ASUS Z70Va Review (pics, specs)

So should I go for the 5006 instead? It seams to have some added features.

Thanks for your review by the way. I'm hoping to build a Z70Va rig within the next month.

 

what are the added features of the 5006 (vs the 5005)? And what exactly is the maximum transmit power? I've seen some say 100mW and others say as high as 450mW. The -105dB recieve sensitivity is amazing and would we WICKED for war driving (which i've done only twice because it was urgent but it's nice to know you can).

Also, Coriolis, how much did you get your 5005 for?

 

It's pretyt much an updated and improved version from what I hear. Either one would probrably be fine.

It can be run at 100, 63, 50, 30, 20 and 10mW for my version, perhaps a new driver would let me to customize it, beccause its currently running at 30mW and I can't seem to change it.

The connection is at -93dB though!

I got mines for $60 USD with shipping

Hmmmm - Just was testing around and word processing with everything off and at 2nd last screen brightness will wield...



Sweet!

edit2:

I just turned on WiFi, and at lowest settings, surfed around and i got this:



Pretty awesome!

 

What about your normal settings? The settings that you like the most (screen light, wifi on, doing average app. use.) I am thinking about buying the modular bay battery with this laptop but wonder if I really need it.

 

With screen at mid settings, WiFi on and surfing, I got about....uhhh..

Hold on lemme try it out....I'll time it in a few hours

edit:

WiFi on and connected, Azereus BT client on, WinAmp on, Photoshop on,MSN Messenger, Spyware doctor, Daemon tools, Firefox(This site and post ) with brightness at 10/15 wielded..

 

I was just wondering if anyone had tried playing EverQuest2 with a Z70va, and if so how well did it perform? EQ2 is the most graphics-intensive online game I know of, and if the Z70va can handle it then it should be able to handle anything.

 

I don't have it but I'm pretty sure it'll run awesome.

 

dude, the z70va has a videocard that's around the speed of a Radeon 9800XT... it'll play anything that videocard can (which is every single game out there with at least 1024x768 at full graphics)

 

Yeah, the 9800XT rocks!

I have one in my desktop, and it has no problem playing Far Cry at maximun settings, and with 8X Antistropic filtering and 4X anti ailasing - just awesome! Doom3 also looks great at 1280x1024 on Ultra.

The X700 is a really powerful card, and well worth the money!

 

Hello, I know that most of you are power users, and I also know, that there is a good guide on using CHC, SpeedFan and Everest here, but after mi week long search and two days of mail-chatting with author of speedfan, I have finaly managed to work out a full atomatic solution for noisy problem, that has been borthering many z70v and m6v users all around the world ... here is what you have to do to make your notebook silent and cool in idle and powerfull, still cool in games .... I write it here, because this forum is the one that pops up from google after I write "m6va heat", so be patient please ... IF YOU ARE a POWER USER, dont waste your time on reading it, its for noobs like me ;-)

OK, so I will try to explain the setting ...
You will need Centrino Hardware Control( http://www.pbus-167.com/chc.htm#anchor_download), SpeedFan 4.27beta ( http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php) and eventuraly Everest ( http://www.lavalys.com/).

1)Centrino Hardware Control is almost the same as RM CLock, but in a way simplyer. Just install it (and deactivate any other power saving software just like RM Clock or Asus PowerGear). All you have to do here is enable dynamic switching and undervolt CPU, which is very efective (you can undervolt in when on 800Mhz vrom original 0.9V to 0.7V and its still stable), if you like to undervolt it in other modes, you can do so, but you have to run some test to find out if your setting is stable enough (for example I have my CPU undervolted even when on 2Ghz, and its stable on 1.180V). And thats all on CHC... to explayn it in every detail would be too long, so I count on your abily to work with such a tools ...
2)RUn Everest, go to Computer > Sensors here you can see 4 thermal sensors, Main board, CPU, AUX and HDD ... AUX is just some secret name of you video card, after you run Everest (keep it runing), run SpeedFan, it should find 5 sensors, CPU, Local, Remote and Temp1. CPU and Remote is important for us. Remote = AUX= GPU. But remember to first run Everest then SpeedFan, if you would run only speedfan, it wouldnt find the sensors. I had a small email converstaion with creator of speedfan and he helped me out a bid and repaired speedfan code so that it can find the sensors, the patched version of speedfan.exe is here, just overwrite the old file eith this one. In case it wont find the sensors, shut it down and run it again, sometimes you have to do so.
3)Setting SpeedFan ... run SpeedFna ond go press configure then Advanced amd select chip ADT746 there you can see some usefull settins ... Now, change the PWM1 and PWM2 mode to Manually Controled. Now you can manually change FAN speeds in the speedfan main window. You can also set the FAN2 div from 1 to 3. Now go to Temperature tab, uncheck Local and open all of the checked ones. Now uncheck subsettins (speed1 and speed2) on every checkers, the only two of them to be chcecked are Speed1 under CPU and Speed2 under Remote 2. Now click on CPU and set the desired and warning temperatures (my setting is 70 for desired and 95 for warning, which looks too high, but you will se why in next few moments). Do the same thing with Remote2 (my setting for this one is 85 desired and 97 warning). Now go to tab Fans and uncheck Fan 3 and Fan4. Now go to Speeds tab and uncheck speed3. For Speed1 set nimimum value 35% and for speed2 set minimum value 30%. Dont forget to check "Automaticalyy varited" on both Speed1 and Speed2. The maximum values depends only on how good is your hearing ... I mean if you are willing to listen do 4000rpm, then set 100% for both, but my setting is 65% for speed1 and 55% for speed2.
4)The final touch ... close configuration and go to the main speedfan window, if your fnas are now going on 100% and are absolutely loud, dont worry! The final touch is checking "Automatic fan speed" option in main window above te temperature readings. Fan speeds of your GPU and CPU fan should decrease after 2 or 3 secounds.

