ASUS G51VX-A1 Review

[dietcokefiend]

by Kevin O'Brien

The ASUS G51-series is a 15.6" gaming notebook offering dual hard drive bays, NVIDIA GTX 260M graphics, and an optional quad-core processor. To enhance the multimedia experience this notebook offers a 1080P 16:9 display, a backlit Chiclet-style keyboard, and Altec Lansing speakers. Base configurations start as low as $1,049 with a dual-core processor and a single drive, and go as high as $1,699 with the quad-core processor and dual hard drives. In this review we see how well this system performs in a number of new games, to help you decide if this is the right gaming notebook for you.

Our review unit of the ASUS G51VX-A1 features the following specifications:

• Windows Vista Home Premium (SP1, 64-bit)
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000 (2GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 6MB Cache)
• Intel PM45 + ICH9M chipset
• 15.6" WUXGA FHD LCD display at 1920x1080
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M 1GB GDDR3 memory
• Intel 5100AGN Wireless
• 4GB DDR2-800 SDRAM (2GB x 2)
• Two 320GB Seagate 7200RPM Hard Drives
• DVD SuperMulti
• Webcam, Altec Lansing speakers, Backpack, Razer Copperhead USB mouse
• 120W (19V x 6.32A) 100-240V AC Adapter
• 6-cell 53Wh 11.1v 4800mAh Lithium Ion battery
• Dimensions (WxDxH): 14.6" x 10.3" x 1.3-1.6"
• Weight: 7lbs 9.0oz
• 2-Year Global Warranty/1-Year Accidental damage
• Price as configured: $1,699

Build and Design
The G51 is part of the Republic of Gamers lineup from ASUS, meaning it incorporates the ROG logo on the front cover and a more aggressive notebook design. The outside cover has chrome trim around the side and bottom edges, and a futuristic pattern painted onto the lid; both helping to push the overall gaming theme. The sides are black plastic, with a silver strip painted on the sides and front of the notebook. You can tell these strips were painted separately, since you can see some faint overspray near the border edges. The inside of the G51 has a more back-to-basics look with a rubberized black palmrest, black backlit keyboard, and glossy black trim around the display. I personally think the design could have been helped by using the rubberized on more surfaces around the notebook, but that might be the ThinkPad fan inside of me talking.

Build quality is above average, with sturdy plastic used throughout the notebook, but there are some areas that could see some improvement. The screen cover feels very durable, and protects the screen against any distortion from impacts to the back cover or flexing the screen side to side. The palmrest and keyboard have absolutely no flex at all, which is something you need if you are going to be playing high-stress games and occasionally taking out some of your anger on your computer. The two areas that I think ASUS could have improved are the painted silver trim pieces, which shows some overspray, and the keyboard itself. It looks like this notebook was designed with a different keyboard in mind for it, since the Chiclet-style model included is sized just slightly small for the bezel around it. It is loose enough that with some careful prying, you can pop the keyboard out of its tray. This is a small gap of about 2-3mm, but it is just enough to let the keyboard slip past the notches that secure it in place.

Users looking to upgrade components inside the notebook will find it very easy, thanks to a single panel giving you access to all user-replaceable components. The only "warranty void if removed" sticker is covering one of the screws used to tension the processor heatsink, meaning that if you want to change out the processor or graphics card you will be forfeiting your 2-year warranty. Given the configuration of this notebook, I only see users really looking to swap out the RAM for larger modules or the hard drives for SSDs.

Screen and Speakers
Considering that this notebook will be used for gaming, an excellent screen is a must. The display on the G51 looks above average with good color saturation and better than average viewing angles. The glossy surface helps make the already good looking colors "pop" out at you more than they would on a matte display, as well as improving the looks of dark colors. While gaming I didn't notice any lag or abnormal backlight bleed in dark scenes. Vertical viewing angles were very good, offering a broad sweet spot before colors started to invert if you tilted the screen forward or back. Horizontal viewing angles were excellent, keeping colors accurate, albeit slightly washed out, at very steep angles. Backlight brightness was more than adequate to be viewable in a bright room, but unless you stick to a shaded area underneath a tree, it won't be viewable outdoors.

