ASUS G74-SX-A1 Gaming Notebook Review

The Asus line of G73 Stealth notebooks proved to be all-around solid desktop replacements, equally ideal for gaming, multimedia, and productivity. In fact, the Asus G53 and G73 line, from Asus' Repulic of Gamers (ROG) family, has been very successful in the market, praised by press and end users alike. We took a look at the previous generation 17-inch G73SW not long ago and it earned high marks with team HH as well. This class of machine is definitely bulky however, though not that many gamers would mind. Now, the G73 is being phased out in favor of the Asus G74 series, the next step forward for the company’s family of desktop replacement notebooks.

We took a long hard look at the Asus ROG G74SX-A1, which features a second-generation Intel Core i7-2360QM CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M for graphics firepower, and 12GB of DDR3-1333 RAM.  The G74's 17.3-inch Full HD display (1920x1080) in concert with a Blu-ray combo drive and THX TruStudio + EAX 5.0 3D gaming audio should help make gaming and movie-watching an immersive experience.
The G74SX-A1 also sports a USB 3.0 port (in addition to three USB 2.0) and HDMI-out for connectivity. Storage is not a problem--the notebook boasts two 750GB 7200RPM hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration for a total of 1.5TB of space.

Like a lot of systems, the G74SX-A1 comes bundled with a pile of pre-installed software, including (take a deep breath) Asus Tools, Asus Vibe Fun Center, eManual, GameFast, Asus WebStorage, Asus Virtual Camera, Power4Gear Hybrid, Rotation Desktop For G Series, Asus Splendid Utility, a Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security trial, and more.

Join us as we put the Asus G74SX-A1 through the paces to see if it picks up where the G73 series left off.