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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Frallan - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
I bought an old ASUS gaming lappy with turbo and the 6800GT in it it has served for a long time now and has been demoted to girlfriend computer now. So Im in the market for a new gaming lappy. BUT when spending that much money I want to have decent performance.Therefore I will wait until there is a good sandy brige / GPU combo is out there. Id like it to come from ASUS bc of the good experience Ive had with the old Lappy but if this is what they will have then they\re out of the game.
BR
/F
jcandle - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
"Contenders like the MSI GT680R (going for $1475 online) offer nearly identical specs"Hey Jarred, how is that a contender? The MSI is a 15 and the Asus is a 17. I have no idea why but bigger in gaming notebooks generally translates to more expensive. Perhaps manufacturers are betting gamers place value on tonnage.
JarredWalton - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
It's a gaming notebook, therefore it's a contender. The ASUS G53SW is also in the rink, along with Clevo P150HM and P170HM. I'm also a bit surprised that there are essentially equivalent spec notebooks that are smaller and cost less; that's usually not the case. Perhaps the high contrast HannStar LCD is adding more to the total than I think?jcandle - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
That's exactly my point. Its not an apples to apples comparison because Asus does have the G53SW that essentially the same machine with 1 less HDD with a much lower price point resolving the pricing issue you were so lamenting. You can't compare a 17" machine and says its more expensive than a 15" when similar offering from companies like Dell with Alienware are doing exactly the same thing.JarredWalton - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
The MSI still supports two HDDs, though, which means the only difference is the overall design elements and the LCD size. The LCD should be a wash, really (both are 1080p, so maybe $25-$50 difference at most). ASUS has the keyboard backlighting and better thermals. Do those three items add up to a nearly $300 price difference? I don't think so.If you go with the ASUS G53SW-XR1 and compare that to the MSI, you still have to factor in the single HDD. I'm also a bit concerned that ASUS might be selling some B2 stepping chipsets with a single HDD, but I don't know for sure if that's the case. Will the Cougar Point bug affect the DVDR or eSATA down the line, or if you add a second HDD/SSD will that be a problem? Hopefully I'm wrong and they're not selling any B2 chipsets in the G53/73 chassis.
Anyway, I've edited the text slightly to clarify that I'm looking at all similar performance gaming notebooks, not necessarily just "all 17.3-inch heavyweight contenders". :-)
jcandle - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
Don't get me wrong I'm backing you up on the point that "essentially equivalent spec notebooks that are smaller and cost less" Maybe there should be some investigating to find out why manufacturers are simply bumping up the form factor and asking for a non-proportional $300 price difference.mattwco - Saturday, March 5, 2011 - link
When stock levels come back, there's an -XR1 variant that has one HDD and a DVD-RW for $1400. It may have a lesser warranty as well.If you're comparing the G73SW to other laptops, please note that there's more than one G73SW. BTW, the 3D version is also coming back in stock at ~$1900.
mattwco - Saturday, March 5, 2011 - link
Jarred mentioned the XR1 version above. Several other variants are available at different price points. The -B3 has a better warranty than the -A1.Example, not company recommendation:
http://pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=product&...
Also, the laptops with the fixed chipset are explicitly labeled so on the laptop and on the box.
http://www.asus.com/News.aspx?N_ID=Bdmf9rXuqU29SRs...
piroroadkill - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
8GB is thoroughly pointless, as is a quad core.I'd much rather have a higher clocked dual core for gaming... 4GB RAM is just fine..
... and mechanical disks? One SSD, one Mechanical disk is the correct way.
piroroadkill - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
I should note, on my dual/quad comment, I meant that a higher clocked dual core would be a better tradeoff for performance/power use in the vast majority of games. Obviously a high clocked quad is the best of all worlds.