I won't lie, this thing is a monster. There is simply no way around it. If you plan on lugging this thing around frequently, I'd seriously recommend either physical training, or a good Laptop Backpack. I do both, and the Slappa Matrix allows this behemoth to fit, although quite snugly. I will say, I was surprised at how small the power brick was, I expected a significantly larger brick. Those of you worried about the power supply being proportionately large shouldn't worry too much. I would imagine the reduction in size is due to the Kepler based GPU, which requires less power than its Fermi GPU cousins (more on that later).
The build quality and design are quite optimal and are what I expect from a premium ROG branded laptop. Everything seems to be well mounted, or fastened down and that glue or adhesive use is at a relative minimum compared to other laptops. This machine look like it will stand up well in the long-haul as well as moderate abuse, but in the end, only time will tell. I will say, I am not as worried about wear and tear with the G75 as I was with my previous M17X R3. My previous R3 had a considerable amount of glue and adhesive and over time, due to the heat from the CPU/GPU (and despite significantly lower temps after re-pasting) several parts of the trim began to peel and pull away, not what I had expected from a "premium," brand laptop. Like I said, time will tell and I plan on updating this review with any problems I come across.
One of two Major Complaints I have against the Laptop is the lack of End-User customization or maintenance. Without completely tearing the G75 apart, you are limited to swapping out hard drives (there are two easily accesible bays), and RAM. You could tear it down to install an mSata SSD, change the wireless card, or access the other two RAM slots, but you would only do so knowing that your warranty is void and that you know exactly what you are doing. On the other side of the coin, I understand why the motherboard and the layout is the way it is. With that said, in my opinion, the percentage of performance gained from upgrading most likely does not merit the cost of a CPU or GPU upgrade.
My Other major complaint rests with windows 8 and the lack of recovery options. I knew going into this the 1TB HDD was a measly 5400 RPM. Completely unsatisfactory for any gaming laptop. I had pulled my 512GB SSD from my previous R3 and planned to use that and install/restore Windows 8. This was a unique learning experience to say the least. After exhausting many options, from cloning partitions to tweaking partition tables using GParted from a Linux Live USB, I even considered ordering the OS disc from ASUS, but I ended up installing Windows 7 on the SSD and using the drivers from the G75VW. Thus far, I have had no problems.
I am pleased with the keyboard and the spacious trackpad. I think the white lighting is a good, neutral touch. I like the idea of different color lighting schemes, but don't believe it to be at all necessary. The keyboard itself is nice to type on (for a laptop), and shows very little flex towards the center. The trackpad is quite large and accommodates multi-touch as well, making for quick zoom-in and out functions. With Windows 8 this feature seemed almost a requirement without a touchscreen. The wrist-rest is stout and feels as if it were made of a high grade ABS type plastic. There is also a soft-touch type texture applied and seems as if it would hold up well in the long-haul to wear and tear.
Performance and thermal testing. I am impressed with the performance of thislaptop (for the time being). Not only can the 3630QM hit 3.4GHz on one core during turbo, but it can maintain load at more than optimal temperatures. Same goes for the GTX 670MX. Even while gaming for extended periods, the fans are nearly inaudible. Borderlands 2 with Ultra Settings, I get an average of 49 FPS. Skyrim on Ultra I see an average of 40 FPS. Hitman Absolution I can only take it to high settings and my frames are generally 34 FPS. In Far Cry 3, I usually see 46 FPS with high settings. All are played in 1080p using the Nvidia 314.07 Drivers. During stress testing, The GPU's temperature maxed out at 68C in furmark for thirty minutes, while the CPU maxed out with 82C in Prime95 for thirty minutes. While gaming, I have not seen higher than 62C on the GPU, and 73C on the CPU. Personally, i'd like to see temperatures after re-pasting the thermal compound, but I don't plan on doing that for several months as I'd like to keep my warranty.
Despite the bulkiness of the G75VX, I appreciate the trade-off received in performance and cooler temperatures. It is also nice to see the new Kepler based 670MX. It may not be a 675MX or 680M, but I understand the compromise of speed, energy efficiency and temperature. Not to mention I need some reason to go back to my desktop every so often. As of now, I highly recommend the G75VX over an Alienware or Clevo-based mobile gaming platform.
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Pros:fast Fast FAST! For the price, its really hard to beat the specs of this machine. The i7's and the factory 8 gigs of ram make this machine a screamer.
Build quality is excellent. I cant find any build defects whatsoever.
Keyboard is quite nice to use and is good quality. Keys aren't exaclty what i would consider high quality, but for a laptop I have no complaints
Large multi-touch trackpad. Having multi-touch in Windows 8 makes for a MUCH better experience than a standard trackpad.
GTX670MX is an excellent GFX card. It should run most modern games for you, although some will be need to be tuned down a bit. I played the demo of Mass Effect 3 and it looked brilliant. Also, being Kepler based it stay much cooler and saves on energy than some of its counterparts.
