A couple days ago I wrote a few thoughts about my new ASUS ROG gaming laptop. It's a nice piece of hardware and if you are looking for a nicely priced portable gaming machine it's worth a look. That said for my most immediate computing past I've mostly used Mac OS and Linux and as such i'm not the biggest Windows power user and I recently learned something you might find useful.
Set Your Power & Sleep Mode To High Performance
One mistake I made when I first got my laptop was to mess around in the power and sleep mode control panel and set it to "power saver." It seemed like a reasonable selection as I figured Windows would switch into "high performance" mode when a game started and then drop back to the default "power saver" mode automagically. Come to find out that's not how Windows works and when you set the power mode to "power saver" it causes your graphics card and CPU to always switch to the lower power option. On my ASUS ROG that means that it will constantly use the integrated Intel card instead of the nvidia one and ignore a couple CPU cores.
So make sure to set your laptop to "high performance" by default in settings and if you kick back on the couch surfing the web you can click the battery icon in the lower right to temporarily switch Windows into power saver mode while it's on battery power. When you plug the laptop back in it will automagically switch it back to high performance mode to run the laptop in all it's gaming glory.
It's nice that I finally figured this out as during the last few days I've got terribly low frame rates and performance in any game I've played on it and it's disturbed me quite a bit. I nearly thought something was wrong with my hardware then I discovered this power mode and how it can cap your gaming performance.
You can read my thoughts on the ASUS ROG:
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/3061/one-month-with-the-asus-rog-gl552vw-dh74-gaming-laptop
Set Your Power & Sleep Mode To High Performance
One mistake I made when I first got my laptop was to mess around in the power and sleep mode control panel and set it to "power saver." It seemed like a reasonable selection as I figured Windows would switch into "high performance" mode when a game started and then drop back to the default "power saver" mode automagically. Come to find out that's not how Windows works and when you set the power mode to "power saver" it causes your graphics card and CPU to always switch to the lower power option. On my ASUS ROG that means that it will constantly use the integrated Intel card instead of the nvidia one and ignore a couple CPU cores.
So make sure to set your laptop to "high performance" by default in settings and if you kick back on the couch surfing the web you can click the battery icon in the lower right to temporarily switch Windows into power saver mode while it's on battery power. When you plug the laptop back in it will automagically switch it back to high performance mode to run the laptop in all it's gaming glory.
It's nice that I finally figured this out as during the last few days I've got terribly low frame rates and performance in any game I've played on it and it's disturbed me quite a bit. I nearly thought something was wrong with my hardware then I discovered this power mode and how it can cap your gaming performance.
You can read my thoughts on the ASUS ROG:
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/3061/one-month-with-the-asus-rog-gl552vw-dh74-gaming-laptop
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Also, be sure to change the global setting in the Nvidia Control Panel. This can be done by right-clicking on your desktop, clicking Nvidia Control Panel, then Manage 3D Settings, then scroll down and make sure "Prefer maximum performance" is selected next to "Power Management mode." See the following link for a visual of what I'm talking about. http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3130/~/setting-power-management-mode-from-adaptive-to-maximum-performance
Yeah that nvidia setting Greg mentions is one that might never cause you any trouble until it does. I don't know if it's a driver quirk or the way games use the driver or what but it usually adapts properly, it just sometimes doesn't.
That's good to know, I think it's set that way but I'll check tonight to be sure.
Yay! I have bought nothing but ASUS ROG for the last 3 laptops. Can't beatthe price/speed,quality for my money!
Nicholas_Biondi: That's really good to hear.
Based on how it keeps getting slimmer and lighter and that i've had such a great time with it so far, when the time comes i'll be looking into getting another. I usually wait a long time to get new hardware but going ASUS again seems like a very solid idea.