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The ASUS W90vP is a so-called ”Desktop Replacement” which is substantially different from rival products. The computer sports an untraditionally large 18.4 inch display, but that does offer certain advantages. The W90 is the first laptop we’re testing with ATi’s CrossFire X technology, which uses 2 GPU’s on ATi’s Radeon 4970 X2 video card.

Besides that the computer comes with Intel’s T9600 processor at 2.80 GHz, 6 GB RAM and a 500 GB hard drive. This beast can compete with most contemporary desktops and is one of the most powerful portable machines you can get. The W90 also has the world record for laptops in 3DMark 06, scoring 15,000 with the Core Duo processor and 20,000 points with the Quad Core processor.  

http://www.asus.com

Specifications

Category
Gaming and multimedia

Processor
Intel® Core 2 Duo™ T9600 – 2.80 GHz – 6 MB L2 Cache

Chipset
Intel® X38 (Bearlake-X) + ICH10R

RAM
3x 2048 MB PC2-6400 DDR2-SDRAM

GPU
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 X2 – 1024 MB GDDR3 RAM

Storage
2x Seagate ST9320421AS 320 GB S-ATA HDD – 7200 RPM

Display
18.4 inch 16:9 LCD display – 1920 x 1080 px

Sound card
ATI RV770 – High Definition Audio

Optical Drive
Optiarc BD ROM – BC5500S – 2x speed (BlueRay)

Battery
12 celled Lithium-ion battery

Connectivity
Atheros AR928X WLAN – 300 Mbps
Realtek RTL8168C(P)/8111(P) LAN – 1000 Mbps

Inputs/outputs
4x USB 2.0
1x HDMI
1x VGA
1x E-SATA / USB
1x ExpressCard
1x 8in1 card reader
1x Audio jack-in
1x Audio jack-out
1x RJ45 LAN port
1x RJ11 Modem port

Operating system
Microsoft Windows Vista® Ultimate x64 SP1 (build 6001)
Splashtop OS

Price
Starts at around £2,200.00

Please note: the tested configuration is called Asus W90VP – there are others which can be viewed on Asus’ website.

Package contents









-    Charger
-    Infrared receiver
-    Wireless mouse (Bluetooth)
-    Remote (Expresscard)
-    Cable Tie
-    Antistatic cloth
-    Manuals
-    Installation media (drivers and OS)
-    Bag

This computer comes with a bunch of very nice accessories, almost all of which are useful. The mouse and remote are practical and work really well, and the antistatic cloth is nice for when the display gathers too much dust. The computer fits perfectly into the large bag, which is very strong but the colour is somewhat off; it doesn’t go that well with the computer itself, but that’s a matter of taste. In addition to that there’s a slightly untraditional infrared receiver, which is meant to be used with the small remote. It’s not particularly handy, but it might be nice if you use other infrared units. All in all, there are a lot of good and versatile accessories.

Construction & Design

First impression

The first thing you notice about the Asus W90 is the size; the computer is enormous compared to what you would usually associate the word “laptop” with. However you’ll quickly learn this computer can do a whole lot more than the average laptop. The computers sports a sort of futuristic look – the metal hinges, the many ventilation holes and the numerous diodes suggest it’s a serious piece of machinery. The colours are black and primarily grey where the surface is brushed. The “skeleton” itself is made of aluminium. The W90 weighs about 5.3kg which is quite a lot, so you probably don’t want to move it around too much.

The lid





The lid is made of brushed aluminium, meaning it has a shiny, grey colour. The Asus logo is imprinted in the middle, and there are 5 smaller status diodes at the bottom which we’ll get to later.

The front



At the front are three smaller speakers which are used for the surround sound. The edges are nice and smooth and the computer clamps up neatly due to the design. The display is acceptable – if a bit heavy – to open up.

The rear



At the rear you find from the left to right a cooling unit, RJ11 modem port as well as RJ45 LAN port, followed by yet another cooling unit. After that we find an HDMI port, a VGA port and lastly our DC jack for the charger. The hinges are also visible at the rear which works well for the overall design.

The bottom



At the bottom under the large lid we find the RAM modules, hard drives, etc. We can also see the subwoofer which takes care of the base frequencies for the sound.

The right side



The left side



Inputs/outputs



Hinges



The hinges are made of metal and can be seen both when the display is open and closed. The hinges are firmly fastened and work wonders for the design.

Buttons/Diodes

There are two touch panels: one above and one left of the keyboard.



