ASUS Z70Va Review (pics, specs)

[oab2]

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.

[flaxx]

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?

[coriolis]

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!

[oab2]

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.

[coriolis]

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..

[ucathinker]

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.

[coriolis]

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

[flaxx]

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)

[Charles P. Jefferies]

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!

[Bird59]

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 ...