50 series will be out?

 

hmmm no n00s at all ... only the "2nd quarter 2009" the ASUS-man claimed at the Cebit interview. Notebookcheck even thinks "end of 2nd quarter (with luck)". That would be in june or july. A very long wait.
If we only knew for sure... somebody motivated to write an Email to ASUS and ask politely?

 

The Asus K series will probably have about 1.5 to 2 hours of battery life. High power GPU + Asus label = short batery life lol.

 

Is there a reason for such a statement? The Asus-Man (I always want to say G-Man, but it doesn't fit...) said 5 hours battery life. Even if it's remotely, in the past (5 years ago) I experienced 3 hour battery life also from an Asus "Multimedia/Gaming Notebook", which was quite nice. Nowadays batteries got better. Also you forgot the 40nm GPU and Griffin CPU should need less power. So I think it's possible.

 

wrong... i would say somewhere in the 4 hour range. even though its a high power GPU its still only a 128bit and not only that it uses a 40nm process woot woot! Less power, less heat, and longer battery life. Also its a 15"...

 

The C90S has 1.5 hours, and can escalate to 2 hours with the E7200 CPU so at least 2 hours...

 

In reality, K50AB will be with 4570.

http://www.shoppydoo.fr/details-ordinateur_portable-asus_k50ab_sx029c.html

 

Wow you brought one back

Its been out for a while now, dont expect this card to srop till year end.