Explenation: Now we have that cool and quiet notebook that we all wanted to have. What have changed? Now after you start windows you can hear the fans running really fast, but after the Speedfan pops up it will decrease. Fans are now running on about 1000rpm even on idle, 1000rpm cant be heard by human ears, when you start some game or any other aplication that needs full power CHC will clock CPU back to 2Ghz and you can put up ATI x700 on full speed through ATI powerplay in ati control panel or control center, there will be more heat and speedfan running on background will detect it and it will start fans depending on your desired temperature and on your maximum fan speeds. BUT thanks to those 1000rpm ond idle, it will take more time to produce such a heat. And to finish things up, after you stop your game or whatever, the temperature will decrease really fast, because CPU will be underclocked and undervolted and as a result, speedfan will put back those unhearable 1000rpm. And now I am getting to those high desired temperatures of mine. It is so high because those are operational temperatures of CPU and GPU, its the edge where you need active cooling, and why I have set it this way? Because when the temperature dropsdown from these values it means it wont be going up, so those 1000rpms are enough to cool it down when you are just browsing or writing text after you stopped playing game or whatever. For example my idle temperatures are 40 to 45C onc CPU and 55 to 60 on GPU. Ofcourse, after you stop playing the fans will be running go few secound loud, but just for a few secounds and when tehy get to low rpm, both CPU a GPU will be hotter than that temperatures od mine, but wait few minutes and you will see same temperatures....

I hope it will help.... plese take my apologies for my bad english, hope you all understand that text above ....

EDIT: and the last word ... some games dont need to clock the x700 on full power to run, and not just the old ones. I was just playing CS: Source for and hour or so and after I finished I realized, that I havent put on the fastest frequencies in ATI POWERPLAY and I didnt notice it in the game, it was as smooth as and fast as on much faster GPU ...

 

Yea, I've already did that, although controlling the fans manually I find alot better, because when I'm listening to music or watching a video/movie, I turn the fans up because it'll be drowned out anyways, mind as well cool the laptop!

I wrote a bit on it on the ASUS FAQ a while ago, have screenies there too ^^

 

Yes, I know that, but for random browsers who are just looking for some info on solving the problem its too "hidden". Well I should thank you, that you got it up in Asus FAQ, because it helped me a lot ... and about the manual control > I am too lazy to chnage fan speed everytime I change the usage of my notebook ...

 

Heh, I usually don't change modes much, it's basically, at home(80%-100%, I have music on), at school(in class, 0%-40%), or at school(everywhere else, 50%-65%)

 

hey bird ... thx for the nice description.

Does div = 3 of fan2 mean that the shown rpm has to be divided with 3 to get the correct value?

 

Awesome Bird59! You succeeded in contacting Alfredo; something I had been trying to do since early August! I never had a problem before, but I can only assume my messages were ending up in his bulk mail.

 

Very nice! Having the GPU-Fan running all the time was really annoying ... Also many thanks to the developer of SpeedFan (maybe he reads this ;-)). But one thing left:

After resuming from Standby (or Hibernate), SpeedFan puts all manually controled fans to 100% and then decreases the Speed every two Seconds by 10% until it reaches zero, even though the temperature is low and there is no need for active cooling. This also happens when I run SpeedFan at startup.

Anybody else noticed this behavior? Anyone know how to avoid this?

 

so what do you guys use to under and overclock your x700? How about switching powerplay? I wish ATI would run max battery on powerplay in 2D mode but then go into max in 3D mode.

also, gigabyteman, maybe it's worth sending an email to the maker of speedfan asking him to program speedfan to read the current speed of the fans and go from there (i.e. the temp is low, decrease fan speeds, if temp high, increase fan speeds, if temp is past "warning" set fan to 100%).

