N56vz review and owners lounge - Techno Art

[nipsen]

A few things before the review: Building a laptop means making compromises. Even if you disregarded cost, and picked the most expensive materials and components, that in itself would not give you a "perfect" laptop. Instead it's a tool to perform a specific task. What that task is depends on how successful the laptop is.

One laptop that lasts you 10 hours as a typewriter is better than a laptop lasting 4 - if you wanted a typewriter. While another laptop that lasts you two hours of excellent portable gaming performance is still better than the typewriter - for a gaming laptop. Another gaming laptop that has better performance while married to the wall-socket - then it has better gaming performance, if you wanted that.

So like every other laptop, the n56vz doesn't do everything. And it's placed in a category between a multimedia top and a gaming laptop. By having average (4h) battery-life, normal/lesser 15 inch type notebook-size. And above average 3d/multimedia and gaming performance. But without being a specialised gaming platform with 3d capable screen, extended input and output options, being "ready for overclock", etc.



Aesthetics & Design
It's pretty.

Notebook measures 38cm x 25.5cm across the aluminium lid. Slightly less area than on an HP Envy. The edge where you open the lid has a 1 cm wide rubber strip - possibly similar purpose as the wifi "antenna strip" on Asus' transformer Prime pads? It's not obviously visible, though.

The i7 version of the n56 is 2.73cm to 3.40cm thick, measured from lid to rubber supports on the underside. The upcoming i5 version will be slightly thinner, because of the power-supply. The i5 version also will have a smaller power-brick.

Unlike most (working) laptops with high-end components like this, the bottom of the laptop is made in hard plastic, melted to fit across the components, along with a soft curve up towards the sides. Therefore the relatively slimmer size compared to other laptops, with parts of the underside panels coming out half a cm or so from the rest (such as the cover over the hdd well). Since the bottom isn't flat, the notebook doesn't keel over if you put it on top of a notebook or a pencil. Also doesn't squish your fingers under the edges, even if you put it down as gently as you possibly can, etc.

When you open the lid it draws backward on the hinges (rather than sticking up), setting the screen a bit lower than the chassis when open. The hinges sit inside the chassis, so it's lowered without creating any large empty spaces. The screen bezel is black, with the matte screen lowered 2mm into the lid. This means dust will gather in the edges, and it's a possibility that the plastic cover frame might be unevenly pressed to the side of the lcd. *budget* *cough*

On the surface, however, it looks solid. It's also snapped together with tight seams, like everything else on the laptop, which makes the overall feel very exclusive.



Screen itself is matte, with the amount of screen to bezel ratio appearing very high. I measured it and it's nothing special - but the dominating feature is the screen itself, rather than the bezel or the frame.

Further down the chassis top is aluminium finished, with a chiclet keyboard coming through the panel (the expensive version, not the embedded plate found in some of the Asus models).

Key-wander is slightly lower than most keyboards like this. And together with the large trackpad, it might have been designed for slightly Taiwanese hands rather than for people with sea-lion flippers for hands.

The circular laser-perforated pattern that hides the speakers end up in a small angle upwards towards the edges. The holes are actually less pronounced in reality than they look on the pictures - the circular pattern is more of a texture than anything else.



Put together with the slight angle towards the edge, it effectively masks the sharp edges on the square top of the chassis. The same for the black border on the main screen. This design thought is also what has the edge on the notebook with the cable connections and ports be very slim, before it curves inwards to the bottom of the chassis.

In other words, the design masks the sharp edges, while keeping the physical size as small as possible. Rather than simply make everything rounded off when seen from above, while actually increasing the chassis size, while leaving the sides and chassis-edges as sharp and straight-angled as before.

Conclusion: It's pretty. The few cheap parts are visible if you look closely. But they don't obviously threaten to create any loose edges or problems either visually or practically in terms of wear later on.

The only less fantastic solutions is the sharp angle on the back of the hinges, along with the slight distance you can press down the surface of the lid into the back of the plate that the screen is embedded into. Neither are technical concerns. Specially since the lid seems glued to the chassis when the laptop is closed, and the hinges apparently are the most solid part on the notebook.

