ASUS G50V - Specifications and Summary
| ASUS G50V-A1 Specifications | |
| Processor | Core 2 Duo T9400 (2.53GHz 6MB 1066FSB) |
| Chipset | Intel PM45 + ICH9M-E |
| Memory | 2x2048MB DDR2-800 |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GT 512MB |
| Display | 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050) Glossy |
| Hard Drive | 2 x 250GB 5400RPM 8MB |
| Optical Drive | 8x DVDR SuperMulti |
| Networking | Integrated Gigabit Ethernet Intel WiFi Link 5100 Bluetooth v2.0 |
| Audio | 2-Channel HD Audio (2.0 Speakers) |
| Battery | 6-Cell 53Whr |
| Front Side | WiFi On/Off Switch |
| Left Side | VGA 1 x USB 2.0 eSATA HDMI Mini FireWire ExpressCard/54 Flash Reader (MS Pro, MMC, SD) TV Antenna (Optional) Cooling Exhaust |
| Right Side | 2 x USB 2.0 Optical Drive (DVDRW) 3 x Audio (5.1 out or 4.0 + mic) |
| Back Side | 1 x USB 2.0 Gigabit Ethernet Modem (Optional) Power Connector Kensington Lock |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit |
| Dimensions | 14.76" x 10.43" x 1.35"-1.60" (WxDxH) |
| Weight | 6.16 lbs (with battery) |
| Extras | CPU Overclocking (5% or 10%) 2.0MP Webcam Backpack ASUS ROG Branded Logitech MX518 Mouse Express Gate by SplashTop |
| Warranty | 2-year ASUS Global 1-year Accidental Damage and Battery 30-day Zero Bright Dot LCD |
| Price | Starting at $1569 for G50V-A1 Alternatives: G50Vt at BestBuy for $1250 G50V-X1 at Newegg for $1350 |
Most of the components in the G50V are near the top of what is presently available. The T9400 processor is only one notch down from the X9000, and the built-in overclocking allows you to run at up to 2.86 GHz by manipulating the front side bus. Truthfully, the P8400 (or at most P8600) is sufficient for all but the most extreme users and would cost quite a bit less, or four bit more money you could get the P9500 that has a lower power requirement but the same performance as the T9400. It's also a little odd that ASUS chose to include two 250GB 5400 RPM hard drives on what is supposedly a desktop replacement system. Battery life as we will see in a moment is nothing special, and it would have been nice to get a bit more performance from 7200 RPM drives - or more storage from 5400 RPM drives. Note that the hard drives are not in a RAID 0 configuration; we prefer this approach, as dealing with RAID 0 - particularly on notebooks - can be frustrating and the performance benefits are usually negligible.
One component that you can't upgrade that we have an issue with is the keyboard. Specifically, we don't like what ASUS did with the number keypad. It's nice to have that keypad over there, but we tend to use the page down, page up, home, and end keys on a regular basis. Unfortunately, you don't get direct access to any of those keys when numlock is on, so we actually prefer either doing away with the number keypad and putting a column with the missing keys on the right side, or else they just need to figure out a different arrangement in order to provide dedicated keys. The HP d5vt takes the latter approach while the Gateway P-7811 uses the former; either one is preferable to the keyboard on the G50V in our opinion. Other than that snafu, the keyboard works fine, but even after a couple weeks of use we still found ourselves having to pause a minute to find the home/end/page up/page down keys.
We have very few complaints with the rest of the component choices. You get a nice LCD, Intel 5100 802.11N wireless, 4GB of memory, and a 64-bit operating system. The GeForce 9700M GT is still a step down in performance relative to the 9800M options, but it's at least a viable midrange solution capable of running most games at 1280x800 at high detail settings. We do wish that ASUS would have gone with the 9700M GTS or one of the 9800M options, however. Speaking of which....
ASUS has a very large selection of current laptops, and it's not unusual to see various models come and go with minor updates. We understand that the G50V-A1 we are reviewing should be available through the end of 2008, but other models will use the same basic design and change some of the components. One example is the G50V-X1, which downgrades the CPU and hard drive selections and shaves off over $200 from the price tag. Perhaps a far more interesting variant of the G50V is the G50Vt that is being sold exclusively through Best Buy.
Priced at $1250, it has a downgraded CPU and hard drive relative to the G50V-A1 we are reviewing; it also comes with a 15.6" 1366x768 LCD instead of the 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050) panel, which is an unfortunate change. Furthermore, the one-year warranty comes from Best Buy rather than a two-year ASUS warranty. That's a lot of negatives, but besides the lower price there's one major positive: it includes a GeForce 9800M GTS instead of the 9700M GT, so in terms of gaming performance it should be at least 50% faster and will go head-to-head with the Gateway P-7811. That card is quite a bit faster than the 9700M GT since it has twice the memory bandwidth and twice as many SPs.)
