Asus G73SW Sandy Bridge Gaming Notebook Review
Game Tests & Battery Life
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Metro 2033 is your basic post-apocalyptic first person shooter game with a few rather unconventional twists. Unlike most FPS titles, there is no health meter to measure your level of ailment, but rather you’re left to deal with life, or lack there-of more akin to the real world with blood spatter on your visor and your heart rate and respiration level as indicators. The game is loosely based on a novel by Russian Author Dmitry Glukhovsky. Metro 2003 boasts some of the best 3D visuals on the PC platform currently including a DX11 rendering mode that makes use of advanced depth of field effects and character model tessellation for increased realism. We tested the game engine using the Metro 2033 benchmark tool. |
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Like the original, FarCry 2 is one of the more visually impressive games to be released on the PC to date. Courtesy of the Dunia game engine developed by Ubisoft, FarCry 2's game-play is enhanced by advanced environment physics, destructible terrain, high resolution textures, complex shaders, realistic dynamic lighting, and motion-captured animations. We benchmarked the test systems in this article with the FarCry 2 benchmark tool using one of the built-in demo runs recorded in the "Ranch" map. |
In Far Cry 2, the Asus G73SW leapfrogged in front of the MSI GT680R, posting slightly better performance numbers in both 1920x1080 and 1280x720 screen resolutions.
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Lost Planet 2 is a third person shooter developed by Capcom. It is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, and takes place ten years after the events of the first game. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates, while featuring major boss battles, extreme terrain, and the ability to pilot mechanized armor suits. We tested the game engine using the stand alone benchmark tool. |
Here again, the G73SW managed to outpace the GT680 by the slimmest of margins. And just as we saw with Metro 2033, neither machine is able to turn in playable framerates at 1920x1080 with the visual quality settings cranked up. Of course, the same holds true for the dual-GPU Eurocom machine, which underscores how brutal these benchmarks can be.
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One thing you're going to have to concede with a gaming notebook and/or desktop replacement is battery life. It's the difference between mobility and portability. Using our unforgiving BatterEater Pro test, the G73SW ran for 67 minutes before it ran out of juice, which is a slight improvement over the G73Jh-A1.
Your usage time will vary depending on what you're doing and which power options you take advantage of (or disable), but what these results underscore is the difference between mobility and portability. What do we mean? Well, the G73SW is portable, in that you can pack it up and take it on an airplane to hop from one LAN party to the next. But unlike an underpowered netbook or non-desktop replacement notebook, it's not really mobile, in that you're going to want a wall socket nearby if you plan on using your PC for an extended amount of time.