The first two buttons in this picture are for mute and deactivating the touchpad. The following “buttons” are used to regulate brightness.



In this picture the first button is used to configure the display with some pre-defined colour schemes, the second button is for a zoom function that follows the cursor, the third a shortcut to the camera software and the fourth and final for TurboGear Extreme, which is basically performance profiles.



This panel is at the left of the keyboard. At the bottom we have a rather clever volume control where all you have to do is slide your finger and the volume will follow. The buttons above are media buttons such as play, stop, next, previous and the like. The two at the very top are used to activate Asus’ own media center, called AI Multimedia, which can be seen in this picture:



The diodes are white and blue



The diodes are located above the keyboard on the display. The first four which can be seen in the picture show the status of the hard drives, numlock, capslock and screenlock.



The five at the right indicate notices, battery status, new e-mails via for example Windows Mail, whether Bluetooth is activated and whether WLAN is activated. The diodes shine with a white light, except the battery status which also shines with an orange light.

The five diodes can also be seen when the lid is closed, which is rather handy when you’re on the go.



Keyboard and Touchpad



The keyboard works really and there is plenty of space to rest your arms on. The keys react as they should and there is no flex in the keyboard. The keyboard is full size with numpads at the right, so it’s much like a normal keyboard for a desktop computer.



The touchpad seems to stop responding now and then for very brief periods of time. This can happen when the computer is loading a lot simultaneously. Otherwise it reacts swiftly enough and the sensitivity is fine. The buttons work just fine as well. The fingerprint reader is located between the buttons, but more on that later.

Noise & Heat

The computer makes quite a lot of noise compared to other laptops. The fans are constantly going at it, and while it’s not too loud during idle it does rise during load. You can easily drown out the noise with some music, though. The heat is not particularly noticeable on the keyboard itself, but a fair bit of heat is evolved at the rear around the cooling units. Most probably won’t notice it back there tough. There are also a lot of ventilation holes which really help out with the heat.

The display

The display is an 18.4 inch LCD display with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a WUXGA resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The display suffers a lot from glare and is practically impossible to use if you’re out in the sun, but fine if you’re indoors. The brightness is just right, neither too dim nor too bright. At the top of the display we have the webcam and two microphones. The backlight is homogenous, meaning the brightness is the same everywhere on the display.









The angles of view are suitably wide, but the colours start to change if you view the display from too far above or below.

Speakers





The speakers play really well, both for movies and games. The volume is relatively nice and loud and the sound is not just the treble; thanks to the built-in subwoofer you get the bass as well. When volume is at max the sound might resonate a bit, which can get annoying after a while. The speakers are from Altec Lansing and use Dolby® Home Theater Audio Enhancement technology. There are 6 speakers in total, including the subwoofer.

Special Features

Secondary operating system – Splashtop



A clever additional function the computer possesses is a secondary operating system, made to provide swift access to internet and related functions. The secondary system boots in about 8-10 seconds and allows you to use a browser for internet, Skype and other widely used internet applications. This is a very practical solution so you don’t have to wait for Windows to start up. There’s a small disadvantage though, namely that this OS doesn’t support the native resolution of the display, i.e. 1929 x 1080 px. Instead you have to make do with 1024 x 768, which is nowhere near as sharp. Splashtop is based on Linux.

Webcam



The webcam is a 2 megapixel kind and is capable of taking pictures in resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 px. Asus have included their Lifeframe software for use of the camera; among other things it allows you to use a plethora of effects on the picture. The software is pretty good and user friendly. The camera also has autofocus.

Fingerprint reader

The fingerprint reader works flawless and uses Protector Suite QL, a relatively easy program to use.

Benchmark









Comparison

The Asus W90 is pitted against Zepto’s Hydra A17 which is aimed at the same user group and can still compete with many laptops when it comes to performance. The price is unknown though, since Zepto has seemingly phased out the Hydra completely.

Zepto Hydra A17 offers:

-    Intel Core 2 Extreme X9100 – 3.06 GHz - 6MB cache
-    Intel PM45 – Bios: 1.00.09ZC
-    4 GB (2x2 GB) DDR3 PC8500 1066 MHz
-    Nvidia 9800M GTX - 1GB DDR3
-    128 GB High-Speed Solid State Disc SATA
-    17" Widescreen - WUXGA - 1920 x 1200 px
-    Blu-ray / DVD-RW SATA drive
-    8 celled Li-ion battery
-    Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit

You can find our review of the Hydra A17 here:
http://www.laptop-review.eu

The Asus W90 ran all benchmarks at standard settings and Asus’ Standard Mode which makes the computer run at a fixed CPU frequency of 2805 MHz. One of the GPUs is deactivated when running on battery.

