# Asus G50VT-X5 review plus pics and benches



## Pheatton

About a week ago I sold my Gateway P-6860FX and bought an Asus G50VT-X5 from Bestbuy. My main reason was I wanted something more portable and smaller but was still powerful enough to be used as a gaming notebook for me when I was traveling. I did ALOT of research online and here on OCN. Looking through pages of threads and reviews of what was currently on the market. I ended up looking at the latest Gateway but was just too big and they donâ€™t make a smaller one. So in the end the Asus made more sense.

So once I got the PC and started looking and testing it turned out that it is a very well built notebook. Had all of the features I wanted except built in Bluetooth. So I decided to put together a review with some benchmarks and pictures since there are some people on OCN that are considering picking this one up.

On to the review.

Specs are as follows:

CPU - Intel C2D P7450
Chipset - Intel PM45/ICH9-M
RAM - 4GB DDR2-800
Networking - Realtek RTL8168 and Intel 5100 AGN
Disc Drive - DVD-RW with Lightscribe
HDD - Seagate 7200.3 320GB
Video - nVidia 9800M GS 512MB
Screen - 15.6 WXGA at 1366X768
Full Specs - http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1218044029168

The case for some is not all that attractive. Itâ€™s a black and brown color with a splash/lighting bolt orange. In the middle is a back lit Republic of Gamers logo. Lower is a horizontal light bar and on the sides are two more light bars that can be controlled by a software app. They are either on full time, off full time or flash according to CPU, RAM or fan cycles.

I found that at first I did not really like that color scheme but it has grown on me since then.



























So on to some interesting features. There is a small OLED screen that can display the battery level and things like CPU and RAM usage and notifications for IM apps. The power and other buttons are white LEDS that look very cool. All buttons but the power button are all flush touch sensitive buttons, very cool. Only down side there are now dedicated volume buttons, itâ€™s the FN plus either F10 - F12 buttons. Keyboard is nice with a 10 key pad. Itâ€™s a little small from some but I have small, skinny fingers so itâ€™s fine with me. Touch pad is very cool as itâ€™s surrounded by a white LED ring and is lighter near the scroll side of the pad.














































On of the very cool and useful features is the Express Gate. Itâ€™s an app that allows you to boot a program, which I believe is a small Linux install, which has a web browser, media player, photo manager, chat/IM apps and Skype. I have used it bit here and there and itâ€™s very useful to me. Itâ€™s opened with a touch key that is always on. Could lead to shorter standby battery life but LEDs donâ€™t really use much power.



















The bottom of the notebook is dominated by a large speaker like grill. I first thought it was a speaker but its not. Once I removed the cover it turns out that this is right over the area where the CPU/GPU fan sits. It may have been an intake grill but as some have thought it turned out to raise the temps of other hardware. Some have removed the cover and found that this is the case.



















Under the cover are the guts of the system. Looks like the CPU, chipset and GPU are cooled by the same fan and a mix of heat pipes and heat sinks.



















Off to the bottom left are the HDD bays. Contained is a Seagate 7200.3 320GB drive. It seems like itâ€™s a very good drive and in some case beats the WD Scorpio Black. There are two bays for, what Asus states can total 640GB, two HDD. Only downside is that there is no second HDD holder/caddy. That has to be purchased from Asus.



















Below are some more pictures on the locations of the ports and such.





































I then proceeded to reinstall a version of Windows Vista Premium SP1 64bit. I used a program that copies the OEM windows license then after you install a trial version of the version of Vista you have it inserts that info back into windows and its just like you had typed in your key. Its very cool app and when used as intended, completely legal. I then installed that latest Intel drivers and just the minimum that was needed to run the PC with its in full features enabled.

The PC features an in Windows overclocking feature that in testing worked very well. Itâ€™s called Direct Console 2.0 and it controls the OC features along with the light features and OLED screen.

I ran 3DMark05 and 06. Vantage would not run as it stated that it needed a minimum to 1280X1024 resolution to run. I also ran Crysis, Crysis Warhead, UT3, and Lost Planet. I ran them, where I could, in both DX9 and DX10 versions and in 64bit mode.

Below are the system info screenshots of the different modes for the OC the PC can run.

Normal









Turbo









Turbo Extreme









Now for the fancy bar graphs on the benchmarks










Both Crysis and Warhead were run at 800X600 as the Crysis tool would not run at the default resolution for the LCD screen. Crysis was set to High with no AA and Warhead was set to Gamer with no AA. Basically I just ran the auto setting option in the setup on both games.



















