For the past year or so, I have been looking for a good laptop for my mobile pursuits. I have some pretty stringent requirements for my mobile platform, the most import of which is the ability to run 3D games. With linux as my primary OS, and many of the games I play being available for Linux (or can be coaxed to run on linux with wine) this pretty much means that Nvidia discrete graphics are a must. I spent many months looking at systems like the M17x from Alienware, or a DIY AVADirect Clevo unit among others. The main issue with these rigs comes down to one thing: cost. A fully loaded M17x can cost just as much as a high end desktop rig. So, after some shopping around I had come to the conclusion that I would have to finance one of these monsters if I wanted a good gaming laptop. A few weeks ago, I was in Best Buy and I did something that I never do – look at the budget laptops that they typically carry. I came upon an ASUS G72GX system. The specs were actually pretty impressive:
CPU: 2.53 Ghz Core 2 Duo
Video: Nvidia 260M 1GB Discrete Graphics
RAM: 6GB DDR3
Hard disk: 500GB, 5400RPM
1600×900 Widescreen LCD Screen
Webcam, USB, E-SATA, 1394, card reader, Secondary hard disk bay, DVD-R/W drive, G/N Wifi, Gig Ethernet LAN, illuminated keyboard
The most amazing thing: a $999 price tag. So, I thought about it, did some quick research the next day, and decided to give it a shot. I have had some mostly positive experience with Asus motherboards in the past, but hadn’t spent much time on anything else from the company.
In short, I am glad I did. For a modest amount of money I got an excellent performing machine that seems to be able to grind through just about anything I have given it. Since I didn’t find many online resources for running Linux on this platform, I figured I would write a quick review on the machine and the caveats with running linux on it.
I chose the latest version of Ubuntu for the install, 9.10 Karmic Koala. Now, overall Karmic is a good version of Ubuntu, however it doeshave some issues (we will save that for another article).
The install went pretty much flawlessly, all hardware was detected and the system came up the first time in a usable state. Typical Ubuntu up to this point. I quickly noticed an issue with the Wireless adapter in the system. It is an Atheros 928X adapter, and it turns out that this chipset can be problematic at times on Linux. Basically the card would work for about 5-10 minutes, but then it would drop off of the network and basically become unusable. Only a reboot could correct the situation. After some research, it appears that better support for the adapter is available in a karmic kernal backports package. A simple package installation with the command:
sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-karmic
Followed by a reboot was enough to get the adapter usable. While this fixed the network drop/reboot issue, it was still not perfect. As the machine was used, you could “feel” times when the network connectivity would drop for a few seconds on a regular basis. This was especially evident when playing World of Warcraft or other online games. Thankfully, the 2.6.31-20 kernel update and the associated backport package that came out about a week later seems to have resolved all of the wireless issues.
The next issue was with the Nvidia 260M graphics. Ubuntu has a tendency to build a distribution with a specific set of Nvidia closed source drivers, and typically does not update those drivers throughout the support life of the distribution version. I, on the other hand prefer to install the latest Nvidia drivers by hand. Unfortunately the latest Nvidia drivers package was not able to recognize the PCI ID of the 260M graphics card in the machine. This is an interesting issue that I do not yet have a resolution for. I ended up installing the Ubuntu supplied Nvidia 185.18.36 package and it was able to detect the card. Luckily, the 185.18.36 driver set is a stable and high performing release (unlike some previous drivers packaged with Hardy or Intrepid).
The last hardware related issue I came across was sound card static. It seemed that playing games such as Quake 4 or World of Warcraft the sound quality suffered from a lot of static. This was fixed by modifying the /etc/modprode.d/alsa-base.conf file. Apparently by default a sound card power management feature is turned on for Intel HDA sound cards. Look for the following lines in your /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf file:
# Power down HDA controllers after 10 idle seconds
options snd-hda-intel power_save=10 power_save_controller=N
Simply commenting out the second line and rebooting the system fixed the issue.
That about covers the hardware issues. For the most part, nothing major.
Usability and Performance:
Overall the machine is comfortable to use and works very well. I can achieve very playable from rates on several games even recent titles such as FEAR 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on Windows and several old standbys on Linux such as Quake 4, Enemy Territory and Doom 3 all run great even running at a full 1600×900 with 4x AA and some AF.
The only complaints I have are regarding the touch pad and the gloss plastic surface that makes up the keyboard. The touch pad is quite large and can interfere with typing since your palms will cause the touchpad to click or move the mouse. Turning off double click capabilities on the touchpad on linux did the trick. The problem with the glossy plastic coating on the keyboard is that is a finger/palm print magnet, and is hard to clean.
The LCD screen is quite bright and crisp, and has excellent picture quality. I was worried that 1600×900 (16×9 aspect) was going to be a little narrow for my tastes – I prefer 1920×1200 or 16×10 aspect ratio monitors, but so far this has not been an issue and I am very pleased with the screen real estate and quality.
I would like to run some benchmarks on the machine with the Phoronix Testing suite, but that will have to come at a later date. Overall I can’t think of a better deal for the money in a gaming capable laptop/portable workstation. While the gloss finish a touchpad are little annoying, they don’t detract from the overall quality and performance of the machine enough for me not to recommend it. I give it a 9/10 grade. Asus did a great job with this machine and I highly recommend it.
The nvidia 256.53 driver set installs and detects the 260M video card in this machine just fine.