Republic Gamers G74sx Ah71 17 3 Inch Gaming Only $1449.99 @ Amazon Rated 4 of 5 Stars by 56 Buyers!

Republic Gamers G74sx Ah71 17 3 Inch Gaming

I bought this laptop to replace my Asus G73 and it blows it away by a long shot. Had to update bios when I got it and the nvidia card, too. The bios update was without apparent effort done through the Asus update utility situated in the strategy tray, but had to go to nvidia assist website to download the latest driver which helps whether or not your playing BF3. The only problem I had with it was the touch pad would not turn off when I utilized a mouse and interferred with gaming when I accidently touched it; I had went into the touchpad settings to undertake and accomplish this to no avail. Ended up contacting Asus aid and had to turn off the touchpad through bios, when I did this the keyboard would not work at all. Turned it back on and the keyboard worked and the touchpad was disabled when I plugged the mouse in. The touchpad now works without the mouse plugged in. The tech said it could of been due to the bios altered No more difficulties though. The speakers are a small missing out since they don’t include a subwoofer like the G73 did. This model as well includes bluetooth so you may listen to music or game with a bluetooth enabled headset. Hands down, you can’t beat the bang for the buck on this machine. A co-worker of my just bought an Alienware m17x and the only divergence was the cpu which ran at 3.9 ghz as apposed to the 2.2 ghz which turbo boosts to 3.1ghz when needed; the difference is he compensated when it comes to $860.00 more for it is I had purchased the gimped down version of this model at Best purchase and after adding a one year warranty with tech assist it came out to $1475.00; returned it when I saw this one. With two day shipping I only salaried $50.00 more and got double the ram, 1 more gig on the video card, a more immediate cpu, and 1year warranty and accidental harm shelter at no further and added cost. The only thing negative was 250 mb fewer in hd space; however, I’ll take one of my 500mb drives out of my G73 to repair that. Also, it would have cost an extra $170.00 for a one-year accidental protection plan through BB. I hope this review helps for those sitting on the fences I gave it a five star since I was competent to repair the difficulties I had with it on the original day.

I work as a web developer & graphic designer, and this computer has been perfect for my needs. Photoshop launches in fewer than 5-7 seconds, and I may run every program in the originative suite as well as 3D programs like Blender without nearing full ability on RAM. For the price this is an unbelievable value, only possible complaint would be that it does not have an SSD. The USB3 port is wonderfully fast as well.

It’s big, it’s bulky, it’s black……

Quite heavy too.

But, Beautifully made and the keyboard is swell to utilized The screen is crytal clear too and doesn’t feel a whole lot littler than the two 24″ screens i have set up on my desktop.

I have yet to exploit all of it is features, but after using it for 3 weeks it works like a charm with various games set at max graphics, as well as transaction with 3ds Max rendering and modelling tasks, which is the main reason why i bought it is Plus, at $1,000 or so fewer than the comparitive Alienware machine how may I not be anything but very pleased with it.

If you intend to use this mainly as a desktop alternate with another screen and separate keyboard it is more than powerful enough. For me I went as huge and powerful as my budget would stretch as I already have a high-end desktop this is my desktop-to-go. I travel a lot for work and can’t stand using the small keyboards and screens, particularly with AutoCAD, 3ds Max and Photoshop, as I ofttimes spend hour after hour doing elaborated changes where a huge screen wins each time.

Whilst the keyboard is nice to use, I’m not to a complete degree convinced regarding it durability or how easy it will be to clean when it inevitably gets a bit grubby in the future.

Another feature that I didn’t comprehend the laptop came with is the separate ‘instant-on’ browsing strategy designed to run like a tablet, to be honorable whether or not I need to browse rapidly and my laptop or desktop isn’t already on then i normally just use my HTC phone. I’m certain someone somewhere will make use of it but at this time i have yet to do so…

To sum up, it does all that i expected it would and i’m very pleased with this present to myself……

I have been playing World of Warcraft on a cheaper Toshiba laptop for rather such a good deal of time, on the lowest settings. I in truth wanted to run SWTOR when the game launched, but I couldn’t do it even on the lowest settings.

So such a lot of time passed, and then I had a budget with which to buy a gaming computer. I researched for a very long time, and weighed the masters and cons of getting a gaming laptop, or doing another habit pc build as I have in the past. Ultimately, I decided on a gaming laptop because of space issues (I live with 2 roommates, a married couple, in a 2 bedroom house), and longevity. I see myself keeping the laptop as is longer into the life span as I would equated to a desktop habit build.

