1.6GHz Intel Core i7-720QM
8GB RAM
1TB hard drive
DVD±RW
17.3 inches (1,920x1,080 native resolution)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 (1GB)
7.4 pounds
2.2x16.3x12.6 inches
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
8GB RAM
1TB hard drive
DVD±RW
17.3 inches (1,920x1,080 native resolution)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 (1GB)
7.4 pounds
2.2x16.3x12.6 inches
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
It’s rare that gamers on the prowl for high-end gear get a price break. Most gamers are used to paying top dollar for bleeding-edge parts and systems—with the downside of sacrificing precious power for any money they try to save by settling for older or less capable components. But the Asus G73Jh, branded under the Republic of Gamers (ROG) line, manages to offer, seemingly, way more than its price tag’s worth of juice.
The G73Jh has some of the specifications you’d expect to see on much pricier notebooks. A quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU? Check. A fat bank of 8GB of memory? Check. A 17.3-inch display at full 1080p resolution? Check. A cutting-edge, HD 5800-series ATI Radeon graphics subsystem? Check again. We’d expect a price of well over $2,000 for this configuration, so we’re left scratching our heads as to how Asus crammed it all into a stylish chassis and charges just $1,599 for it.
The G73Jh looks like a stealth fighter. It's a nifty-looking, unique system, with a matte-black finish and a streamlined, contoured lid. It's definitely not your father's Dell Inspiron, that's for sure, and it's sure to turn heads at gaming parties. The only downside of the form factor is the included power brick, which weighs more than a pound on its own and is one of the largest we've ever seen.
The input devices alone, including a black, backlit keyboard and a huge, 4.5-inch-diagonal touch pad, are worth the price of admission. The keyboard features surprisingly large keys with plenty of room between them, and it even includes a numeric keypad. Plus, somehow, enough room is left over for one of the largest laptop touch pads we’ve seen. They keys and the pad are both gloriously responsive, and thanks to an innovative cooling system that draws air through the front and blows hot air out two rear exhausts, the palm rests stay cool throughout any computing session.
Furthermore, the G73Jh features a 2-megapixel camera that performed well in all lighting situations. You’ll also find an eight-format memory-card reader, Bluetooth 2.1, and a full range of connectivity, anchored by Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. Of course, you'll find the rest of the standard ports along the sides of the laptop, including four USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, a VGA port, and audio jacks. One specification that floored us is the full terabyte of hard drive space, divided into four partitions on two physical notebook drives. One partition is expressly for the operating system; the rest are for the whims of the user.
Output is equally remarkable, via the huge, bright display. Driven by the powerful ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 chipset, which features a full gigabyte of DDR5 VRAM, the display features excellent visuals no matter what you choose to do. On our tests, video-playback quality was brilliant, without hiccups, artifacts, or blurring. Audio playback through the onboard speakers proved muffled, typical for any notebook, but throw on a decent headset, and the aural sensation goes from blah to fantastic. That's because the built-in Realtek audio chip supports Creative’s EAX technology up to version 4.0, allowing for positional audio in games that use it.
Indeed, gaming is a pleasure on the Asus G73Jh—as it should be, because that’s what it’s built for. And our gaming benchmark tests came back with excellent scores. On our 3DMark Vantage test, for instance, the G73Jh scored 8,234. On the first of our real-world gaming tests, Company of Heroes, it scored a very nice 139 frames per second (fps) on the DirectX 9 (DX9) version of the test and an excellent 51.2fps under DirectX 10 (DX10). When we ran our second gaming test, Far Cry 2, the G73Jh scored a strong 92fps for DX9 and 53fps for DX10. Considering the price, these are all very impressive scores. Only the most expensive laptops, such as the $4,849 Alienware M17x, trump these numbers.
Other performance scores were equally impressive. On our CPU-centric Windows Media Encoder test, the Asus ROG G73Jh came back with an outstanding time of 3 minutes and 53 seconds, a leading time in its price class, with the exception of the $649 Gateway NV7915u, which beat it by 21 seconds. All the other systems that beat this score cost $4,000 or more, proving that the Intel Core i7-720QM processor, paired with 8GB of DDR3 memory, is as impressive as it sounds. Next, in our iTunes encoding test, the G73Jh took 2 minutes and 54 seconds to convert our 11 standard MP3 files to AAC format, stacking up the same against competing notebooks as in the previous test, except that in this case, it beat the Gateway NV7915u by 2 minutes.
For overall system performance, the G73Jh managed strong PCMark Vantage scores of 5,436 and 3,936 on our 32- and 64-bit tests, respectively. Again, consider the system's low price: These are standout scores, trumped only by pricey notebooks such as the $4,199 Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q708 and the $4,076 Malibal Satori. In a nutshell, this entry in the Republic of Gamers line is a real powerhouse. 