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We don't know what has happened lately but many portable gaming machines from many of the big players seem to have more emphasis placed on the lighting effects, rather than the hardware inside.
We are quite sure than a substantial portion of the enthusiast audience want something sleek in design, but perhaps a little more subtle.
Enter the Asus G73 Republic Of Gamers laptop, a machine which makes a clear call to sports car design while having a specifications list to bring most grown men to their knees with desire.
The Asus G73 ROG packs a Core i7 processor, AMD HD5870 mobility, 1080P LED screen, 1TB of storage and 8GB of DDR3 ram into its formidable chassis.
The procesor is the Core i7-720QM, clocked at 1.6ghz – a quad core Hyper Threaded CPU which incorporates Turbo Mode (Rev 2) to achieve 2.8ghz when required. Equally so when temperatures get too much, it can downclock to 996mhz to lower heat output and power consumption. The Core i7-720QM is not quite as powerful as the high end 820QM because it has only 6MB of Level 3 cache, not 8MB. It still should be powerful enough to deliver a fantastic experience however.
We have looked at the HD5870 mobility before and it is an impressive mobile solution, even though it runs 150mhz slower than the desktop solution (700mhz) and sports only 800 stream processors, compared to 1600. This is all part of the need to lower power consumption however … after all they could hardly slot in a 190W desktop card.
| Processor | Intel Core i7 720QM @ 1.6 ghz (2.8ghz Turbo) |
| Display | 17.3 inch 1080p (1920×1080) LED Backlit |
| Memory | 8GB DDR3 1066mhz |
| Graphics | ATI Mobility Radeon HD5870 1GB GDDR5, DX11 |
| Storage | 1TB (2x500GB) 7,200 Hard drives |
| Optical | Blu Ray Combo Drive |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Home Premium x64 |
| Lan | 10/100/1000 Ethernet |
| Wireless | Intel 802.11 b/g/n ” 2.4 ghz, Bluetooth V2.1 |
| Webcam | 2.0 Megapixel |
| Ports | 4 USB, Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, microphone, headset, 8-in-1 Flash Memory Card Reader |
Thats a good specification for the price. Seems it arrived in quite a state mind you.
good article, covers a lot of areas which is useful. That cpu seems really good, quite impressed with it.
That is an interesting looking machine. I dont think I really like the appearance from the back, but it look good in the normal, typing position
i really like it, 8gb of DDR3 as standard is pretty over the top ! shame the HDD side is poorly set up.
I love this machine. I really do. makes my dell looks positively pedestrian
Wow this is much better than I thought it would be, they haven’t compromised on anything. although I agree. either Raid 0 the 500GBs or remove one and put in a 40-60GB SSD, put the price up a tiny bit.
The lack of SSD in such a killer machine is a huge oversight. the price is good, but they have dropped the ball with the configuration of the drives. I cant believe one wasnt formatted either.!
Pretty much my perfect laptop. although id prefer a 1200 res screen at this size. gives a bit more deskspace.
Really brilliant, but i prefer a smaller machine with better battery life.
Styling rocks. performance rocks. battery life doesn’t. id change the HD’s out too. 120gb for boot (SSD) and a 1TB for storage. or even two 128 GB SSDS in raid 0. I think this machine might feel a lot slower than it is with the current setup. how did it act in speed Zardon? slow to boot?
needs an SSD, id never use a laptop now without one.
Hi Ted – performance was good, but you always feel a mechanical drive now as slightly sluggish when an OS disk, even for overall responsiveness. It wasn’t slow, but moving from a laptop with one in it, it can feel slow at times. I agree with your points but adding in an SSD would increase the price. unless they went for a 40GB unit as a boot drive.
I also like Asus G73./ It is a good laptop.
I have one, its awesome. Not really a portable laptop though, its too big and the battery life is not enough (just over an hour internet surfing). It is a great desktop replacement if you lack space, which is one of the reasons i went for it. The design is lovely. I liked the angles and exhausts vents before i bought it and its even better in real life. I imported mine from the states and saved about £500, even with the duty paid.