Some questions about my new G53JW-A1....

[Cef_Vil]

Hello to everyone

I just got my G53JW-A1 on Sunday and although I'm happy with the laptop itself, I've encountered some peculiarities that require your insight to be clarified.

-First: It runs hot. I don't know if it's the fact that the regular temperatures over here range from 25 Celsius at night to 35 Celsius at day, or if it's normal for the laptop to run that warm. I'm talking about 50 to 60 Celsius on the CPU and 50 Celsius on the GPU while doing virtually nothing, in Quiet Office Mode or Entertainment Mode.

-Second: It feels sluggish. Maybe it's the Windows 7 Home Premium or the unrequested software that ASUS includes in the laptop, or maybe it's just my imagination. Small programs like Winamp and Office 2007 take a little while to open, Aero is not always smooth, and data transfer rates are not what I expected from a Core i7 machine with 8 GB's of RAM.

-Third: I'd like to know if that "Anti-Theft" thingy is activated by default or if I have to install additional software to get it working.

I will really appreciate any information on these subjects

Thanks in advance

.C.

[xeromist]

What are your temps under load? The heat is a function of ambient temp, load, and fan speed. I would not worry about it unless your load temps are over 80 or 90c.

Sluggish is a kind of subjective word but I will say that anything accessing a laptop HDD is going to be a bit slow. If you want snappier performance then you should consider changing the drive to an SSD.

AFAIK, AT is not offered by default on any model. I think you need additional software but I'm not sure what it is.

[Retired]

Hello xeromist, thanks for your reply, and sorry for the delay of my response, I've been up to the neck with work and unpleasant situations...

For some reason I couldn't log in with my old account, so I decided to make another, if any mod could erase my past account I'd be grateful. Now on with the topic.

-The maximum temps I've noticed are 83C on the CPU and 80C on the GPU while playing Super Street Fighter IV on max and with Turbo Boost enabled, so far it seems that TB is trying to burn the laptop since even low web surfing and office work makes it overclock the CPU up to 2.80 GHz thus raising the temperatures ridiculously for such tasks. I've also noticed that no matter what the load on the cores only goes up to 20% while the voltage kicks up to 45W while doing nothing.

-Sluggish in this context means I get 45 fps in Deus Ex Human Revolution, keyboard lag while playing SSFIV and I have to put the laptop in "High Performance" mode just to work fluently in CorelDraw X3 and Adobe Acrobat 8.

-Haven't checked the Intel AT thing for now, as my top priority is to solve the heat and performance issues I have encountered. Any suggestions on how to improve my laptop's behavior? Should I format and install my Windows Ultimate instead of Home Edition? Or do you think the machine is actually broken and I need to RMA it? Also I'm a bit freaked out by all the reports I've read about the AC pin breaking after a month or so leaving some G53JW laptops inoperable, what are the odds for this to happen to my machine?

I'm sorry if I sound as a paranoid noob, but this is my first laptop in 8 years and it cost me a little fortune, so I'd like to know as much as I can about it and about any thing I can do to make it last as long as it can.

Thanks in advance

.C.

[Chastity]

Those temps are not bad all things considered. The G53JW I had for awhile would run warmer compared to the G7x units. Some games hit 91C on the GPU.

As for sluggish, it's probably the standard mechanical HDDs. My JH and SW here have Momentus XT drives for the OS drive, and are more responsive compared to the G74SX with mechanical drives. I need to pop in a XT in that one eventually. 🙂 I've gotten used to the speeds.

When gaming, you should be using High Performance anyway. 45FPS is sluggish? 🙂 You might just need to kill some processes, like AutoUpdate and Web Storage for example. You don't need them running and accessing the LAN/WiFi while you are gaming. You can also do a DPC Latency check. http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

[grungeboy2]

unsure if it still works or not, but check this out. http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/273276-powermizer-switch-get-most-out...

handy little tool, lets the video card downclock to around 200mhz when i'm at the desktop. card picks right up when something demands it. helped with running hot.

[Retired]

Thanks for your replies guys

Hey Chastity@ASUS I just checked the latency tool you suggested and it says that some drivers are misbehaving and causing drop-outs in real time video streaming. Today I was playing a DVD movie to my class and the video stuttered a couple of times. So maybe the problem comes from the pre-installed stuff the laptop came with.