I started off on alienware, just to see what was theres 1300-1400 for a 14 inch alienware with an i3. Um, no thanks. So I picked a graphics card that was in the range I wanted and decided on the 550m, where there are better, but the 550m is more than capable of running games on max.

I searched for laptops that came with a 550m, and this Asus G74SX-AH71 stole the show for me. The 16GB of ram is astonishing, and convenient. The screen is beautiful, the hard drive is a bit small but HD space was perfectly on the bottom of my list, that’s what I have externals connected to the wireless network for. The i7 is just as good as I have heard it was, I’m very pleased with it’s processing power. My original Intel processor in years.

It is a heavier laptop, you definitely don’t want to attempt and lift it up with 1 hand and carry it over to the couch, not unless you want to snap something in it is But it’s not so heavy as to make it entirely unportable. Don’t count on buying a generic 17 inch carrying case either. I would commend a more prominent backpack designed for possibly a 19 inch laptop, give yourself extra room for the fans in the back.

So far I have played World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic, since I’m an mmo gamer. WoW booted up nicely, and looked each bit as good as my roommates $2400 habit build desktop pc from a year ago. All settings were maxed out to ultra, and I was invariably at 60fps everyplace I went, orgrimmar, cata quest areas, 5 mans, everything. absolutely flawless. As of writing, I realize I never turned vertical sync off, which would grant for framerates higher than 60fps. I will try that later and edit this whether or not I find anything astonishing. Also, this laptop is directx11 compatible, and wow has an option for directx11, but I wouldn’t commend enabling it just yet. Blizzard screwed something up, and wow crashes on 11. It’s a general problem.

SWTOR is rather a bit more graphics intensive than wow, so this was the test. All graphics settings set to the max, a steady 45-60fps everyplace I went, even kicking up to 80-90 in such a heap of spots. Anything over 35 is ideal, and this laptop effortlessly exceeds that at all times.

Side note: I commend a razer naga mouse for mmo gaming, you won’t be disappointed.

I will be playing SC2 on here, which no doubt will have no problem running effortlessly on max. This laptop has renewed my love for pc gaming, so I’m going to need to get galore FPS games on here too, and perchance in the end try out crysis.

Additionally, I have heard mixed reviews on the keyboard, and I for one absolutely love its Best keyboard I have ever have experienced on a laptop hands down. I love to write assorted articles and blogs when it comes to sports, music, various things, and this just makes things a breeze.

Tips

- Get such a great deal of canned, compressed air, and spray off your keyboard once a week. Take a lint free cloth and keep the whole area clean and fresh so keys are less likely to commence wearing and getting sticky on the bottom.

- Go to the asus website, and download the newest audio drivers. The ones pre-installed don’t sound very good, at first I thought oh good horrible speakers, but I downloaded new drivers now they sound fine. Not mind boggling great, but good.

- Get a large, padded backpack for storage when you’re not using it, or for on the go. I would get one huge sufficient for your power cord, mouse, and anything else you need.

Overall, I am so relieved this purchase worked out. I figured it would be good, and at least better than my old laptop. But to compare side by side performance wise with 2k+ desktops, this laptop far exceeded my expectations. Bravo Asus, bravo.

What a monster laptop this is! It’s huge! The screen looks great, it has a great deal of power and more ram than I’ve ever had. Most of the controls are conveniently placed, but I think the page up and down buttons are misplaced, they ought to be by the arrow buttons. I like that it has a devoted numeric keypad, and it has plenty of usb ports. I am able to run Skyrim on it in high graphics settings which was a nice surprise giving careful consideration to the video card wasn’t as powerful as I wanted. I was a small dissappointed in not being able to custommake the touchpad very much, and the speakers aren’t very earsplitting but those are comparatively minor things and easily gotten around.

All in all, I am very happy with this laptop

Compared to custom built gaming laptops, you in truth can’t say no to Asus ROG systems. whether or not you’re looking at Alienware or Doghouse or other common custom built laptops, run away. Fast. You are going to remunerate out your nose just for the name. I then started poking around other lesser known custom built laptop companies. Even altho their prices were more in line with what I was looking for, they were still charging $400 more for the precise same constituents with only a different case and no back lit keyboard. I then turned to Amazon, not genuinely expecting to find a unfeigned gaming laptop. I was very excited when I found this one. It took me a few days of contemplation before I took the plunge, but I’m so glad I did.

