NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready Notebook – Asus G51J 3D Review

Impressions and Conclusions

The standard Asus G51J was without a doubt a very strong product which earned it some recognition here on PC Perspective, however the 3D version is less decisive.

NVIDIA’s Vision 3D, while gorgeous and exciting in games that support it well, gave the G51J 3D a performance hit that forces the user to decide between better game visuals or the stereo 3D effect. As we have seen in our testing, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M is just sufficient for current generation games at 1366×768 with 3D Vision enabled. If you decide to use an external 120Hz panel at a higher resolution, or decide to play more intensive games, NVIDIA Vision 3D will likely make the Asus G51J 3D stutter unless you scale back the details.

Watching movies in 3D was a lot of fun and can really add a new twist assuming movies are filmed properly. With more and more 3D movies hitting the street and theatres, the Asus G51J 3D we reviewed is missing a Blu-Ray to complete the experience. Luckily the G51J 3D comes with a BD option assuming you can find a vendor selling it, or you can purchase an external 3D drive for about $100 to $150.

Putting the 3D Vision performance aside, the Asus G51J 3D has a 120Hz display that is absolutely stunning and gorgeous to watch. Games play at a higher vsync rate, mouse movements feel smoother which makes it great in Windows 7 and image editing, and the colours just pop nicely. My only misgiving on the panel is that the panel is only 1366×768 and not 1920×1080 for true full HD. But if Asus used a 1920×1080 panel, the price would have gone up drastically because the GPU will need to scale up to handle 3D Vision properly at a higher resolution, and a panel with 120Hz refresh at 1920×1080 would not be cheap.

Overall the Asus G51J 3D is a fine product with a lot of other good features like support for two hard drives, a backlit keyboard, a cooler thermal profile over the G51J “standard”, and an overall good design. However, the underpowered feeling when playing current games with 3D Vision enabled should make you think a little harder before shelling out money (see Dirt2, Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, Demigod, and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in our testing).

In the end, the Asus G51J 3D makes you decide on compromises:

• Do you prefer a display with 1920×1080 resolution at 60Hz, or 1366×768 at 120Hz?
• Do you prefer better 3D gaming at higher resolution and better visuals, or do you dial things back a bit but gain NVIDIA 3D Vision?
• How much do you value 3D movies and are you willing to pay extra for a Blu-Ray option?

How you answer these questions will help you decide whether the Asus G51J 3D or a different system is a better match for you.

But let’s clarify one thing as we finish here: NVIDIA’s 3D Vision technology is excellent, it’s the hardware implementation on the Asus G51J 3D that makes it a bit restrictive for gaming. With NVIDIA GTS 360M parts on the market and Fermi GPUs just release, my guess is that it’s only a matter of time before we see a revision of the G51J 3D with a faster GPU.