The design on the inside is still the most interesting. The cooling solution draws in air through an intake at the underside towards the front, as well as through the small laser-perforation on the front, and through the keyboard surface. Meanwhile, none of the internal components lead heat into either the plastic chassis bottom, or the aluminium top (or the underside of the keyboard well, as is unfortunately very common). The heat is instead going through an isolated plastic channel towards the exhaust, not completely unlike on Asus' ROG gaming laptops.

So even on heavy load, after the heatsinks reach high temps (where they transfer heat most effectively), the temperature in the keyboard and the bottom chassis is more or less completely unchanged, in spite of both aluminium and plastic (in relatively cheap manufacture) having very low heat-capacity. This is good planning and excellent design that has escaped most if not all laptop-makers so far, that enables more powerful components to be placed in "entry-level" laptops.

One thing some may find is a problem is the more subjective feel of the palm-rest. The aluminium layer is thin (it's a kind of aluminum composite with a core that has no flexibility, and a thin surface layer), so if you typically type with the hands on the palm-rest, the surface will start to feel warm. This is also a concern with the large track-pad - if you prefer the narrower design from Lenovo, for example, you will not instantly become a fan of this part of the n56 design.

But if you become a fan, it is likely because of the better precision the larger pad gives you, along with the quick and easy keypresses on the keyboard. I have a tendency to miss keys and hit a second unwanted key, for example. But thanks to the low but noticeable wander, and good spacing on this keyboard, that is suddenly not a problem. The impression would have been even better, had the adjustable backlight not been bleeding a bit under the side of the keys.

Hard-drive, ram and wifi-modules are easily accessable by removing a snap-on panel attached with one screw. The disc-drive caddy is accessible without removing the chassis as well.

(edit: But because of Asus unintelligent bios-tweaking, locked/overriden settings, refer to this thread when choosing ram-upgrades. I was expecting Asus to simply tweak the bios-settings to standard spd-timing instantly after release, since locking the memory timing can be the source of a lot of stability issues, but no such luck yet. Therefore, refer to the linked thread when shopping ram-upgrades.)

Access to the insides otherwise, along with the fan and the heatsink requires a complete disassembly. I can forgive Asus this part, because it's not done to keep people out, but rather to keep the components as compact as possible - the typical components are easily accessible (also goes for the optical drive-bay - one phillips screw on the underside).

The battery on the n-series now has become a pack with hinges on the back that snaps in place inwards. This is a good choice, since replacement batteries can be easily put in without putting the screen in a particular position, and it also protects the battery well from dust.

Outside that, what catches my attention with this laptop is that it has no grooves and tracks that will gather dust or make the edges eventually lose the tight seams. For example like the seam between the screen and the back cover on an Asus EeePC. There are no corners that will dent, or sharp edges that stick out. And it results in the laptop - save for the backside of the aggressive-looking hinges - giving off a very sleek visual impression, whether you focus on looks or practical functionality.

Hardware

i7 quad-core and Ivy bridge with the new hd4000 internal graphics module. Mainboard with pci2.0 at 16x for external devices. The nvidia gt 650m card runs at 5Gbps speeds. Lack of broader bus-speeds on this motherboard class (i.e., less than a desktop setup/latest intel motherboards) would be one explanation for why gddr5 versions of the 650m card do not have higher performance than the n56's ddr3 card.

For context, the 650m card uses the same chip and configuration as the gtx660m cards, but run at lower default timing. Tests show these have comparable performance in practice on mobile platforms. This is caused by two things - relatively low bandwidth compared to a desktop motherboard, along with the dynamic overclocking on Nvidia's Kepler card line. So presumably good cooling and stable current is more important than clock-speed.

Sata connector supports Sata 3, in case you want to shop the fastest Solid State Drives to replace the one shipped with the notebook (transfer speeds easily peaked out on 500Mb/s read&write on my Corsair ForceGT). The laptop defaults the two sata ports to autodetect, so no worries with time-outs or lower speeds with an upgrade later on.

Notebook has all usb 3.0 connectors - but no worries since the usb-drivers and the bios actually works with usb 2.0 devices (but be aware that some Windows install disc versions will croak if you install via usb stick, since it will detect usb 3, but don't actually have the usb 3 driver on the installation's driver repository...). The multi-card reader is hidden underneath the edge on the left.

