F3SV - **Resource Thread**

Not to feel outdone by G1S resource thread i thought F3SV owners can get togeather to share feedback on Drivers, Benchmarks and software and of course any problems and solutions.

What are u using to get the most bang for your buck.
Please indicate what OS u are using also.

I would like to kick off one topic which is VIDEO DRIVERS.

There seems to be a wide range available plus a wide range of benchmarks to go with them. I know ASUS only supplied DDR2 instead of DDR3 for most of the F3SV's but people lets move on.

People have reported getting over 2800 on 3dmark06 with stock settings.
What drivers are u using?

Here are a few i have tried and the scores to go with them from 3dmark06.
All drivers are from www.laptopvideo2go.com with modded inf's. As i do more i will update. I am running XP

V101.19
2130

V158.51
2217

V162.18
2219

v162.50
2223

v165.01
2221

If there are better scores out there what r u using to get them.


Let the FUN begin.

 

yay gj saber, lets hope our good friend ASUS releases some official drivers so that this f3 can actually look like a real 8600GS...

 

btw these are the official 8600gs specs....dont really think the f3v looks much like it...at least in terms of stock settings

 

To be honest all i really want is a good VIDEO driver. Everything else works just fine. Maybe Asus will do just that for us.
People are getting in the high 2000's with vista and i can only get in the low 2000's with xp.

I am keen to see what others are getting.

Do me a favour would you, if you are running XP can you tell me what you Memory Clcok speed is in Rivaturner. Cheers

 

**** UPDATE*****

Just tried the new 163.44 drivers and found something very intresting.
While idle my memory clock speed showed 799.8. This is a first.
I was about to close the book on this driver issue when it all came crashing down.
I ran 3dmark06 and then had a look at the stats from Rivaturner and if you can belive it the damm clock speed dropped back to 399.2 for the entire test.
Then when it was finished it when back up to 799.8

It is like the 2d and 3d modes have been switched.
In 2d it reads 799.2 and in 3d is reads 799.8

I got a score of 2260 which is the best yet.

I think if we can just get the Mem clock working correctly we will be set.

 

yea the core can get oc'd to 600 which is the nvidia standard, but the mem is wayyyyy underclocked at 400...and it doesnt go pass 500 at stable performance. asus needs to do smth bout this

 

I think you missunderstand me.

Yes these cards come with 400mhz DDR2 ram. That is not the problem.

The problem is that DDR "Double Data Rate" vram of 400mhz has an efective speed of 800mhz ie double. This has nothing to do with Asus underclocking the gpu or the vram.
This is the point that i am making, currently none of the XP drivers for this card that i have seen allow it to run at its normal speed of 800mhz.
163.44 is the closest that i have seen to it working properly.
But it only runs at that speed while it is idle, which is kinda pointless.

I will try and upload an pic of the graph from Riva Turner

 

here is the jpg of of the RIVA Turner graph.

As you can see it stays constant at 799.2 when idle but drops to 399.2 when running 3dmark06 or any othe 3d app.

Please can someone shed some light on this problem.

 

I just purchased a F3SV-A1 but when looking at the ASUS driver page, they have about 75 things to download for the laptop, much more than all my previous computers. Can anybody post links to the latest drivers that are needed for Vista and help some of us Asus newbies?

 

Well, you're shader and core clocks are jumping up correctly. This leads me to believe that :
a) The card is overheating and forcing the memory back down, or
b) Your mem chips are defective.

I would try manually downclocking the core to 2d levels (to see if it's a heat problem), and then seeing if you can get the mem speeds to stay up their. Other than that, I would contact your reseller about a replacement, as it seems your video card might be defective.

 

Today I installed the 163.44 drivers on my F3SV-X1, the ones you had a problem with and everything is running fine, try reinstalling the driver or monitoring the speeds via nTune because rivatuner might be reading them wrong.

 

It looks like rivaturner might be the problem here. I believe that it is mis reporting the mem clock speed as Ntune reports it correctly.

Firstly, what mem clock speed are u running and secondly have you had any success overclocking with these drivers.
I have reinstalled several times but have the same resaults.

 

Well since nTune reports it correctly you've got nothing to worry about my clock speeds are 500 Core Clock and 400 Memory, stock from what I've heard the only way to overclock using these drivers is via the bios because driver overclocking seems to be disabled.

 

After Further investigation i think you might be right.

