Review: ASUS M6BNE review, Built from barebone. - Page 3

When you build it yourself, aren't you losing out on some of the warranties that you would otherwise get? How does that work? I suppose you get individual warranties through parts manufacturers? Could you talk more about this?

bought all the parts through newegg.com

they rock, ask anyone.

as for warrenties each seperate piece has its own. I think my proc has 3 years and my notbook itself has 2 years while my ram and hdd have 1 or something. Not sure though, it would vary from brand to brand.

you your barebones laptop had a warranty? What did it cover? Doesn't the fact that you are working aroundinside of it play some role in the type of warranty (or lack thereof) that you get?

No, I haven't posted any benchies yet. I have just test-run someof them and got some good scores comparing to what others got. The thing is that I don't really care nor do I trust any of these benchmarks. I had a thread titled "for those who still doubt Dothan power" or something like that and in there I refered to my results of running REAL-LIFE programs on my 1.7 Dothan laptop compared to a 3.0P4HT desktop. The point is that benchmarks are just useless applications that have ZERO value to you. Often benchmark results are very different from real-life tests so I really don't see a real reason to do them. I did them anyway and got some good results but don't remember the exact figures. I can retest the lappy and send you a PM if you are really interested but again these benchmark results often mislead people. For example there are lots of benchies out there that will tell you the 3.0P4 will eat alive the 1.7Dothan but when I ran a real program on them it was the other way around so those fancy benchmarks that you rad everyone to be psyched about are hardly of any use in real life other than helping you feed your ego of having a bench beast of a lappy.
I can still run some benchies for you, though. Send me a PM if you are interested.

Good points and I understand them completely! I agree that benchmarks are probably far less useful then people make them out to be. I suppose I was just interested in the performance difference between the 9700/64 and the 9700/128. Would a benchmark be helpful there? If they would them I will pm you and talk more. Thanks for your time.

I love your specs. That is the system I want I am almost positive. I am really looking forward to your review!

Probably the gpu benchmarks will be of some help for the 3Dmark01 bench I ran was basically a collction of diff games so my guess is that for gpu capabilities it might be useful. Also keep in mind that the gpu in asus M6n might be a 9700 but it is clocked at lower settings than say the gpu in a Sager laptop. This is to keep heat and battery consumption at a lower level. This is not a problem for it can be fixed by OCing the gpu but then again - more heat and shorter battery life than the stock settings of my lappy will give you.
As for dif of 64 vs 128MB 9700 there was a review on an Apple G4 machine posted some time ago (meybe google would help you more) and in there they were much more equal then most peoplewould think. The only situation when 128 had some advantage over 64 was in the most demanding benchies at the HIGHEST of settings. But again in that review those were benchmark results and not real-life tests.
I will run 3dMark01 for you (and maybe even 3dmark03 but I am having some problems running it - not sure how exactly to do it) and PM you the results.
Anyway, if you don't get a PM from me by tomorrow, know that I have forgotten (kind of airy these days) so please remind me with a PM.

Sounds great! Thanks.
As I have said before, most of the games I play are not the most intensive. I dont play HL2, Doom 3, Farcry stuff. At least, not on my laptop. So I should be fine. I will look forward to you pm and also to your review!

I'm trying to decide between the M6N 15.4" or the 15.1". The 15.1" has better resolution and is cheaper, but from what I understand, it is used in the same laptop frame as the widescreen version, so there is an ugly 1.5" plastic border all around the screen. Any thoughts?

(by the way, very helpful posts above... thanks)

I sooo agree about benchmarks. They are worthless. I remember a time when hardware maker used to cheat and made drivers that spcifically addressed the benchmarks to artificially pump-up the benchmark numbers. WTF does it matter how many FPS you can get. on ONE game..how about something real like how fast does the swapfile take in and out of memory.


Besides, the speed and ability of your new system is relative to your old system.

I use Etymotic ER-4P canalphones. You stick them in your ear canal, and they block out external sound.

Asus M6BNE - $1700, from notebook vendor.
Etymotic ER-4P - $220, from Headroom
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - $20, from BestBuy
Turning coach class into your personal home theatre - Priceless

I just bought a m6ne, and it's nice having the higher resolution and more screen real estate. The border around th screen is closer to an inch on the sides and a half of an inch on top. The border is not ugly, and is half rubber (closest to the lcd). Also remember that that the m6bne wide screen mode has a hump on the back of lcd (on top of the unit when closed), as the m6ne doesn't, making it thinner when closed. The unit is about .9 inches wider than most 15.1 in models but is much shorter (thinner) then most. The wide screen also only come in wxga, and i personally don't see the benefits of a wide screen. You can always wait for the v6v series to come out and they are a bit smaller. There is a link somewhere on here to some european site that shows good comparison pictures of the two units. I'm happy with my choice, just got it today. Just my two cents.