ASUS G51Jx, G53Jw, G73Jw or possible other?

humbe

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Jun 22, 2007
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Hi.. I'm pondering what laptop to buy. Thought I'd ask here to see if someone had some ideas or experiences with the computers I'm thinking about.

I just bought Civilization V and noticed it was very slow on my computer. Thought I'd upgrade my old computer, such that I'll get an up to date computer for me to use, and let my not so old computer be available for girlfriend and visitors that I may LAN with. My current old computer is below minimum specs for my games now.

Seeing that there now exist nice desktop replacement options, and that I'm getting a bit tired of building myself and handling stuff that was supposed to be compatible, getting such a laptop sounds like a good option.

I've looked at the ASUS G73 Jw which looks great. Running cool with low noise from what I read, and my best bet for getting a high quality, stable computer which is my first priorities. Sadly, norwegian distributors don't seem to give me any configuration options, so I have to choose among only different setups available in norway or so. Meaning, no bluray option, no SSD option, no 8 GB memory option, etc, unless I fix it myself afterwards. Though I like the looks of the G73Jw it is horrible bulky. Most of the times I'll probably be using external monitor/keyboard/mouse anyways, so no need for a huge screen.

Looked into G53Jw as an option, which initially looked like exactly what I want. The same, only smaller. But from the measurements given it looks like the G53Jw is actually almost as big, just with a smaller screen. It's size is more comparable to other 17" laptops than to other 15" laptops.

That lead me to the G51Jx. But from what I read, this one may have noice/heating issues. It looks less bulky, and still have more than enough specs for me, but I'm a bit afraid it won't be as stable as it is running hot. A minor issue is that it doesn't have an extra harddrive bay, so getting an SDD I'd have to throw away the old disk rather than utilize it for extra storage, but that's a small price to pay for portability.

So then I'm thinking back to the G73. Heating issues sounds scary, and if I'm going to have a huge bulky laptop anyways, I can just as well go for the G73 as with a computer with almost same size, just smaller screen.

Any input appreciated :wahoo:

1. What is your budget?
Not so worried about budget. More worried about getting value for money. I can pay a lot if I think I'm getting a perfect fit that will stand the test of time for many years, but if I don't feel like that I'd rather get something with decent price/performance ratio and rather upgrade earlier next time.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
I'd like it to be fairly small, but avoid performance/heating/noise issues. Seems I need at least 15" laptop in order to have enough juice for games. And even they seem to have problems with heat, or are very bulky in order to dissipate heat.

3. What screen resolution do you want?
I'll use a 1920x1200 external monitor mostly, but that shouldn't be a problem no matter what internal resolution is. All resolutions will probably do, but it doesn't look like the full HD resolution laptops add much to the price, so I can't see any downside of going for that. Unless that is, I'd have to set resolution down in order to play games with decent performance, and they look bad when not played in native resolution.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
It's a bonus if it's a bit portable. So I can weekly take it into living room, and take it on some vacations. At least vacations I'm not taking a plane to get to. Would be great if it was small enough to take on a plane too, to use on the plane, but that doesn't seem doable with decent gaming performance too.

5. How much battery life do you need?
Battery life would be great. But it doesn't look like any of the computers looking like a decent desktop gamer replacement has battery life to speak of. As long as there aren't enough battery for a 3-4 hour session, all I'll need is 5 minutes in order to move the laptop to another outlet.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?

Civilization V, Starcraft II, Diablo III. Maybe a MORPG. Dislike first person stuff. Mostly like 2D strategy games, but for some reason they refuse to make them 2D anymore. Even Civilization takes a lot of power now. Grmpf. Don't mind playing on low/medium graphics settings as long as I can play on high resolution, but if I'm to expect to be able to keep the laptop for at least 3 years before getting a new one, it should likely drag my current games around easy for it to be able to play a new game in 2-3 years time.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)

No tasks worth mentioning from a laptop requirement point of view. If roleplaying/strategy games still had an option for using cheap 2D graphics, I'd get one of those light 13.3" laptops with 6+ hours of battery time.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Not much. Got a NAS at home for storage of data. But for some reason OS, games and application are bloated behind recognition nowadays, so some space is needed for that. A decent size SSD would be great I think, but sadly distributors in Norway seems to refuse to let people customize anything, so I'd have to replace HDD myself and reinstall OS if I wanted one. A hybrid drive as comes in the G73Jw might be good for me though, if it manages to move all the most accessed files into the memory cache part, without blowing the cache too often. Not tested one myself.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Sadly, I live in Norway, and all ASUS resellers seems to sell 1-2 versions of each model. So choice of what to get is thus sadly limited, but I see no other way than to just use a random net shop like komplett.no or similar to buy one of the few models offered. There are good customer guarantuees and stuff in Norway, so sceptic about buying from abroad.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
The longer the better. A lot of hassle to exchange it. Though if I don't find a good solution, I'd rather go for cheap and not so long than expensive, hopefully long, but not what I wanted, so it's going to be short time anyways.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?

