Review: Hooga's Asus z80k - Page 7

agent9 ,you are right.
I have to say,WLAN is a factor that pull down the video card
I install the WLAN driver with utility from stock,that game running quite slow,almost freeze.
I quit the game and disable the present useless devices:IR,WLAN,modem+stop ASWLSVC service and set manual start type for it--back to normal now
I didn't follow your way,because maybe one day i might need the WLAN,and i am not sure if it still works without the asus wifi utility

there is a new bios for Z80K now!
FileName Z80K0207G.zip 2005/03/30
but it might be the same as the 0207a for A2K
the size,the data modified are the same
i refresh it but nothing special,but still keep it

http://www.asus.com.tw/support/downl...0K&Type=Latest

The way I explained doing it was to install the Asus WLAN Driver/Utility from the CD and then remove it the Utility from Control Panel >> Add/Remove Programs. What this does is just remove the ASUS Utility, but leaves the drivers with XP - therefore allowing the WLAN card to be functional and controlled by WinXP [which is what most of us want anyways...]

Loneykey - Uninstalling the Utility will not stop the WLAN card from working, just will make WinXP handle WiFi access, rather than the ASUS WLAN Utility. Sorry if I was confusing earlier...

Glad to hear you got it working!

I was sad to part with our first Z80K... I played HL2 on it for an hour straight before I was forced to give her up, err... deliver it to our customer. It's a really great DTR system! [once we figured out what was wrong - lol]

You deserve a banana...

good,I will bring the laptop to school to test.thanks

Ciao bella gente,

Great news!!! I've tried the new ati optimized driver (based on catalyst 5.3) by NGO.
http://www.ngohq.com/
COOOOOLLLL!!!!
Here http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=66384 there are some benchmarks (3DMark01)... mine were quite similar:

1. Stock driver underclocked (390/180): 9500
2. Latest Omega (5.1) (390/180): 9700
3. Latest Omega (5.1) (420/200): 10300
4. ATI original (5.3) (390/180): 9600
5. ATI original (5.3) (420/200): 10100
6. NGO (5.3) (390/180): 10150
7. NGO (5.3) (420/200): 11020

As you can see: 7% faster than omega drivers and 8% faster than ATI 5.3!!! And they're based on ATI 5.3!!

Get them!!
(remember: a patch is required for Ati Tay Tool...)

Have just got my Z80K going to my satisfaction. Took a while finding the right combination of drivers that work and settings but goes like a scalded cat now.
I got it barebones (from pagecomputers.com $749) and added a 3700+ CPU from newegg and one stick of 512MB of Corsair DDR400 (value series) which really does run at 400 and a Western Digital WD800VE 80GB hard drive. A bit of trouble getting into the case to install the memory but the hint about the little hole in the top panel was very helpful. The total cost was $1340 US dollars plus shipping to New Zealand where I live.

I really like the machine although have a few gripes. The drivers seem to be a bit inconsistent (I'm using Windows 2000)
I had to download the latest Catalyst drivers off ATI's site to get the video working at all (the Asus site's ones would hang the machine).
There's a very handy utility called DHModTool that fiddles with the Catalyst installer to let you install standard ATI drivers on the notebook. I've now put on the ATI catalyst driver tweaked by NGO and they're good. I also had to install the RealTek ALC650 sound drivers as the Asus one didn't pass all the DirectX tests and was quiet in some games. I put on the NVidia drivers also and NTune which allows some overclocking (2650 Ghz!) but this was giving some problems during video encoding so I left it running at 2400 for now. Overall the machine is good a real flyer. I use it for development and running the debug version of Adobe InDesign took 4 minutes on my old Celeron 633 and only 15 seconds on this, so I'm happy about that.
What I am not happy about is this APIC business with Windows XP 64 bit. I DO want to install that at some point in the future. I have been reading up about this and found an interesting comment in a document called "BIOS and Kernel Developer's Guide for AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron Processors" on AMDs website. Besides telling you a lot of info about the APIC and how to enable it (future BIOS tweakers anyone?) there's this statement:

"All AMD Athlon64 and AMD Opteron Processor-based systems must support 64-bit operating systems. As a result, all platforms must support APIC and declare it to the operating system in the appropriate tables."

This surely means that if Asus do not allow the Z80K to support Windows XP64 then they are violating some agreement that they have with AMD?