Combined stereo out/coaxial or digital spdif (...if anyone has a device accepting a connection like that ). Hdmi 1.4 - graphics card supports 3d output for a 3dtv. Also works flawlessly with an extended display running either fullscreen resized or usual desktop contexts.

Hdmi out quality overall is perfect, as usual with Nvidia, either in mirror or extended mode. Bears to be mentioned that the Nvidia card creates a noticeably less distorted and scaled image when compared to ATI's Radeon cards in general.

(Have not tested bitstreaming yet, but it seems the audio output device supports it after the 2.04 bios update.)

Internal audio on the laptop is, like mentioned, two speakers masked underneath the laser-drilled holes in the chassis. I don't know if the Bang&Olufsen label extends to anything beyond the instruction set on the "dsp" element. But the speakers are actually quite good for laptop speakers. I'm not about to debase myself to the point where I actually plug in the bundled "subwoofer". There are some things a man just cannot do.

But the sound range and precision is actually good. Most laptop speakers, computer speakers in general - rely on some dynamic range compression that makes the speakers muddle (or just cut out) anything that happens outside the range of normal human speech. And while this notebook is not hifi either, these speakers are at least precise not just on single tones up and down, but clear on a fairly broad range in a complex sound-context.

So they are comfortable to play games, listen to music on, or watch movies with.

The bundled blu-ray/dvd-burner drives is standard Matsushida (great automatic swear-filter *thumbs*)/Panasonic OEM fare, but it does the job well enough. If you can't have a Sony slot-in player, this is better than most options. Reasonably silent, no shaking, and doesn't constantly rev up and down, etc.

Next, the track-pad. The track-pad is a stroke of genius, in my opinion, even though it requires you to use it in a particular way. The larger space means it's easy to be more precise. And if you use taps for button-presses, and dislike the "shove the cursor" exercises on for example Lenovo laptops, this will suit you well. The area where you have the laptop "buttons" is still part of the track-pad, extending the reach.

A new entry in the Elantech software makes the trackpad less sensitive out towards the edges as well (edit: you can control the size and placement of the area, tilt it slightly to the right, left, make the radius the size you want, etc) - so there are no "small, unforseen problems" with this design. But it might not make sense for all users, since you will need to actually move your hand to point where you want, etc. (Meaning that it's not difficult to get used to, but it is different from most other designs).

The buttons on the track-pad are interesting as well. Instead of having the pressure point placed towards the sides, like on every track-pad ever made, the pressure point is near the middle. So you press a right or a left click by clicking slightly to the left or right of the middle of the bottom of the pad (edit: you can actually push down on the middle of the pad if you want to get a left-click - essentially you can push the entire pad down for a left-click from the middle and down, while the sector on the right is for a right-click. You can use a one-finger tap for left-click, and a two-finger tap for right click as well..).

I think this is much more natural, and easier, than pressing on the sides - since your fingers will be closer, for one. So it's nice that the tech is sensitive enough to pick up the left and right click on what basically feels like one single button under the middle of the pad. While the software cancels out small movement while you're pushing the button.

It's even nicer that someone thought of doing it this way.

Performance

As you would expect, an i7 3rd gen. quad-core at 2.2Ghz standard, and 3.1-3.3Ghz boost means high performance for office tasks and specially single-threaded tasks compared to most laptops. Still, the distance back to a quad-core AMD is not far for non-synthetic runs. For example, a typical 720p video to a mobile format conversion I do often runs at 1m50s on this setup. The same configuration on a significantly lower clocked AMD A6 completed at 2m10s. So you could have some legitimately informed thoughts about how much this much dearer processor really was worth.

Meanwhile, actually finding a program or a game that is cpu-bound even on the non-boosted states on this chip is usually difficult. In other words, while the increased power gives you instant response in every possible context involving processor speed - outside the synthetic benchmarks, the actual performance increase isn't the greatest for a laptop system (that isn't overclocked until it crackles because of the heat).

Some 3dmark11 results:
N56vz vs. N53tk

Solid score at p2356. Note how the score from a significantly weaker AMD setup is trailing a bit closer than it probably should.

