Asus N10J First Impressions

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SILVR 6

Gawd
Joined
Nov 13, 2003
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Just got my N10J today and thought i'd share my experience with the rest of you.

First off its a very nice looking notebook, since I have an MSI Wind i'll be comparing the two.

The Asus looks very stylish, more so than the wind although styling isn't a huge issue in my books. Constuction is very solid no flex or weak points at all. it does weigh more than my Wind but thats probably because I have the 3 cell version of the wind (Asus is 6 cell).

Performance wise, in windows the 2 notebooks are the same, which is to be expected because they have the same cpu.

The 160gb hard drive included is a seagate 5400.5 Not a bad drive but I yanked it right away and put in my WD 500GB drive (no benches yet)

Came with Vista, seemed a bit sluggish but I don't use vista so i "planned" on using the downgrade to xp option however unless i'm stupid and missed it, there is only a vista 32bit recovery dvd.

I threw a copy of XP on but had to download all the drivers off Asus' website, by selecting the Asus N10e (comes with xp preinstalled).

The speakers are alright apparently altec lansing, sound better than the speakers on my wind.

Now for the info that everyone has been waiting for, gaming and 3d performance. I'll tell you right now i'm disappointed in the performance. It has nothing to do with the 9300M GS, its entirely capable but the Atom cpu is seriously holding back the performance in the notebook. Although I guess that is to be expected, what the 9300 does enable the notebook to do is make games that were not playable on the gma 950+atom somewhat playable, however don't buy this laptop for the sole intention of playing games.

On to some better news now and that is the battery life.

Screen brightness at minimum (which is quite usable) bluetooth+wifi on,using the 9300m graphics the power draw using Notebook hardware Control was 11-13w/h estimated 4 hours of battery, I got just over 4 hours browsing the web watching youtube ect....

Screen brightness at minimum Wifi on bluetooth off,using the intel graphics the power draw using Notebook hardware Control was 8-9.5w/h estimated 6.5hours of battery, same use as above and I got just about 5.5 hours of use.

Battery life on this notebook is very good, and on the wrapping the battery came in it said "only use on U3xx" and some other models I can't remember, which leads me to believe that the batteries for the U3S should work on the N10 meaning 9 cell batteries!!!



 
ignore my above post talking about the poor 3d performance, I disabled powermizer and performance is wayyyyyy better, never would have thought that power mizer would kill performance while that laptop was plugged in:mad:

Full benchmarks to follow later today
 
nice! only one thing that bugs me, the laptop is quite big yet the screen is still 10"

it has a bezel inside of a bezel lol. should have been 12.1" would of been killer.
 
I agree with the bezel, but i'm thinking that the bezel is there so that it can have a full keyboard without looking goofy, as the keyboard is wider than the width of the screen, if the wind was to have the same size keyboard it would probably have to have a larger bezel?
 
In my original post I complained about poor 3D performance and blamed it on the cpu. Well I should have been a little more watchful about the nvidia Power-Mizer settings. I had assumed that while the laptop was plugged in everything would be running at full speed. That wasn’t the case; I disabled Power-Mizer and noticed a large increase in performance. Settings for all the benchmarks are as follows.




3D Mark 2001 1024x600x32 Default Settings = 7887

3D Mark 2003 1024x600x32 Default Settings = 4919

3D Mark 2005 1024x600x32 Default Settings = 2745

3D Mark 2006 1024x600x32 Default Setting = 1592







Above screen shot taken at 800x600 that framerate is about as low as it got when there was intense fighting on the screen.

Now i'm much more impressed with the 3D performance of this little netbook/notebook, but as i mentioned before the atom is limiting performance, but this will satisfy some people's craving for gaming on the go.
 
Seeing as the game you pictured (at least appears) to be TFC, do you think you could try it with TF2 or HL2 for reference? I know my little EEE 701 will actually run HL2 when overclocked at a somewhat playable speed (you CAN play at 5fps, with impulse 101 and god mode ;)), and any HL1 based games just fine.

I just ran across this thing tonight when search for an ultra portable powerful enough to run Red Alert 3. Good to hear an actual gamer has gotten ahold of one! My old Sonly VGN-S260 has been able to cut it up to now for my "mobile gaming" with a Radion 9200, but it's just not fast enough for when my main rig is down.
 
So it has a huge bezel. a shiny screen. is wider than an X61....

