ASUS G74SX: Noteworthy Updates to ASUS' G7 Series
by Jarred Walton on October 6, 2011 12:00 AM ESTSystem Temperatures and Noise Levels
One area where I’ve praised the ASUS G73 in the past is their thermals and noise levels. The G74SX continues that reputation, providing an extremely quiet notebook even during lengthy gaming sessions. Idle noise levels fail to register above the ~30dB noise floor of my testing equipment and environment, and under maximum load the G74SX still only hits 37.3dB. Of course, noise is only half the equation—is ASUS just running their fans at low RPMs to keep things quiet while letting the internal components roast? Here’s a chart showing maximum temperatures as reported by HWMonitor after several hours of running high load tasks (Cinebench, x264 encoding, gaming, 3DMark looping, and even 3DMark looping while Cinebench renders in the background).
Compared to the noise created by Clevo gaming notebooks and other offerings like MSI’s GT680R, the ASUS G7 series delivers the goods in cooling and keeping quiet. In our stress testing, the CPU maxed out at a comfortable 76C, while the GTX 560M laughs as it fans itself lightly with a 65C core temperature. That makes the CPU temperatures roughly the same as the G73, while GPU temperatures have dropped 10C—apparently the reworking of the internals paid off handsomely.
I do have a concern over whether the G74SX can handle extreme environments—like say a soldier wants to pack one of these over to the Middle East during the summer months. To see if the fan speeds normally experienced are the maximum ASUS supports or if the system just isn’t getting hot enough to ramp up the RPMs, I put my hand over the rear vent while running 3DMark06. Naturally, temperatures started to climb, but unfortunately I can’t say the same for the fan RPMs. Noise levels remained consistent throughout the approximately 10 minute test run, and the GPU did manage to get up to 75C according to HWMonitor. That’s still 8C below what Dustin measured on the Alienware M18x, but it was painfully hot on my arm/hand. (Honestly, I’m surprised the GPU and CPU didn’t get any hotter!) The final score also dropped slightly (to 15241), but I’m not sure if that was a decrease caused by heat or if the new (beta) drivers are to blame.
While the above scenario may not be a fair test, I do wish ASUS had at least one higher fan speed available, and with a maximum load of Cinebench + 3DMark06 there did appear to be some throttling going on—again, though, only when I covered the exhaust vent, which isn’t something I’d recommend doing. The lack of a higher (and noisier) fan speed may also be why ASUS limits the G74SX to the GTX 560M. The GTX 570M and GTX 580M would likely need better cooling, and ASUS may not be willing to sacrifice noise levels in order to support such GPUs.
Update: A reader pointed out a potential CPU throttling issue in the comments, and I was able to replicate the throttling. The throttling so far required the use of Furmark along with a heavily threaded CPU workload, at which point the CPU clock drops to 800MHz and stays there until Furmark is halted (or the CPU load is removed). The temperatures are not a problem, and without using Furmark I have not been able to cause CPU throttling, but the potential is at least there. If anyone has other specific workloads not involving Furmarm (or a similar utility, e.g. MSI Kombustor), please let me know and I will investigate further.
Still a Good LCD
The G73 notebook had a good LCD, with a high contrast and reasonable color. My one complaint was that even at maximum intensity, the backlight wasn’t as bright as I would like. With the G74SX, ASUS appears to have taken that criticism to heart, as the maximum brightness is nearly double that of its predecessor.
Contrast is excellent at nearly 1000:1, and the maximum white level of 289 nits is a big step up from the ~150 nits of the G73 series. Given the change in characteristics, it’s no surprise that the LCD panel used in the G74SX is different this round, coming from Chimei Innolux (instead of HannStar). The model is N173HGE-L21, and it appears that our contrast ratio result is better than the advertised 500:1. Backlight intensity is up, and we also note that color gamut is up, with a slight (not generally noticeable) improvement in color accuracy as well. Without calibration, the panel has a decidedly bluish cast, but that’s common among LED backlit panels. Overall, I definitely appreciate the changes made to the LCD panel; the previous version was good, but the new version matches or improves on it in virtually every way.
