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wook

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Asus G70s

g70s1.jpg

Processor - Core 2 Duo Extreme

Processor Speed - 3.0GHz

RAM - 4Gb DDR2

Hard Drive - 2 X 7200 320 Gb

Optical Drive - Blu-ray combo drive

Graphics hardware - Dual Nvidia Geforce 8700M GT

Diagonal screen size - 17.1 inch

Remote Yes

TV tuner Yes

Operating system - Windows Vista Ultimate

Weight w/battery - 4.79 kg

Wireless LAN - 802.11a/b/g/n

Webcam - 2.0 Mp

The good

Core2 Duo extreme processor

Turbo Extreme over clocking

Dual cooling fans

The extras!!

The bad

GPU Over clocking is limited

The Asus G70 notebook is the flagship of asus fleet. Specifically designed for gamers with an ultra fast CPU and two graphics cards in SLi mode.

It offers a 17-inch, full High definition display (1920 x 1200).

Marketed as having ?Multi Dual-Engine? architecture. Essentially a duplex structure in its major components.

IntelĀ® Core? Duo Processors

Dual graphics engine

Dual hard drive bays

Dual fan systems

wook_sli.jpgwook_hdd.jpgwook_boost.jpg

The model I have contains an Intel Core 2 Extreme processor x9000 and the graphic is provided by two Nvidia GeForce 8700M GT in SLI mode, a BluRay drive and Bluetooth, WLAN and Gigabit Ethernet.

What does this all mean... and how does it actually function as a ?gaming laptop??

Gamers are obviously interested in performance! So, having SLi is a great start. Support for SLi is increasing, so the two 8700m GT 512 Mb (Total of 1 GB DDR3) card capabilities are being catered for. But... and this is a big but... it?s only an 8700m GT.

This card is good. Not fantastic, not bad, only good. What I just can't understand is why not give it more power? Maybe Asus have this as a base unit to get the price down a little. The good point in the G70's SLi setup is having a cooling fan for each of the GPUs. Hitting a peak temperature of 79 Oc (while in turbo extreme over clocked mode) during Crysis assures me that the G70 will not have a warrantee issue any time soon.

The extras!

Dolby Home Theatre - Altec Lansing speakers are built-in and strategically placed at 4 corners of the notebook, a subwoofer for the best 3-D surround effects. This does sound fantastic!

Secondary screen - Displays additional system information: In-coming email and message alerts, memory usage, CPU usage and personalized messages ensures a disruption-free game-play when gaming in full screen mode.

Radio and TV tuner ? Using vista is a breeze. Plug into a cable, media player will search for the channel, and that?s it. Using the remote to watch and even record an HD movie.

It also has all the other features that come on standard systems:

USB x4

sATA x1

firewire x 1

7-in-1 Card Reader

HDMI x1

The G70 features brushed aluminium, and honey comb plastic giving the feel of a stealth fighter. Interactive LED lighting system arrayed strategically placed around the casing of the G70 that is not only attractive but informative as well. For instance, LED lights at the rear of the unit change colour with fan speed, and that on the side of the display can be configured to flash when the CPU is under load. With ASUS Direct Console software, the user can change various features. You can even over clock the CPU. Performance levels can be switched between Standard, Turbo and Turbo Extreme. So this unit is capable of running at 3.6 GHz.

(This function is only capable on vista operating system.)

wook_light.jpg

Performance

Using 178.13 modified drivers from www.laptopvideo2go.com , and resolution of 1280 x 800 the G70s reached a 3Dmark 06 score of 9779

(not over clocked)

Vista performance score

Processor: 5.6

Ram: 5.4

Graphics 5.9

Gaming Gfx: 5.9

HDD: 5.3

Unfortunately the unit was not able to achieve a high stable over clock using rivatuner, ati tool, or even EVGA Precision. NTune was able to over clock the card slightly higher. Still not as much as i would have expected. This is disappointing.

Core Memory Shader

625 - 799 - 1250 - Factory

660 - 830 - 1320 - Over clock

Over all

This unit can play any game at its native resolution and at maximum settings. But for the $2900 (USD) recommended retail price, you could do a lot better in terms of pure gaming performance in a laptop. In saying that the additional features are hard to turn your head at. Especially being able to over clock the CPU. This in itself would cost an extra thousand for a 3.6 GHz compared to a 3.0 GHz core2 duo processor.

If you are after a multimedia machine then this is the one for you. But as a gaming laptop, I would have expected a little more.

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For that price get a Gateway7811FX so close its not even funny and a better video card, and Windows score's are 5.9 in ALL categories except HDD 5.3 Best part price is only $1299.00 on sale Hell that's 1/2 the cost of the Asus!

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a great laptop apart from the choice of graphics card, they had to cut costs somewhere unfortunately they chose the gpu...

a great review though wook!

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yeah she is a good unit. happy with purchase. unfortunate about the gfx but current games are fine.

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  • 5 months later...

The warm feeling I get when someone is thoughtful enough to say thank you for having been helped far outweighs the empty one I get when there's no feedback at all.

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