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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nubie - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Well. . .If there was a PCI-e standard for mobile, then maybe you could choose your graphics and the laptops would have to work properly with standard drivers?
What if you used DisplayPort for the interface to the display? Then you could plug in any graphics chip and it would work with the standard drivers.
You would of course need "thermal" stages, where you had a cap on the amount of power that it could dissipate, but if you wanted to set your PC on a fan and cut out a vent you could move up.
I think that a standard needs to be set already. There is no excuse for making a handful of extra or different pins, or form factors off by a few millimeters just so that you can't build your own system or upgrade it.
I would hope that as time progresses you could put a faster chip on a smaller more advanced process into an older laptop, or just choose the exact graphics you want (IE less powerful) in a system with the processing power you need.
JarredWalton - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Unfortunately, the biggest reason for a lack of unified mobile GPU standards is that OEMs along with ATI and NVIDIA like to compete in a variety of ways. Look at Apple and imagine trying to tell them they their laptops need to conform to a standard layout.It *could* happen, and for higher performance laptops with discrete GPUs like the W90Vp, that would be ideal. In fact, the GPU modules in the W90 look very similar to the GPU modules from NVIDIA. The problem is, no one wants to do the work to make sure upgraded GPUs would work -- plus you need to worry about having not just a standardized form factor, but standardized heatsinks/fans.
Ultimately, a standardized notebook form factor would probably lose more customers than it would gain. Everyone would complain about the "boring design and aesthetics", and the number of new bugs/problems we'd see would probably skyrocket. But hey, maybe someone will prove me wrong on this and make the idea work....
Goty - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Wait, NVIDIA managed to release drivers on all platforms simultaneously ONCE and suddenly they have a unified driver model? I'd have to wait and see if that trend continues down the road, but I'm not holding my breath.There's also the issue that a large number of notebooks simply won't accept the drivers directly from NVIDIA.
JarredWalton - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
NVIDIA previously had a mobile driver program where they committed to quarterly updates, and they delivered on that three times (though the first wasn't quite "quarterly"). The drivers started out several months behind the desktop releases, and now we have drivers released on all platforms twice (185.81 and then the final 185.85) - though granted they're mostly the same thing.As far as laptops where the NVIDIA drivers won't work, are they in the "unsupported" list? They've worked on every laptop I've tried, which ranged from 8600M to 9500M to 8800M SLI to 9800M. What laptops specifically don't work or have problems? Or are these problems caused by old and cluttered Windows installs where malware or something else gets in the way?
If NVIDIA doesn't continue to release unified drivers, we'll certainly point it out, but at the same time they've already strongly committed to minimum quarterly updates. That's more than anyone else has done for mobile graphics.
rbfowler9lfc - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Really impressive battery life. You can watch a 1080p movie on the road, as long as it doesn't last longer than 1h. Bah!