The Altec Lansing speakers sounded nice, but given the overall size of this notebook we had hoped for a subwoofer as well. Audio from the speakers consisted mostly of higher frequencies, with some midrange coming through. Bass was lacking, but without a subwoofer that is normal for most notebooks. As a gaming notebook I think headphones should be required, especially surround sound-enabled headphones so you can hear your surroundings and react accordingly.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard was comfortable to use, and really helped solidify the overall look of the notebook. The keys and inner trim were all matching black, with white lettering that lights up when the backlight is enabled. The individual keys were easy to press, and felt very solid with very little wiggle if you moved your hand around the keyboard. Support was very good, with no flex noticed in the primary typing region. The only complaint we have, is the size of the keyboard itself inside the tray area; it's small enough to move around and come out with little effort.

The G51 includes a large Synaptics touchpad with a very smooth barely- textured surface. Tracking speeds are excellent with no lag noticed in our game testing, and the sensitivity was great even with the default settings. The touchpad buttons were easy to trigger, but didn't give as much feedback as longer throw buttons.

Ports and Features
Port selection was pretty good for a 15" notebook, with 4 USB ports, an eSATA connection, HDMI and VGA out, Firewire 400, LAN, and three audio jacks. The expansion ASUS included an ExpressCard/54 slot and a spring loaded SD-card reader. ASUS also found a creative use for the ExpressCard blank, turning it into a handy storage card holder. Considering that most of us will keep that blank card in the slot most of the time, it now becomes a handy storage device.

ASUS is always big on including freebies with notebook purchases, with the G51 being no different. They included a very nice padded notebook backpack, a Razer Copperhead gaming mouse, and a pair of Eee Stick game controllers. The backpack provides more than enough protection for the G51, with enough room to spare for accessories or even a book if you wake up in time for class. The Razer gaming mouse is a nice step up from standard generic freebie mice, and the Eee Stick controllers are good for games that might support them.

Performance and Benchmarks
System performance and gaming is the main attraction for the ASUS G51-series notebook, offering NVIDIA GTX 260M graphics and in our notebook's case, an Intel Q9000 quad-core processor. In our review besides running the standard assortment of benchmarks, we also tested its performance in five fairly recent games. These included Call of Duty 5, Left 4 Dead, Crysis: Warhead, BioShock, and Batman: Arkham Asylum. All of these games were tested with Anti-Aliasing disabled, high detail settings across the board, V-Sync disabled, and the resolution set to 1920x1080, which is the native setting for this notebook. All of the games performed very well, with the exception of Crysis which stayed at or below 20FPS. Left 4 Dead gave us the highest framerates, with peaks as high as 170FPS, with the average being between 100-120FPS depending on action. Both BioShock and Call of Duty 5 stayed at or above 50FPS, with no noticeable dips in framerate even under heavy action. The Batman demo stayed right around 30FPS depending on how many characters were on the screen, but still remained very playable. For both Batman and Crysis, lowering the resolution and tweaking some of the detail settings would speed up the performance.

Batman: Arkham Asylum @ 1920 x 1080	Left 4 Dead @ 1920 x 1080
Crysis: Warhead @ 1920 x 1080	Call of Duty 5 @ 1920 x 1080
BioShock @ 1920 x 1080

Multimedia playback was excellent, with HD video barely fazing the quad-core processor. In fact I am pretty sure this system could decode two 1080P videos at the same time, displaying one on the display and another through the HDMI connection.

The ASUS G51VX-A1 supported software based overclocking without the need to reboot. For our gaming tests, we left the system in the Extreme Turbo mode, which gave a mild processor overclock. For our benchmarks we show the performance in the stock mode, and in Extreme Turbo mode. The processor speed in the Turbo mode was 2.15GHz.

wPrime processor comparison results (lower scores mean better performance):

ASUS G51VX-A1 (Core 2 Quad Q9000 @ 2.15GHz)	17.599 seconds
ASUS G51VX-A1 (Core 2 Quad Q9000 @ 2.0GHz)	18.907 seconds
Dell Studio 15 (1555) (Core 2 Duo P8600 @ 2.4GHz)	32.995 seconds
Toshiba Satellite A355 (Core 2 Duo P7450 @ 2.16GHz)	35.848 seconds
Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 (Core 2 Duo P7350 @ 2.0GHz)	38.455 seconds
Lenovo G530 (Intel Pentium Dual-Core T3400 @ 2.16GHz)	38.470 seconds
HP Pavilion dv5z (Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80 @ 2.1GHz)	39.745 seconds
Dell Studio 15 (1535) (Core 2 Duo T5750 @ 2.0GHz)	41.246 seconds