 

anyone know how to oc it thru bios? is it easy or impossibly hard?

 

Ummm, I'm pretty sure if you have overclocking drivers you should be able to overclock fine via software.

 

No...i can OC my 8600GS fine with riva tuner. The only problem is that my mem clock is pretty unstable beyond 550 but my core clock can get to 750 no problem

 

Some can get up to 600 mem or so, I've heard, but that's about the max upper limit.

 

so any news on any dec. oc'in drivers?

 

Nop.
I have just about given up and am going to try bios overclocking

 

guys my f3 is startin to get really hot at the bottom right/.....uh worse than my old w3...it was fine a few days ago

 

you can do bios overclocking with f3sv? i haven't found the options in the bios to so...

 

I am wondering, is it ok to install the drivers on the nvidia website instead of those provided by Asus? The latest Asus driver is kinda old (2007/05/17) and I suppose it's one of the reasons for poor performance. Can you clear things out a bit since it's my first laptop...

Thanks!

 

You'll need to either get an nVidia mobile driver (I believe they release one every once in a while, there's a 15x.xx one that's the most recent right now I think), or if you want the latest drivers just go to LaptopVideo2Go.com and get the forceware drivers with modified INF files. Read the Video Driver update in the Gaming board stick for more info.

 

Hey guys,

I got my Asus F3Sv-X today and ofcourse vid card (8600M GS) has its Clock/Mem down to 500/400. I've spend all day clocking it up and down and running 3dmark again and again and again with ASUS vid drivers and heres what i got nothing fancy but check it out.

3D Mark 1
-------------
Aero
DreamEffects
No-Overclock
GPU Speeds: 500/400
BenchMark = 2342


3D Mark 2
-------------
Aero
Overclocked: 520/420
BenchMark = 2393


3D Mark 3
-------------
Aero
Overclocked: 540/510
BenchMark = 2724


3D Mark 4
-------------
Aero
Overclocked: 533/509
BenchMark = 2727


3D Mark 5
-------------
Aero
Overclocked: 535/505
BenchMark = 2729



Now, i wanted to point something out because i've been searching around like CRAZY trying to get top performance cuz i know its not impossible.

I got 2GB Ram and im sure its DDR2, now.. They say that with 3GB Ram your vid card will perform ALOT better.

What do you guys think?

- Intrus

 

Ahh, yes. F3SV.

Right, stock speed on F3SV is, as mentioned, 500/400. However, the temperature might rise up to 90 degrees C whilst playing games. That means that overclocking is out of the question in "normal"mode.

I have taken this one to the limit, far as I know. Screwed out the back plate and placed it on a Notepal Infinity laptop cooler. I really don't understand why ASUS made that backplate out of solid plastic and steel, because either way, it's got a real heat issue as it is now.

Using just nVIDIA nTune and the 169.12 package (with INF from laptopvideo2go), I reached a stable setting at 700/532. Higher settings leaded to unprovoked crashes (705 or 542), so I am currently assuming that this is the cap of it's possibilities. It's worth mentioning that the max temperature was 83 degrees with the external laptop cooler set on medium, so lower then what stock might bring you.

The scores:

3Dmark05: 5969
3Dmark06: 3175

You will mark that this is merely theoretical, as it's unpractical and, indeed, hazzardous if only for the integrity of your laptop to run it without a backplate. I am, however, looking for a spare backplate which I can "modify" to my own liking, giving some extra passive cooling, as well some entry for the external laptop cooler.

In due course of time, I'm planning to make this laptop watercooled; I've got a pretty basic model, that leaves room for some extra material of my own. That should allow me to run this laptop on max speed all the time, as long as I am in reach of the external heat transfer unit. I actually plan to make it hybrid, leaving the original fan intact, so I can actually use the thing as a laptop, as it's supposed to be

Anyway, there you are.

 

I've got 3gb DDR2 on board and guess what?

It has no influence whatsoever on the 3Dmark scores. And Windows Vista Aero score for RAM actually lowered from 5.1 (I've got a 2gb hi-speed SD card in ReadyBoost) to 4.8. And I haven't noticed any progress in speed to speak of in general. Might be at the lack of using utilities that reach beyond 2gb mem use, come to think of it... I'm actually thinking to going back to 2x 1gb setup. It's all stock PC5300, for who's interested.

 

Uh,

There is already an Owners Lounge for this laptop.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=132846