ASUS X72D/K72DR: Three Cores, No Waiting
by Dustin Sklavos on October 25, 2010 12:01 AM ESTBattery, Noise, and Heat
We'll get this out of the way right now: between having to power a 17.3" screen, an AMD Phenom II tri-core processor, an RS880 Northbridge, an SB850 Southbridge, and the Mobility Radeon HD 5470, the anemic six-cell, 48Whr battery included with the ASUS X72D is hopelessly overmatched.
Given that the X72D is so substantial to begin with, it's difficult to imagine too many situations where you'd want to run it unplugged. That's good, because it isn't going to last that long anyhow: even completely idle and with the wireless off the X72D can't eke out three hours of running time. When tasked with media playback, you'll be lucky to finish a movie. This notebook just wasn't made for running off of the battery.
In order to test noise and heat, we ran 3DMark06 in a continuous loop for an hour with HWMonitor running in the background. We recorded the results with HWMonitor.
The thermals aren't very good, but the X72D seems to be tuned to favor silence. Under load the fan would spin faster and was audible, but it was a fairly quiet whooshing sound and wasn't hugely distracting. Temperatures of the computing surface of the unit are actually perfectly fine under load; some heat does radiate off of the top left side of the keyboard (near the exhaust), but overall the unit at least feels cool under load. Still, this is another place where the increased form factor of the 17.3" chassis could have been better used to manage heat: a peak temperature of 91C on the processor cores may be within spec, but it's still high.
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lammers42 - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Would you guys at Anandtech stop screwing around with 6-cell 48Whr battery laptops that have larger than 14 inch screens. No matter what CPU and GPU combination are used, these laptops are crap and typically don't have over 2.5 hrs of battery life. I think the 6 cell 48Whr batteries have there place in <15.6 in laptops. In 15.6-16 inch laptops a minimum 6-cell 60Whr battery should be used and the jump to 17.3 inch should grant the use of a 9-cell battery.Batteries have battery curves and have different runtimes depending on the load put on the battery. Batteries from different manufactures with the same spec aren't the same, period. Maybe it would help to use a general purpose battery with special connector to connect to the laptops for the battery test life. I don't feel I can trust the relative battery life performance table as it is in its present state. Or just show the power consumed from the wall for the different idle, internet and multimedia testing. I think I would much rather see that and then I would know what battery to order when I purchase the laptop.
I wish the manufacturers wouldn't put the crappy 48Whr batteries in these > 15.6 inch laptops, but you can request them to only send those sizes to you.
lammers42 - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Sorry, I meant to say that you can request the manufacturers to not send you those laptops that exceed 14 inch screens but still have a a 6-cell 48Whr battery or equivalent.JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Many of the laptops we receive don't even have an option for a larger battery. Personally, I'm with you: 6-cell batteries should all be "extended capacity" 63Wh or so models. But we do check wear levels with HWmonitor and our "relative battery life" is at least something more to consider. The fact is, even if you have two laptops with the same specs and the same battery, BIOS tweaks and other power saving utilities can enable one manufacturer to offer superior battery life. ASUS' Power4Gear actually does quite well in that regards, but obviously pairing it up with a discrete-only GPU and a tri-core AMD CPU is far more than a 48Wh battery can handle.lammers42 - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Seriously! I only know of one option out there to buy an AMD laptop with a decent battery (I'm not talking the extended runtime batteries that look like the laptop has a tumor growing out the back). Certain configurations of the DV7 comes with the 9-cell 93Whr battery that supposedly gives 5-7 hours of battery life but details are sketchy at best for the configuration tested. If you guys have a chance request the DV7-4060US and/or DV7-4170US. I'm sure there are a few of us here that would love to see the relative battery life of those laptops!JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
The HP Envy has been on request for months, so don't hold your breath for a DV7 to come our way! LOL. Funny thing is, we can get HP to send us their business laptops, but getting consumer laptops from them is like pulling teeth from a grizzly bear.Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
That's not true. At least the grizzly bear responds. ;)shady28 - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
I have a hard time seeing why this laptop is being used to represent the AMD price / performance line.The K72DR is indeed an $850 laptop at NewEgg.
However, for $679 you can get an Acer with a phenom II x3 850 that's slightly faster, and with a Radeon 5650 GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
And, for $750, you can get an Acer 17.3" laptop with a quad core Phenom II 2.1Ghz with a Radeon 5650 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Clearly the K72DR is just not up to snuff compared to competition within Acer's own line.
I'd say either of the 2 laptops I listed above are a much better representative of what you can get for 650-750 $ using AMD, especially the Quad core AS7552G-6061,