ASUS G74SX: Noteworthy Updates to ASUS' G7 Series
by Jarred Walton on October 6, 2011 12:00 AM ESTGaming Performance: Good for 1080p Gaming
The GTX 560M is clocked 15% higher on the cores, but memory bandwidth remains the same so we should see a spread of up to ~10%. Driver differences may also play a role, but generally speaking the gaming performance of the GTX 460M was already good for 1080p high quality gaming, and the GTX 560M continues that trend with moderate improvements in performance. Even compared to the older ASUS G73JW, the G74SX isn’t a major step up, so if you’re running the older iteration you can probably hold off upgrading for a couple more cycles.
Medium Quality Gaming
High Quality Gaming
Ultra Quality Gaming
Medium quality gaming obviously doesn’t tax the GTX 560M all that much, and even at 1080p we see that results are generally higher than what the next step down (GT 555M) can manage at 768p. Toss in results from the GT 540M (Dell XPS 15) and we can see just how wide the gulf is between “mainstream” mobile gaming GPUs and “high-end” offerings. Really, if you want to play modern games on a laptop, the GT 540M should be your bare minimum GPU, and it’s only good for 768p and ~medium settings; if you want to play at 1080p, the GTX 560M is what you’ll want.
Looking at our eight titles (with a couple more in Mobile Bench), the G74SX can handle 1080p and our Medium settings in every single title while breaking 30FPS, and eight of the ten games break 60FPS. Move to 1080p and our High settings and nearly all of the games still remain above 30FPS, Metro 2033 being the one exception, but only one title (DiRT 2) can actually break 60FPS. When we turn on antialiasing, we clearly hit the limits of what the GTX 560M can handle. In our Ultra charts, half of the games still break 30FPS, but Mafia II, Metro, STALKER, and StarCraft II fall well short of the mark. You’ll want to monitor your use of antialiasing, and personally I find it too much for the G74SX at 1080p in the majority of titles; average frame rates may be reasonable, but 4xAA often introduces periodic stalls where you drop into the teens or even single digit frame rates, and I’d much rather sacrifice visual fidelity than deal with periodic choppiness.
One other interesting item in the above charts is the comparison of the G74SX with the Toshiba Qosmio. Toshiba employs Optimus Technology, but their laptop also felt a bit less optimized for performance, and it was running older NVIDIA drivers. How much each of those elements accounts for the gaming results is difficult to say, but while we see equal performance in some of the results (BFBC2 Medium, L4D2 High/Ultra, Mafia II Ultra, ME2, Metro Med/High, STALKER Med/High, and SC2 High/Ultra), there are also a few areas where the Qosmio is substantially slower. There’s a 20~25% gap in BFBC2 High and D2 Med/Ultra, and a 5~15% gap in BFBC2 Ultra, D2 High, L4D2 Med, Mafia2 Med/High, STALKER Ultra (unplayable though), and SC2 Med. We also see at least one instance (Metro Ultra) where the Qosmio comes in 73% faster (though it’s completely unplayable at <20FPS, regardless). Clearly, there are some differences in how the two notebooks perform, despite having nearly identical hardware (outside of Optimus support).
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seapeople - Friday, October 7, 2011 - link
Don't say things like that, because soon we'll be hearing from the "I have 32GB of RAM and it's not enough for my super duper special application load" crowd.JojoKracko - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
He is saying 8GB because the 16GB is useless for the rest of the computer's specs. It is just a waste. Cheap marketing poop.DanNeely - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
The table at the start of the review indicates a HannStar panel, the LCD page says it's a Chimei Innolux.Joehettinger - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
I have a G73, and slapped a WD 128 GB SSD in it, the only problem I had was the lack of brackets and the weak chip-set limited me to 150 Mb transfers from the drive. It's good to see that they upgraded the chip-set so that the SSD can run at full speed.Also, the little rubber foot pads came off the first week or two. Anyone else have that problem? Did ASUS come up with a better way to mount the foot pads.
I'm also voting for the 16:10, I would love to have more vertical space.
And finally, A USB 3.0 port ... Outstanding!
andrewcooke - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
is there any site that provides a simple overview of the different asus models and their specs? the asus site is a real mess and doesn't explain anything unless you look in detail at each model. thanks.Wolfpup - Friday, October 7, 2011 - link
Not that I know of, but there's not that much variation. Basically the biggest change is the Best Buy model "only" has a 128-bit memory interface for the video RAM rather than the 192-bit interface on the other models (but it's also cheapest).Besides that you've got some variation in whether there's 1 or 2 drives (and thus a second drive bracket and cable), Blu Ray, and apperently this A2 model "only" has 1.5GB video RAM instead of 3GB like on most. (The ones with 2GB you know have a 128-bit memory interface because 192-bit ends up needing either 1.5 or 3GB to do that.)
Obviously Blu Ray is a must have, and I wanted the kit for the second hard drive, so the A1 model worked well for me, though frankly even the Best Buy model's a good deal, relative to a lot of other systems.
andrewcooke - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
hey, thanks for the reply, but i didn't mean just for this model, but for all asus laptops. i live outside the usa so need to select from info on the net (and then quickly buy something when i travel there). cheers.JojoKracko - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Search for G74 pdfI came across a pdf once that listed all of the specs for the many, many world wide variations of G74s. I think it was some Montreal computer shop, but it was in English.
Death666Angel - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
If I were in the market for such a notebook (read: desktop replacement with gaming capabilities), this would probably be it. Nicely balanced components, good looks, priced adequately.Paedric - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
I'm the owner of an original g73jh with an amd 5870, and there are several long term issue with.First, amd drivers cause screens of death, asus recommend the stock drivers.
That'd be fine if the latest version wasn't nearly 2 years old.
A common issue is the thermal paste of the gpu.
After some time, it needs to be changed, otherwise the gpu idles at about 80C and get as hot as 110C, before the system shuts down.
I don't know if the g series is still having those issues since it's not the same gpu anymore, but it has kinda ruined an awsome laptop for me.