It does seem badass with the video chip and all and i'd buy one if i wasn't liking my eee 1000+ubuntu :)


Also, before you get rid of vista, just tweak it. turn system restore off, upgrade to 2gb of ram and turn the page file off, turn indexing off, mess around with pre/super fetch to see how it behaves, turn the theme service off, etc. Cant imagine that will make it fast but it might make it tolerable.
 
omega-x said:
So it has a huge bezel. a shiny screen. is wider than an X61....

It does seem badass with the video chip and all and i'd buy one if i wasn't liking my eee 1000+ubuntu :)


Also, before you get rid of vista, just tweak it. turn system restore off, upgrade to 2gb of ram and turn the page file off, turn indexing off, mess around with pre/super fetch to see how it behaves, turn the theme service off, etc. Cant imagine that will make it fast but it might make it tolerable.
Click to expand...

Vista in on the stock hard drive so might throw that in a mess around with it as per your instructions.

Don't have any experience with the x61's although I was close to buying one back in university (got an Asus W5Fm instead) I"m pretty partial to Asus notebooks I can't even remember how many I've owned,

Compared to the eee pc 1000h this is very similar, I love the battery life on this (probably much similar to yours) when using the intel graphics, I play the odd game on the road so thats why I picked this notebook.

Suprizingly the bezel doesn't bother me, and even if it did, the keyboard more than makes up for it.
 
i can't help but compare it to the MSI PR211 which will cost only £550, is the same physical size as the N10, and yet comes with the AMD PUMA gpu............... :)
 
I'm seriously thinking of selling my Wind and getting one of these.
 
The Amd puma gpu would be very tempting, lol I might have to pick that up too:D

phobic said:
I'm seriously thinking of selling my Wind and getting one of these.
Click to expand...


As for selling you wind, I did the exact thing, not because I didn't enjoy it but it was nice to have some extra money to put towards the purchase of my N10. The biggest difference other than gpu with the Wind is the keyboard, once again can't say enough good things about the KB on the N10
 
SILVR 6 said:
The Amd puma gpu would be very tempting, lol I might have to pick that up too:D




As for selling you wind, I did the exact thing, not because I didn't enjoy it but it was nice to have some extra money to put towards the purchase of my N10. The biggest difference other than gpu with the Wind is the keyboard, once again can't say enough good things about the KB on the N10
Click to expand...

Do you find the extra size and weight of the Asus to be annoying at all or is it not really a big deal?
 
R3MF said:
i can't help but compare it to the MSI PR211 which will cost only £550, is the same physical size as the N10, and yet comes with the AMD PUMA gpu............... :)
Click to expand...

While the N10 seems to be nicely between the netbook/notebook crowd, the MSI PR211 is definitely a full fledged notebook. It's slightly larger (the MSI PR211 has a 12 inch screen, weighs about a half pound more), costs more (about $250 to $350 US dollars depending on the price/exchange rate available), and is more capable (better processor, has a drive, more memory possible). Graphics aren't that compelling to me on their own - an nVidia 9300 versus an ATi 3200 by itself probably doesn't make much of a difference; it's the chipset/processor that would be more noticable, I'd think.
 
Have you tried overclocking the Atom at all? I've heard tell that someone overclocked it to 2.0GHz without too much of a problem. I don't know if it was just to see if they could or if it was a long-term thing, though.
 
So you bought the $700 one? I know at least at Newegg the 160gb version ONLY comes with Vista Home Premium, but the 320gb $800 version comes with Vista business and also the XP downgrade. They both come with 2gb of ram though, which is awesome.

Very nice review. If it wasn't so damn expensive, I might consider it. But for $700-800, I can get a 13" notebook which would suit me much better. I'm sticking to the under $500 category for a netbook. Still, nice impressions, hope you like your new toy :D
 
I got mine from ncix canada, last week for $729 plus taxes and shipping, didn't want to spend the extra 100 on the one with the 320gb hard drive (was 110 more) becasue I took out the stock hard drive anyways. The extra weight I don't even notice, when its in my bag or even when walking around with it.

Interesting that the 320 actually comes with the xp downgrade, i did not know that, I suppose had a known that i would have picked it up, all I did for xp drivers (the vista driver cd didn't eveen work for drivers in xp) was goto Asus' website and download the drivers for the N10E, eveything worked like a charm.


