G73 from 5870 to 460M? What Gives?

[Killdozer]

Can anyone explain why Asus decided to go from an ATI 5870 in their last generation of G73 to an NVidia 460M in their new version?

I understand things are different in the mobile world, but it doesn't look like there's a comparison between a 5870 (High end card) vs a 460 (Midrange card). It seems like the older models would be faster in GPU intense games.

Don't really care about what CPU it's paired up with. Simply looking at the performance of the cards by themselves.

 

[Abula]

The 5870m is faster than the GTX460m, but not by much, in most games around 5%. The 5870m has some draw backs, usually the G73JH idle between 55-60C, while the G73JW/SW between 40-45C. Also at load the 5870m is known to easy pass 80C, with a lot passing 90C, with some even reporting over 100C, while GTX460m the worst i seen in my case was 77C. Asus had a lot of RMAs with the 5870 specially with GSODs, this was later resolved with bios update, none the less, i think Asus decided to stick with Nvidia for now (all Asus line has Nvidia based gpus), and lot of other manufactures are following, like Acer with thier huge succes in their Timeline X, are switching from ATI6550m to Nvidia GTX540m, then again you have Apple that have switched their line to ATI, so it's a never ending switching from companies, no winner or loser here.

Now if you are looking for better performace you should be looking into higher end laptops, like Sager or Alienware, they both offer ATI 6970 and sager offers nvidia GTX485, both are high end cards, not value oriented, but performance. But if you are still looking inside Asus for value/budget, and you are not confortable with GTX460m performace, let me suggest you wait for Asus G74, its a refresh of their G 17'' line with somewhat different appearance and cooler setup, its not confirmed yet if it will come with ATI6850 (downclocked 5870) or Nvidia GTX560 (about 5% faster than GTX460), but should be either of those. If you wish to read more about it, check Asus ROG G74 coming? and couple of videos, Asus G74SX 3D Gaming Notebook - Cebit 2011 and CeBIT 2011: Asus G74 gesichtet.

 

[Killdozer]

The heat thing makes a lot of sense and I can't fault them for changing.

Honestly I was expecting a bigger performance delta between the 5870M and the 460M. 5% doesn't seem that bad.

Thanks for the info about the G74. Can't wait to see what they have going.