Lost Planet was set all to High with no AA again.










Unreal Tournament was left at its default settings and resolution.










Looks like the OC settings have some affect on the performances numbers. Itâ€™s not much but every bit counts. Iâ€™m not entirely sure what happened to the Lost Planet Turbo runs. I ran it three times and came up with the almost the same numbers. Temps reported by Coretemp were around 50C on both cores in all benchmarks. The GPU was between 72C and 76C with the fan ramping up the 4200RPM.

So there you have it, my first review on OCN. Thanks for looking.


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## Asus Mobile

Very nice! Undervolt it with RMClock!


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## rock3ralex

excellent review! I'm looking at buying this laptop for engineering in college. I took a look at it while in best buy today and really like it but I couldn't pick it up as it was locked down. Can you tell me, is it heavy to transport and what is the battery life on it when just web browsing and gaming on the stock battery?

Thanks


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## Pheatton

Just normal websurfing its about 1:30 to 2 hours. I have not really tested it while gaming on the battery yet. The Asus power utility has some automatic power settings that work very well.


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## burrbit

most of the pictures arent working


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## Juggalo23451

heave you tried it with the modded driver??

Use 182.50Whql
http://www.overclock.net/software-ne...er-laptop.html

or
use 185.68 beta (have it on my Asus G50VT-X5)
http://www.overclock.net/hardware-ne...s-laptops.html


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## Pheatton

Quote:


Originally Posted by *burrbit* 
most of the pictures arent working









Looks like the server removed all my pics from my gallery...









Quote:


Originally Posted by *Juggalo23451* 
heave you tried it with the modded driver??

Use 182.50Whql
http://www.overclock.net/software-ne...er-laptop.html

or
use 185.68 beta (have it on my Asus G50VT-X5)
http://www.overclock.net/hardware-ne...s-laptops.html


I tried to modded driver on my Gateway and it led to all sorts of issues even after a clean Vista install. it always had issues going to sleep and hybernate and then would not shutdown.


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## Juggalo23451

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Pheatton* 
Looks like the server removed all my pics from my gallery...









I tried to modded driver on my Gateway and it led to all sorts of issues even after a clean Vista install. it always had issues going to sleep and hybernate and then would not shutdown.

I am having no problems what so ever on mine and I have had my laptop for about a month now


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## rock3ralex

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Pheatton* 
Just normal websurfing its about 1:30 to 2 hours. I have not really tested it while gaming on the battery yet. The Asus power utility has some automatic power settings that work very well.

Is it really that bad? I thought it got 2 hrs gaming?


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## Pheatton

Im not sure what the exact times are. I was using it with all options set to run full bore to drain the battery after the initial first charge. It has been getting better now. iIs about 2:30 now on full normal power mode with no OCing.

Also pics are now working.


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## rock3ralex

okay, thanks. Can you shut the flashing strobe lights all the way off? I know the Asus ROG doesn't go off but what about the airplane lights.


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## Pheatton

Yeah the side lights can be turned off all the way. Its all run by the Direct Console 2 app.


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## OfficerMac

Damn, I am looking to get a laptop. This ol' gateway I have no really sucks. This one looks amazing. I'll have to go to bestbuy and see if they have one of these to play around with.


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## Pawz2142

If you didn't know already the 9800m GS gpu is easily and safely overclockable to 9800m GTX settings, with some diffrences:

Pipelines64 instead of 112 (GTX)
Core Speed 530 MHz instead of 500 (GTX)
512mb DDR3 instead of 1gb DDR3 (GTX)

My GPU reaches a max of 85C underload with the GTX settings (besides the Core Speed, i left that one at 530 mhz)

Another note: IF you buy from Best Buy you get 1 year limited warrenty from Asus. If you buy from anywhere else you get 1 year limited + 1 year accidental (2 years total)


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## Bonz(TM)

I just bought this laptop last week. After careful research I decided on this instead of Gateway.

I love this laptop. I got it for $719 on Tigerdirect with $74 cash back. Couldn't really beat it. A little heavy and low battery life, but it's a gaming laptop. If someone wants light and battery life then they should get a netbook.

Btw, are those golf clubs in the first picture?


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## Pheatton

Quote:



Originally Posted by *Bonzâ„¢*


I just bought this laptop last week. After careful research I decided on this instead of Gateway.

I love this laptop. I got it for $719 on Tigerdirect with $74 cash back. Couldn't really beat it. A little heavy and low battery life, but it's a gaming laptop. If someone wants light and battery life then they should get a netbook.

Btw, are those golf clubs in the first picture?