None at all I think. Unless there's still copy protection crap requiring optical drive for game to work. I'll still have a desktop if I want to burn DVDs, from my NAS storing my data. A bluray player would be cool, but I don't need it that bad, and it seems noone is selling one with it in Norway.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.

I prefer ASUS because of personal good experience with their products. My priority is quality, stability, power consumption, noise, heat. I'd thus rather use well tested products than bleeding edge stuff. Not impressed with Dell customer support. Though to be fair I've never talked to customer support of other firms.

13. What country do you live in?
Norway

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
A built in 3G modem to be online anywhere would be cool, but only available on business PCs as far as I can tell.
 

humbe

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Jun 22, 2007
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The alienware computers look cool. After some digging I found out that Dell in Norway actually sells them and you can configure them..

However, speccing one like the G53/73, the price is around 20000 NOK (where G73Jw is 12000 NOK). In addition, if I wanted to use the configurability to have SDD disk instead, I'd have to add another 4000 NOK, which is 3x the price I can buy an SDD for in the shop. Deducting cost for the HDD I'd not need, I'd assume the upgrade price should be something like 500 NOK max.

In addition, searching for reviews of it, all I find is a youtube review and reports of stuff that hasn't worked for people, which seems to break with my main goal of having a troublefree laptop.

As noone else have had suggestions I think I'm going to buy the G73Jw.
 

lucarade

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Nov 8, 2010
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I agree, The MSI Gx640-260 is the laptop I bought myself, which for a gaming laptop has great battery life and portability (about 3.5 hrs, 6.3 pounds) and it is a 15 inch. Its performance and specs are not as good as the Asus G73 and G53, but it can still perform all the games you would play in high settings, and you dont seem to be concerned whether its high settings or max settings.
The resolution is 1680 x 1050, and its a 16 : 10 aspect ratio, but if you're gonna use an external monitor that doesnt matter. Its also a lot cheaper and has everything you need.
 

raza715

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yeah i could have also suggested asus g series or toshiba qosmio but i suggested msi gx640 simply because of his requirement which are 3-4 hrs battery life on echo.
 

humbe

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Didn't even know MSI made laptops. Haven't found the GX640 in stores here, but I see a GX660 which seems like a newer model whose specs more or less match the ASUS G73Jh.

I can't find much user reviews of it online though, so a tad worried about stability, heat/noise. Looks cool though.
 

humbe

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Jun 22, 2007
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Actually.. The GX660 is more expensive than the G73Jw here, with a considerable margin too, unless I'm happy with i5 CPU and 4 GB of ram in which case it is marginally cheaper.

The Toshiba Qosmio X500 sounds interesting. It has a blueray drive which is a plus. But getting two crappy hard drives instead of a hybrid or SSD drive doesn't sound great. And it's even wider than the G73Jw, so portability doesn't sound great. It's also around 1000 USD more expensive, which is a lot to pay for that bluray drive.

The Toshiba Qosmio F60 15.6" also sounds interesting. That one looks to have great portability, include the bluray drive, and not be that much more expensive, but that only has a GeForce GT 330M TurboCache graphics card and 1366x768 resolution, so seems like I can't have it all.

So then I have the following alternatives:

Asus G73Jw +Cooling -Bluray -Portability
Asus G53Jw +Cooling -Bluray -CPUMemory
MSI GX660R -Price -Bluray
Toshiba Qosmio F60 -Resolution +Bluray +Portability -3DGraphics -Upgradable
Toshiba Qosmio X500 -Price -Portability

Bluray player would probably not be used much, so not too worried about sacrificing that. Neither alternative have great portability since they are all fairly big, and neither have much battery life, so portability doesn't seem that bad to sacrifice either, as actually getting very good portability seems to ruin the laptop as a gamer laptop. Considering that, the G73Jw sounds like the best alternative still, as I cannot get a version of G53Jw with i7 CPU or 6+ GB memory in Norway. The F60 looks to have much better portability which looks great, but the lack of a second HDD slot makes it hard to upgrade with an SSD drive for most accessed data, and I'm worried about the graphics performance. The X500 seems to have just about anything I could want apart from 3G card/SSD disk which noone has and USB 3.0, but it's a behemoth and very expensive. Not willing to pay that much extra for a bluray drive.

So think I'll either go for the G73Jw or wait a bit if I see anything interesting coming into the market in the near future. Thanks a lot for the input.
 

Mr_Garcia

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Dec 1, 2010
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I was thinking about buying the G51jx. Why don't you recommend it?