Asus G72Gx-A1

Spec review :

• Processor : Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000 (6M Cache, 2.00 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB)
• Memory :  3 x 2048MB DDR2 800 MHz SDRAM
• Hard drive : 2 x 500GB SATA Seagate  7,200rpm
• Graphics card : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M GDDR3 VRAM
• Chipset : Mobile Intel P43 Express + ICH10 
• Screen : 17.3-inch F HD (1920x1080) + (1600x900) Glare-type
• Operating system : Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• DirectX 10 supported
• Dimension : 16.14 x 11.77 x 1.75~ 2.04 inches
• Optical drive : Blu-Ray + 8x DVD-RW Dual Layer
• Primary 8-cell li-ion battery
•  2 years limited global hardware warranty + 1 year battery pack warranty
• Plus internal system.

Price : $1599.95
Starting price : $1599.95 (might vary depending on the store)
Starting weight : 8.9 pounds
Customizable : yes.
The specification above is for A1 model with basic components, so it comes with minimum price and weight. For more information about component, customization and price for A1 model, visit  here.
External accecories (keyboard, headphone, TV tunner, gaming controller, etc) are exculded, except for Razer Copperhead mouse and backpack are both included.

Again, another Asus' G-series laptop is here. And again, it's cheap! No humiliation, because actually it's not  cheap, but ways cheaper compared with other high-end gaming laptops. G72Gx is before G73JH, so it has lower specification, but the difference isn't that worth. Almost no difference in price, but G72Gx comes with Blu-Ray optical drive. Quite a hit for his brother.

G72Gx has great gaming performance. Call of Duty 4, Left4Dead, GRID, Anno 1404 are able to be played at max setting and resolution fluently. Unfortunatelly, G72Gx can't run ultra-high DX 10 games such as Crysis smoothly at high setting, but medium will work well.

G72Gx here uses Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000 2GHz with 6MB L2 cache and 1066MHz FSB. Q9000 is advanced with VT-x, Trusted Execution and Speedstep technologies to improve performance for multi-threaded applications and be faster, cooler and quieter. However, Q9000 doesn't have Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading technologies, which greatly speed up performance for demanding applications, especially for gaming. Also, it consumes high power. Oh, well... But worry not, because G72Gx paired with quad core has Performance Boost which can boost performance up to 15%! Oh, yeah!

GTX 260M is featured with 1GB GDDR3 VRAM, CUDA, PhysX and PureVideo HD technologies. Equipped with those technologies, GTX 260M displays very impressive graphics and visual effects, very smooth. As the consequence, it consumes high power, so it's only suited for big laptops equipped with cooling system. Asus reduces GTX 260M clock rate, likely because without reducing its clock rate, the laptop will quickly get heated up while in Turbo Mode.

For the memory, 6GB is... unusual, but quite big for current gaming laptops. Current games need approximately 2GB memory, so if you were to have this laptop only for gaming, 6GB is much too big. DDR2 is still fine, because DDR3 is just too early to have and much more expensive. DDR3 is ways faster than DDR2, and consumes 30% less power. Yet, DDR2 is still fine.

For the hard drive, again G72Gx comes with 1TB and 7,200rpm. So big... I wonder if  I can store an elephant inside this huge black box. A TeraByte equals to approximately 128 DVDs, 20 Blu-Ray Discs and can store about 250,000 4MegaPixels images. Wow, I can store a photo for every cat in my continent! Still, it's just too big for me.
G72Gx has numpad, too.

Where there's good, there's evil. The evil of  laptop is its shortage, which has sullied every laptop in the universe and caused them to fall to cons. And here are cons of G72Gx...
The Q9000 and GTX 260M consume high power, causing G72Gx to overheat quickly, very quickly while in Turbo Mode and ultra quick (approaches the light speed) while being overclocked. Fixed well with external cooler. Another output, huh...
Short battery life due to high power consumption. G72Gx can last for less than 2 hours, maximum for 101 minutes with minimum setting. It's a normal case for a big gaming laptop, but too short!
G72Gx comes with almost the same price as G73JH, equipped with blu-ray drive, but not Core i7. Blu-ray as an exchange for Core i7 by Core2Quad? Think again.
The system is noisy. It can't be quiet even if you set the volume muted. Just wear headphones and you won't hear a continous nuclear explosion.
Some keyboard problems. Some say have experienced double-strokes, and such. External keyboard? Oh, please...
Finish! Those are common cons from G72Gx. If you own this laptop and have additional pros and/or cons, please write in comment.


References :
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Asus-G72GX-Gaming-Notebook.22297.0.html
http://ca.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=qaDohSj4JPENXkxw
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-Much-is-a-Terabyte
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-reviews-owners-lounges/455755-asus-g72gx-rbbx-05-gaming-performance-review.html
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=40480
http://www.agearnotebooks.com/asusg72gx-a1.html