Hey just thought i'd post something of thoughts of sorts about my experience with an Asus G74SX (TL;DR at the bottom - Early 2011 model/somewhere in the middle of January )
Ok so first of all(does this go here ? i think it does not sure ..if not let me or an admin know) it's huge and bulky And less battery life - and the specs on this thing are ancient like it's i7 is 1st gen ( i7-2760QM )although i don't know if it still IS 1st gen cause i sent it in for repairs at the end of last year because the touch pad/integrated mouse came defective since the beginning of 2011 and to be Really honest i don't no if i'm the only one that has had a successful Asus RMA (it was my 1st too) but they did a few internal things like bump up my graphics card total from 1.5 Vram/GB to 2.0 Vram/GB - GDDR 5 and i think it's the same card ? /not sure but i do know it's a GTX 560M(before i sent it and after i sent it) and i think other stuff as well but anyway - Ram is 8gb DDR3 Somewhere lost in 1600Mhz and 665Mhz (2x 4Gb) and res is 1600 x 900 60hz
so basically it's good for what year it came out of since a few years/months later the xbox one and ps4 came out and changed Everything from graphics to engine - NFS rivals is an example of that i like to say - ( not really a bad thing since i do enjoy a green open cup of linux on supported hardware)
Oh and for the curious - the successor of this laptop is the G75x/G750 ( x = number ) so the only thing i see they did for the latest model is change there style to a Deus Ex human revolution style which was announced at IFA this year (in color and from outside perspective)
TL;DR bought a beauty(still is) of a gaming laptop from asus and a few months in - turned outdated due to xbox one and ps4 announcement / system of functions for past future games forcefully changed
note - feel free to yell at me for misspelling's if you find any since i has have yet to go to an eye doc