Asus G75VX After a week of use my review.

[bignazpwns]

Lets kick this off by finding out what the G75VX is. We know its a laptop but what is it? Well its a Gaming laptop and Asus would like you to think that this is a high end gaming laptop. Well only 1/2 of that is right. It is a gaming laptop but very far from high end. These systems can be broke down into the fallowing.

Entry Gaming systems. Single GPU', Limited upgrades and the GPU will always fall into the lower to mid end of GPU's out.

Mid End. These will have more upgrades open and will come with a single high end GPU.

High End. These systems feature the most advanced upgrades and will let you put more and do more in/to them then the rest. These will have 2 of the top flag ship cards in SLI or Crossfire.

So the G75VX is a entry gaming laptop and there is nothing wrong with that. But Asus would like you to think that it can divide by 0 and is the best of the best.


Overall the G75's look nice.....But thats about it. They are very plain when you compare them to other systems. Want to run a subwoofer? To bad no optical port or subwoofer out like on every other gaming laptop. Macro keys? Nope, Extra MSATA ports? Nope unless you ditch the wifi. Only 2 slots for a harddrive or ssd unless you lose the Optical drive and even then that drive does not support SATAIII or Raid. My MX18 can not only take a MSATA SSD but i can stack upto 3 SSD's in it and put another on in the optical bay and raid the 3 together. However the G75VX does get a thunderbolt port what is very nice as it opens up the ability to use EGPU's giving the system a little more life by using a desktop GPU.

Display.

Matt. displays are nice however the picture quality looks like crap. Gaming systems should have glossy displays everything looks much better on a glossy unless you start looking unto the very highend IPS displays and even then they dont seem to pop as much as a glossy. Glare has never been a issue for me and i feel gaming laptops should have displays that offer the best picture quality. No sence in cranking up the settings to see the fine detail when it just looks like crap because of the display. Also people have complained about white lines in the display but this unit does not have them. Viewing angles are pretty good and what you would expect from a non IPS display nothing here to go crazy over.

Cooling.

Ok the G series myth is that the cooling is the best around. Its not. Every high end gaming laptop i have used has had far better cooling. Bigger heat pipes, more heat pipes or copper fins for the heatsink. The G75's cooling is good and above par but far from the best. I would of liked to see larger heat pipes used and at least 3 on the GPU. But the Temps on the i7 3630QM and GTX 670mx were all very good but if you put a 55w cpu and a high end GPU with that cooling it will show you how good the cooling system on other laptops that use these components really is.


Battery.

It works but you wont be gaming on it but then again very few systems can do this. Really wish they would of went with a 12c pack but oh well you gotta bring the cost down some how.

Wifi

My unit has a braudcom that works pretty good. I would of prefered a real 2X2 card or somthing full speed because the 65mbs N kinda sucks i dont know why they could not give a gaming system a gaming card with a 150 or 300mbs card. But it gets the job done but if you are running a 300mbs network and fios like my self then you will want to swap that out asap.

Keybord.

Asus really failed on this. No macro keys and the back light is a joke. Very dim low control over lighting and its only white. My Series 7 is easily 3 times brighter. I mean its so dim its kinda almost useless and out of every system i ever used this is the bottom in terms of back light.

Touch pad.

I really like the buttons. The touch pad size is great and tracking is good. Pinch zoom and all that works great. Useless since gamers will be using a mouse but if your not using the mouse they did a good job on the touch pad.

Sound

Crap. Really it sounds like crap. You would expect much more from this and a $599 HP system i have here with a subwoofer not only has more base but it is better overall sound and gets louder. If you adjust the settings you can get it to sound ok but its still crap. If you like deacent sound you better get a nice set of cans but just a heads up the headphone port wont push a really good set how they should. But again why would they put that kind of audophile port on a gaming system? But its a fail across the sound range but a nice set of cans to me is a requirement for this laptop.

GPU.

The GTX 670MX is very nice. Runs cool clocks high if you know what you are doing packs 3gigs of vram and when overclocked it can easily catch upto a GTX 680m. Stock i tested this card in a 25m raid in wow with everything on Ultra MSAA at 8 and at stock clocks the card did tend to dip into the lower 20's in some fights. Slight oc and it gets the card to keep the fps int he mid 30's so this is a very capable card and with wow maxed out at 1920X1080 i was only using a hair over 2gb of vram. Really Asus its about time you diteched the sad GTX660m and GTX 670m and get a real card in the system. I would of loved to see the GTX 675MX in it but i;ll take the 670MX.

CPU.

Its a i7, Its a 3630QM not much more i can say. Lock the multi to turbo and let it go.

PSU.

They made it thinner and its still the same specs as the old one and the one i been using does not get to hot during use. Anyone who has used a gaming laptop psu knows that come can get very hot.


Overall the price tag on this system was $1250. And that buys you

i7 3630QM
GTX 670MX
8 gigs of samsung DDR3 1600 ram
DVD multi drive
1tb 5,300 rpm drive

Honestly if you look you can still find better systems for the same price. But if you like the looks of the G75's then this is not all that bad of a price. It is much easyer to give this system a look for $1250 then the VW. The thunderbolt port and the upgraded GPU and CPU make it worth to atleast look at and just not pass it up for another brand.