Excellent ventilation. I play SWTOR for hours on end (not the most demanding game) and it barely warms up. Laptop stays cool to the touch and very little heat coming from the exhaust.
Dual Hard Drive SATAIII bays. It comes standard with a 1TB 5400rpm Hard drive, but its nice to have the spare slot for additional storage/SSD boot drive.
Cons:
Size. This isn't really a con to me but I thought I would list it for potential buyers. This is no small laptop. I use this as more of a desktop replacement so it works well for me. If you plan on traveling a lot I would probably something smaller and lighter.
Standard 1TB 5400rpm Hard Drive. To me this is an odd choice by ASUS. A very high performing machine hindered by a slow drive. Do yourself a favor and replace it with an SSD and move this drive to the 2nd bay for storage.
No blu-ray drive. This isn't really a con for me but I thought I would list it. You really wouldn't want to be toting this thing around watching movies anyway
No OS discs included. Why is this becoming so rare? If you want to re-install Windows 8 to a different drive you'll have to order an OS disc from ASUS or find someone with a Windows 8 disc (Key is stored on the motherboard so it will auto detect for you)
Wrap Up:
All in all this is an excellent laptop. It performs very well out of the box. If you want to make this thing even better for a little extra cash, replace the standard 1TB 5400rpm with a SSD and move the 1tb to the other bay. Re-install windows to the SSD and this machine boots in less than 8 seconds. Also to future proof a bit (or for bragging rights), install 2 x 4gb ram sticks in the 2 open slots on the bottom of the computer to 16 gigs total. As of today, you can get a 64Gb SSD for about 80 bucks and 2x4GB Ram for about 60.
Feel free to comment with questions!
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Hey everyone!I have this gamer for about 90 days now. I did not buy it here since this version seems to have the worst hard drive one can put in a laptop that otherwise got the power to match a 1GB desktop GTX 650Ti or so !!! Pixel & texture fill rates are even higher than 650Ti, when OC'd.
Now, let me tell you about how much OC one can do on it :D
As most know by now Kepler GPUs have a core limit that won't let you clock more than +135MHz on laptops, without doing modifications that will void the warranty or may harm your hardware if you don't know what you're doing. Anyway, the core on 670MX is good enough to play all the latest stuff in 1080p on Ultra and even go ahead and turn on MSAA or FXAA it's not a surprise when you see that the chip is a GK104, which is also the chip that powers 675MX/680M/MX as well as desktop 660/Ti, 670 & 680 :)
The only "downfall", if you will, would be the memory bus (192 bit) and the clock frequency the memory runs on 1400MHz is low, even 670M ran @ 1500MHz.
Considering this I have to mention that if your GPUs ASIC quality is 80% and up, like mine is, you'll be able to max the memory clocks in MSi Afterburner @ +1000MHz !!!
The sweetest thing about this is that 670MX seems to embrace that crazy 60% memory OC and DOMINATE any game I tried @ only 2-3*C over the stock clock temps. The highest temperature I got while playing 2 hours is 65*C !!!
OK, enough about the graphics for now :D
Let's take a look @ the sound.
Sound is supplied by a Realtek HD Audio.
No more playing BF3 with headphones and having sound coming both from speakers and headphones simultaneously like my older G75VW with VIA HD sound card did.......I loved it by it was kind of an annoying issue, especially when you have a hot chick sleeping in the room and she does not like gaming sounds and she decides to leave after that, not cool :D
The sound is a lot more crisp and focused and it has a lot of options that will give you a surround sound-like quality on the stock speakers and theater-like sound with a HDTV. I use a 24" 1080p Toshiba TV and together they just KILL IT!
One small sound issue is the instance when you plug or unplug audio-in or -out, like headphones or a mic from the laptop and you have your Windows taskbar set to "auto hide". Sometimes it will lock it in "visible" position preventing it from "hiding". Anyway, it can be resolved by simply plugging/unplugging again this will make it hide properly. In the end I remember having the same on a Win7 Asus K53SV-A1, which also used the same sound card it's more of an Windows issue than Realtek HD problem.
The hard drive it came with is a 7200rpm 750GB Seagate Momentus XT. It goes for about $125-150 or so right here on Amazon and is pretty fast for a mechanical drive.
My older VW came with the non-XT version of this HDD and I'm happy to say this one is visibly faster....1080p BF3 gameplay playback recorded with Fraps would cause lag on the Momentus, the XT is yet to choke :D
I do use an OCZ Vertex 4 SSD with it for gaming only, Win8 is on the Seagate XT, it makes games near seamless fps drops are caused by the GPU.
My model is a G75VX-RH71 and comes with 12GB of Hyundai Hynix memory, which is pretty cheap but I do have 16GB Kingston Hyper X RAM and plan to put it in anyday now (voiding the warranty if I do it too rough, damn those G75s are tight inside :D). Honestly, this gamer doesn't need that much RAM though I have it from my VW as it does everything @ thunder speed already.