(edit: But note that practically, this means the difference between The Witcher 2 running 20-24fps in 1024x768 on the amd setup.. after some tweaking and unlocking v-sync. And between the 650m comfortably running 28-32fps in 1280x720 on the nvidia card. See post further down in the thread for fraps-cap and temp-readings. This means that in this particular class of graphics cards, at this power-consumption level, it performs more than just "well", statistically speaking).

editer: also see Supranium's OC/standard clock results here.

With the 2.04 bios, performance improves slightly. Presumably because the affinity for the boost-states has been increased. Any game or program you run on this setup, and one of the cores on the processor is going to stay firmly in the 3.2Ghz range, which helps with single-thread response.

Some testing shows that the actual effect-draw is not very different from 2.2Ghz to 3.2Ghz, and the heat levels as well are identical. So I am not entirely certain why the initial bios had softer timing than the update. It's possible that the cores were simply timed to switch to higher states if all the cores came over a certain amount of load, something that typically doesn't happen in games. Instead some of the cores will have full load, with tasks that can't be distributed on other cores.

So that my guess would be the cores have been configured to give you boost-performance on some of the cores, rather than having all cores switch states together. And this will give us the single-threaded peak performance that is so important in games.

In any case, this means the 2.04 update brings the general performance of this laptop from good - to great gaming performance, having increased the boost-state affinity until the laptop quickly runs at 3.2Ghz. While still keeping the low states (1.2Ghz) selected when smaller tasks are running, specially on battery saving.

edit: (this was completely wrong, really: see LulzChicken's and jxulo's posts here. Most likely the first bios didn't allow scaling over the base state at 2.2Ghz, while the second bios did. The other observations seem to hold true, though - that the processor has the same power-draw and heat overall when having one core at boost, compared to running all cores at base.)

(p.s. Graphics card is a bit of a mystery right now. It seems to do some automatic overclocking, while then idling towards something else during light load - but I can't figure out exactly how it's done. Meanwhile, in the tests it seems that everyone has identical (and extremely good) performance. 640, 650, 660 - same chip, different standard timing, but similar results. Something is going on here.. but what..?)

edit, 1st of September: Overclocking in general - like many people have pointed out already, the kepler cards are extremely good overclockers. Owing to different reasons: good construction, and basically because the different 640-650-660 models are really the same chip with different timing and bioses. Meaning the lower clocked that card is, the higher the overclock potential is over the stock clock.

As it is, with the cooling solution on the n56vz/6-series asus, and the way optimus/nvidia switching works (it idles the card at the same low frequencies when not used) there's absolutely no reason to not overclock the 650m card. On a normally functioning system, the core-clock on a 650m can safely be raised 130Mhz/as far as it goes while raising the temperature about 5 degrees, with no issues of any kind. Raising the memory clock too much is going to increase the heat very quickly, though, and might cause instability. This will be increasingly more of a problem the worse the cooling system is.

But not running the n56vz with an overclock is a bit like driving a Ferrari with a plank put under the gas-pedal. Doesn't really make much sense, technically speaking.

3dmark11 results before light overclock is approximately 2300. A safe +135(core)/+100(memory) overclock should score about 2677.

Note that because of the way the optimus/nvidia gpu effect-scaling works, by reducing the activity when the v-sync is reached - increasing the core speed could actually end up decreasing the temperature in some circumstances (lower fps limit is raised, card hits v-sync quicker, nvidia drivers respond and turn down the performance, etc). So be aware of that when overclocking, and test with a program that will tax the card 100% (like 3dmark11, furmark, your favourite game that tends to tax the computer the most) when figuring out where the limits are. Since you could end up overclocking too far, without seeing the real temperature when the card is running at load.

Odds are that you're going to hit the vbios limits (the max limits set on the graphics cards flash-rom), or the limit of the ram-modules (this limit will be slightly different from card to card) - before experiencing any instabilities or dangerous temperature increases, though. When it comes to instability - either the overclock works, or it doesn't. So just use a tool that doesn't force an overclock at startup (msi afterburner, for example), and lay off the bios mods, and you're 100% safe).

Another thing, because of many comments about this: upgrading the graphics driver separately to nvidia's (currently beta) drivers for the 650m is easy and painless. The graphics driver is separate from the intel driver, and integrates perfectly fine between version installs and removals. It's the same way the drivers are installed from asus' driver packages. Both the display adapter drivers should and can be updated separately without problems. Beta-drivers as they are now (1st Sept.) are better than the rewritten reference driver without official support that ships with the computer as well - no reason to not install it right away.

