Heroes die young. 

At Cebit this year the W90 from Asus was still the big eye-catcher, where it promised gaming performance, which you would otherwise more likely find from the Alienware camp. Although Asus rightly worked flat out on the design of the case, the deployed hardware was first and foremost the reason for the overall interest in the notebook. Two Mobility Radeon HD4870 graphics cards connected via Crossfire should have put the fear of God into the competition. – yeah, should have…
 

Amidst the massive case the offered keyboard seems rather compact. A somewhat clearer layout would have been nice in any case. The standard keypad shows no abnormalities regarding the placement of the keys, as all keys have a sufficient size. Furthermore you can profit from a separate number pad.

The typing feel is to be described as rather jerky and medium deep. In the area of the enter key the keyboard unit was also slightly bowed, which expressed itself in a springy feel when typing.

We couldn't make friends with the touch-sensitive control panel on the left alongside the keyboard, in particular with the volume adjustment positioned here. It requires some practise to bring the volume of the sound onto the desired level. The well-known combination of FN and an F-key would have also sufficed and would have probably even made it more precise to use.
It's a similar case for a control zone above the keyboard, which allows the adjustment of the brightness of the display. Well, apart from the fact that adjusting the brightness of the display is undertaken less often as for example the volume and so such a present button has no real justification, the touch-surface is all the same only laborious and more or less imprecise to operate.

The touchpad provides a basically good surface of adequate size. Also both keys are pleasant to use.
On the whole you must note that not only the keyboard but also the touchpad suffer from the height of the base unit, which reaches a proud 40 mm on the leading edge. This causes a hand posture that is often not ergonomical.

In the 3D-Mark 2006 standard test the first anticlimax already follows: 12.328 points are reached by the Asus W90 at our standard resolution of 1280x1024 pixels. For this we indeed already had to activate the "overclocking mode", which squeezes 2.2 GHz out of the Q9000 CPU. With the normally-clocked CPU it reached 11328. Here, other gamers reach more than 13000 points, where the Alienware M17x leads the list unchallenged with its currently unbeaten 15379 points. Indeed, all models use more powerful CPUs, as the Q9000 in the W90 is once more identified as a bottleneck. Detailed gaming tests follow in the next chapter.

So what's the gaming performance of the Asus W90 like? As usual, numerous well-known games are put to use in the test.

CoD4

The classic shooter Call of Duty 4 is of course a must in the performance test. It shouldn't surprise that in a gaming monster the main focus is first and foremost on high graphics details.
No sooner said than done, we tested by means of a standardised play-through of a passage in the first single-player level as usual. We benchmarked the system with the settings at 1280x1024, all graphics options on or respectively on high as well as 4x antialiasing. As always the tool Fraps logged the results.

In the test the Asus W90 showed a consistently good performance in the test. The achieved frame rate practically constantly lay over 60 fps. On average the notebook reached 99.8 fps. Compared to this the Clevo M980NU with Nvidia Geforce GTX 280M SLI, indeed with  a T9900 CPU with a stronger 3.06 GHz, only minimally exceeded these results, and respectively in sections recorded  higher outliers upwards. For this reason this also exists on average with 119.3 fps.

Racedriver GRID

The driving-simulator GRID is a representative of a completely different genre.  Also here demanding settings came into play (1280x1024, all options on or high, 2x XMSAA). It started with a good 45-60 fps. On the whole the performance remains approximately between 30 and 60 fps and for this reason in the always fluid region.

The Clevo M980NU remains somewhat steadier with a frame rate of 70-90 fps. On average the M980NU lies at 77 fps and comparatively the W90 at 52 Fps.

FEAR2

As a representative of the current shooter generation we also looked at FEAR2. At a resolution of 1280x1024 pixels, all graphics details on or high and activated 4x antialiasing the W90 provided frame rates of up to 60-70 fps yet it experienced short dips down to under 15 fps which become noticeable in short judders. This could possibly be down to a fault with the drivers. Here the Clevo with Nvidia GTX 280M SLI graphics turns out fundamentally better. Here the frame rates remain at an average of 123 fps.

At risk of repeating ourselves again: shame. The Asus W90VP would have absolutely had the stuff for a successful gaming notebook. Care has not only been taken in making the case, but also when it comes to the design and the quality of the workmanship. The result is exhibited in any case - Asus W90VP is positioned far removed from the playfulness of so many colourfully flickering gaming notebooks.

The deployed display shows weaknesses. Here the probable cost pressure becomes noticeable, as the panel only features lukewarm brightness and cannot really convince when it comes to illumination and contrast.

The absolute essential for the W90 is performance - full stop. The in-built quad-core CPU seems promising at first look, yet one should have invested in a higher-clocked dual-core. Four cores are up until now still simply insufficiently supported.

Finally, also the deployed graphics solution suffers from this, which with two ATI Mobility Radeon HD4870 chips would have absolutely had the stuff to be a front-runner. Indeed ATI also has to put up with the accusation that such negligent driver support, even for the top graphics solution from AMD/ATI, does no good at all. For this reason there is also the question of the future of this graphics solution. The W90 was and is the only device which falls back on both of the 4870 chips. Well the production has also been discontinued, which won't really increase the incentive for ATI to bring out new drivers, on the contrary.

Because of the arising inconsistencies when it comes to CPU and drivers the W90VP is a tip for nerds and tuners who could conjure up a gaming machine from a 2300 Euro device, which could even make the current Alienware M17x range look old. Yeah…, could.