 

PCMark05 measures overall system performance (higher scores mean better performance):

ASUS G51VX-A1 (2.15GHz Core 2 Quad Q9000, NVIDIA GTX 260M 1GB)	8,016 PCMarks
ASUS G51VX-A1 (2.0GHz Core 2 Quad Q9000, NVIDIA GTX 260M 1GB)	7,507 PCMarks
Toshiba Satellite A355 (2.16GHz Intel P7450, ATI Radeon HD 3650 512MB)	5,842 PCMarks
Dell Studio 15 (1555) (2.4GHz Intel P8600, ATI Radeon HD 4570 256MB)	5,731 PCMarks
Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 (2.0GHz Intel P7350, Nvidia 9300M 256MB)	4,844 PCMarks
Lenovo G530 (2.16GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core T3400, Intel Intel 4500MHD)	4,110 PCMarks
Dell Studio 15 (1535) (2.0GHz Intel T5750, Intel X3100)	3,998 PCMarks
HP Pavilion dv5z (2.1GHz Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80, ATI Radeon HD 3200)	3,994 PCMarks

 

3DMark06 measures video and gaming performance (higher scores mean better performance):

ASUS G51VX-A1 (2.15GHz Core 2 Quad Q9000, NVIDIA GTX 260M 1GB)	10,833 3DMarks
ASUS G51VX-A1 (2.0GHz Core 2 Quad Q9000, NVIDIA GTX 260M 1GB)	10,282 3DMarks
Dell Studio 15 (1555) (2.4GHz Intel P8600, ATI Radeon HD 4570 256MB)	4,189 3DMarks
Toshiba Satellite A355 (2.16GHz Intel P7450, ATI Radeon HD 3650 512MB)	4,084 3DMarks
Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 (2.0GHz Intel P7350, Nvidia 9300M 256MB)	1,833 3DMarks
HP Pavilion dv5z (2.1GHz Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80, ATI Radeon HD 3200)	1,599 3DMarks
Lenovo G530 (2.16GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core T3400, Intel Intel 4500MHD)	730 3DMarks
Dell Studio 15 (1535) (2.0GHz Intel T5750, Intel X3100)	493 3DMarks

All of the 3DMark06 scores for all of the systems listed above were run at 1280 x 800 resolution (for 16:10 screens) or 1280 x 768 resolution (for 16:9 screens).

 

HDTune storage drive performance results:

 

Heat and Noise
The ASUS G51 got warm in our tests, but nothing we were not expecting given its internal components. The palmrest and bottom panel near the heatsink got to the upper 90's, which was pretty warm but nothing uncomfortable. While gaming with the processor and graphics card under stress the heatsink output temperature was 140 degrees Fahrenheit, but the case around the vent never went past 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Fan noise was noticeable while gaming, but during normal activity it stayed pretty quiet, with small bursts as temperatures crept up.

Battery Life
We kind of knew from the start that the ASUS G51 with the Q9000 Quad-Core processor and NVIDIA GTX 260M graphics wasn't going to be breaking any records in our battery test. With the screen brightness set to 70%, wireless active, and the system set to dynamically adjust the processor, the G51VX-A1 managed 1 hour and 26 minutes before it shut down. Power consumption during the test was between 31 and 35 watts, quite a bit higher most notebooks we test. The Gateway P-7805u, which is a 17" gaming notebook that had similar levels of performance managed 3 hours and 29 minutes under the same test.

Conclusion
The ASUS G51VX-A1 gaming notebook performed quite well in our tests, easily coping with modern games at its 1080P native resolution, with the exception of Crysis. In a gaming-only setting I think users might see similar performance with a dual-core processor, instead of the quad-core this model had. It would drop power consumption as well as price. Overall the build quality was great, with the slightly too small keyboard being the only problem on our review unit. If the keyboard fit was not a problem, this notebook would definitely be very high on our list of recommended gaming systems.