Would i advise anyone to buy this system? No. Its still missing some key points for me to give this system the thumbs up. If they did some minor improvements then i could very easily give this system the thumbs up and earn a spot as the $1300 system i advise people to buy. The 17inch gaming laptop market is not small. This system is very unimpressive when you look at the competition. But if you are buying a system locally from a Best Buy and you will only buy one in person not order one online and you do not have a place like Frys around you then the G75VX will be the best system you can get for $1300 new. Also i will point out that another reason i can not give this the $1300 spot if because the lack of support from Asus and the large number of issues the G75's have had as well as the large number of systems sent in for repair only to return with the same issues. I tell people not to expect a warranty from Asus and they are buying it as is. I also tell them o take any warranty the store offers as that will be the easiest and fastest way to fix it.


Links to temp logs running 3DMArk 2013. Please note the overclock was 800 on the core the program was reading the freq. wrong. Also the temp reading were accurate this was confirmed via a temp probe installed on the gpu. The bottom panel was reinstalled with the probe installed and ran on sitting on a table. CPU was also locked at 3.3ghz.

Stock

http://www.2shared.com/document/A8NmjM0H/GPUZ3DMSTOCK.html

Overclocked 800/2500

http://www.2shared.com/document/T9hBjo4H/GPUZ3DMARKOC.html


My final thoughts are this. The G75 is the 6cyl Camaro or Mustang of the computer world. Yeah it can beat the focus's and Cobalts but it is just a 6cyl and it will get spanked by a real car. Looks are not always everything. They do play a key role in the system but to what point really? I mean right now the way i see Asus's G series is the Apple Macbook pro's of the gaming laptop world. They look good but lack the power, ports and options and the fact is if Asus really baleaved that their cooling system was the best they would have the bios unlocked and be putting their money where their mouth is. I mean the ROG mobo's have a ton of options. What i baleave is they know they over hyped the living crap out of the system and limit the option to keep it looking good in reviews and on paper. The ROG logo on the laptop is a joke it should just be replaced with a Apple logo because this system is locked down.

Overall i give it a 7/10 in the $1000 to $1300 category

[User_n]

bignazpwns wrote:


CPU.

Its a i7, Its a 3630QM not much more i can say...... Lock the multi to turbo and let it go.

bold... how do you do this? what does it mean

thanks
EDIT: I would also say that, I am not a fanboy of anything. I was once (3 years ago) a proud owner of alienware after which I concluded the price I paid for it was not worthy although it was claim to be high end.
I own now G75vx, and literally there ain't no game it would not spin at it's highest settings. For example Max Payne 3 being one of these games. It runs completely maxed out, and we all know rockstar games are primarily made for consoles, when they transfer game to PC usually one can expect plenty bugs. Even with that VX is quite able to push it @ 60 FPS at it's highest (MSAA @ off thou).
Saying that may I add that Max Payne 3 looks like something we would call next Gen graphics as does BF or at least close to. I do believe that most today rigs not being able to push the game at it's max is really not the hardware but their unoptimized engines.
Only game that is giving hell to this laptop I found is Batman AC. Very High + Tessellation on - FPS @ 20! But I came to realize that in action I do not even notice this tessellation as I really do not care about how does the bark on the tree looks like... or rust on the fence... Game looks very decent all at Very High even without Tessellation and can be played locked at 60 FPS.
If I was not so much on the move doing job that I do, I would have never gone for a laptop when it comes to gaming.
Ultimately I understand what OP tried to say, it is not a high end lap definitely NOT and if Asus claims that this is "high end" (althou never saw such claim) then they are wrong and I agree with that, but it does very well what it was designed for, and that means gaming. Also I am satisfied with the performance that I got from G75VX. It is definitely not the best but it is worth the money spent on it. Besides Screen which I definitely a crappiest I've ever seen... however in the gaming I do not take notice of these things.

[DRAKON]

@bignazpwns: I was always wondering why people use "fanboy" when they try to argue. Is that some kind of real argument? Please if you want to pretend being objective stop using such phrases.

Now you say that Alienware warranty is great. They come to your house and fix everything. Now would they do that in Bulgaria also? Cause if they don't then this warranty service example means nothing to me. From there on if could be the same or even worse than ASUS for me. Also keep in mind that according to real statistics people that are unhappy share their story a lot more than people that are satisfied and to be honest I read a lot about problems with Alienware. With that said we can argue a lot if the Alienware warranty worth more than ASUS one. Now I don't defend ASUS in any way (also I'm one of their biggest critics when it comes to customer relations). Just stating different point of view.

Also keep in mind that not everybody in the world lives in America so this leads to totally different perspective. In Bulgaria the only real options we have for gaming laptop is ASUS RoG or Dell Alienware. Razer Blade, Sager, MSI are not even sold here. Yes we can order them from somewhere else but it costs more (laptop price + shipping + country taxes) and the warranty is always an issue. Also price wise the Alienware costs about twice as much as the RoG. If that was the case would you have the same opinion to what is worth and what is not? I doubt so.