Overall feel, most useful context

In any case, power balancing as it is now means that while just typing or browsing the web for the most part, the fan and processor drops down to the lowest state. On normal work it's silent, and the surface of the chassis is cool (whether in battery saving or high performance profiles). There's no frequent fan-revs in this state.

At full load, even after long sessions, the chassis still doesn't get warm on the outside. The fan revs up, but you hear the air-flow more than the fan itself - it's a good magnetically suspended fan, but more importantly the heat transfer out of the chassis is incredible. Note I'm not comparing the heat signature to other laptops, but compared to what it's like when the laptop runs idle. There is a spot on the left of the keyboard that gets slightly warmer than the room-temp the rest stays at, though. But it's maybe two degrees difference. (Edit: over a couple of hours, the edge of the keyboard plate will be warmed a bit by the exhaust but that is all).

The battery pack is a 6-cell 56Wh rated battery, and will last you about 4 hours on light work, when relying on the internal graphics card. If you add streaming Spotify in the background on the internal speakers, you can shave that down to 3h. This is a far cry from the other AMD setup (with the same battery-rating) mentioned earlier, that would last 4h while running on 25% processor load. But in this "class", i7 quad-core, it's actually very good. And note that the actual effect-draw is lower than average (meaning that with a better battery, this laptop would easily outperform the "winners" in the battery category)..

(edit: turns out that the internal speakers draw a lot of power - if no devices are playing sound on the internal speakers, the speakers turn off. And in that state, you actually do get close to 5 hours battery while surfing normally on wifi, typing documents, etc).

The battery is also not large enough to run for very long on full load in a 3d game (when running on either the integrated or the dedicated card). But the performance while running on battery is actually very good, and consistent. You can easily run The Witcher 2 on battery in 720p at "high" preset, for example, at about exactly the same performance as when plugged in (same happens while running 3dmark11 - same gpu score, slightly lower cpu and combined score). A positive surprise - very useful if you needed to run a small 3d context, and needed to know the performance is stable even if you're not plugged in.

In other words, the n56vz fits into the low range for typewriter notebooks (being miles away in battery-life from for example the Macbook or the Vaio lines of notebooks with larger Lithium polymer battery packs - note again that the actual power-consumption level is identical or lower on the n56 than on a similarly specced Macbook (or a dv6, some testing shows), it's just that the battery doesn't last).

The laptop is also placed in the "average" range for gaming laptops, not being able to compete with Asus' ROG laptops, or Alienware PCs in that sense.

On the other hand, it is actually comfortable to use for smaller tasks, being small in size for a 15 incher, as well as not too heavy (2.7kg - it's more than a kg up to a g55). While still having a monster of a processor, and a far above average graphics card hidden away. It also runs that setup comfortably with very silent and modest cooling, even on full load, without conducting heat into the external chassis.

This comes from a combination of newer tech allowing lower heat signatures on the internal components - along with a laptop design that takes advantage of it enough to ditch many of the heavier and more expensive materials you typically find in laptops. Meaning that Asus could use more plastic without any of the problems you usually have when using lighter materials with high-end components.

So what we have here is a good all-round notebook that fits into a not very heavily populated category placed between towable gaming laptops and lighter portable typewriter/office-notebooks.

Seen from a bit further away, this means that we finally have a reasonably powerful and solidly built gaming/media netbook, that still is as portable as other netbooks, with cooling that actually works.

So if the battery was a bit bigger (or it was possible to buy a larger pack, I suppose), it would be very easy to recommend this laptop for all kinds of roles. Specially since most laptops on the market actually does offer similar battery-life, even with much less powerful hardware.

Still, with Amd's Trinity line of laptops turning up soon, we might quickly see cheaper laptops with performance above the mentioned Amd A6 setup, except with even lower power-draw and lower heat signature.

It might be a while longer before laptop-manufacturers would create a design that would really take advantage of the lower heat-signature of the components - as well as they did with the n56vz, though. And it's out of the question that anything with actually higher graphics performance at the same low power-draw will turn up any time soon - so this is a optimal choice in many ways, and will continue to be for at the very least six months. Note also that you don't get desktop performance even on the most expensive gaming laptops anyway, and you might perhaps end up having spent your money better on a smaller desktop rig if higher gaming performance was the goal.