A good machine, but it does run hot - the 81 watt processor is at the limit for the cooling system, when encoding video it is at 70-72 degrees (Celcius) which is supposedly the limit for the chip. Also had trouble getting a temperature monitor program to work all of the ones I tried gave widely varying reports, so have stuck with the Asus probe program on the Asus website. Have also disabled the wireless as it was doing that surging thing where the CPU useage spikes upwards every second or two. (Scanning the airwaves perhaps?)
I anyone's intersted in the exact versions of drivers etc or where to get them or anything else feel free to ask.
Oh and I also find Asus website(s) to be annoying and full of broken links.

video card issues

I recently bought an AsusZ80k with an AMD64 3000+ and 512mb of ram. Of course it has the ATI Radeon Mobility 9700 GPU. I haven't had much luck with this laptop. My latest issues are video related. When I play DVDs I get major artifacts on my display. I have tried the video drivers from Asus's site, I have tried the omega drivers too. I just tried the noghq drivers with no luck. I continually get the same artifacting when I play a DVD. I also disabled my WLAN card as well with no luck. Should I start thinking that I got a bum video card? Or does anyone have any other suggestions to try?

Thanks for any help.

so,you did install all the drivers from stock CD, does it only happen on DVDs,not games?or movie files in harddrive?disable the wmv acceleration?did you try another mediaplayer?

About the DVD video playback problem I'd suggest trying VLC mediaplayer I didn't install any DVD player on my system except this one (ie none of the disks that came with the machine) and it works fine with all disks from all regions.
http://www.videolan.org/
You could also try some other sort of media file from the harddisk to see if its the DVD or video rendering software/hardware. I don't know if the 9700 has any hardware support for MPEG decoding for playback or not. Have you tried running dxdiag to check the DirectX status and support?

I had similar problems until I nailed it down to the right drivers and taking out the ASUS WLAN driver. Might want to read up on our last posts...

Hey 212112, I am getting my z80k in about a week and I was wondering if you could fill me in on specifics of the overclocking of the machine; not so much the processor but the GPU. What percentage should I look at in core? mem? What can you get up to safely with the NGO drivers? Or should I just use the standard 5 mhz increment ATi Tools process?

In short, how does the z80k handle overclocking.

I, too, had similar problems. When watching a DVD with the Asus DVD Player, the picture would first start showing vertical rows of green dots. Those dots would increase in size and number, until I was watching something similar to a green poor tv antenna signal. I rebooted the machine half way through a movie and it was good again for a while, then, faster than before, became the same, following the same progression.

I attribute driver conflicts. I get no artifacts during anything else, including watching the video intensive WMplayer9.0's "visualizations" full screen.

At the moment, it doesn't concern me, as I'm not using this machine for DVD playback.
[Note: I just loaded the VLC and have the same problems. I'll try using the drivers agent9 recommends at some point to fix this.]

Thanks for the replies. I have read the previous posts and I think I have tried everything suggested.

Other videos play fine. Windows media player vizualizations don't cause the artifacting. I played the Episode III trailer in Quicktime and it doesn't cause the artifacting. It seems like it only happens in DVD playback. I have not tried any gaming yet. I have also tried the VLan player but it also happens with that player. I removed my video drivers and ran DriverClean, then I installed the stock drivers from the CD, disabled the WLAN controller, disabled WMA acceleration and DVD playback still caused the artifacting.

One thing to note, when I removed the video drivers alltogether I was able to play the DVD. I guess the laptop was working with the XP default drivers. The movie was choppy and unwatchable, but there was no artifacting at all. This tells me it must be a driver issue but I just don't know where to turn next.

Of course, the laptop is not just used for DVDs, and everything else works fine, but I should be able to watch DVDs if I choose to.

Still open to suggestions.....

Thanks.

As I mentioned in my posts, it's not the actuall WLAN controller (and/or driver) that was giving me trouble, it was the WLAN Utility (hogged a lot of resources).

I go over reasons for it causing trouble here:

http://notebookforums.com/showpost.p...&postcount=106

and fixing the problem here:

http://notebookforums.com/showpost.p...&postcount=123

I also used these drivers:

ATI Driver: CD
MAIN INF Drivers: nvidia.com >> nForce United Driver Package (UDP)
Sound Card: Not necessary, with above installation of UDP
WLAN: CD, but uninstall ASUS WLAN Utility from control panel (fixes problem and driver files remain - only way to accomplish that)
ATK0100 ACPI Utility: CD
56K Modem: CD
LAN: CD

Hope this helps!

