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M50sa-X1 general questions

post #1 of 3
5/12/08 at 1:51pm
Thread Starter 
I recently purchased an Asus M50sa-X1 from Newegg and I'm pretty happy with it. I just have a few questions that I hope can be answered here...

1. How do I get 5.1 sound out of the 1/4" jack. I've got 5.1 speakers and its a shame to be using them in stereo for 3d sound.
2. Can I get the hdmi port to output to a computer monitor? If so, how. If not, what can I use it for...
3. eSATA... should be easy right? Well I plugged in an external with an esata cable and nothing happened. Tried it with a restart too, still nothing. Same drive works over usb. Am I missing something?
4. This came with Vista 32, is upgrading to 64 bit worth it?
5. This laptop is supposed to have 4gb of ram, windows recognizes 3 (cuz its 32 bit) and I have ram monitoring software that only reads 2gb... whats going on here, is the graphics card using 1gb of system ram? Can I change the amount of memory the graphics card uses?

Thanks for the input!
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post #2 of 3
5/12/08 at 2:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeonic_Warrior View Post
I recently purchased an Asus M50sa-X1 from Newegg and I'm pretty happy with it. I just have a few questions that I hope can be answered here...

1. How do I get 5.1 sound out of the 1/4" jack. I've got 5.1 speakers and its a shame to be using them in stereo for 3d sound.
2. Can I get the hdmi port to output to a computer monitor? If so, how. If not, what can I use it for...
3. eSATA... should be easy right? Well I plugged in an external with an esata cable and nothing happened. Tried it with a restart too, still nothing. Same drive works over usb. Am I missing something?
4. This came with Vista 32, is upgrading to 64 bit worth it?
5. This laptop is supposed to have 4gb of ram, windows recognizes 3 (cuz its 32 bit) and I have ram monitoring software that only reads 2gb... whats going on here, is the graphics card using 1gb of system ram? Can I change the amount of memory the graphics card uses?

Thanks for the input!
1.) you need a digital optical cable. I've got a TOSlink cable with an optical minijack for that purpose that I got from Amazon.com

2.) the HDMI port can output to any TV or monitor with an HDMI port or you can get an HDMI to DVI adapter and use it to connect to a monitor with a DVI port.

3.) I don't know anything about eSATA, but I think it should be plug-and-play. I don't know why it wouldn't work. Sorry!

4.) & 5.) if you get the 64-bit version of Vista, then all your RAM will be recognized and utilized. The 32-bit version can only access just over 3GB total, including dedicated video memory. Since as I recall your video card has 1GB of dedicated video memory, that takes away from the amount of system RAM that can be accessed. I know Asus sells some M50 versions with Vista 64, so all the drivers should be in place. I'd advise an upgrade if you can.
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post #3 of 3
5/14/08 at 4:10pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the reply! I guess I'll look further into the eSATA thing...
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