So I bought one yesterday and I was amazed that for this price it's so thin and good looking and it can handle Black Ops 2 at 720p perfectly. A tiny bit of stutter but I have it running at almost 60 fps for multiplayer so I can be first on my team :)

The cooling system does work very very well. Perfectly quiet at idle and handles heat on full load.

The keyboard of very good. The touchpad can be sticky which is odd.

The main drawback is the horrible screen. The resolution would be fine (because of the price) but the screen changes when you move your head even a little bit. It really sucks. The viewing angles are completely horrid.

I would pay more but don't know which laptop is like this one but with a better screen. Help?...

Sata 2 is still very fast - with up to 300 mb/s. an HDD gets at maximum 160 in reading - but only reading and only the fastet ones.. writing is much slower. So - ofcourse you will have a very faster system by using an ssd - even with sata 2.
Most SSD, wich arent the best and expensive (like samsung 840) arent so much faster then sata 2 specially at writing.

Thanks for reply!
So, if I bought an ssd disk sata 3 should be the speed of the sata 2? Why, if the motherboard HM 76 is sata 3 capable, ASUS has decided to use the SATA 2 controller limiting the upgrade?
My last question is: there would still be an increase in performance compared to the disk installed by default?

Bye

Quote from: Me on July 04, 2013, 22:23:36
Just a question... Does the notebook use the sata 3.0 6Gb/s for the hard drive? Can I upgrade the hdd with an ssd?

Thank you!

Hello,

The interface is SATA II, so 3Gb/s. An SSD installation is possible, make sure it is 7 mm to be certain that it will fit correctly

Just a question... Does the notebook use the sata 3.0 6Gb/s for the hard drive? Can I upgrade the hdd with an ssd?

Thank you!

ssd cache is sensless (in my opinion) - much too small and doesnt help at writing-speed. Only for a few readings.
a real ssd is much better and often costs the same, then such cache from the producer.. they want to earn good money ;)

Also, will the i7 version be needed for gaming and graphics editing (Corel Draw X6/Photoshop CS6)?
The difference is a staggering $300 between the i5 and i7 in my country. Also, is the S46CB/S46CM a worthwhile upgrade with the extra 24GB SSD cache? Or would I be better getting the A46/56 and install and SSD myself?

Please review the 14" model as well. I need to know the battery life. Also, will this model receive a Haswell upgrade in a near future?

Well, this depends on the game and the settings. In my opinion, a Core i5-3317U and a GT 740M are an overall appropriate combination.

In the review for the S56CM (with the i5-3317U and GT 635M), it was mentioned that the ULV i5 bottlenecked the 635M chip by about 20%. But for the A56CB, with the weaker ULV i3 and stronger 740M, all gaming performance seems to have improved? Could you maybe shed some light on this? Is there a bottleneck for the 740M with the ULV i3?

I am planning on purchasing one of these overseas, and am really trying to find out if an i5-3317U version will bottleneck the 740M.

Thanks.

Excellent review, and extensive too. It seems that this model satisfies what I am looking for in a laptop, but has there been a US release yet?