The ASUS G50V strikes an interesting middle ground between "gaming" laptops that use 8600M/9600M graphics chips and the 8800M/9800M offerings. It's a bit odd that the fastest version of the G50V to date also has the lowest resolution LCD, but regardless there's still plenty to like with the G50V. It's a heavier notebook, almost as large as most 17" offerings, but the features, build quality, warranty, and accessories add up to a very good overall package. In a straight up performance shootout between the Gateway P-7811 FX and the ASUS G50V, we would take the Gateway system every time. However, we have received quite a few emails from users that purchased the P-7811 who had stability/reliability problems. The G50Vt should close the performance gap, but Gateway still has a decent WUXGA display that easily trumps a 1366x768 panel. What we'd really like to see is a modified version of the G50Vt with dual hard drives and a WSXGA+ LCD price between $1400 and $1500.
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JarredWalton - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I chatted a bunch with ASUS on this; there was some confusion so I may have ended up with the wrong conclusion. (Yeah, marketing wasn't positive on the specs, and engineering didn't ever pass on the exact details.) I actually had a paragraph detailing the differences between the 9800M GTS and this supposed 9800M GS. Since I don't have one in my hands, I can't say one way or the other with certainty.The worst case would appear to be clock speeds equal to that of the 8800M GTS (500 core instead of 600 core on the 9800M GTS), which is still going to be a lot faster than these other notebooks. Since it's also limited to 1366x768, gaming performance should be no problem at native res... but there's a lot of headroom left untapped. Certainly, gaming performance won't be lower than the G50V tested here, unless the game happens to be CPU limited.
Enrox - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Take a look at the Gateway P-7811 battery's life: it's about 150 minutes regarless the task (DVD playback, web surfing, H.264 playback).That to me says only one thing: no power management in place.
Is that a Vista issue or a BIOS issue?
JarredWalton - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Oh, the P-7811 is definitely doing *something* - though idle battery life is lower than I'd expect relative to the others. Actually, I think it's more that the P-7811 is doing quite well in other tasks. Remember: 17" 1920x1200 LCD, 7200 RPM HDD, and a 9800M GTS put it at a much higher power envelope than most of the other laptops. Relative to the P-6831 and m15x, the results seem to be right where you'd expect. If only Gateway had implemented Hybrid Power....jonmcc33 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Did you verify that with the Power Saver setting that EIST was working properly? Use CPU-Z or similar to see if the clock speed of the FSB and CPU does change as it should. Check the BIOS settings as well.CU - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Yes it would be interesting to know what the cpu, gpu, fsb, and ram clocks are at when in power saving mode for Vista and OSX.JarredWalton - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
CPU speed drops to a 6X multiplier, so at least that aspect is working. Looking at the voltages (according to CPU-Z), they're all at 1.083V except for the G50V, which runs at 1.338V most of the time. (I'm still trying to figure out what's going on there and will update when I know more.) I'm not as concerned with G50V battery life, though, since it's in a different class of performance and size; it's the U6V and similar notebooks that need to do a lot better.Regarding RAM, GPU, and FSB, the FSB stays locked at the base speed - 1066 MHz on the Centrino 2 notebooks. RAM likewise stays at a set speed, in this case 800 MHz. 2D GPU clocks (according to GPU-Z) are 169 MHz core, 200 MHz (100 base) VRAM on all three of these notebooks. GPU-Z also reports a memory clock of 800 MHz (400 base) for the HP dv5t, which seems wrong - I though the 9600M GT was supposed to be much faster RAM, but apparently not.
JarredWalton - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Update: The G50V was back on "High Performance" mode after rebooting (an issue with some of the ASUS software). Setting it back to "Balanced" or "Power Saver" dropped the CPU voltage to the expected voltage - though still slightly higher than the others at 1.063V.fabarati - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Asus is known for their crappy batterylife in the latest generation. When compared to equal or even better specced laptops, they fall flat on the ground. It's probably because of bad ACPI coding. My F8Sa has worse battery life than my old A8Js, despite having less powerhungry parts. And the A8Js had mediocre batterylife (I reached about 3½ hours, with hardware disabled). I can barely break 2 hours, and that's when I disable hardware.The HP DV5 seems to suffer from the same issue, at least that's the conclusion we came to when it was tested by NBR.
JarredWalton - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
I haven't tested a comprehensive selection of laptops by any means, but if you look at the specs for the various laptops and the resulting Minutes/Whr chart you can see that if this is bad ACPI coding the practice extends far beyond just ASUS and HP. If the MacBook Pro was around 3 or 4 Min/Whr, I'd think maybe it was just some fine tuning that was missing, but it's still literally double what the closest tested Vista laptop managed.The best result I've personally seen on Vista to date is the http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=328...">ASUS U2E, which manages 3.72 Min/Whr with the 86.5 Whr battery. That's a lot closer than the other laptops, but keep in mind that has a U7500 CPU (10W max TDP), X3100 IGP, and an SSD, plus an 11.1" LED LCD.
Another 15.4" laptop I'm currently testing with T7250 and X4500 graphics (plus 4GB RAM, 250GB 5400RPM HDD) manages 4.18 Min/Whr, which is closer to Apple. Still, that's a 50% advantage for the MacBook, so it's not really *that* close. (It gets 204 minutes of battery life in our web surfing test.)
nizanh - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Can't you just install Vista on one of the MacBooks?Sounds to me like the best testing methodology.