ASUS G73SW + SNB: Third Time’s the Charm?
by Jarred Walton on March 4, 2011 12:00 AM ESTG73 Is Still Kicking…
One year later, the G73 is still kicking, but I have to say that I’m ready for something new. Familiarity may not be breeding contempt yet, but that love at first sight feeling is definitely fading. If you purchased the original G73JH, there’s no real reason to upgrade to the G73SW for games. For CPU-intensive applications, Sandy Bridge is still an awesome upgrade from Clarksfield, but I’ve seen other SNB designs that impress me more in some areas. The G73 still has plenty of good aspects, but let’s see some innovation and improved industrial design—as Vivek puts it, every engineer should be required to use a MacBook Pro for a couple months, just so they can get a feel for all the design elements that it gets right.
Obviously, the G73SW isn’t anything like a MacBook Pro, not even the 17” model. The GPU alone is far more powerful than anything Apple has ever shipped in a notebook, and with that power comes a penalty in chassis size. You’re not going to cool a GTX 460M very well in an ultrathin chassis, and you’re really not going to have a quiet-running notebook at heavy loads with such a design. However, that doesn’t mean you have to use a predominantly plastic chassis. On the other hand, you don’t have to go full out with a unibody aluminum chassis either.
I still appreciate plenty of areas of the G73 design, like the keyboard backlighting and the lack of glossy surfaces (outside of the LCD), the good cooling, and the reasonable noise levels. Performance has always been a strong point, pricing is acceptable, and you get a nice selection of extras (a backpack and laser mouse, if you purchase the A1 model we’re reviewing). Still, this is a huge system even by 17.3”-notebook standards, and there are faster options out there where you’ll get more than 30% better performance for a 30% price increase. Until we start seeing truly upgradeable mobile GPUs, notebook gamers are best off spending as much as they can up front; gaming requirements continue to increase every year, and there's still a gulf between the top mobile GPUs and their desktop counterparts.
Looking at the desktop world, we now have $230 GPUs like the GTX 560 Ti that have twice the number of CUDA cores as the 460M, and they’re clocked 21% higher as well. To go along with the potential 142% computational performance increase, you also get 113% more GPU memory bandwidth. Yeah, all of that in a $230 desktop GPU. Shift over to the mobile world, and the cheapest GTX 460M notebook will set you back around $1325. That laptop comes from ASUS as well, the ASUS G53SW. Hopefully we can get one of those in for review next, because on paper that’s a more compelling option (even if you don’t get the mouse and backpack). But the point is, with mainstream desktop GPUs pushing that sort of performance, you can count on more complex games coming out to make use of them. Just like Mafia II and Metro 2033 (and some other titles as well) manage to choke anything less than a 460M at moderately high resolutions, 2012 is going to bring [along with the end of the world] titles that will bring even the GTX 460M to its knees.
Ultimately, with any review we have to ask: is the product worth buying? In the case of the ASUS G73SW, we can certainly answer in the affirmative. Anyone looking for a gaming notebook they can take to LAN parties should be very happy with this purchase, and even if the GTX 460M isn’t the fastest chip on the block, you can look at our Mobile Bench results to see how it still blows away mainstream mobile GPUs like the 425M. (We didn’t show the results here, but we’ve got our Medium 768p gaming scores in Bench.)
I really, really want to check out the G53SW model next, ASUS, because personally 17.3” gaming notebooks are just a bit too bulky for my taste. If you have similar tastes, check back next week for our review of a 15.6” notebook sporting AMD’s latest HD 6970M GPU. It may cost more than the G73SW and G53SW, but it’s also got the performance to back it up! Hopefully the next revision of ASUS’ G5/G7 series can get something similar.
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parthgh - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
" So far, no one has been willing to try NVIDIA’s Optimus Technology with any mobile GPU faster than the GT 435M, although we hear there’s a GT 555M Optimus notebook coming some time in 1H’11."I guess XPS 17 has already launched and has Optimus enabled (apart from the 3D version).
