ASUS W90Vp: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870... with CrossFire
by Jarred Walton on May 29, 2009 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Design and Appearance
If we were to summarize the ASUS W90Vp in a few short words: it's big, it's bad, and it's beautiful. And we really do mean big! The Clevo D901C is one of the largest notebooks we've ever tested, and the W90Vp dwarfs it. However, despite the size disadvantage, power requirements are actually quite similar in the two notebooks are relatively close to the same 11.5 pound weight. You can see a few comparison shots between the Clevo D901C (Sager NP9262) in the ASUS W90Vp below.
As a bonus, ASUS also includes a large carrying case for the W90Vp. This is not your standard notebook bag, but is instead a rather large backpack. If you ever had to load this thing around, say for instance at a LAN party, we actually think the backpack will prove far more convenient. It's also large enough to carry the gigantic power brick, the included Razer mouse (another nice bonus), and there's still plenty of room for any other accessories you might want to bring along.
The design and appearance of the W90Vp is very attractive, assuming you go for the "giant laptop" look. It has a brushed aluminum cover with the ASUS logo, a reasonable selection of expansion options, a great LCD (relative to other notebooks), Blu-ray support, and an HDMI port to highlight a few areas. We really only have two complaints with the design. First, there's no latching mechanism on the LCD panel, relying instead on magnets to hold the display closed. They seem to work well enough, but some users might prefer actual latches instead. The other issue also involves the top panel. As you might expect, it's heavy, and after several past experiences with notebooks we have to wonder about the ability of the hinges to hold up over the long haul. It's not something we can review directly, as any problems in that area will likely take months or longer to manifest, and they appear relatively durable. However, we recommend users exercise some care when they open or close any laptop display, and that goes double for large 17" and 18.4" notebooks.
If you want to access the internal components on the W90Vp, the only thing you should need to remove is the bottom cover. ASUS uses one large cover instead of several smaller covers, secured surprisingly by just four small screws. After removing the screws, the whole bottom panel slides towards the rear of the system, at which point you can lift it away. Numerous plastic prongs help hold the cover in place, but these small prongs are also somewhat fragile so exercise caution if you ever remove/replace the cover.
Inside you can see the two large GPU heatsinks/heatpipes, another HSF/heatpipe for the CPU, the three fans, and other components. You can see that one of the screws on the GPU heatsinks is missing its spring, but a bigger concern for many users is going to be the "warranty void if removed" sticker on the CPU heatsink. Yes, like several other vendors we looked at, ASUS doesn't want you to upgrade your CPU. We've heard that it's technically not something they can enforce, but nevertheless it's not something we enjoy seeing. Make sure you're willing to live with that limitation before purchasing a W90 with the intent to upgrade the CPU.
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buzznut - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
Looky there, I went and missed "bash AMD day"Damn, they're prolly still reeling.
Johnmcl7 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
In the specs for this machine it lists an 8x DVDR drive initially, then refers to it as a blu-ray drive just further down - I assume the first entry should read bd-rom/dvd-r combo.I have to say the pictures are extremely disappointing as the main shots of the laptop are badly underexposed concealing most of the details. I do realise these machines are not easy to get a picture of but normally the pictures in reviews are pretty decent. It would be good to see some pictures with some standard items (DVD cases or something) when the laptop is open to get a better idea of the scale, I think the sleek look makes it look smaller than it is especially given it makes the D901C look small which I didn't think possible.
As for the laptop itself I did consider one of these mainly because the price was good but decided against it due to the size/weight. I had a Dell XPS 2 then M1710 and I think that's really the upper limit to carry around with me. I have an XPS M1730 at the moment and it never leaves the house as combined with its huge powerpack makes it quite a bit bigger and heavier than the M1710, there's no way I would go bigger again.
It's a shame to see the driver situation is so poor when the performance is clearly there, it's not very encouraging for other companies to pick up mobile ATI parts either.
mrbios - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Jarred (or anyone who may purchase this notebook), I have a different Asus laptop that has the same multimedia touchpad, and I did find a way to disable it. Go into the Mouse control panel, go to Device Settings, expand tapping, click on tap zones, and uncheck "enable tap zones".garydale - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Why is it so difficult to get good display drivers for games? The OpenGL interface is well defined so what's the problem with writing a driver for it that game developers can have confidence it will work according to spec.?Is this a case of the hardware manufacturers screwing up with the driver or the game developers trying to get around the API to work directly with the hardware or a bit of both? Frankly, I don't care. If I want to play a game on a computer, it should install and work just like any other piece of software or hardware.
Hopefully AMD/ATI's release of details of their API will help bring stability and performance, at least for Linux games. Now will NVidia follow suit and allow the open source community to build their own drivers to end this proprietary "buggy driver" lunacy?
JarredWalton - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
I believe most of the driver updates are to optimize the way the GPU executes certain code. In theory, the drivers should run all code properly but not optimally. The reality, sadly, is that the "properly" part is only correct about 80% of the time with new titles. Add CrossFire into the mix and that seems to drop down to 50%. If you have a regular dual card CrossFire setup, disabling CrossFire in the CCC often solves compatibility issues, but that's not an option on the drivers I've received for the W90Vp.In the case of Empire: Total War it looked like the drivers were rendering properly on one card but not on the other. If I grabbed a screenshot via the PrintScreen button, everything looked correct, but looking at the screen only the landscaping and sky were always visible and correct. The units, trees, buildings, etc. were only visible about 10% of the frames, which pretty much means you can't play the game.
mbaroud - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
I own one the W90VP-A1.I have been dyingto update the drivers, it sucks running on OUTDATED drivers :(
nubie - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
If these are simply mobile desktop replacements why doesn't somebody get on making a desktop built into the screen already?And I don't mean the hideous monstrosity that is the Dell XP1.
I am all for laptops, but this form factor is silly above 15.4" in my opinion.
(that said, I love the tech, it is very cool.)
Jackattak - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Dunno if you've been asleep for the past two years but just about every major PC manufacturer offers a desktop built-in to the screen nowadays, none of which are "hideous" (strictly my opinion, but I find it hard to find a screen "hideous", and that's essentially all these offerings are is a screen).garydale - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
It's generally cheaper and faster to run multiple desktops in the locations you need than to lug a "desktop replacement" around. Just keep your documents (and other settings) on a USB key or implement an Internet synchronization scheme.The simple fact is that you cannot get anything that can be reasonably called a laptop to match the performance of a desktop. Laptops don't have the space for multiple drives, they can't dissipate heat as well, and they certainly can't accommodate expansion.
To get the same performance of a desktop in a mobile platform, you have to wait for the technology to become available then pay a premium for the privilege. People have been saying laptops are getting near desktop performance for decades. What is actually happening however is the price of admission for an application platform has been decreasing.
You can get a resonable desktop today for what a hard drive would have cost you twenty years ago. However, if you want cutting edge power, you need a desktop or larger.
frozentundra123456 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
The charts are technically labelled incorrectly. I believe for instance the first chart, black bar, means the ratio of nVidia performance to ATI, not percent improvement as it is labelled. Saying "102 percent improvement" actually means that the nVidia solution is twice as fast as the ATI, which from reading the rest of the article appears not to be what the author meant. The rest of the charts are labelled in this way also.