Asus G1S

One of the fastest growing segments in laptops today, are gaming machines. As their demand increases companies like Nvidia have started introducing graphical chipsets that promise to bridge the difference between very high-end dedicated gaming laptops and more mainstream efforts. The 8600 GT is one such chipset, that was recently introduced and has been getting positive reviews overall both in performance and in the form of adoption by manufacturers. One such manufacturer is Asus, who has adopted the 8600 GT in their gaming laptop the G1s. At the same time they have upgraded the CPU of the G1 to the newly introduced Santa Rosa platform.

How well does this laptop perform? Read on to find out…

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The most striking thing about the G1 is the fact that for a 15.4 inch laptop, it’s rather large and designed more like a tough notebook than a consumer grade machine. However that’s where the similarity ends. Unlike the reinforcement that tough laptops enjoy, the G1 is made out of standard construction plastic that while being thicker than normal is nowhere near as durable. One good point to note here, is that Asus has reinforced the hinges of the G1s with nice thick iron bolts. This is a good departure from the standard plastic hinges that not only begin to squeak after a few months of use, but also may also break in some rare cases.

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The color scheme of the G1s? Non-existent as Asus has used a standard black matte finish all over the laptop. This was a disappointment as a tastefully done two-tone color scheme, would have increased the brand-value and bragging value of the G1S. Keeping in mind that this is a gaming laptop, a little bit of flash would not have hurt anyone. The only concessions that have been given to it as a gaming laptop are the polymer film glass cover on the top lid of the laptop and around the keyboard area, the WSAD keys being clearly highlighted, an LED panel that scrolls your name or any text that you desire or the current time/date and green highlights around the integrated webcam.

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The LCD panel on the G1s is a widescreen variant offering a native resolution of 1440x900. The quality as compared to previous laptops remains unchanged. The screen offers a generous work area, excellent color and contrast levels and surprisingly for a laptop panel very deep black levels. The provided software “Splendid Video Enhancement Technology” however is a bit of a disappointment. Its preset modes don’t really bring out the level and quality display this panel is capable of. To get the best possible display, it’s better to define your own settings using the software’s profile maker. Overall keeping in mind the gaming aspect of the laptop, the LCD panel is quite welcome.

The keyboard of the G1 is quite well designed. The keys are well spaced out, offer good feedback and the highlighted “WSAD” keys are a welcome touch. The only thing we found annoying here was the fact that sometimes the key presses didn’t register in games and caused problems. Initially we thought that this might be a problem in our test piece, but it was not. We worked on the machine for normal every-day work and found that the same keys worked fine. The touchpad of the G1 is a very standard fare. It offers good traction and control and is generally pleasant to use. It is however not very good to game with and for this Asus includes a stylish mouse.

If the mouse strikes a feeling of familiarity… it’s because it’s a rebadged Logitech MX518.

In terms of peripheral connectivity, the G1 is certainly not lacking. It offers 4 USB slots which unfortunately have been all grouped up at the back. This is a major annoyance as it means that for connecting any USB item; one has to turn the laptop around every time. The rest of the connectivity is quite standard with a Firewire slot, Rj11/ Rj45 jacks, Mic/headphones out, a card reader and a dual-layer DVD drive. Wireless connectivity is present in the form of Bluetooth 2.0 EDR and 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi support.
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The G1s being a gaming laptop, comes with some decent specifications. It is powered by a Centrino Duo T7300 processor clocked at 2 GHz, comes with 2 GB of DDR2 667 RAM, and Nvidia’s 8600GT graphical chipset with 256 Mb of graphical turbocache RAM. The 8600 GT is the beefed up version of the 8400 graphics chipset that was present in the A8SC that we reviewed recently. Like the 8400, it is DX10 compliant and supports Nvidia’s Purevideo 2 technology.

We divided our tests into 3 sections. First up and most importantly were the synthetic tests namely 3DMark06 and PCMark05. The G1s aced both tests achieving scores of 4608 and 5124. These are impressive scores, keeping in mind that we have the mid-level version of the G1s. In comparison, the top-end version comes with a faster processor (T7500) and the 8600GT has 512 Mb of graphical memory.

In our second test we tested the games like F.EA.R, WoW, Oblivion and Prey. Each of the tests was run at the laptop’s native resolution of 1440x900, which is a widescreen resolution and conforms to the 16:10 standard. While some of the games support widescreen modes natively, we had to utilize either 3rd party patches/hacks for a couple of the games get them running in widescreen mode. Each test was run with a very moderate 2x AA/AF setting.

In each of the games the laptop was more than up to the task. We had average playable frame rates of around 38-63 across the spectrum. While the variance in the frame rate may seem to be a lot, please remember this is average frame rate. Smooth gaming is indeed possible on this laptop.
Our final test was the battery life. Here the laptop was a solid performer. We set the laptop for maximum performance and got a battery life of around 2