Review: S96J Review - Page 5

The 64meg X700 gets about 2300 in 3dmkar05. (the x1600 gets 50% more performance roughly, so) the X1600 vs X700 shouldn't be a huge difference. It should be a jump from Medium settings to high settings. Or maybe even being able to enable AA/AF in some games.

I'd say the jump is pretty big, however it is not recommended to upgrade your laptop as you already have a powerful machine. It's only 1year old at the max, you should keep it a bit more...

That is incorrect. You are thinking of the 128mb version. The 64 mb version gets about 1,000 - 1,200: http://forum.notebookreview.com/show...t=22330&page=3 Look at the posts 25, 26, 27 I expect that scores with the newest bios are even lower. The newest bios reduced the VRAM clock from 330MHz to 300MHz. I expect that Ryzeki can also confirm what score he gets on his...

Im afraid my performance is less that the optimal. Indeed the bios downgraded my memory clock speed from 330 to 300mhz, and my 3dmark05 score is 1185.

Even tho is not that old of a computer, i cannot stand the crippiling frames on CSS in certain mods or other games, and its performance is not that big of a jump from my old Emachines with the Radeon 9600 o/c to 9700 speeds. in fact, the only game i noticed an improvement was Doom 3 and Fear, both in which ran smoother, but not nearly as good as the 128mb version of X700.

The problem itself is not the x700 64mb, its THIS Acer's x700, because i have seen other 64mb x700 score around 1800, but this one is not a performer.

my 3dmark03 score is 4404, and i think this X1600 gets around 9k, so i think its at least over twice as strong as my current laptop.

Hi everyone....What temps are you getting on the S96J? I'm using MobileMeter and I get 52 C idle and 65 C at full throttle on a Dual Core 2500. Also, the touchpad and the area on the right of it (with the ATI sticker) does get warm....Is this normal? I used AS 5 instead of the given goop....

Those temps are pretty good, actually. a Pentium M in a Z70va will easily go over 70C at full throttle.

What program are you running when you hit 65C? Where do you live? While I run prime95 torture test I used to hit 62C. This is a very intensive CPU program. When running games like Quake 4 I would hit about 60C. Lately my temps have improved. When I run prime95 torture test my CPU now does not get over 58C. I think my AC5 has broken in. My right palm rest does get warm but not uncomfortable. As soon a fan utility comes out that supports this notebook I imagine that if you have the fan kick in at lower temp some of this will be alleviated. The fan is never on while CPU temp is at 52 or 53. I think this is why palm rest is warm. When CPU is warmer and fan is on there is very little heat in palm rest.

^ I Heard the battery life on this laptop is only about 2hrs unfortunately. This was a big disapointment. How long have u guys been getting while surfing the net and typing in word..?

Presently I'm in Seattle but even on Long Island, the temps were the same To get the temps up, I used 2 instances of Prime95 for each of the cores...didn't monitor during any games yet...Will try using Oblivion next week Still waiting for AS 5 to break in...Its been only 2 days since I started using the laptop...I wish I could kick the fan on sooner...

Battery life is around 2-2:30 hrs...I'm thinking of buying a spare battery soon....

I think the battery time is very good. I never run at full brightness though. This is a very bright notebook. 70 - 80% brightness works very well for me. I got 2.5 hours with DVD and 80% brightness. I'm even able to work on this notebook at 30% brightness. I got 3 1/2 hours at 30% browsing web and working in Word.

orangutan and azriyeti, i have been considering screen resolutions for games too.

I have talked with Mystery on MSN for quite a while regarding resolutions and gaming.

First thing, many here can agree that a higher res like WSXGA+ is good for windows and application/programs.

Now the problem occurs when gaming.

I asked Mystery, why not get a high res screen, and then in the game, tell the game to run at a lower widescreen resolution? His answer is that it will be all blurry. <-hmm true i have heard about this before.

