Asus launches 18.4 inch gaming notebook with 4870 X2

Thanks to ToTTenTranz over at xtremesystems for the original post.

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W90 – The Ultimate Multimedia Notebook

Bridging the Gap between Form and Function, the ASUS W90 Delivers Both Style and Performance in One Stunning Package

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW, LAS VEGAS, NV (January 8, 2009)– The ASUS W90 represents a shift in the manufacturing and designing of the notebooks of today, where style plays an equally important role as performance. In blending the two elements together, the ASUS W90 can be likened to a high performance sports car—providing users with exhilarating performance and immaculate charm. Be it for entertainment or for work, the ASUS W90 is the definitive notebook for the modern, discerning consumer with an eye for design and attention to performance.

Designed For the Soul
An exquisite brushed aluminum top cover greets the user, conveying a sense of class and prestige. An ultra bright, high definition LCD display lends an air of sophistication with its flushed design, redolent of a top-of-the-range LCD television. These stylish features adorn a refreshingly clean and streamlined chassis, with speakers that are designed like the heating vents of a performance sports car. The cumulative effect of these design highlights imbues users with a sense of panache and power that only the W90 can provide.

Strength in Numbers: World Leading Graphical Performance and Memory Design
Powered by the dual graphics ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4870 X2, the W90 is capable of reaching the world’s best graphical performance for a notebook with an astonishing 3D Mark 2006 score of 15,000. The W90 also offers other graphical choices with either the ATI® Mobility Radeon™ HD3850 X2 or the NVIDIA® GeForce™ 9800M GS; and complemented by a seamless Full HD1080p, 18.4” widescreen display with a 16:9 golden aspect ratio high definition ultra bright LCD display, the W90 delivers a truly stunning visual experience.

The W90 is also the world’s first notebook equipped with a 3 x SO-DIMM mainboard design; with a maximum RAM capacity of 6GB of DDR2-800 memory. This massive speed, coupled with an Intel® Core™2 Duo processor, provides the W90 with the muscle for extensive multitasking. Dual hard disk drives provide up to one terabyte of storage capacity, allowing users to do more, as well as store more documents or multimedia.

Multimedia performance is definitely another forte of the W90, with 6 Altec Lansing speakers shaped in the form of a sports car’s heating vents producing true 5.1 channel audio enjoyment via 5 speakers and an integrated subwoofer; while the 2nd generation Dolby™ Home Theater complements this ensemble perfectly to provide a symphonic audio experience. The combination of audio and visual enjoyment delivers a mind-blowing mix of high definition audio and visual entertainment that can be easily controlled via the ASUS exclusive AI Touch Media, an intuitive control panel located beside the keyboard on the notebook that combines a hardware and software interface for full control of videos, photographs, music, and various other forms of multimedia.

Turbo Performance beyond the limit – Turbo Gear
The ASUS W90 also comes equipped with the Turbo Gear function, which allows you to overclock your system to significantly increase its performance by up to 25%*, so that you can enjoy audio and video playback while gaming and web-browsing simultaneously.

Specifications
Processor and Cache Memory

Intel® Core™2 Duo processor T9600/T9400/P8600/P8400
Intel® X38 + ICH10R Chipset, FSB=1066 MHz

Operating System

Microsoft® Vista 64 bit SP1 Premium

Main Memory

DDR2 800MHz, up to 6GB, 3xSO-DIMM slots support

Display

- 18.4” widescreen HD ultra-bright LCD display (W90Vp/W90Vn)
- 17” widescreen WUXGA ultra-bright LCD display (W90V)

Graphics Card

- ATI CrossFireX™ technology with ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4870 graphics, GDDR3 1024MB VRAM (W90Vp)
- NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS, GDDR3 1024MB VRAM (W90Vn)
- ATI CrossFireX™ technology with ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3850 graphics, GDDR3 1024MB VRAM (W90V)

Hard Disk Drive

320 + 320GB / 250 + 250GB / 500 + 500GB (5400rpm)

Optical Drive

Blu-ray Combo/ DVD Super Multi DL

Video Camera

2.0M Pixels Auto Focus Webcam

Communication

- 802.11 Draft N wireless connection
- BlueTooth 2.1+EDR
- 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
- 56k Modem

Audio

5.1 channel Altec Lancing speaker (w/ subwoofer),
2nd Generation Dolby™ Home Theater

Interface

- 1 x HDMI
- 1 x E-SATA
- 4 x USB 2.0
- IEEE 1394
- VGA-out (D-Sub)
- Headphone (SPIDIF)
- Mic-in
- 8 in 1 Card Reader
- 1 x Express Card
- 1 x CIR
- RF-in (w/ TV SKU)
- 1 x Modem jack (RJ11)
- 1 x LAN port (RJ45)

 

how much is that going to cost!

 

Crossfire 4870!

 

something tells me it is going to be really fast.

Wonder what the battery life would be. Or if it even comes with a battery! Heck it might not be able to use a battery.

But it only supports 6GB RAM.

 

I think it will probably need two ppl to carry it LOL

 

I guess to make it a *little* cheaper they are using DDR2 800MHz ram memory ???!!!

 

Who cares how much it costs. I'd be more worried about getting a hernia carrying it. I've got an Asus M70VM (17") and that weighs a ton!

 

this was already posted in the Asus forum and like i said there ill say here:

I said i wanted to buy the Asus G71 but was waiting for it or another sli/crossfire notebook and BAM here it is right here its great to hope especially when it comes true At least when i buy this i'll know i wont be getting crappy service

 

Oh man I think I could probably replace my desktop with one of those

If I wasn't still using my G1P for games I would seriously consider one of these.

 

Just 15k in 3dmarks? No quad core?
Weak.
Sounds like another high benchmarking score/low gaming results.


