ASUS W3V help

Ok, well I helped my brother pick out a laptop and decided to get the ASUS W3V. The specs seemed good for the size. Though we just got it today and does not perform like I had hoped. In 3dmark01se it only gets around 5900. The rig in my sig gets around 12900 so I am a little disapointed by this. Anyway I was looking at the detailed info for this laptop in 3dmark and it said the CPU is only running at 800mhz. I remember hearing about this before, thought it was a feature to scale the CPU up and down to save power. Though I wanted a straigh benchmark so I went to bios and told it to run max power. All seemed well, it was running at 1.8 according to everest. With it running at max though 3dmark cannot even open. It just crashed and gives me some error. I checked temps and they are around 57C which seemed kind of hot to me. Anyway does anyone have any ideas on what I could do to maybe make this thing run a tad better. I releize its not a desktop but I was still expecting more power then that from it. Thanks

 

57C is a very reasonable temperature for normal operations. Under stress, your CPU can easily get in the 70s. THis is entirely normal. You don't have to worry until your CPU temps get into the 80s or 90s.

 

Check your power4gear settings. If it is set to home/office the cpu will clock down to 800 mhz, if you set it to superperformance it will clock up to 1.86 ghz. If you want more control over your cpu then I suggest downloading Centrino Hardware Control or Rightmark cpu clock. They allow dynamic switching which allows the cpu to clock up to 1.86 ghz and down to 800 mhz automatically depending on usage.

 

Ok thanks, I am going to go check out the settings. The reason I was mainly worried about temps is when it was running like that I tried to open 3dmark and got some BSOD that said something about ati then some numbers.

Edit: How do I change the settings in pwer 4 gear? I go to start/all programs/aus utility/power4 gear/ power 4 gear. Though nothing opens when I click it, is this not the correct program?

 

Power4gear is usually running unless you explicitly turned it off. Look for the icon in the task bar. The first shortcut button on the right side of your keyboard also changes the power setting in power4gear, its the one right above the bluetooth button.

 

Power4gear is down near the clock. Just right click it the icon. You can also set it with the side buttons on the right. Its the topright one.

 

Ok thanks. I found it and ran the 3dmark 01se again and got around 12300. Which is a lot better and a lot closer to what I was hoping for. So far this is looking to be a very good laptop if you are going by performance to size/ wieght ratio. (he wanted and IBM at first so I am thinking this was a good choice)

Edit: Just wondering, can you OC these things at all? The bios didnt seem to have to many settings but I was thinking maybe a software overclock like softfsb. Just didnt want to fry it and I knoe temp on laptops is a big deal. Any input on this would help a lot.

 

I dont know about overclocking but you can undervolt it. It wont make affect the performance at all but it will lower cpu temperatures by as much as 10 degrees celcius and will add around 20 min of battery life. You would need a program like NHC (notebook hardware control) or rightmark cpu clock to do this. There are some posts on this forum about undervolting, try a search if you're interested.

 

Ok thanks a lot for your help and anyone else who has posted. I just ran the 3dmark03 and it actually beat my desktop. Which though it kind of sucks for me I am happy to see. I may try undervolting it, just hope that dosnt make it to unstable.

 

If you follow the instructions for undervolting there should be no stability issues. It's true that if you undervolt too much your computer will be unstable but if you stress test and undervolt conservatively there should be no problem.