Also the XPS 17 before SB revision had GT 445M with optimus enabled.
JarredWalton - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
Still not faster than 460M... I didn't realize Dell upped the XPS 17 to the GT 555M, though. Interesting, and something I'll try to get them to send me now. Thank goodness they're now doing Optimus on all GPUs!Someone above asked about how they compare in performance, though. 460M has 192 cores at 675MHz with 2500MHz (effective) RAM. 555M has 144 cores at 590MHz with 1800MHz (effective) RAM. Note that 460M uses GDDR5 by default where the 555M goes with DDR3 by default. So the net result is 460M has 52.5% more computational power and 38.9% more memory bandwidth. I'd say GT 555M will be good for medium detail at 1080p, or high detail at 900p (give or take).
Drooosh - Saturday, March 5, 2011 - link
FYI - They won't allow you to get the good 1080P screen with Optimus. For some reason if you get the 1080P screen they force you to have it configured for 3D/120Hz which requires the 555M be enabled full time and thus no Optimus.I would bet that most customers are like me and would prefer Optimus over 3D. If they gave me FHD, 555M, and Optimus, I would by now.
Jarred, do you know of anyone that will have 555M or better switchable graphics, 1080P, and a backlit keyboard in a 15 or 17"? Lenovo or MSI may have thiese soon it appears?
JarredWalton - Saturday, March 5, 2011 - link
Right now, I'm not aware of anything like that. I don't know why Dell insists on doing weird things like killing Optimus support with certain upgrades. Perhaps Optimus doesn't work quite right with 3D at present? Heck, I'd just as soon skip all the 3D notebooks--the 120Hz panel is fine, but 3D just doesn't do anything for me.I've asked my NVIDIA contacts if there are any current/upcoming laptops with your above feature list. I've also asked them why no one appears to be willing to use Optimus with 460M or better. We'll see if they respond with any useful information. :-)
bennyg - Monday, March 7, 2011 - link
I heard rumours it's the way Optimus works sending the data from GPU to onboard gfx, the sheer amount of data pushed from high-end GPU to iGPU saturates that link, so midrange is OK but high-end suffers bigtime performance issuesIt does seem ridiculous that every SB laptop has the hardware to run ridiculous battery life (sans GPU of course) but not the drivers to allow it.
I don't care about Optimus and profiles. Give me a switch or a combo box and that will be better since I'll be in control not some numbskill algorithm. Just give me switching already!!!
strikeback03 - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
In the Futuremark 3DMark Vantage Performance Score table on page 2 you have the wrong MSI laptop highlighted red.In the previous reviews I somehow missed how massive this laptop is, this time I noticed what a small portion of the chassis the 75WHr battery takes.
JarredWalton - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
Thanks - the 3DMark Vantage chart is now correct. Also, I've added two more pictures to the gallery, this time with a tape measure in place. You can see the diagonal of the G73 chassis is about 20 inches (in a 17.3"-screen chassis...), and the Compal SNB unit we looked at in December also has a 17.3" LCD but the chassis is almost an inch smaller on the diagonal (and it's still got a lot of extra room for the large hinge). I'd like to see a 17.3" LCD in a chassis that's no more than 18.5", but I doubt that will happen.NaterGator - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
As a G73SW owner I can absolutely 100% promise you this thing does not have an eSATA port anywhere to be found.Look over the unit they sent you again, but in the production unit I got from Amazon over a month ago there is most assuredly no eSATA. It is the only thing that frustrates me about this laptop, but the USB3.0 port makes up for it.
NaterGator - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
Also, the screen flickering issue is a known bug with the nVidia drivers.Downgrade them to a 265 version and the flickering will stop.
JarredWalton - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
I don't have that flickering problem on any other NVIDIA based laptops, though. Maybe it's localized to the G73SW for some reason? Anyway, you're correct about eSATA. Sorry for the error.