Boot and out of standby times





Boot and out of standby times are measured from when the power button is pressed and the Windows desktop appears.

The boot time is at 108 seconds which is quite a lot; this is due to the software being loaded when Windows starts up. Here the Hydra A17 wins with 61 seconds.

Battery life



Battery-eater Pro 2,70 is used to measure the longevity of the batteries.

Idle test settings: Fixed clock frequency of 1843 MHz, brightness 1/8, HDD standby after 10 minutes and WiFi activated.

Classic test settings: Fixed clock frequency of 2805 MHz, brightness 8/8, HDD standby after 10 minutes and WiFi activated.

As can be seen on the graph, the Asus W90 only lasts about an hour, however with such hardware that’s not surprising. The Hydra A17 lasts about twice as long during idle, but 2 hours and 20 minutes is not particularly impressive either.

Processor

Sisoft Sandra CPU Aritmetic





SiSoft Sandras Whetstone and Drystone benchmark tests the processor’s ability to do pure number crunching, which occurs during gaming or different forms of picture editing. The measure is in Mflops (Millions Floating Point Operations Per Second) – the higher, the better.

The Zepto Hydra A17 is equipped with an Intel Core 2 Extreme X9100 – 3.06 GHz - 6MB cache whereas the Asus W90 is equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 – 2.80 GHz – 6 MB L2 cache. Both have overclocking potential and when it comes to performance the two are fairly even, though the X9100 is slightly faster as can be seen.

Sisoft Sandra CPU Multimedia





The multimedia test in SiSoft Sandra is calculated on a 2D figure. The output (it/s) is Mandelbrot iterations per second, i.e. the bigger the better.

Here the results are scattered, which may be due to an error in the benchmarking process.

wPrime 2.00



wPrime calculates the square root of numbers up to 32 million, and is capable of utilizing multiple cores to reach the processor’s maximum potential.

The Zepto Hydra A17 has unfortunately not been tested in wPrime, but the W90 gets a pretty good result nonetheless.

RAM – Sisoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth





Sisoft Sandras Memory Bandwidth benchmark is used to measure the speed of the RAM – the higher the value, the better.

The RAM modules in the Zepto Hydra A17 – PC-8500 – are slightly faster as they are used on a 1066 FSB compatible motherboard, unlike the modules in the Asus W90. However, the Asus W90 has 3x SDIMM interfaces allowing you to put up to 3 RAM blocks in it, which isn’t something you see every day.

Hard drive

Sisoft Sandra Hard Drive Read



HDTach



The hard drive has a reading speed of about 60 MB/s which is pretty good, but Zepto’s Hydra A17 had an SSD which drastically improves both reading and writing speeds.

GPU – 3DMark





The 3Dmark tests cannot be compared directly as they depend on which graphics system is used. 3DMark 2005 and 2006 are based on DirectX 9 and show the performance under contemporary games and 3D applications.

Here the Asus W90 wins comfortably with a score in Vantage almost twice that of the Hydra A17. Thanks to the 2 GPUs you really get a lot of performance when it comes to graphics. A higher score is possible though, but more on that in the Overclocking section further down.

Overall performance



The PCMark program’s results can be compared directly with other laptops that have run the same PCMark version. The programs test all the important parts in the computer such as hard drive, processor, GPU, RAM, etc.

Here the Asus W90 wins by a large margin, most likely due to its substantially greater graphics performance. The score is actually really good, even compared to desktop performance.

Overclocking
The Asus W90 also has overclocking potential which can greatly enhance its performance in certain applications, in fact so much that it in 2008 beat the world record for laptops in 3DMark06 with a score of 15,000.

When you overclock a computer the hardware is forced to work harder than specified by the manufacturer. This typically evolves a lot more heat and the system becomes more unstable, increasing the risk of loss of data and calculation errors. Laptop-review.eu and Asus shall not accept any responsibility for any damage or loss associated with or caused by overclocking.



Overclocking on the Asus W90 is done via the included program TurboGear Extreme. By setting overclocking to 17% – the maximum – you reach a clock frequency of 3289 MHz on the CPU, which is 484 MHz greater than the standard frequency. There have been some problems with regards to observing the effect of the GPUs, but the results speak for themselves. The comparison shows how the computer performs out of the box and when overclocked.