Meaning that the n56vz is placed very nicely in a "above good enough" segment (i7@3.2Ghz/gt650m), even if it does not have the best synthetic 3d performance on the market.

So for it's use, this is a very good notebook. The very large number of perfect design decisions as well - trackpad, keyboard, form-factor, screen resolution, weight, amazing cooling, graphics card - makes it a very appealing purchase.

Alternatives that will be more immediately available could be the n46, a 14 inch version of the same laptop, with the same hardware. To maximise the portability, while still keeping the secondary screen option and graphics/processing power. At the cost of screen size and the extra row of keys on the right. The version with intel's slightly less power-hungry i5 processor might also be worth a look, if you do not care about multicore performance.



edit: P.s. Throttlestop link - you can install throttlestop on this laptop, set (documented but not enabled) power-saving flags, etc. to save battery. Will be possible to get it over 5h on light load that way. With no adverse side-effects, etc.

editer: So to sum up the things you can do to extend the battery:
-Throttlestop, as mentioned above - enable power-saving flag, copy the limiter in Power4gear by setting a max multipler, plus disable undemotion flags to allow processor states to stay in c6-c7 between instruction cycles (btw, these settings will not actually significantly impact performance with boost enabled except in extremely specific cases).
-Disable bluetooth adapter when not in use (control panel/icon in taskbar).
-Install latest bios/vbios updates.
-Disable gpu overclock settings, but retain nvidia acceleration (kepler "dynamic underclocking") of webgl/browser windows/flash (i.e., avoid using the intel hd4000 card for anything else than displaying the desktop. Disabling aero has very little impact on battery life, since when you disable the instruction acceleration, the system writes directly to front-buffer instead - this is actually more expensive battery-wise).
-Reduce brightness.
-Change refresh rate* from 60hz to 40hz in (for example) the nvidia panel.

On light loads, this will extend the battery to a reasonably long work-day.

*Many thanks to Zaphod for figuring out the screen-refresh tip (Zaphod is just this guy, you know?). This drops the most constant drain on the system, so it is the biggest power-saver on normal light use.

[LulzChicken]

Thank you so much for this outstanding review. It was about time someone here on Notebook Review got one underway! I thoroughly enjoyed the read and can't wait to get mine in the mail today. Thank you! I'll definitely update this thread with my experience as well and hopefully we can make this into an official owners' lounge! I'll be sure to update the BIOS as well.

[Hodor]

Thanks a lot for this great review, I really appreciate it!

It simply brings up the NB' strengths and weaknesses in a very clear and structured way. Everyone can now easily decide on his own if this is something worth to buy or not.

Only thing I missed a bit are some pictures. You could consider to take some from the chassis and some performance screenshots (maybe some temperature stats from HWmonitor while idle/under load would be also nice).

For me I can say, I am just waiting until the N56VZ-Serie is available in my country and then I finally own this awesome looking laptop. I really can't wait anymore longer.

[nipsen]

Thanks and yeah, it's a nice laptop.

For benchmark graphs and so on, see GentechPC (guy also posts on the forum here once in a while) Product Showcase: Asus N56VZ Unboxing & Review - YouTube

He's measuring this while running a synthetic benchmark, and that's going to load as much as possible. You actually won't reach that kind of load while running a normal game, but it's a good indication of where the upper limit is. Note, like he demos in the vid, the chassis is almost cold.

Point being that sensor temps aren't as important to look at here as usual, since the chassis actually doesn't absorb heat. Unlike with.. every other laptop on the market. I mean, when you build desktops, you always choose a cooler that can transfer heat quickly when the temperature in the heatsink is high. What you want is a stable temp where the heat is transfered effectively, to have as low noise level as possible, without burning things up and so on. So you don't try to push all the heat away while the copper is lukewarm. But that's usually not the best strategy with a laptop, since the heatsinks can't be very large.. ..I'm going to have to stop myself from opening up the chassis to figure out what exactly they've done to solve this right now, though..