NOTE: I played the Matrix DVD for about 30 mins, looked great, no problems with my configuration.

looking good

Thanks Agent9 -- it looks like I got the DVD playback to work well. I think for me the key was the nForce UDP drivers. I uninstalled the nVidia audio drivers that came on the cd and then installed the UDP. Now I am watching The Two Towers with abosolutely no artifacts. I have been watching for 15 minutes (with fingers crossed) and all seems well.

Thanks again for the replies.

addition to review / warning

I have had this laptop for a couple months and I just wanted to mention a couple things that might help a prospective buyer or a new owner.

I upgraded my hard drive and I had the laptop turned upside down on my wood desk to remove the hard drive. There are three screws to remove to take out the hard drive. I removed two and missed the third. Needless to say, the drive would not come out. I yanked on it a few times before I realized there was a third screw to remove. I took out the screw and the drive came out easily. To my dismay, when I flipped the laptop, I had some major scratches on the lid. Yes I felt stupid and I take the blame, but it's not like I had sand or thumb tacks on my desk. My point is that the lid scratches easily. I figure my stupidity may help one of you avoid this headache.

Also, as mentioned before, the ctrl button is not in the lower-left-most corner of the keyboard. I still haven't gotten used to that. It drives me nuts.

Here is a good review of the laptop you might want to read.

http://www.hothardware.com/viewartic...eid=642&cid=10

He mentions the stuff I mention and much more. Definitely read it before buying this machine.

Thanks again people.

I'm sorry but I haven't tried overclocking the GPU. I do worry about the heat that this might generate because it seems to be crammed in there with possibly less effective cooling the the CPU has, and I haven't found a temperature sensor utility (if there is even a temp sensor in the thing). In other words be careful...
Overclocking the CPU I took the easy route using NTune (from NVidia's website) it reboots the machine a few times while running tests as it cranks up the memory bus speed from 400MHz and the AGP speed. You can also alter the memory timings in there. As I mentioned I let it run and it reckons I could bump up to 440Mhz which was 2540Mhz on the CPU (12x multiplier for the 3700+ / 2 for the 420 being really 220MHz) You can save different speed profiles as well. You can't boost the CPU multiplier there either.

new updates from A4K for Z80K
VGA: ATI 4.10(09/09/2004) VGA_V8_06-040909a-018485C_logo.zip
ATK 0100 (05/24/2004) ATK Driver V1043_2_15_36

http://www.asus.com.tw/support/downl...e=A4K&Type=All

works well

new: (from Z71A)
ATK v1043_2_15_43
Touchpad v7.12.9
PowerGear v1.11

http://www.asus.com.tw/support/downl...=Z71A&Type=All

Agent9: I'm running W2K Pro. I couldn't uninstall the WLAN Utility without unintalling the driver. W2K wouldn't let me through the control panel. What do you think of this?

Btw, I just installed the AMN3400BIX5AR model cpu. It's so fast I couldn't believe it really. I now have a 3000 AMD from an older machine. It isn't 64 bit compatible but has all the other functions of the 64 bit chips, like SSE1 and 2, etc. If anyone wants to buy this cpu from me before I list it on eBay, please message me for more information. I'd sell for $80 USD. Note: it is 62w, 128 kb L1 and 256 L2 cache. The only advantage of using it over this newer cpu is that it nearly never caused the fan to come on, as it ran at 1600MHz without OC'ing (which it has been to 2.2GHz). This new cpu drives the fan all the time now. Ya win some and lose some...

Edit--

I've taken agent9's advice and installed the Unified nVidia audio driver. I just played a DVD lasting 3 hours and no artifacts. The video player used was VLC Media Player. Note: I've not removed the Asus WLAN Utility.

update available (from A4D)2005/04/05
Gameface
Touchpad
ATK
Powergear
works well on Z80K
http://www.asus.com.tw/support/downl...e=A4D&Type=All

latest m9700 driver from ATI will be released soon,that's a good news

playing DVD in mediaplayer10 with nvidia DVD decoder:
In battery mode- using video overlay
In AC mode--usingn video mixing

InterVideo XPack (DVD and MP3) doesn't has such issue and better video quality (without DXVA)

correctionApri12)
video overlay for DVD in MWP 10..(Nvidia DVD decoder or Intervideo decoder)
mediaplayer --performance--advanced--uncheck DVD video(use video mixing render) will give overlay
note; After install nvidia DVD decoder, "nvidia NDIS IO control Driver" will be addded to the Non plug-play drivers
How to uninstall Nvidia DVD decoder :
1.uninstall nvideo dvd decode
2.diable nvidia NDIS IO control Driver ,then restart
3.uninstall nvidia NDIS IO control Driver,then restart