Asus G73SW-XT1 vs. Asus G73JH

Hi there,



Was curious about the new G73SW-XT1.

I currently have the G73JH & was considering retiring mine.

Been looking all over and cannot find comparisons as far as benchmarking goes between the two.



The G73JH runs the Ati Mobility 5870HD w/ GDDR5



The G73SW runs the nVidia GeForce 460m.



I have read around notebookcheck and I understand the nVidia's 460m has a lower rating than the 5870.



However, the new G73SW with the SandyBridge 2.0 has higher specs than the G73JH.



Regardless of specs only concerning the GPU and CPUs...which laptop would be best?



According to notebookcheck the 5870 gets around 40fps on average whereas I'm only getting around 32fps average on Mafia II.



Why is this? I downloaded the latest Catalyst package 11.3. Should I try updating from 11.2 to 11.3 for better results or is the factory drivers for this laptop better suggested for better fps?



Thanks!

-Kev

Reply 1 : Asus G73SW-XT1 vs. Asus G73JH

The leap from the JH to the SW isn't major in the graphics department, I'd wait for a later version of the G74 or something to get a major bump with the GPU. Unless you're really hankering for a better CPU and USB 3.0, I'd wait it out. As for the drivers, I'm waiting for 11.4 personally.

Reply 2 : Asus G73SW-XT1 vs. Asus G73JH

Does your G73JH not do things you wish it could? I have a JH and it does everything I ask it to with ease and I don't ask it to perform easy tasks either. I've not yet had any thoughts of upgrading it beyond just having the latest and greatest, which is solely to please my ego.



Good luck in your decision but I'll be waiting a while before I upgrade.

Reply 3 : Asus G73SW-XT1 vs. Asus G73JH

You won't see any performance game cept in CPU intensive games (Starcraft II, GTA IV and some more that I can't remember off the top of my head). IMO, it'd be a waste of money to upgrade to the SW from JH as the performance gain is debatable (you get better FPS in Mafia II due it using PhysX, but lose some FPS in other games that require pure gpu power). You should consider the resale value of your JH too and what the offset are (considering what you did to your JH). It is different for everyone, if you got the money go for it.

Reply 4 : Asus G73SW-XT1 vs. Asus G73JH

If you already have the G73JH, then just keep it but if you can sell it for almost 85% of its original price then go for it and get the SW.

Reply 5 : Asus G73SW-XT1 vs. Asus G73JH

Hey,



Perhaps when the G73JH was released it could handle most of the applications/games that were put towards it; however, the i7 7XXM processors that comes standard on the G73JH are starting to show their age in terms of how they perform with current games.

Example, Shogun Total War 2 (RTS) is a recent game, however, despite running the G73JH in "twin turbo" mode and with engaging the "turbo boost" feature (ie. built in overclock) the game bottlenecks at [what looks like to me] the CPU and not the GPU.



So in short, repackaging you question - where will the bottleneck be on the current games and new ones coming to be released?



My opinion is at the CPU; since the 1 GB ATI and 1.5 GB NVidia are current enough to handle current games for a good while; and bottlenecks, as others have pointed out, tend to be along the CPU lines.



So, unless you're infatuated with the ATI 5870, go with the G73SW. Personally, I would not bother with the G53XX since their smaller size results (most likely) in higher temps.



Thanks,



-NRUserII

Reply 6 : Asus G73SW-XT1 vs. Asus G73JH

Quote:

Originally Posted by NRUserII Hey, Perhaps when the G73JH was released it could handle most of the applications/games that were put towards it; however, the i7 7XXM processors that comes standard on the G73JH are starting to show their age in terms of how they perform with current games. Example, Shogun Total War 2 (RTS) is a recent game, however, despite running the G73JH in "twin turbo" mode and with engaging the "turbo boost" feature (ie. built in overclock) the game bottlenecks at [what looks like to me] the CPU and not the GPU. So in short, repackaging you question - where will the bottleneck be on the current games and new ones coming to be released? My opinion is at the CPU; since the 1 GB ATI and 1.5 GB NVidia are current enough to handle current games for a good while; and bottlenecks, as others have pointed out, tend to be along the CPU lines. So, unless you're infatuated with the ATI 5870, go with the G73SW. Personally, I would not bother with the G53XX since their smaller size results (most likely) in higher temps. Thanks, -NRUserII

You shouldn't turn on TwinTurbo or the Turbo mode in BIOS(that's also TwinTurbo), as people have noted a decrease in performance when it is turned on. The games that seems to have some issues are the ones requiring heavy PhysX calculations, since the 5870M can't do them, its all done on software (using the CPU), this is where bottlenecks might come in.

Reply 7 : Asus G73SW-XT1 vs. Asus G73JH

After seeing what you did to your JH, I would retire it too.

Reply 8 : Asus G73SW-XT1 vs. Asus G73JH

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amitosh After seeing what you did to your JH, I would retire it too.

ha ha! Yes, but as long as it doesn't have a heart & is not an A.I., It'll be mauled by me >;-) unless the A.I. of course is frustrating me, I might consider persuading exiting my truck while it is moving >;-) but, so far my laptop hasn't pushed me to that point yet.



yes, thank you for all your concerns.

Some things that really upset me about the ATI is...



1- heat

2- jerking (in games such as FarCry 2 when running a higher cap than 40fps.

3- Lower fps avg on games.



well, this is based on my lappie top.



I ran 3Dmark2011... yes ha ha, this won't give me fascinating results (believe me, it didn't!) It did however show me that the Physics are actually being processed just fine by my CPU.



The GPU however was suffering greatly. I only got a P1997 score on 3dMark 2011 total on the basic version. My GPU suffered greatly during lighting and shaders. CPU didn't suffer much at all and actually still ran cooler than GPU.

Reply 9 : Asus G73SW-XT1 vs. Asus G73JH

My G73JH fared a little better on 3DMark 11. Here are the results of my laptop if you wish to compare. If I can check anything to help track down a performance discrepancy you might be experiencing please let me know.