As for overclocking, I tried with my wind, using the setfsb method but all i ended up with was a grey screen, no matter what I tried. I suppose I could try with this one but i'd hate to fry it this early in the game:rolleyes:
 
FWIW - there is a Turbo mode available when plugged in. It bumps the bus speed from 133 MHz to 147 Hz, resulting in an overclock from 1.6 GHz to about 1.75 GHz. (Multiplier is 12x). In the default configuration (running Vista), this is enabled in the Power4Gear options.

For people who like benchmarks and the like, I'll quote the only one I have installed: in the Vista Experience Index, the CPU rating goes from 3.0 to 3.2 :) It definitely feels a little snappier.

I haven't tried going into the BIOS and seeing what I can mess up there yet...but I'm also hesitant to go too far with it at this point. My wife's already mad enough that I bought the new toy; she'd be really pissed if I wrecked it.:D
 
LhasaCM said:
FWIW - there is a Turbo mode available when plugged in. It bumps the bus speed from 133 MHz to 147 Hz, resulting in an overclock from 1.6 GHz to about 1.75 GHz. (Multiplier is 12x). In the default configuration (running Vista), this is enabled in the Power4Gear options.

For people who like benchmarks and the like, I'll quote the only one I have installed: in the Vista Experience Index, the CPU rating goes from 3.0 to 3.2 :) It definitely feels a little snappier.

I haven't tried going into the BIOS and seeing what I can mess up there yet...but I'm also hesitant to go too far with it at this point. My wife's already mad enough that I bought the new toy; she'd be really pissed if I wrecked it.:D
Click to expand...

Do you have an N10J or an EEEPC, I suppose i could load up the power 4 gear (never really liked it) under xp and see if it can be overclocked a little bit more i'll try that tonight after I get home from work.
 
SILVR 6 said:
Do you have an N10J or an EEEPC, I suppose i could load up the power 4 gear (never really liked it) under xp and see if it can be overclocked a little bit more i'll try that tonight after I get home from work.
Click to expand...

N10J - same flavor (160 GB drive, Vista Home Premium, nVidia 9300M GS, etc.)

I'm guessing we could overclock in the bios too - but it is nice in that it's done in software.:D
 
LhasaCM said:
FWIW - there is a Turbo mode available when plugged in. It bumps the bus speed from 133 MHz to 147 Hz, resulting in an overclock from 1.6 GHz to about 1.75 GHz. (Multiplier is 12x). In the default configuration (running Vista), this is enabled in the Power4Gear options.

For people who like benchmarks and the like, I'll quote the only one I have installed: in the Vista Experience Index, the CPU rating goes from 3.0 to 3.2 :) It definitely feels a little snappier.

I haven't tried going into the BIOS and seeing what I can mess up there yet...but I'm also hesitant to go too far with it at this point. My wife's already mad enough that I bought the new toy; she'd be really pissed if I wrecked it.:D
Click to expand...



Under windows xp, I have a "super performance option" but it does nothing to change the bus speed, still 133:mad: Maybe its a VIsta thing?
 
SILVR 6 said:
Under windows xp, I have a "super performance option" but it does nothing to change the bus speed, still 133:mad: Maybe its a VIsta thing?
Click to expand...

Could be - they are different software versions (the WinXP one I see online - v. 1.18 - is over a year old. The Vista version - 1.1.06 - is less than a month old).
 
try installing the super hybrid engine software from the Eee 1000h driver page.
 
LhasaCM said:
I haven't tried going into the BIOS and seeing what I can mess up there yet...
Click to expand...

So, I looked at the BIOS offerings earlier today...and there isn't anything in there that I could find that adjusts FSB, memory, or anything like that.
 
This is the one with HDMI output right? Have you tried using it with a HDTV or anything?
 
I did. it works perfectly on my 42" samsung LCD 1080P TV at 1920*1080 res

The HDMI also support audio... ,so no need to use audio cable this time.
 