Also, I wonder if he can add in delta rates of time. FOr example, we can set how long (in milliseconds) the % changes when increasing fan speed and another when decreasing fan speed. Or even just having two delta % rates of change (one for decent and one for asscent). The reason this would be good is I rather have the increase be faster (5-10%), but the decrease be very slow (1%) so that once the fan kicks in (or speeds up) it stays spinning faster for a longer time to cool the core. This would prevent the fan from turning on and off as frequent. In my configuration, I have all fans off, but my GPU fan has to keep comming on every 5 minutes for around a minute. If this change was made, my GPU fan would come on every 10 minutes and stay on for 90 seconds or a 2 minutes.

 

I created two profiles in the Catalyst Control Center - one with PowerPlay set to "Optimal Battery Life" an the other set to "Optimal Performance". Then I assigned two hotkeys to thease profiles so I can easy switch between them without doing so many clicks in the Control Center.

 

Hi,

I just wanted to say thanks to all you people contributing to this thread - it has been very valuable in guiding me as to which laptop to buy.

Thanks in particular to coriolis for an excellent review, and to bird59 for posting easy-to-follow steps for reducing noise with Centrino Hardware Control and SpeedFan. I now have a brand-new and almost completely silent :asus: M6Va, and with 1,5GB of memory it's absolutely blazing.

This is a fantastic notebook!

/Erik

 

Yes, you have to set it this way if you want to know the right speed of you FAN when on low motion, like it can be aroun 1000rpm, but the speedfan would shol some silly things running from 400 to 20 000rpm ... thow, it could be just my case ...

TO ALL :
I am happy to be of any asistance ... > :asus:

 

Coriolis, that was a really nice review. The screenshots and pictures were great, although apparently you didn't think so Anyhow, I also wanted to thank you for one of the reviews that helped me buy the z70Va last month. I never registered on these forums before, but now I feel like it's time to join in the fun

 

Hi there

I'm glad I had been of help in anyway, even if its AFTER you bought it haha

FMA Fan too eh?

 

Heh, yup. <3 FMA

No, you actually helped me in my purchase decision Too bad my laptop has been sent back to ISTNC to correct the ghosting issues. I'll post a full review with lots of detail and pictures once I get it back! BTW- I'm `k3v on the NBF too

 

Hi Guyzz

Bingo from Denmark here ....

This is a great forum , and a great thread ...

I just bought (5 hours ago) an Asus M6Va - M6994VAUP , and i think its the same as the Z70Va here , besides my 2.13Ghz Cpu.
http://www.edbpriser.dk/Listprices.asp?ID=156276

I just finished the "Notebook Hardware Control" (CHC) / Speedfan installation , and my notebook is running : CPU = 52 degrees celsius , GFX = 64 degrees celsius , just as i'm browsing here. (Is the temps acceptable , for the hardware ??)


I would like to add a 1GB Ram module , and found this one
http://www.edbpriser.dk/Listprices.asp?ID=119347

Can anyone confirm that it will work ??

Is there any guide on how to install the memory ???

I can see there is a FAQ but cant find the URL ....

What is the ghosting issue i can reaad about in the post just above ?? , how do i see if i have that problem ??

Well that was a lot of questions in one post , i hope i will get a few ansvers , especially about the Ram.

TIA

/Bingo

 

I'll also add in that this was a great review.

Thanks Coriolis!

I am picking up my Z70Va this afternoon. A HUGE factor in making this purchase was this review.

 

coriolis: How did you get your multiplier down to 4x? Is that using SpeedFan? It seems chc/nhc won't allow that low.

Thanks.

 

I believe the multipliers vary, depending on your processor. I have a 1.86ghz PM, and the lowest for me is now 5x.

As for the memory, Try the bottom of the laptop, it should be a small rectangular 'plate' just unscrew it. However, if the RAM is there, then its trickier. Unscrew the ones with 'K' marked. That is the keyboard lock. Now you take a flat edge(Like a screwdriver), and above F1-F2 and PrtSc, there should be a little 'lock' You place the flathead there and gently pop the keyboard out. Now you should see the RAM slot.

 

Hey I just ordered one of these! Coriolis, your review was very helpful in making my decision, thanks!! Now I am interested in maybe finding a way to match Flaxx's 3dmark score, and I am also interested in learning about undervolting and all that jazz. I am new to the whole laptop scene but I am used to rooting around the insides of computers, soft modding, and light hardware modding. I am just not used to the concept of power managment....stupid desktop has a 550w power supply. Any advice and direction on where to read would be much appreciated! Thanks guys!!!

 

Check the ASUS FAQ, I wrote a small article about undervolting there.

 

i suggest using Notebook Hardware Control. I use it to automatically overclock my machine when powerplay (the GPU powermanagement) is set to maximum. So i get the best of both worlds (underclocked, undervolted for battery life and so that no fans are on, but when a game starts up fans kick to 100%, system overclocks, and i get the performance i need.... er... desire, haha).

 

HAHA, thats what I like to hear. I want to make sure I get the power I NEE...want out of my machine. Mild mannered and quiet for just basic puttin' around and then a freekin monster when I need it to be! Thanks for the advice guys.