Full specs here: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0388513 Since this is rather long I warn you about spelling and grammar Just got this gaming laptop Sunday and I got to say that I was skeptical about some of the important features I was looking for and after testing I was disappointed. I will return it to the store in about a week or a bit more (Microcenter has 15 days return policy on laptops). I really hate returning stuff that I buy but at the same time I will not take lies and corporate BS advertising. First and foremost the price is out of this world! ($1469.99 + 3.5% sales tax = $1521). I honestly was shocked that for this price I didn't get a matching backpack and an ASUS gaming mouse that I seen on a few youtube videos that people received with their G75 laptop. And one reviewer actually said that all G75 models come with those items standard. Audio To main part of what is bothering me about this "Inspiring Innovation, Persistent Perfection" notebook is the audio. It plain sucks and is nowhere to the level of perfection someone would expect from a 1500$ laptop. The subwoofer placement on the bottom left of the laptop makes it sound like the sound is not centered and when I first played music on it I actually thought that one of the speakers was bad. The sub barely produces bass and instead it distorts anything remotely low frequency. The equalizer that is included with the sound driver software has a 60hz setting. WHAT THE HELL FOR? This crappy sub will never even play anything that low. It makes no effect on the sound as I played some music that has bass. The 2 speakers on top of the laptop are equally crappy with very poor reproduction of midrange tones. I spent about 20 minutes playing around with the equalizer and still could not get the quality of audio I'm getting from my 7 year old Toshiba laptop. The ASUS is slightly louder but that loudness comes with distortion and this will not fly with me. I can make my old laptop speakers louder with Winamp equalizer and they will also distort but at least when played below max volume the sound is full, crisp and natural sounding. Graphics Next problem I have is the hype over the video card that is included. Nvidia GTX 670M with 3GB GDDR5 memory. Ok this video card is about the same in performance as my ATI HD5770 I have in my desktop. This is where the lies come in that I mentioned. They give this video card a fairly high model # and the performance is nowhere close to a desktop video card with a GTX 670 model name. According to videocardbenchmark.net site http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php the GTX 670 has a score of 4043 and ranks #2 on the list of all currently tested videocards. The GTX 670M scores 1747 and has a ranking of 66 (as of July 9 2012) So, judging from the windows experience scores, my desktop ATI HD5770 is about the same with benchmark score of 1695 and ranking of 71 and actually the GTX 670M is supposed to be slightly faster but I didn't really notice that with my testing. The GTX 670M roughly compares to a Nvidia desktop model GTX 260. So, I wish manufacturers like Nvidia and AMD would not use the same model #s from desktop boards and just add a M after it and make people think that the performance of their mobile products is comparable to their desktop ones because this is in fact what they are trying to accomplish and keep the prices and expectations up. CPU The 3rd generation I7-3610QM quad core cpu is faster but not by a lot than my desktop cpu (Q9550S). I hoped for a bigger improvement but I was not really disappointed with the cpu speed. During testing of the cpu I also ran it for about 5 minutes on Prime95 small FFT test and noticed the cpu temperature went as high as 81C which I guess is ok considering that this is a laptop and I didnt hear the fan at all and stayed quiet during my testing. Battery Although I didn't really expect a huge life expectancy out of the battery considering that this is a gaming laptop, but just over 2 hours of pure web surfing is a little short. It is possible but unlikely that the battery has not been "broken in" yet and may get slightly better in time. The G75V comes with an 8 cell battery right in the middle of the bottom back of the laptop which is good as it gives a balanced feel when picking up the laptop but if they added a 12 cell battery it would be better and a 16 cell would be great! To me a 8 cell just doesn't cut it especially if the laptop is designed and will be used for gaming while running on battery and I don't think it will last more than an hour while playing games. During my testing of battery life while playing games I got about an hour out of mine but that 1 hour was very painful for me as the processor seems to constantly throttle down to 1ghz during play. This is another thing that is unacceptable in a machine like this. As soon as I plug the power back in the cpu throttling is reduced but still drops down slightly. This laptop has a button right next to the power button that lets you select various power saving modes. In my opinion when I select performance mode it should be performance with no cpu throttling. Today's games rely on a steady stream of cpu cycles to get the best visual effects and smoothness of the game. Well, not with this laptop. Video I made describing the cpu throttling problem is here: http://youtu.be/gZAqzKhgzAc Another video showing Flight Simulator X http://youtu.be/wgdnfQGo2ms Ok, now that I got the negatives out of the way I can say what I liked about it. The screen is simply breathtaking. 17.3 inch full hd with no glare, bright and with accurate color reproduction. Keyboard is white backlit and very comfortable to type on. The entire laptop has a very solid quality feel to it and the 8.7 pounds (advertised) is not a problem to me and if it came with a heavier and higher capacity battery the weight still would not turn me off as I expected a laptop of this size to weigh more than any other laptop. I also like the ability to add a second harddrive/ssd to it and have them run in RAID 0 for added speed. A blu-ray drive would also be a plus and useful with the full hd display but that would make the price go up even more. This laptop also comes with 4 usb2.0/3.0 ports but I haven't tested them and im sure they perform to spec. Final thoughts Asus needs to work out the problems with the sound quality, cpu throttling down while in battery mode and battery life. After all this is a laptop and should have a decent battery life and sound. The price is a bit disappointing considering the problems I encountered. If the things I mentioned are fixed then this laptop would be worth the price.
This site saved my a$$ many times and I wrote the review for another site and figured I let the users here read it too.
I have the similar spec laptop Asus G75VW-DS71 with GTX 660 , as per Audio there are more problem with it as the subwoofer keep on turning itself on even when the earphones or speakers are plugged in, which can only be disabled by uninstalling the via driver.
Open the little cover in the back of the laptop that covers the graphics card fan and remove the stupid metal dust cover thing that doesn't stop dust much anyway. This cover rattles when sound from sub is played. You can also replace the speakers with 3rd Party speakers, I'm currently trialling different speakers for my wife's G75VW-T101S3. Some dudes said they added a piece of cardboard between the grill and subwoofer to reduce the tinniness and buzz. I personally think just replacing them with better quality speakers and sub is the way to go. I'll post back when I find good solution and how to rewire with pics and any gear needed. It's not too hard to swap out internal speakers and many speakers can also be modified, though the original speakers in these laptops are crap and quiet so it's best to modify better quality speakers instead and increase the output. The Alienware has good speakers but is about $1,300 more expensive and the visual design isn't as good (though looks ain't much when you want that much power in a laptop space). Upgrade the Nvidia graphics drivers and always set the laptop to High Performance power profile for gaming or the GTX670 doesn't run at full speed. With recent drivers, you may have to go to a laptop site and download their driver package with modified .inf and that dramatically improves graphics performance. In High Performance power profile the laptop will then run Crysis 2 and BF3 and highest settings without a hitch. If you use headphones or external speakers it's the best value gaming laptop ATM and runs quite darn fast if you have the high end model with 256SSD+1TB, 16GB RAM, i7-3610QM and 3GB 670M.
Thanks bioCor3 but I returned the laptop to the store 1 week after I bought it. It was a nice machine except of the things I mentioned. The solutions you mentioned may have worked but then again I really should not be doing this on a laptop like this. Thanks for the info.
