ASUS W90Vp: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870... with CrossFire
by Jarred Walton on May 29, 2009 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Back to the ASUS W90Vp
We've already discussed many of the features found on the ASUS W90Vp. Here's the complete system summary:
| ASUS W90Vp-A1 Specifications | |
| Processor | Core 2 Quad Q9000 (2.00GHz 1066FSB 2x3MB L2) Overclocking to 2.29GHz (1221FSB) |
| Chipset | Intel X38 + ICH10R |
| Memory | 3x2048MB DDR2-800 |
| Graphics | 2 x ATI Mobility Radeon 4870 (CrossFire) |
| Display | 18.4" Color-Shine CCFL Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) |
| Hard Drive | 2 x 320GB 7200RPM 16MB |
| Optical Drive | 8x DVDR/BD-ROM Combo (4x DVDRW) |
| Networking | Realtek Gigabit Ethernet (RTL8168B/8111B PCI-E) Atheros AR928X 802.11n WiFi Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR 56K Modem |
| Audio | 6-Channel Realtek ALC888 HD Audio (5.1 Speakers with Mic/Headphone jacks or Digital out) |
| Battery/Adapter | 12-Cell 97.7Whr 19.5V DC, 11.8A, 230W Power Brick |
| Front Side | None (Speaker grilles) |
| Left Side | Heat Exhaust Two audio jacks (Mic and Headphone/SPDIF out) 1 x USB 2.0 Kensington Lock |
| Right Side | BDROM/DVDR Combo Drive ExpressCard/54 SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro/xD reader WiFi On/Off Switch 1 x Mini FireWire 1 x eSATA 3 x USB 2.0 Optional TV Tuner Input (?) |
| Back Side | 2 x Heat Exhaust 56K Modem Gigabit Ethernet HDMI VGA Power Adapter |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit |
| Dimensions | 17.44" x 12.91" x 2.48" (WxDxH) |
| Weight | 11.44 lbs (with 12-cell battery) |
| Extras | 2.0MP Webcam 102-Key Keyboard with 10-Key 16 additional touch-sensitive multimedia keys Fingerprint Scanner Up to 15% Overclocking (via ASUS Windows utility) Norton Internet Security 2008 |
| Warranty | 2-year standard ASUS Global Limited Warranty (varies by location) 1-year battery pack warranty Razer optical mouse Carrying backpack |
| Price | Starting at ~$2500 online |
Like the recently reviewed MSI GT627, ASUS support overclocking on the W90Vp. You can configure the amount of overclocking from 3% to 15%; honestly, anything less than 10% probably isn't even worth discussing, and we had no instability or other issues setting the maximum 15% overclock. We will include overclocked performance results in our performance rundown. It's good that ASUS includes overclocking, since the base clock speed of the Q9000 is only 2.0GHz. For gaming, the dual graphics cards will almost certainly outpace the CPU. Previously, ASUS offered a version of the W90 with a dual-core processor, and honestly that's a better choice than the Q9000. There are a few multithreaded games, but to date only a few games (Left 4 Dead and Far Cry 2) appear to benefit from having more than two cores.
There are couple other interesting aspects of this notebook. First, check out the chipset: X38 and ICH10R. That's right, ASUS is using a full desktop chipsets on this notebook. Clearly, this is intended far more as a portable desktop replacement as opposed to your typical mobile laptop. It shouldn't be a surprise considering the size and weight, but the choice of chipset may further reduce what should already be poor battery life. The second interesting point is that ASUS provides 6GB of memory, with three SO-DIMM slots. No, this isn't a Core i7 system with triple-channel memory; ASUS just felt getting more than 4GB of memory into their laptop would be useful, and the X38 chipset supports that. We think they should have taken things a step further and include four SO-DIMM slots, but that would have necessitated rearranging a few things.
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buzznut - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
Looky there, I went and missed "bash AMD day"Damn, they're prolly still reeling.
Johnmcl7 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
In the specs for this machine it lists an 8x DVDR drive initially, then refers to it as a blu-ray drive just further down - I assume the first entry should read bd-rom/dvd-r combo.I have to say the pictures are extremely disappointing as the main shots of the laptop are badly underexposed concealing most of the details. I do realise these machines are not easy to get a picture of but normally the pictures in reviews are pretty decent. It would be good to see some pictures with some standard items (DVD cases or something) when the laptop is open to get a better idea of the scale, I think the sleek look makes it look smaller than it is especially given it makes the D901C look small which I didn't think possible.