LhasaCM said:
While the N10 seems to be nicely between the netbook/notebook crowd, the MSI PR211 is definitely a full fledged notebook. It's slightly larger (the MSI PR211 has a 12 inch screen, weighs about a half pound more), costs more (about $250 to $350 US dollars depending on the price/exchange rate available), and is more capable (better processor, has a drive, more memory possible). Graphics aren't that compelling to me on their own - an nVidia 9300 versus an ATi 3200 by itself probably doesn't make much of a difference; it's the chipset/processor that would be more noticable, I'd think.
Click to expand...

you might be surprised.

given that the Eeepc 1000 has a volume of 1.94 litres (versus 2.13 litres for the MSI PR211), you might find that the N10J has a greater volume than the full notebook, because i know its a damn site bigger than 1000.

this is one of the reasons i like the lenovo S10 so much, at 1.13 litres in volume it is almost half the size of the Eeepc 1000 let alone the N10J!
 
R3MF said:
you might be surprised.

given that the Eeepc 1000 has a volume of 1.94 litres (versus 2.13 litres for the MSI PR211), you might find that the N10J has a greater volume than the full notebook, because i know its a damn site bigger than 1000.

this is one of the reasons i like the lenovo S10 so much, at 1.13 litres in volume it is almost half the size of the Eeepc 1000 let alone the N10J!
Click to expand...

According to the product specs (and my ruler), the N10J has a volume of 1.89 litres :) The 1.94 litre figure for the eeePC 1000 is a little on the high side - it uses the maximum thickness of the machine. In reality, those two are comparable in size (give or take), but smaller than the MSI PR 211.

Your point about the S10 though, is valid, though a little overstated. It's a small machine, yes, but it's about 30% thinner, and about 5% smaller in the other dimensions. That's not quite the same, necessarily, as "half the size."
 
calculating volume is a bit of a dodgy science with latops and netbooks, agreed. :)
 
Thanks loads for posting your experiences!

I want that 9300m and this form factor/weight/battery life pretty bad, but I really don't want Vista on a 1.6ghz atom, and I don't want to pay an extra $100 for the right downgrade (that comes with the n10j-a2) when I don't really want the 320gb anyway, or another 80 or 90$ for a new copy of XP. Blast ASUS for that set of config choices. I assume the n10j-a1 exceeds MS's price limit for pre-loading xp. So blast MS too.
 
vista's fine.

just need to optimize it.

/yes that's technically MS again.
//maybe try server 2008?
 
omega-x said:
vista's fine [for me]
Click to expand...

Fixed it for you. :D

For my purposes, even XP needs to be heavily optimized. I've been playing around with nlite in preparation to make my first atom snappy and super-light weight on the inside as it is on the outside.
 
fortunz said:
Fixed it for you. :D

For my purposes, even XP needs to be heavily optimized. I've been playing around with nlite in preparation to make my first atom snappy and super-light weight on the inside as it is on the outside.
Click to expand...

I noticed little difference in snappiness between a standard XP installation and Vista installation on my N10J. Some of the pre-loaded ASUS applications (e.g., Splendid) bog it down a bit with little positive benefit, but those were easy enough to remove.
 
Vista does manage memory better than XP... Provided you have at 'least 1GB, prefferably 2GB. I've even seen reports of people noticing slightly better battery life on their netbooks with Vista. Properly configured, I'm sure it can be every bit as snappy as the lightest of XP installs.
 
I want to hear about the N20 or N50. Its been hard finding info about the Entire N Series. I saw 1 report that the rest of the N Series will be release late this month.
 
Impulse said:
Vista does manage memory better than XP... Provided you have at 'least 1GB, prefferably 2GB. I've even seen reports of people noticing slightly better battery life on their netbooks with Vista. Properly configured, I'm sure it can be every bit as snappy as the lightest of XP installs.
Click to expand...

my girlfriend's 1000H gets around 6 hours running a nicely tweaked vista with brightness set to medium and wifi on and browsing flash heavy sites
 
right, so i bit and got an n10j to play with

put XP on it for fun, got 5 hours max estimated with intel video on. 4 with nvidia.

Went back to vista but folding GPU client bogs the entire system down for some reason (doesn't on XP with stock asus drivers, but the stock asus drivers for vista don't have CUDA)

Now on server 2008 "workstation mod" and it's fast as hell, but the same folding@home bug applies since it uses the vista drivers.

Tried the latest 178.x from laptopvideo2go and it did the same as well.

Anyone successfully folding with vista/server08: what driver and settings are you using?
 
With these netbooks getting to $700-800, Intel needs to release the faster dual core Atom cpu. It doesn't seem like your getting much value with the current Atom in a $700-800 netbook.
 
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