Nope shinny new pots and pans hehe.


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## steezy

I just picked up a refurbished one from TigerDirect (Canada). I can put up with the thickness and disgusting cover simply because of the bargain - for the P7450/4GB RAM/Dedi GPU/320GB HDD with room for another simply could not be beaten at that price.

Anyone know where I could get my hands on a 2nd HDD Housing/Holder thing though? Google doesn't seem to be revealing any results, and I just got a bargain on a 250GB 7200rpm Seagate.


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## Pheatton

Only place I have found was on the Asus parts site.

Asus Parts Store


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## garlicman

Hi,

2 questions regarding this great bargain of a laptop:

Can i run an external monitor at a greater resolution than 1366x768 or is there some software/hardware lock on this ?

I have a Dell 1680x1050 LCD display that i would like to use as my primary display for gaming, will i be able to run it at 1680x1050 ?

My main computer right now is a MacBookPro [email protected] 2G RAM with a Mobility X1600 w/256megs running Vista 32 under BootCamp. It runs L4D smoothly at low/medium detail.
I just bought Fallout 3 and even at all the lowest settings it feels sluggish and obviously looks like .

How much of an improvement can i expect from this ASUS laptop over my older MacBook Pro ?

Thanks


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## Bonz(TM)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *garlicman* 
Hi,

2 questions regarding this great bargain of a laptop:

Can i run an external monitor at a greater resolution than 1366x768 or is there some software/hardware lock on this ?

I have a Dell 1680x1050 LCD display that i would like to use as my primary display for gaming, will i be able to run it at 1680x1050 ?

My main computer right now is a MacBookPro [email protected] 2G RAM with a Mobility X1600 w/256megs running Vista 32 under BootCamp. It runs L4D smoothly at low/medium detail.
I just bought Fallout 3 and even at all the lowest settings it feels sluggish and obviously looks like .

How much of an improvement can i expect from this ASUS laptop over my older MacBook Pro ?

Thanks

#1. Yes you can. I run my 1920x1080 monitor over HDMI just fine. Even with the VGA you'll be able to run the external at whatever resolution.

#2. You will see a huge difference in games. The 9800 is pretty similar to a desktop card in performance. It's no 260, but it still makes games look beautiful. I max COD4 and TF2... That's all I play.


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## burrbit

what kind of cpu upgrades can you do to this model?


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## Pheatton

Quote:


Originally Posted by *burrbit* 
what kind of cpu upgrades can you do to this model?

I imagine most of the new 45nm Core 2 Duos..


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## lucaslcf

I just picked up a refurbished one from bestbuy but it didn't arrive yeat. The pictures provided from best buy doesn't really made my mind, I bought more because of the bargain of a P7450/4GB RAM/Dedi GPU/320GB HDD, it simply could not be beaten at that price of U$700.

But after seeing this review and the decent pictures you took, I really symphatize with the cover design, but what really made me impressed were the internal display that shows "republic of gamers", "CPU USAGE", ETC and the lights details.

I hope to have the same good impress with games plays... I'm not fancying to have big results instead of my old PC's, witch had ATI hd4870 1Gb 700/4000Mhz Gddr5. My old 1tb of disk space also will be necessary lack.

Anyway is a potable gamer pc that is making me very excited.


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## zparqy

I've noted that numerous sites state that Asus claims a MAXIMUM of 640gb in harddrive storage in this computer. (2x 320gb).

Is this true? or was the maximum available HD size 320gb when this was released? Is this limitation a BIOS function? and if so, is there a bios upgrade available?

If it IS BIOS related, does that preclude using larger USB external drives?

thanks


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## YannieBoy

I had 2 320's in my system, but one of them failed for some reason then I just got a replacement from a older lappy which worked. I didn't have to mess with anything, computer set it up after reboot.


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## Pheatton

Im not sure if its a BIOS limitation of a HW limitation. Either way I never tried anything bigger than two WD 320Blacks.


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## Leviticus

Hello,

Quick question I have a G50VT-X5 recently replaced my hard-drive and looking to add a second drive to it was wondering if it supports Sata 3.0 or not?

Thank You for your help I can't seem to find anything on Asus's website if it does or not.

--Leviticus


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## Imglidinhere

No. It doesn't support Sata III as it wasn't implemented in laptops until this past year.


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## somerandomnewb

Necro'd. Twice.


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## Valo666

Hi!
By the way, very good review.
Could you pls tell me, where can I download (or better what type) of express gate, because I already tried some, and my notebook refuses all them, it is not working. Please help

Valo


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