As for the laptop itself I did consider one of these mainly because the price was good but decided against it due to the size/weight. I had a Dell XPS 2 then M1710 and I think that's really the upper limit to carry around with me. I have an XPS M1730 at the moment and it never leaves the house as combined with its huge powerpack makes it quite a bit bigger and heavier than the M1710, there's no way I would go bigger again.
It's a shame to see the driver situation is so poor when the performance is clearly there, it's not very encouraging for other companies to pick up mobile ATI parts either.
mrbios - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Jarred (or anyone who may purchase this notebook), I have a different Asus laptop that has the same multimedia touchpad, and I did find a way to disable it. Go into the Mouse control panel, go to Device Settings, expand tapping, click on tap zones, and uncheck "enable tap zones".garydale - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Why is it so difficult to get good display drivers for games? The OpenGL interface is well defined so what's the problem with writing a driver for it that game developers can have confidence it will work according to spec.?Is this a case of the hardware manufacturers screwing up with the driver or the game developers trying to get around the API to work directly with the hardware or a bit of both? Frankly, I don't care. If I want to play a game on a computer, it should install and work just like any other piece of software or hardware.
Hopefully AMD/ATI's release of details of their API will help bring stability and performance, at least for Linux games. Now will NVidia follow suit and allow the open source community to build their own drivers to end this proprietary "buggy driver" lunacy?
JarredWalton - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
I believe most of the driver updates are to optimize the way the GPU executes certain code. In theory, the drivers should run all code properly but not optimally. The reality, sadly, is that the "properly" part is only correct about 80% of the time with new titles. Add CrossFire into the mix and that seems to drop down to 50%. If you have a regular dual card CrossFire setup, disabling CrossFire in the CCC often solves compatibility issues, but that's not an option on the drivers I've received for the W90Vp.In the case of Empire: Total War it looked like the drivers were rendering properly on one card but not on the other. If I grabbed a screenshot via the PrintScreen button, everything looked correct, but looking at the screen only the landscaping and sky were always visible and correct. The units, trees, buildings, etc. were only visible about 10% of the frames, which pretty much means you can't play the game.
mbaroud - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
I own one the W90VP-A1.I have been dyingto update the drivers, it sucks running on OUTDATED drivers :(
nubie - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
If these are simply mobile desktop replacements why doesn't somebody get on making a desktop built into the screen already?And I don't mean the hideous monstrosity that is the Dell XP1.
I am all for laptops, but this form factor is silly above 15.4" in my opinion.
(that said, I love the tech, it is very cool.)
Jackattak - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Dunno if you've been asleep for the past two years but just about every major PC manufacturer offers a desktop built-in to the screen nowadays, none of which are "hideous" (strictly my opinion, but I find it hard to find a screen "hideous", and that's essentially all these offerings are is a screen).garydale - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
It's generally cheaper and faster to run multiple desktops in the locations you need than to lug a "desktop replacement" around. Just keep your documents (and other settings) on a USB key or implement an Internet synchronization scheme.The simple fact is that you cannot get anything that can be reasonably called a laptop to match the performance of a desktop. Laptops don't have the space for multiple drives, they can't dissipate heat as well, and they certainly can't accommodate expansion.
To get the same performance of a desktop in a mobile platform, you have to wait for the technology to become available then pay a premium for the privilege. People have been saying laptops are getting near desktop performance for decades. What is actually happening however is the price of admission for an application platform has been decreasing.
You can get a resonable desktop today for what a hard drive would have cost you twenty years ago. However, if you want cutting edge power, you need a desktop or larger.
frozentundra123456 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
The charts are technically labelled incorrectly. I believe for instance the first chart, black bar, means the ratio of nVidia performance to ATI, not percent improvement as it is labelled. Saying "102 percent improvement" actually means that the nVidia solution is twice as fast as the ATI, which from reading the rest of the article appears not to be what the author meant. The rest of the charts are labelled in this way also.