We’re still dealing with a TN panel, so viewing angles aren’t perfect, but they’re about as good as you can expect from the technology. I still wish the notebook people would start using IPS panels in laptops—they’re putting them in $400 tablets after all, so it can’t be that hard to fit one into the budget of a $1500+ notebook, can it? Then again, supply and demand create a self-perpetuating cycle, so as demand dries up so does supply, resulting in higher prices for the remaining supply, which segues back into lowered demand, etc. I’d love to see that trend reverse and go the other way.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
AMD's mobile GPUs tend to hit higher temperatures on the high-end in my experience, so that may be part of the equation. Obviously, we don't get to keep these systems long-term, so unfortunately I can't say how any of these will hold up after six months or a year of use. On the plus side, if you do change your thermal paste out, you can use something better that won't need to be replaced a second time.Coup27 - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
Am I the only one who is confused by the single USB3 port? I am assuming they used a controller such as NEC which supports two ports, so why did they only use 1?Wolfpup - Friday, October 7, 2011 - link
Yeah, no Intel chipsets support USB 3.0 until next year (I guess it's finally coming next year).Can't remember what chip it uses, but it's worked fine for me (the port is blue, so you can tell the difference).
I'd guess maybe it's harder to wire it up to two ports, or maybe they didn't want to reduce the available ports to only 2 if you're not using Windows 7 (or don't have the drivers installed).
Like the port doesn't work until you get the drivers on there (hopefully Windows 8, or whatever they call 6.2 will just support it out of the box).
I've got a Tripp Lite USB 3.0 hub which seems to work well, and my two external USB 3.0 drives (that I happened to already have) hooked in to that.
I love USB 3.0 so far! I mean 2.0 gets the job done for me, but of course maxes out around 25MB/s-ish, while the same drive under 3.0 seemed to be averaging 95MB/s-ish (and sometimes even higher), which is not something I'll complain about!
hrbngr - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
Jarred,I have read you mentioning your RSI issues in several articles. The MS keyboard is a nice option, but you really owe it to yourself to try out a kinesis ergo keyboard:
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage_pro.htm
It has a USB connection and comes w/a foot pedal that is usually programmed to be the shift key, it only needs a separate numeric keypad--the built in one is kind of clunky--if you use that a lot. I'm not sure I could live w/out mine. Individual key wells and a focus on using both thumbs for the shift/alt/control/tab keys vs using your pinky really work--and I didn't take as long to get used to it as I thought I would.
Great laptop review as btw. However I think that I will wait for the next gen chipset as the on-board video seems to be a substantial upgrade, and when used in Optimus mode, would be good for most all work but heavy gaming.
666 - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
Those horrendously overpriced weird keyboardlike things are not selling that well, are they? Perhaps it's the color? :)hrbngr - Friday, October 7, 2011 - link
666,I suppose the white color is a little off-putting, but I did buy the black usb model! :-) They are very overpriced, but there is no other keyboard on the market that come close to it in terms of comfort--especially through the use off the foot pedal for the "shift" key.
Wolfpup - Friday, October 7, 2011 - link
And I really like it. I agree with everything in the review except the (continued) obsession with switchable graphics. A big factor in my purchase of the G74 over other models is that it DOESN'T use switchable graphics. No driver weirdness. No reduced performance. If I'm buying something mid range or high end and it's got a GPU, I want to use the GPU. Power gating and whatnot to get power levels down further would be fine, but I'm not compromising on compatibility or performance to get some extra battery life, even if I used the battery, which I never have on a notebook.I find the G74 very portable too, though the bag they included didn't fit it well, and most don't. Targus' "XL" bag works pretty well, and is pretty decent build quality (if not LL Bean quality).
I've found everything in the review (save for the Optimus stuff...) to be dead on. The performance is great. The keyboard's remarkable for a notebook. (And I love finally having a numberpad!) Physically it SEEMS similar to my Macbook Air keyboard, but the buttons on the Air are much more "mushy" and don't have as much travel as the G74 keyboard does.