I took the negative reviews here to heart and was hoping the good outweighed the bad, and I’m happy to say that there are virtually no negatives to owning this astounding machine. To begin, I did the windows updates and the Asus Live update and that was all. I did not go hunting for new drivers for anything else and let it be. My motto is don’t mend what isn’t broken. whether or not I encounter a problem, I’ll look into it at that time. Thankfully, I’ve had no issues at all. One of the things I noticed individuals mentioning was poor wifi connectivity. I’m not saying there aren’t bad apples in each bunch, but I think most oftentimes times this is a network issue, not a hardware issue. I did not test it, but it seems likely that the protected networks that only grant access to accepted to gimmicks are the culprit. I have an old old Asus netbook that was notorious for dropping connection constantly, and it was indeed the way my network was set up. Since I’m not using that extra layer of protection, I have had zero issues with my connection being dropped. It just plainly as not took place a single time. I may roam through every allocation of my house without ever dropping signal. I may even pick up innumerable neighbor’s signals. I have no complaints at all regarding the wireless capability.

Another issue I noted noted cited was the touchpad issue. I have been using an old Dell for years that is HORRIBLE for this reason. Any time I try to write anything, the cursor is jumping all over the screen and wholly screwing everything up. This may be an issue with this laptop whether or not you leave the touchpad in it’s default settings. But unlike the Dell, this laptop has several choices for customizing how your touchpad behaves, including disabling it for a set numbers of seconds for the duration of and after typing, disabling it when an external mouse is plugged in, or disabling it altogether. I will confess that it does tend to enable itself again after coming out of sleep mode, but a simple FN+F9 disables it again and it will stay disabled until it goes to sleep or restarts. It takes a fraction of a second to do this and it only happens when it’s not been in use, so I in truth consider it a non issue and I may easily live with it.

I saw a few notes when it comes to dead pixels as well and I have ZERO dead pixels! Yay! I need to be blessed by the pixel gods because I’ve never received a laptop or monitor with dead pixels. The screen is vivid and vivid and beautiful. I have a 32″ monitor that I in addition adore, but the colors on this laptop display are just gorgeous out of the box. Games like Rift and Kingdoms of Amalur which are very colorful are brought to a new level of greatness. I in addition have no screen bleed whatsoever. I’ve seen galore say that all displays bleed. My 32″ monitor does have a slight edge bleed that’s only noticeable during loading screens, but this display has no bleed whatsoever. My only gripe is that the glare is awful on the glossy screen. You can’t play this in direct sunlight, but I feel that’s more Asus telling me that if I’m out in the sunshine, I should not be playing on my laptop. Indoors, even on bright sunny days, it’s a non issue. But step outside when the sun is shining and you’re only going to see yourself in that glossy display.

Next issue, overheating. This is a major concern plainly because it may fully destroy the systems I have a Targus Lap Chill Mat AWE55US (Black/Gray) that I’ve employed with my old Dell because that laptop would shut itself down after 30 minutes of playing WoW due to uttermost heat and the only way I could keep it cool was with the Chill Mat. I was prepared to have to use it with my new laptop as well and I did for a while, but then I realized that it in truth doesn’t need any help with cooling. Now I’ve not had any ridiculously long gaming sessions with it (yet!) but after 2-3 hours of Mass Effect 3 or Rift, it is only somewhat warm. When doing regular word processing and other non-gaming tasks, it stays very cool. It’s as well fantastically quiet which is quite awful for how well it cools itself. You will never listen it running over your games. This is something I do NOT miss from my desktop which you may hear running from down the hall in another room.

There was a particular review that noted the pin in the power connector breaking on him, twice. This has not happened to me yet, but I’ve taken note of it and I’m very very tame with the power connector. When I move the laptop, I perpetually unplug the cord so the weight of the brick is not pulling on the connection. I as well take care that it does not get bumped in any way and I unplug it when I turn it off. These may be extra precautions, but I wasn’t willing to take a chance and so far so good. No issues with this heres in addition regarding the power cord, numerous humans noted it is in a bad place given that it can get in the way of the mouse. I’ve not had this issue and I’m using a LapGear Multi-Purpose Jumbo LapDesk which leaves perchance 5 inches along the side for my mouse, littler than I’m used to, and with my Razer Naga MMOG Laser Gaming Mouse (RZ01-00280100-R3) and thanks to it’s high DPI capability, I have never bumped into the power cord. If you’re sitting at a desk and the strategy is not on your lap, I don’t see this ever being an issue at all.