Pros:

• Great build quality (not counting the keyboard)
• Solid gaming performance
• Good looking design

Cons:

• Short battery life

Related Articles:

• ASUS G51 Gaming Notebook Coming Soon
• ASUS G50V-A1 Review

[Rahul]

Those Wii style remote controls caught my surprise as being bundled in this notebook, I saw them last year as a prototype to be used in the EEE line. I wonder what games could work with it, maybe Asus has bundled some small mini-games to use these controllers? Maybe these could also work with flight simulators and similar?

I must be one of the few that would like to see the battery removed completely as an option to add additional components, such as an additional HDD or GPU. Though it could serve as built-in UPS as with other gaming notebooks. Why not make it modular?

[dietcokefiend]

Those Wii style remote controls caught my surprise as being bundled in this notebook, I saw them last year as a prototype to be used in the EEE line. I wonder what games could work with it, maybe Asus has bundled some small mini-games to use these controllers? Maybe these could also work with flight simulators and similar?

I must be one of the few that would like to see the battery removed completely as an option to add additional components, such as an additional HDD or GPU. Though it could serve as built-in UPS as with other gaming notebooks. Why not make it modular?

The EeeMote controllers were odd to see included, I think they must have a stockpile of them somewhere and just decided to throw in random accessories.

The battery removal idea is somewhat interesting, but they dont seem to take up much space overall. I can't imagine the size of the battery cavity on this notebook plus the charging circuit would really free up a ton of room for something else.

[Angelic]

Just so you guys know, you can get a base configuration from Best Buy for $1,049!
The specs are actually pretty decent too!!!!


Might wanna edit that Kevin! Sometimes Best Buy has it on sale for $999 as well.

[dietcokefiend]

Thanks, looks like BestBuy has an exclusive on that one. I was checking Newegg and Amazon for prices and nothing below the 1,299 config showed up.

Oddly enough I think I prefer that white background with black logo over the weird alien style graphics on our model.

[Angelic]

O my yes, so do I! I was drooling over it when I saw it at Best Buy.
Wonderful review Kevin, that sure is one sexy lappy.

I've heard it can get very warm though, Im surprised you didn't list that as a con. You're right on the money about the short battery life though. O well, who cares, it's a beast.

Edit: Just be careful. The Best Buy model doesn't come with the 2 year warranty. That's where they kind of get ya.

[Althernai]

Just so you guys know, you can get a base configuration from Best Buy for $1,049!
The specs are actually pretty decent too!!!!

The specs on the original are pretty decent given what you pay for it. The specs on the Best Buy one are a severe mismatch: it does have the GTX260, but it also comes with a 1366x768 screen and a 2 GHz C2D (rather than C2Q). The GTX260 is completely wasted on that screen and the processor is not helping matters either.

I think the one Newegg sells for $1500 is the best deal -- unless you really need to use 4 cores at once, the T9600 is better than the Q9000 and it will run cooler too.

[Angelic]

The specs on the original are pretty decent given what you pay for it. The specs on the Best Buy one are a severe mismatch: it does have the GTX260, but it also comes with a 1366x768 screen and a 2 GHz C2D (rather than C2Q). The GTX260 is completely wasted on that screen and the processor is not helping matters either.

I think the one Newegg sells for $1500 is the best deal -- unless you really need to use 4 cores at once, the T9600 is better than the Q9000 and it will run cooler too.

I really don't see your point. There is no need for a Quad Core processor for gaming purposes, it won't really help much, if at all.

The screen...I've seen it first hand, I still really like it, it's not a huge deal. For the price decrease, you have to *give* somewhere, right? The 260 definitly isn't *wasted*.

For a gamer on a budget, the Best Buy one is the best deal. It even looks cooler! (In mine and Kevin's opinion)

[Rahul]

but it also comes with a 1366x768 screen and a 2 GHz C2D (rather than C2Q). The GTX260 is completely wasted on that screen and the processor is not helping matters either.

At least it should be able to play demanding games like Crysis and future games smoothly at native resolutions.

But I would rather have a higher resolution screen myself when not gaming and do not mind too much playing games at non-native resolutions.

[siLc]

As far as the touchpad is concerned, it seems to be like the one used in countless other 15"+ ASUS notebooks, even ones from 3+ years ago. Having used one for 1,5 years, I can attest that its a fine unit.

Can I get a HWMonitor screenshots when the NB is idle and under gaming load?