The cooling's awesome, the noise level is awesome, just as the review says. The screen's great by notebook standards too-looks great, great viewing angles and contrast, etc.). I normally leave it on minimum brightness (and half the time use a 24" external monitor) but I love having the headroom to crank it up if I need to!
Obviously I'd have loved a GTX 570 or 580, but the 560 is getting it done for me, and probably will for a long time, so...that's fine. Mine (the A1 model) comes with 3GB instead of 1.5GB, though I guess that doesn't affect performance today? Hurray for Windows and good hardware...I was running Modern Warfare 2 on my external screen, while leaving Outlook 2010 running on my internal display, all just working flawlessly!
RAM access seems super easy compared with any other notebook I've seen (there's a bit more space than normal, and of course 4 DIMM slots). My only complaint with access is I wish the cable for the second hard drive had a better mechanism attaching it to the motherboard. If you swap drives as I did, I wouldn't disconnect the cable from the board, just disconnect it from the drive. Otherwise that all went smoothly.
My A1 shipped with two Seagate Momentus 7200/16MB drives, and I stuck a 300GB Intel 320 in as the main drive, which has been a great combo. I stuck Steam stuff on the second drive, as well as all my shows from my Tivo, etc., while most of my programs are on the first drive. (The Seagate Momentus XT is a nice compromise if you don't want to spend a crazy amount on an SSD as the boot drive...honestly to me there feels like a bigger gap between normal drives and the Momentus XT than between the XT and SSDs...so the $550ish I spend on my SSD isn't REALLY worth it, I just wanted to do it!)
Anyway, so far my G74's just been a pleasure to use. Normal Nvidia.com drivers installed with no hacks or weirdness. Nothing's gone wrong. All the hardware's nice, and fast, etc.
aguilpa1 - Friday, October 7, 2011 - link
This thing is huge and uses the same tired old 560, so sad. I don't see how this is news or can be considered an update.Siorus - Friday, October 7, 2011 - link
Jarred, have they fixed the throttling issue that they've had since the G73 came out yet?I bought a G73 for work a few months ago, because I needed a mobile CAD workstation RIGHT (bleep)ING YESTERDAY and that was the closest I could get locally. 2630QM or a 2720QM or something, and a GTX460m. While setting it up, I found that if you run furmark and prime95 at the same time, the CPU throttles down to 800MHz and stays there. It's not a heat issue; temperatures stay well under control (60s-70s*C); I did some googling and found people reporting performance problems in games because of it.
So I ran out and bought a G74 since the guy that needed it was going on a trip and he needed a machine the next day (it's great when people don't tell you these things until the last minute). The G74 (same CPU, 560m) has the same exact issue.
I guess some HP laptop had the same problem and HP released a BIOS update to fix it. As far as I know, ASUS has not yet seen fit to actually fix or stop selling a fundamentally broken machine.
I'm frankly disgusted with the whole episode; I've used ASUS boards almost exclusively both at work and at home for years (since the demise of Abit), and unless this is addressed, I, for one, will never buy another ASUS product again.
JarredWalton - Saturday, October 8, 2011 - link
I just spent the last couple of hours trying to replicate the throttling issue, without using Furmark. I have been unable to do so. With Furmark however, running any heavily threaded load at the same time will result in almost immediate throttling of the CPU clock, as you mention.The problem I have here is that Furmark is a well-known "power virus". Both AMD and NVIDIA have already essentially prevented it from running at maximum load to the point where it will ruin hardware (or at least they have tried). I have not found any other graphics program (without including Furmark derivatives like MSI Kombustor) that will generate a similar load on a GPU. As such, it's difficult for me to ding a laptop for throttling while running what is essentially a load that you cannot replicate without using a synthetic utility.
If you can give me some real-world scenario where throttling results (e.g. running a particular game), I'll be happy to look into it. But it needs to be an actual game (or game + heavily threaded application load). I'll put a note on the power/temp page at least warning of the throttling potential, but until I can replicate it elsewhere I won't lose any sleep over Furmark.