Now for weight. Obviously this beast is going to be heavy. There are other gaming laptops on the market that may be as much as 3 pounds lighter with alike builds, but they are going to cost you a lot more. Likewise with those who wish it had a solid state drive, that would as well drive the price up significantly. It’s exceedingly simple to install a SSD later yourself if you so wish but I have no issue with the included hard drive. Given it’s size, it’s less portable than other laptops, but is still much more portable than a desktop! I have a Targus Terra Backpack Designed for 16-Inch Laptops – TSB226US (Black/Red Accents) which is designed for 16″ laptops but this monster genuinely does fit in it is It works very well for toting it around, but if you’re carrying it for hours, prepare for back aches! Most of us don’t make cross country treks with our gaming laptops strapped to our backs, so I think for taking to and from school, work or a friend’s house, it’s weight is fine given the power it has.

Bloatware! I was actually pleasantly amazed at how little bloatware this scheme has. It’s not one thing like my mother’s new HP she got for Christmas which actually had dozens of game demos installed, along with so such a great deal of cheap anti-virus that no one would use and a bunch of miscellaneous utilities that she would never ever need. I expended hours cleaning up her laptop, so this one was a welcome relief. The only thing I would genuinely consider bloatware was galore app type software that I forget the name of. I wasn’t fascinated in that so I got rid of it is There were a few other minor things, like a label printer that I’ll never use and those were got rid of as well. That was it, however. I can see a few utilities being viewed as bloatware, but I actually like them. It comes with a Turbo Boost monitor that shows you when your processor is overclocking and at what speeds. I like this but it’s very simple to turn off. There’s in addition a utility that lets you swap different performance presets that you can customize to your heart’s content. It auto detects when the laptop is unplugged and switches to the mode you have assigned for that (batter saving, for me). There’s in addition a nice utility called GameFast where you can choose presets for what programs you want to concede to run while you’re gaming. A click shuts off all the background tasks you don’t want running while you game, and another switches it back. It’s just a nice little time saver that saves me from having to go into task manager every time I play.

Lastly, to clear up a few misunderstandings. I did not see anyplace that this scheme comes with a Blu-ray drive. I watch movies on my TV so I didn’t care regarding this, but apparently some persons saw somewhere that it DOES come with a Blu-ray drive. It does NOT and only as a standard DVD-RW. Also, there is some misconception when it comes to 3D capabilities. This scheme does come with 3D software enabled and even has a sticker on the actual unit that says “Nvidia 3D TV Play” but upon doing some research, it doesn’t appear that the included graphics card is 3D enabled. I haven’t tested it as I don’t have glasses, but according to Nvidia’s own website, this card is not capable of 3D. Correct me if I’m wrong. I’d love to be wrong! But again, it says nothing with regards to that in the description so I wasn’t expecting it nor was it something I was looking for so it’s unfair to knock Asus for it not being 3D enabled when it doesn’t say anywhere that it is.

Another misunderstanding drifting around is that hard drive. The hard drive is split into two partitions, as is typical for pretty much any computer. It is still a single hard drive that is virtually divided up, one for the OS and one for everything else. I have been putting on my games on the non-OS partition and all other programs (Anti-virus, Firewall, etc) on the OS partition. If you actually need to have one partition just to prove to yourself that it’s actually one hard drive, it’s possible to do through reformatting, but I recommend you just trust that it veritably is one hard drive.

I wanted to make sure to address each of these issues as they weighed very to a great extent on my mind when settling on this laptop and I wanted to reassure others giving careful consideration to a purchase that these were all non issues for me. Now as for performance, which is what most of us care about! I have thrown a potpourri of games at this system, the most demanding being Skyrim. On Ultra settings indoors, I see no drag at all. Outdoors I can observe a slight drag, so I do adjust my settings slightly to let me play at a better framerate. Overall, I am very happy in regards to how smoothly the game runs. I am able to run Kingdoms of Amalur beautifully on max settings, as well as Rift, WoW, Fallout New Vegas, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and innumerable others. Everything I’ve thrown at it, it performs wonderfully. I haven’t even touched my desktop PC since this arrived. My desktop is more powerful, but I really wanted to be able to take my games with me when I travel and even just when visiting friends and this laptop has done all of that for me. I couldn’t be more felicitous and at it’s price point, it simply can’t be beat by anybody anywhere! I can’t recommend it highly enough. Bravo, Asus!

Wow, this is a great machine. Order this a week ago and it arrived the morning of the second day after ordering and I have been I heaven with it since. Totally amazing machine so far in all aspects. Fast, quiet, great heat control, and great looking display. I read other reviews and envisioned the wireless may be less than stellar so I ordered a different wireless card to put in but frankly the little bit I did with the wireless before altering it out I did not notice a problem but I as well did not speed test it or anything techy. Not sure what else I can say that others have not. Let’s begin out with my gaming experience with it is I have played both SWTOR and WoW on here and have graphic settings as high as they can go. this machine cruises right along and does not miss a beat. SWTOR on high graphics in HM Flashpoints and I average 40-50 FPS. I have only played limited WoW on here but again with all settings on Ultra and in Cata areas, I was able to play right along without a hiccup.