As can be seen by the graphs the results vary quite a lot, which gives you an idea about the maximum performance and potential of the computer. These results are some of the best you can obtain on a laptop at the moment!

Gaming
All games were run while overclocked so achieve the greatest possible performance. All games were run in a resolution of 1920 x 1080.

Crysis Warhead DX10



Crysis Warhead is still one of the world’s most demanding games when it comes to hardware. The game takes place in a beautiful jungle environment (among others), with much focus on realism. The game was released in 2008 by Crytek.



The game has been tested with Crysis Warhead Benchmark tool BETA, which increases comparability. The game reached an average FPS of 21, which is pretty good for a laptop. The maximum FPS reached by the benchmark was 31 FPS, which is pretty impressive.
For some odd and unknown reason, “Gamer” settings produced a lower FPS than “Enthusiast”. No idea why.

Fallout 3



Fallout 3 takes place in year 2077 in the aftermath of a nuclear war somewhere in the USA, where you’re running from your home. The objective of the game is to search for the truth about your father. There are plenty of different ways to play the game and choices to make, and it’s up to the player to play as either good or evil. The game offers a huge map in a beautiful setting based on a real place in the USA.



The game was tested with 4x anti-aliasing and ran rather well. At Ultra settings the computer reached an average FPS of 47, which is perfectly playable. At High settings the game ran with a constant FPS of 60, possibly due to V-Sync.

Grand Theft Auto IV



Grand Theft Auto IV is the latest edition of the popular series from Rockstar Games. The game is basically a giant “sandbox” where you can do all kinds of fun things. It’s a fairly demanding game for a computer because it was ported directly from the PS3 edition, meaning it was never really optimized to run on a PC and thus not even the newest hardware can quite keep up.



The game was run at an automatic configuration made by the game itself, with all settings at lowest. The automatic configuration looked like the following:



The computer reached an average FPS of 46 at low settings, which is decent enough for gaming. However, you can clearly see the lack of details compared to the higher configurations. With just the automatic configuration (no lowered settings) the game reached an FPS of 36, which is okay. It looks a lot better that way, though. Overall it doesn’t run too well on a PC due to the aforementioned reason.

F.E.A.R. 2 – Project Origin



F.E.A.R. 2 has been hailed as one of the scariest games in the world. The game has plenty of nice special effects and is based on a mysterious story about a girl named Alma.



The W90 reached an FPS of 41, which is playable enough. If you lower the settings to medium you’ll reach an FPS of 55. The game runs really well on the W90.

Conclusion
The Asus W90 is truly one of the most powerful laptops you can get your hands on. The performance is tip-top and comparable to a lot of desktops. The computer has a lot of great features making it fine to work on. A huge display, huge resolution, huge performance, Blu-ray, plenty of inputs/outputs and surround sound are just some of the things that make the W90 what it really is – a monster! The accessories are top of the line as well and you get all the practical items you’ll ever need.
The computer also has few negative aspects, some of which by their nature come with the more positive aspects. The weight and mobility could not do much worse: 5.5kg for the computer alone is a lot to lug around. The battery life is also exceedingly short, but what else could you expect with such hardware? The speakers have a tendency to resonate when playing at maximum volume and the fan noise is also quite noticeable if you’re not listening to music or something to drown it out. The computer also comes with some less important features which could easily have been skipped in favour of a lower price. Many will probably wonder why an infrared transmitter was included, and I personally have little faith in the functionality of the secondary OS which could really benefit from some tweaking with regards to resolution and user-friendliness of configuring the wireless network.
All in all though the Asus W90 is probably one of the most powerful desktop replacements on the market, with a performance that exceeds most others. The size of the computer truly makes it a pleasure to work on, and there are few limits to what it can do. Windows runs smoothly and there’s barely any wait for anything. The price is actually impressively low compared to what you get…compare it to Zepto’s Hydra A17 and it’s a bargain. £2,200.00 is money well spent for a computer that can do so much, and it certainly is an obvious choice if you want the best of the best.

Pros:
Incredibly high performance
Good sound (though not at maximum volume)
Display with a good resolution
Ease of use
User-friendly software
Plenty of accessories

Cons:
Fan noise
Too low resolution on the secondary OS
Battery life
Weight

Battery: 1 / 5Graphics: 5 / 5Construction: 5 / 5Mobility: 2 / 5Software: 3 / 5Overall: 4 / 5