Yeah, 45 fps is sluggish for me, when I played in my old desktop I almost always got solid 60 fps in many games, I played in 1280*1024, but the gameplay was smooth, at 45 fps I feel the slowdowns and lack of fluidity, specially in shooters. And yeah the old PC had a mechanical drive and never gave me these problems.

With this computer not only I have those dreaded 45 fps in Deus Ex, but also stuttering and mini freezes in SSFIV, and now I've noticed keyboard lag while inputting commands and even while writing mails and stuff in Firefox.

Thanks for the suggestion grungeboy, I'm not really worried about the GPU heat, I know they can take a little bit more of punishment than processors. I'm concerned that the CPU hits so high temps while doing nothing or light gaming such as SSFIV. I'm going to check the tool, however, to use it at the work, since I had to extend the battery life as much as I can.

By the way, now I hear popping coming out of the speakers while I play music... Is the laptop crumbling down on me or what? I've just had it for two weeks and I'm really disappointed on how it has been working.

Any other suggestions guys? Thanks in advance.

.C.

[grungeboy2]

everyone talks down about the mechanical drives, i've used 7200RPM drives for years and never had any trouble. when the SSD drives have decent capacity for a reasonable price i'll probably jump ship. people shouldn't take it that they have to install a SSD drive to get good performance out of their G-Series. the SSD should enhance the experience, not fix problems you have.

the mini freezes, etc, sound like a driver or software issue.

try updating your video drivers. make sure to uninstall the old ones.

winamp is garbage, that is probably most of your problem. winamp was a great program back in 2001. you have something causing the performance issues, just to be sure, check and make sure you're not set in entertainment mode or some such.

personally i never noticed the power4gear program give me any additional time on the battery. a CPU clocked at half speed is going to take twice as long to accomplish the same task. using this reasoning, i just leave mine on high performance all the time.

who knows. maybe you got a bad one. sounds like funky software tho. i'd look at winamp, it tends to install bloatware.

[Chastity]

I would first uninstall the following:

AsusUpdate, Web Storage, and Trend Micro suite. I've seen these apps cause pauses, latency, crashes, and so forth. Besides, I maintain a handy driver update page. 🙂

[Retired]

Hey, hello to everyone and thanks for your replies.

@grungeboy. I agree with you on the SSD affair, it seems to be a common recommendation and I'm sure it comes with the best of the intentions, but it shouldn't solve any problems with a laptop that should work perfectly or at least reasonably good considering it costs a thousand dollars.

I don't know if I can leave Winamp... I've been using it for 10 years, and never had problems with it, for now I only have Windows Media Player installed and I really don't want to use it.... Any suggestions on a good non-intrusive music player?

I just updated the sound drivers and it seems that the speaker popping issues has subdued or at least it's less noticeable.

Same goes for the latency issues, disabling the wireless driver seems to diminish the 5k+ peaks of latency. Minor peaks of let's say 2k still occur while playing SSFIV, but they don't seem to cripple the game's performance.

Hey Chastity@ASUS, I just uninstalled Trend Micro Suite, AsusUpdate and other bloatware I found sapping CPU. The only one I couldn't get rid of is Webstorage. As I try to uninstall it the thing says the files are locked. Any advice on how to eliminate it?

Also do you know if I can format the laptop, install another Windows and -if that fails- still take it to service with ASUS? Will any change in the OS void my warranty or something?

I checked your driver page, as a matter of fact I downloaded the sound drivers and ATK packages from there. It's a very useful contribution to the community, thank you.

P.D.

I'm still having minor lag issues with the keyboard and it's getting on my nerves, anybody has any suggestions or can tell me of a fix? Thanks guys!

.C.

[Chastity]

1) Foobar2000 makes a great lightweight audio player, and was developed to be a Winamp replacement. http://www.foobar2000.org (I'm also on the beta team for that) You can also pop in to #foobar2000 on Freenode.

2) You can try uninstalling WebStorage from Safe Mode.

3) You can install a fresh OS. It will not void your warranty. If you ever RMA it, just be aware that they may want to do a factory restore, with your consent of course. In fact a fresh OS install usually fixes aberrant Windows behavior.

Just to compare, my JH has a max latency of 250. Just another reason why I swapped out the Atheros WiFi for the Intel 6300. Before you do that, update your Wifi, and LAN drivers.