Asus G75VW-DS71

By Joel Santo Domingo The Asus G75VW-DS71 is a gaming laptop that captivates your attention the instant you take it out of the box. It's branded with Asus' Republic of Gamers logo, so you know it's aimed at the gamer audience. It has impressive hardware?a quad-core processor, 12GB of RAM, two 750GB hard drives, and Nvidia Kepler graphics?that give it the chops to do serious work during the day and play (somewhat) hard at night. It's also nicely priced for the midrange gaming category, coming in under $1,750. If you're looking for a performance PC that makes a few concessions to reach a palatable price tag, take a long look at this system, but those wanting the most powerful gaming PC available should search elsewhere. Design and Features
The G75VW is definitely not an ultraportable: It measures roughly 2 by 16.5 by 12.75 inches (HWD), and weighs just over 9 pounds without its included power adapter and mouse (which bring it up to 12 pounds). Thus, it's really designed to move around the house rather than serve as your regular commuter laptop?unless your daily commute is to a gaming center and you have Herculean strength and stamina. The bright 17.3-inch screen has a 1080p HD (1,920-by-1,080-resolution) screen, good for both playing games and watching videos using the built-in Blu-ray drive. The system comes with a pair of speedy 750GB 7,200rpm SATA hard drives, which were divided into four logical volumes on our review model. Theoretically, you could run dual- or triple-boot environments and play different games in different operating systems to avoid conflict between the installs. Also, you can separate your video data from your gaming data on separate volumes as well. If maximum drive capacity is what you're after, on the other hand, you could stripe both drives together to make a single 1.5TB drive, which may be an advantage if you're using the G75VW for video production. Speaking of videos, the laptop's full-size HDMI port can be used to connect the laptop to an HDTV or other external display. It also has four USB 3.0 ports, as well as a card reader, VGA, Gigabit Ethernet, and audio ports. The last port is a Mini DisplayPort, which is handy for the few users with Mini DisplayPort monitors, but it hints at the chassis' potential. (This port is likely to be upgraded to a Thunderbolt port on future models.) The G75VW has a backlit keyboard with numeric keypad, and comes with an Asus gaming mouse; you're all set out of the box for controlling your favorite games. The speakers and subwoofer are clear and put out a good amount of sound. The laptop comes preinstalled with some Asus software, in particular recovery and webcam utilities. The inevitable Microsoft Office Starter 2010 is present, as is Adobe Reader. There's also an Asus power management utility, which can switch power settings between battery saving, high-performance, and multimedia options, a nice feature if you find it annoying when the screen dims too quickly in Windows' default "balanced" mode. Performance
The G75VW comes with a quad-core Intel Core i7-3610QM processor, 12GB of DDR3 memory, and a high-end Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M graphics card. All these components work together to deliver very good multimedia and passable gaming performance. The system completed our Handbrake video test in 1 minute 18 seconds, and the Photoshop CS5 test in 3:24. Both scores are as quick as you'd see on a full-blown desktop, so the G75VW is a true desktop replacement. The Editors' Choice Alienware M17x R4 beat the G75VW at both tests thanks to its faster processor, but the G75VW matched the Eurocom Leopard 2.0 and MSI GT70 0NC-011US . This is no wonder, as the MSI GT70 and the Asus G75VW both have the same processor. It's on the game grid where the gaming laptops shake out. All the aforementioned laptops are fine playing both Crysis (upwards of 60 frames per second, or fps) and Lost Planet 2 (more than 40fps) at the lower resolution and middle or medium quality settings, but it's at the higher settings where the higher-end laptops earn their price tags. Both the Alienware M17x R4 and Eurocom Leopard 2.0 are playable on both games at their native resolutions. The Eurocom Leopard 2.o0 comes out ahead of all three competitors, but that's understandable considering that it costs almost twice as much as the G75VW. As it is, the G75VW and MSI GT70 are "almost playable" at Crysis and Lost Planet 2, but could be smoother with adjustments to quality settings. With all these power-consuming components, it's not surprising that the G75VW only lasted 2 hours 59 minutes in our MobileMark 2007 battery rundown test. This is on par for gaming rigs, as the Alienware M17x only lasted 2:36 and the Eurocom Leopard a mere 1:48. This isn't much of a drawback, as the system won't be far from power for extended periods of time anyway. This is a system that will roam the house, migrating from power plug to power plug. All in all, the Asus G75VW-DS71 isn't too bad. It's decently priced. It's a good choice for the multimedia maven who needs the bright HD screen and copious storage and games once in a while. It's not that portable?if that's what you want, you'd be better off with an ultrabook with a 1080p screen like our high-end ultrabook Editors' Choice, the Asus Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71 . The G75VW also falls behind the competition (like the Editors' Choice Alienware M17x R4) when gaming, with slow frame rates when image quality and screen resolution are set high. These stumbles may keep the G75VW from leading the pack, but it still merits a look if you're limited to a midrange gaming budget.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Asus G75VW-DS71 with several other desktops side by side.

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