But I'll be adding some graphs with the gpu temps, fps, and cpu temps while running The Witcher 2 later, so you can see how it looks. ..It's very nice to actually play this on high/720p and get a stable 30+ fps. Specially the increased boost helped raise the lower fps level. So yeah. I was a bit worried that the performance wouldn't be much better after all - that we'd still have some microstutter and sub 24fps because.. it's a laptop. They all have this kind of thing, right..? But no..

So I'm very happy about how this turned out.

[LulzChicken]

Thanks and yeah, it's a nice laptop.

For benchmark graphs and so on, see GentechPC (guy also posts on the forum here once in a while) Product Showcase: Asus N56VZ Unboxing & Review - YouTube

He's measuring this while running a synthetic benchmark, and that's going to load as much as possible. You actually won't reach that kind of load while running a normal game, but it's a good indication of where the upper limit is. Note, like he demos in the vid, the chassis is almost cold.

Point being that sensor temps aren't as important to look at here as usual, since the chassis actually doesn't absorb heat. Unlike with.. every other laptop on the market. I mean, when you build desktops, you always choose a cooler that can transfer heat quickly when the temperature in the heatsink is high. What you want is a stable temp where the heat is transfered effectively, to have as low noise level as possible, without burning things up and so on. So you don't try to push all the heat away while the copper is lukewarm. But that's usually not the best strategy with a laptop, since the heatsinks can't be very large.. ..I'm going to have to stop myself from opening up the chassis to figure out what exactly they've done to solve this right now, though..

But I'll be adding some graphs with the gpu temps, fps, and cpu temps while running The Witcher 2 later, so you can see how it looks. ..It's very nice to actually play this on high/720p and get a stable 30+ fps. Specially the increased boost helped raise the lower fps level. So yeah. I was a bit worried that the performance wouldn't be much better after all - that we'd still have some microstutter and sub 24fps because.. it's a laptop. They all have this kind of thing, right..? But no..

So I'm very happy about how this turned out.

Great, great, and great! I'm looking forward to the graphs and temperatures. Can't wait to get this thing in my hot little hands, update the BIOS, and see how it does. Thanks again for starting up a great thread and writing an excellent review. As mentioned earlier, a few more pictures would be nice even though they're readily available on the web.

[Hodor]

But I'll be adding some graphs with the gpu temps, fps, and cpu temps while running The Witcher 2 later, so you can see how it looks. ..It's very nice to actually play this on high/720p and get a stable 30+ fps. Specially the increased boost helped raise the lower fps level. So yeah. I was a bit worried that the performance wouldn't be much better after all - that we'd still have some microstutter and sub 24fps because.. it's a laptop. They all have this kind of thing, right..? But no..

So I'm very happy about how this turned out.

Thanks for your effort! Always good to have some different graphs from other people, as there are so many factors (ambient temperature, laptop base etc.) which often affects the temperature in a different way.

@lulzchicken:
I am glad that you gonna get your NB soon! I am already interessted what you think of it and spread your experience with us

[nipsen]

Ffff... can't get rivatuner to work. And my e-mail server is down, so I can't get a registered version of hwmonitor..

Here are some screencaps with a fraps counter from The Witcher 2, though. This runs on the external monitor via hdmi at 1280x720, with the hardware scaler tilting it to 16:10. Default "high" preset. Standard graphics drivers from Asus, haven't tested the beta-drivers yet. Works about exactly as well as on the internal display.

While playing, I end up with the hottest cpu-core going to 78 degrees (the lowest max is 72). The graphics card peaked at 67 degrees.

Ambient temps here right now are.. too hot.

The Arena, Flanking, Riposte, Your Spleen, Sir..

[Hodor]

While playing, I end up with the hottest cpu-core going to 78 degrees (the lowest max is 72). The graphics card peaked at 67 degrees.

Ambient temps here right now are.. too hot.

I am impressed, your temperatures are pretty low. Do you use a cooling pad?

[escapist]

Nice write-up Nipsen! I actually learned something new about my machine while reading it

I have an outboard d/a converter that would be fun to try with the spdif combo jack. Do you know if the asus outputs spdif via mini-optical, or alternatively, through a stereo mini-jack like the "flexijack" on the old x-fi series cards?

[kDrum]

Fantastic review! So the bios update allows the CPU to boost even when playing games now? (No random turbo lock because of GPU)?