So now, why not take the native res WSXGA+ and make it run at WXGA, and then play the same game and run it at max resolution which is WXGA. < what happens then? (no clue)

I will definately agree with you guys, that the X1600 will not be powerfull enough to run at WSXGA+, but like many here, we don't mind putting the resolution lower aslong as the LCD doesn't blur or ghost.

It would be nice for someone to test this out on any 15.4" WSXGA+ laptop and see what happens on a perticular game.

1) Set native res to WSXGA+, then play a game at WXGA res, see what happens and report to us.

2) Set native res to WXGA. then play the same game at WXGA res, and see what happens and then report to us.

With this info, many of us can then make our purchasing process a lot clearer, and yes the MBP 15.4" with a WXGA+ matte is definately a nice option, a blend of the best of both worlds.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

MysticGolem,

My experience with my desktop LCD which is 19" WXGA+ (1440x900) is that games look considerably better at native resolution. Much more crisp. Text in particular can look a little weird when stretched. I was not getting the best performance in F.E.A.R on my desktop at 1440x900 (I only have a 6800GT) so I changed to 1280x800. I was not very happy with the results. I ended up lowering the other settings and going back to 1440x900.

This is one of the reasons that I think WXGA is a good resolution for the X1600. I can run the games I like to play at native res at the settings I like to play them at. While I could probably deal with 1440x900 at 15.4" in 2D I know I would really have to turn down the settings of the games I play to play at that res with the X1600.

ok interesting.

Here's how i see things.

I wanna get a laptop with an X1600 and have it last for about 4 years or so.

My desktop has a Geforce 4 ti 4200 128mb, with a 17" CRT with 1600x1200 as its max res.

I run my CRT at 1280x1024 because of my dad. But i play all my games at 1024x768 or 800x600 because my computer is old and all settings on off or lowest.

Now i know the GPU in a laptop cannot be change, but if i can't decrease the resolution for games on a Laptop LCD then i would only be able to play new games that come out for about 1-2 years after my laptop.

You know what i'm saying?

I wanna run all future games at lower resolution and low settings without the game looking like cr ap or something. To me all my games running at 800x600 on my CRT look fine, im kinda use to cra ppy graphics lol, so i don't mind it. hehe.

But i would definately love WSXGA+ for windows and apps/programs, i wouldn't mind WXGA+ like the MBP, but i fear that WXGA would not provide sufficient real estate.

Hmm once ASUS hold the next Laptop show in Toronto i will see all screen and test these things out.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

Here is an example of the difference in resolution. I took this screenshot of Unreal Tournament 2004. both are set on highest settings, without AA or AF, the first link is to a 1280x800 resolution, my native one. the other one is set to 1024 resolution.

I hope you can see the overall difference between them. basically different resolutions from native seem more blurry etc, because the image is stretched to fit the screen. this is different with CRT monitors.

of you put together the images, specially you will notice the difference with the gun.

http://img95.imageshack.us/my.php?im...nut20046al.jpg

http://img132.imageshack.us/my.php?i...res10248rm.jpg


If possible, i prefer playing at Native Res, but because of my 64mb card, im forced to play at lower res. so i dont mind that much that i dont play at my native res.

With the asus, i think i will be able to play games at native res without much trouble at least for a while. so for me WXGA with glossy thing is a nice deal.

That's not really too bad, but I've seen worse screens than that. Basically, not using native resolution is like NEGATIVE AA/AF. Things get blurrier and messier and its hard to see clear, especially in games such as COD2/CS where it matters how accurate u can see each other's helmets so you can pop your oponent before he pops you up.

EH, i find looking at the second picture really annoying. Maybe its just me but all the jaggy stuff is just eww.

Anyone have a link to the asus specs for this laptop? I was wondering if I can use a Mobil Pentium M CPU in it because I have a couple of them here and I wanted to but the CPU for this laptop later in june after the price drops
Mike

Is it possible on the gentech store website to take out the 1.3 megapixel camera? I dont really need a camera on the laptop as I have a camera already? Also does gentech take student discounts into account? Thanks.