The processor used in this Asus is a Intel Core i7 3630QM an entry level Ivy Bridge Quad Core which is more than you'll ever need. I edit around 50-100GB of raw/uncompressed 1080p video a week and this processor, does it ~10-15% quicker than 3610QM did.
In my opinion it's the best CPU choice, since all the 37xx/38xxQM and 3940XM are way overpriced and will make this Asus cost as much as an damn Alienware, while delivering just few more "horses". Not to mention most today's laptop components will be outdated next year and you gonna be stuck with an older GPU, while your CPU has enough power till 2014.... makes no sense.
This laptop is a great buy today and will sell with ease when you're ready for the next one believe me, I've sold 2 of them by now and it never took more than a week to get them sold.
The fps is just wonderful on this bad boy in any game I threw at it.
Like I said before you can turn all the bells & whistles in them and get high fps.
Battlefield 3 all ultra, 1080p, 2xMSAA 50-80fps, with Fraps 35-70fps, though I turn MSAA off when recording;
NFS:Most Wanted You'll never go below 60fps maxed-out, period;
GTA4 + over 60 high-poly car mods + ICEnhancer v2.1 with High-End PC config.ini file all very high, shadows medium, draw distance 50 the fps is 30-45;
When recording this game all GPUs I had: GTS 360M, GT 540M, GTX 660M & now GTX 670MX never worked @ 100% core engagement, so when recording the fps might go as low as 15fps and as high as 35fps;
I never tried this game without mods but I'm sure you can put all settings on max and still get like 50fps with ease......the car/graphic mods are what's causing the drops.
Some of the things I feel are worth mentioning too is the fact that even with Win8 on an HDD, this Asus takes about 10seconds to go from being off to asking for your password.
The next thing is the presence of Thunderbolt outlet. I never used it myself, but I remember my G75VW having the same outlet in the exact same place and those who said the VW comes without Thuderbolt and complained about it. Well, here all of you "complainers" will finally be satisfied as well it's OFFICIAL this time, the VX has it and it works perfect, I checked it this time :)
Well, that's it for now.....I think the laptop is a great buy, the $1500 amount here seems a bit pricey for what you get (8GB RAM/5400rpm HDD), but that's not my business everyone should do their own research before buying and considering that retailers like BestBuy are just getting them in stock for the first time might explain the price as well.
I'll do an update in 90 days to let everyone interested know if there are any issues that need addressing, but from my experience with AsusTek I can almost be sure there won't be.
Thanks for reading and I hope this review helps y'all to make a decision.
Peace.
Honest reviews on ASUS G75VX G75VX-BHI7N09 17.3-Inch Laptop
PROS: Really nice HEAVY Laptop. Let's be clear. This is not to be hauled around on a daily basis. This is a desktop replacement for sure. Even with the slow 5400RPM drive, the system flies. I will most likely upgrade it to MAX the ram and put the most capacity SSD drive I can afford, in addition to a faster, additional hard drive.I do not care for games. I want computing power for graphics and business and this does the trick so far.
Man this thing is big..Did I mention how big it is? Think...COFFEE Table Book!
So here is my goal. Use my iPad4 during the day, and this thing at night for the heavy work.
Cons: Slow 5400RPM Drive. But that is minor at best. I am sure they leave this drive in here to hit the $1500.00 Price point. Understandable as ASUS probably figured us nerds would toss it and put something else in...
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After a lot of consideration I finally decided to go with this laptop because of the price for the cpu and gpu combo.I'm pretty happy with my decision despite the poor performance from the 5200rpm hard drive,i knew I should have sprung for an ssd and plan to soon,though it is upsetting it didn't come with any recovery software so installing a new hard drive will require an installation disk.I've already jumped the hurdles of installing windows 7 with a 7200 rpm drive I had which can be a headache if you don't research before you dive right into it lol. anywho before I start bashing windows 8 i'll do a like/dislike listLikes:
bright vibrant display HD
cool simple design almost like a Lamborghini hood very solid
great performance plays my games smoothly at high settings
speakers sound pretty good but I prefer headphones so not a good judge of that
fairly easy access to 2 hard drive bays and 2 extra memory slots
Dislikes:
Matte screen I've owned a matte screen before and I don't recall it having this much texture almost looks dirty annoys me
Wifi seems to have problems connecting at the right speeds research suggests they haven't sorted out the drivers for the qualcom cards yet
keyboard chicklet I think they call it idk but too flat hard to feel for the key I want to press without looking but maybe that's just me
and last but not least the harddrive is painfully slow (by todays standards yees I remember windows 95) installing and loading games or anything else for that matter lol
not much else I can add all I do is play games and watch youtube on it so if that's what you do I highly recommend this laptop just not the windows 8 which isn't really all that bad just annoying and unnecessary
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