The specs for this stated it included Win7 Home Premium but mine did not. No idea if it was a adjust or an error on thier percentage but mine shipped with Win7 Professional installed. Also like that it did not have a butt load of bloatware that had to be removed. Yes there were a few things but nothing 30 minutes of uninstalling did not take care of. Nothing like some of the other machines I have had where it takes a few hours to get all the crap out the load in.

Let’s talk in regards to the not as good (there is no bad I have found). Plan to spend with regards to 90 minutes for basi set up. This includes 65minutes it took me to make the DVD backup effigy before removing bloatware and personalizing. It is nice to not have that image on a partition but would be even better if they tossed in the 4 DVDs with the image on them already but not a huge deal to make em yourself. As others have said this is a heavy machine. I do not travel with it so not a large deal for me but might be for some if your lugging it around airports all week. The power brick is also quite heavy. Keyboard is responsive and has a nice look and feel but I find the space bar to be a touch on the stiff side and I miss space often. Not a big deal and I anticipate I will adapt to it in time and not have to go back and add the missed spaces.

Overall I love this machine and am quite glad I made the choice I did.

I purchased this laptop with the thought that its when it comes to as good as an alienware but a couple grand less. I have 2 friends with slightly older alienwares that they remunerated well over 3000 dollars for 6 months ago and this isent just bettering This computer blows them away in every aspect… And it was half the price! Feels great, not to heavy, just big, screen is gorgeous. Fast and great for gaming, I purchased this with the thought of playing SWTOR.

I can play it on the highest settings without any issues, no matter what I am doing within the game. The version with 16 GB’s of RAM is the way to go.

The venting scheme is extremely well thought out… There are no vents on the bottom at all so doesn’t matter what you have it on.

The ONY drawback is the mouse pad’s position, you can disable it but it is in a spot that you will hit it often while just typing or using WASD.

Best buy I have made in years, if you want a beast of a laptop and do not care about having a known gaming brand. This is the way to go… by a long shot.

Enjoy

This computer is very sturdy and reliable. It vents out the back instead of on the bottom like most notebook/laptop computers – this helps keep it from overheating when on your lap or other soft surface. My last computer was a high-end HP – this one blows the HP away by far. My one and only complaint – it does not assist wireless display. I really wanted to wirelessly display to TV as I was told this one could. Oh well I guess. One other complaint – the touchpad is a nightmare. it is really big and it is near totally unlikely to keep out of the way of in an unintentional manner touching it when typing – creating all sorts of troubles when typing. I use a wireless mouse now – problem solved. This is a very powerful strategy – and it’s built like a tank so I have high hopes it will last awhile. I had to replace the monitor in my HP after one year and the display hinges broke (HP is renowned for that) – also the HP monitor wiggled when the strategy was moved, and finally, the HP motherboard croaked after overheating (due to bottom vents getting covered by soft surfaces). Not this one – again, it’s built like a tank and appears up to the task of taking my abuse…. This strategy is worth the extra cost over many other brands for its durability alone.

Great laptop for playing PC games. Almost a high end desktop as it is very heavy to carry around. Runs very cool and silent. What I am unhappy is that this system came with WiFi card that keeps dropping/interrupting video streaming even after removing and updating latest Atheros drivers. If there is a way to replace these WiFi with Intel or other WiFi modem I would give it a shot. Another negative is that it came with a scratchy internal speakers compared to other cheaper laptops I have used. One will need to use good headphones or good external speakers or lower the volume just enough to keep out of the way of the scratchy sound.

UPDATE: 11/10/2011

After using the laptop for some more days found following issues:

a) The number pad is for using with spreadsheets or accounting. I could not use the 8,4,2,6 number keys as cursor in any of the games. There is no NumLock key. In its place is a button to start the default calculator applications This is a BIG let down. If anyone figured out how uses the keys in games please feel free to updated I have even updated the Bios to the latest and still I can only get numbers but not the cursor or home/end/pg up/pg dn keys.

b) I was unable to control the scroll speeds when using the Sentelic touch pad or what Asus calls ‘Finger Sensing Pad’. Even after updating touch pad drivers the two finger scrolling or right side edge fast scrolling is not smooth as seen with Synaptic touch pads. Sentelic configuration is limited and is no where comparable to what i have seen/experienced with Synaptic touch pads.

End result I still need my gaming keyboard and mouse where ever I take this laptop around