Mobile Ivy Bridge and ASUS N56VM Preview
by Jarred Walton on April 23, 2012 12:02 PM ESTThe LCD: One of the Better Offerings
There are a few things we need to reiterate with the LCD before we run the numbers. First, this is a good panel from LG—it’s the LP156WF1 (A1). You get a matte surface, 1080p resolution, decent color gamut (exceeding the sRGB color space), and a maximum brightness that can certainly be used outdoors. That’s all great, but there’s a catch: we don’t know if this panel will actually ship on all, some, or none of the N56VM models. We hope it’s the first option, but most likely it will be the second, and we’ll be very unhappy if the 1080p panel gets pulled in favor of a cheaper 1366x768 display. So while we’ll present the numbers below, just make sure you check on the panel resolution if nothing else before purchasing a retail N56VM laptop. With that out of the way, here’s how the LG Philips display compares to other LCDs.
Overall, this is a well balanced LCD for a 15.6” laptop. It can get very bright, which is always a plus for laptops that might be used outside or on public transportation, the contrast is good, and the colors are good as well. The AU Optronics B156HW01 v4 is still a better LCD in some regards, with a higher color gamut and better post-calibration colors, but we wouldn’t complain about using the LP156WF1.
Viewing angles aren’t quite as good as the AUO display either, but outside of IPS, PLS, or *VA panels you simply won’t get excellent vertical viewing angles. And there’s the rub: the IPS display used in the Sony VAIO SE and HP Envy 15 has great viewing angles, but color gamut is a bit low and that results in colors that aren’t quite as good as a high-end TN panel, at least in theory. The problem is that TN panels get color shift unless you’re in a narrow viewing arc, so ultimately we prefer the wide viewing angles of IPS even if it means slightly lower scores elsewhere.
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JarredWalton - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
Temperature is related to the amount of cooling and the speed of the fans. For the N56NV, it runs very quiet -- I don't have numbers, but it never got really loud and I'd guess it maxes out at around 35dB. As for temperatures, I just did some load testing to see what sort of temperatures we get. The i7-3720QM hits 86-89C on the four cores with various stress tests.Is that hot? Sure. But again, you can't compare temperatures in a vacuum; the Sony VAIO SE reaches similar temperatures on a dual-core SNB CPU, but the fan in the VAIO is much, much louder than the N56VM. ASUS should probably bump the fan speed up a notch, IMO, but it's one of the quietest laptops I've tested under load.
GDSquared - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
I'm certainly no expert, but if Intel made it so that the integrated GPU could ALSO supplement a discrete GPU, every gamer on the planet would want one.Surely there are some functions that could be off-loaded to an integrated GPU and thereby free up discrete GPU resources?
Failing that, NVidia could at the very least toss a gazillion dollars Intel's way to let the integrated GPU handle Physx!
Zink - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
Even AMD hybrid crossfire doesn't work well. It would probably be a driver disaster.JarredWalton - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
I think you mean that NVIDIA would want a bunch of money from Intel in order to let them license PhysX for their IGP (assuming it could handle the workload, which I'm not at all sure it could!) PhysX currently needs something around the level of GTX 460 before it's really useful and won't seriously drop performance. As much as HD 4000 is an improvement over HD 3000, GTX 460 is still about five times more compute and shader performance.Zink - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
Even AMD hybrid crossfire doesn't really bring much benefit. It would probably be a huge driver fiasco.A5 - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
It would also be slower and draw slightly more power.Angengkiat - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
Hi Jarred,Can u pls help us to verify that the notebook is supporting triple display(1 internal, 2 external) output since it is using hm77 chipset thanks!
Regards
EK
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
Hi Angengkiat,I just checked and this laptop does not support triple displays. You can connect two external displays and disable the internal display, but it appears ASUS did not include the necessary third TMDS transmitter or whatever.
Angengkiat - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - link
Thanks for your reply! :)Angengkiat - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - link
I wonder if this inapplicable to all ivy bridge notebook (or hm77-powered ones) cos my Vaio Z with nvidia gt325 graphics can't support dual output..:(