/BS

 

Is there a release date? I still have a couple of days to cancel my OCZ, just in case. Although, no Quad AND DDR2 AND only up to 6GB AND only GDDR3? Why would you put 3 slots in a notebook and only allow 6GB?

I agree. BS!

 

ahh....

my "wanting to buy a OCZ WB/M17 now, but want to wait for whats coming out" stress is over!

 

6GB minimum.

15K, eleron, is amazing considering its just a T9400 (or even lower) with not overclocking. High scoring WhiteBook owners have Qx9300s or X9100s and overclocked like crazy.

 

6gb max with 3 sodimms means it only supports 2gb sticks? and ddr2? weak

 

This thing will hit 20,000 easily, mark my words if people went from 13,000 - 17,000 in a ATI 3870 crossfire this can break that like nothing

 

Whether it uses DDR2 or DDR3 doesn't really matter. DDR3 is not worth the cost of entry for Core 2 Duo systems. Memory bandwidth has never been the Core 2's weak point.
The only systems where it is helpful to have DDR3 is on ultraportable and notebooks where battery life is very important, because DDR3 needs only 1.5V versus 1.8V for DDR2.

One way or another, it looks like a great performer. I need to get my hands on one.

 

Hoepfully this thing has an unlocked PLL too. That's what I'm waiting too see.

 

Man I want to know the price of this thing, and how much the 4870s are attributing to this figure. The overpriced 9800GTX needs some serious competition in the pricing game.

 

lean mean gaming machine

 

The fact that it's benching 15,000 3dmark06 with a dual core CPU is a much better indicator of gaming performance than a 9800M GTX SLI system with a Q9650. I've been saying this for weeks about the Mobility HD 4850, actual gaming performance will be a punch in the face to the 9800M GTX.

Quad core 9800M GTX systems are giving falsely high performance numbers in 3dmark06.

 

I forgot to mention this VS that new Clevo is gonna be a showdown my money's on this though

 

no love for gddr5? why? a 4870 is not complete without gddr5!!!!

 

No it will be a showdown between this and practically every other notebook that releases with the 4870X2.

 

Yes quads get a nice boost in the cpu portion of 3dmark for score. In gaming usually only 2 cores are used. There are some games out there that use quad though, for everything else in the world I woud take a quad though. video rendering, multi tasking, ect.

Id take a small hit in current gaming performance if need be for the readiness of a quad for future games and for all the other advantages it would bring.

That said I wonder how ready a "laptop" is for a quad until it gets another die shrink,they have to run pretty hot and use a lot of power.

 

The M70VM weighs 8.4 lbs.

More than likely this 18.4" will weigh in at 10-12lbs or so...
(the clevo/sager SLI 17" are 11.5lbs with battery)

That's definitely not ultra-light, but still not so bad really.

As for hernia-causing... methinks someone needs to put the laptop away and hit the gym or consult a doctor.


To put this in perspective, I spent last weekend with a friend and her three kids. One of them is a 10-yr-old girl who hauled around a 9lb 17" laptop everywhere due to her webkins collection.

Not once did she complain about the laptop's weight... more often than not she carried that 9lb laptop in one hand. Not once did she drop or even bump that laptop. I sincerely wish my corporate users were even HALF that careful!

If you think your lighter laptop "weighs a ton" that places you weaker (and notably whinier) than a 10-yr-old girl.

 

Not really, this notebook will probably lean more towards people who want entertainment AND gaming it is an 18" form factor dont forget

 

that 4870x2 is gonna really bottlenecked by the cpu and ram. seems kinda lame. good idea with the gpu but they really cheeped out on the cpu and ram.

 

gunna second that, I hauled my 17incher around all the time, its like a big book, if a little girl can do it so can u guys...

 

Jlbrightbill well the 9800m GTX SLI does not give false numbers when it comes to gaming performance. Sure it gets high scores in 3D Mark 06, but in pure gaming performance they are really fast with a Quad Core.

 

The only current game to benefit from a quad core is GTA IV, and that's likely due to poor coding. Crysis I have no difference in FPS running my quad at 3.2 GHz or running it in dual core at 2.4 GHz, same FPS average in the benchmark.

 

Well since the GFX driver is taking the multi-core advantage so quad do have performance advantage on games

 

This looks like a good gaming notebook; ASUS does not typically include high-end graphics cards in their notebooks. I need to get my hands on one of these.

There are other games that benefit from a quad-core, such as Unreal Tournament III, Fallout 3, and other games based on the Unreal III engine.

That said, GTA IV is the worst offender of console ports to PC to date.

 

UT III will run with sufficient framerates on even a mid-range system however.

Fallout 3, yes, but the price / power / subsequent weight premium may not be worth it. It would be nice to have seen it at least as an option.

 

Agreed, but unless the driver situation changes, we`ll another high benchmarks/low gaming results fiasco.

I wouldn`t quite put my money on this one. Looks to me as if ASUS is stepping on alien grounds for them, and the lack of experience in the high-end notebook sector might be an issue.
With the power requirements these cards have, I`m sure that they`re going to be a lot of "My card just hit 95C while testing 3dmark" etc etc threads...

As for GTA, notebooks can`t handle it because it requires massive video memory and a quad core to run decently. Once you pair a quad with at least a 8800 GTX (768MB video RAM) then the game looks absolutely amazing. The level of details and the whole scenery involvment granted it the GOTY title. Sure, I`m pissed I can`t max it out on my SLI, but I do play it natively in medium details and it`s absolutely amazing.

 

there is no support for sli for gta4 yet, only crossfire.

 

Why do people always complain games don't use 4 cores? GTA IV does. Crysis, Far Cry 2 do too. Most Source games do too. Basically, most good engines are multi-threaded, not just dual threaded. This new gaming laptop is going to be sweet.