Review: Hooga's Asus z80k - Page 3

I am erring on the side of caution, having just special ordered an AMN3400BIX5AR. Cost: $358 CAD incl. taxes and shipping. It takes a few weeks. In the meantime, I'll play with the "wrong" cpu, then list it on eBay.

Total cost so far for my notebook: $1900 incl. taxes ($250) and shipping ($60); not bad for the specs. In American $, this is about $1280.

Thanks for the company. I've added it to my db of preferred sellers.

some notes: (bios version=0207A)

1.Don't set the "PC Card/IEEE1394/SD/MS" to "locked" in BIOS-Security-Device
configuration even though you don't need it. I tried to lock/disable it, an overlay
problem appears in win2000/winxp.--when you play a movie in the media player required overlay output, the picture almost freeze.But the mediaplayer using VMR9 output doesn't has such problem.

2.The adjusted color setting will be helpful:
Color: Desktop / Full Screen 3D
Gamma: 1.32 / 1.60
Brightness: -90 / -90
Contrast: 145 / 145

OVERLAY:
Brightness: 0%
Contrast: 100%
Saturation: 150%
Hue: 0
Gamma: 0.85

The sound card provides NVIDIA ASIO is awesome.
just my choice

I just tried those colour configurations with my M6Ne... I must admit, things do look quite good

Lonekey, what about the ASIO do you consider awesome? I've been toying with the idea of plugging in an Echo Indigo IO into the PCMCIA cardslot. But you appear to like the sound? Explain how this 16 bit sound card sounds so nice

Echo Indigo IO supports asio ,gisf.without SRS issue.
It's good.

comparing to my desktop:sb live 4.1 digital+kx deiver 3538+foobar asio output
asio buffer latency about 10ms
nvasio :buffer latency could be set to 16ms in w2k
it seems good enough for me (just music+headphone),not consider the z80k speakers

SiSoftware Sandra Professional 2005.SR1 results

AMD64 mobile 3000 62w
512 m DDR333
60G 5400 rpm 8m cache
ATI mobile 9700 128m

Other benchmarks?

Anybody else have benchmarks on their z80k's? Like 3dmark03, 3dmark05?

Another review?

Is this the same as the Asus z80k?
The asus A2526KUH: http://notebookforums.com/archive/in...p/t-50400.html

If it is, that would explain why everybody is getting low 3dmark01 and 3dmark03 scores. According to this its M11 128meg Radeon 9700 is only clocked at GPU: 392 MHz, Memory: 179 MHz.

According to muzauk's Acer Ferrari 3400 Review: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=52703
His same Radeon is overclocked to 478 / 248. I know they are different laptops with different cooling, but they are similar in specifications.

Is it possible that the z80k's video perhaps is underclocked slightly due to Asus's safeness?

I think the A2K is prebuilt from ASUS... whereas the Z80K is the barebone version.
So essentially, they are the same...(i think)

Yes, the Z80K is the same thing as the A2K...the drivers cd that comes with the computer is labeled A2K, and all of the files for download are the same for both computers (actually, the A2K has a more recent bios than the Z80K - http://www.asus.com.tw/support/downl...2K&Type=Latest)..

...and yes, the 9700 in it is "underclocked" to those same specs (390ish and 180ish MHz).

Give me a moment and I'll post another review with pics and benchmarks...

New review is up...

http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=66384

My benchmarks posted as followup to plageclochard's review.

There has yet to be a 15.1" SXGA+ screen that hasn't had crappy vertical viewing angles on a laptop. If one exists, it certainly hasn't been reviewed in the last year and a half since I've been on this forum.

anyone has such LCD geometry problem?

result and the software

In win2000,when the battery power is low,the FN+Fx /hot key control function doesn't work well under battery mode ,sometime- no response. but there is no problem in winxp.

Audio -Rightmark audio analyzer54

perform the raa test--kind of leakage
but still worked

Hi lonekey... just to know, where did you collect these pictures? I've this laptop and I'm investigating on the video board heatsink to try to figure out how far can I overclock the MR11...

Lonekey, did you update the bios to version 0207A?

[edit] Also, I tried installing Win2k pro, only to have the BSOD! My version of Win2000Pro is at least 3 years old, so it must be the same prob as with Winxp without sp1. I'm downloading Knoppix version 3.6. Hopefully I can get that installed. I really don't want to give MS any money.

[edit] I've solved the BSOD problem. Here's what works when installing an older version of Win2K: format the hard drive using FAT instead of NTFS. Simple, but works. Good luck.

[edit] The solution doesn't solve all the problems with using the older version of Win2k. I still have the computer blue screen during the configuration stage of setup. It does a memory dump. I am systematically changing BIOS settings, partitions and file systems to see if anything will work.

[edit] I gave up on trying to install win2krap. I downloaded and burned an image of Gentoo amd64 minimal. It includes memtest86v.1.11, so I ran that right away. CFKaufmann(?) is right when he says this machine's ram bus runs at 400mhz. Memtest says this about my eBay cpu (not the BIX5AR which hasn't arrived yet):

AMD Athlon 64 1596 Mhz
L1 Cache: 128k 13079MB/s
L2 Cache: 256k 2784MB/s
Memory: 1023M 1558MB/s
[edit] I just threw in pc2700 ram, and memtest86 shows its flowthrough as 1075MB/s, giving it only 2/3 the data transfer capacity of pc3200!
Chipset: nVidia NForce3 (ECC: Disabled)
Settings: RAM: 399 Mhz (DDR798) / CAS: 3-3-3-14 / Single Channel (64 bits)
Note: Gentoo amd64 won't run with this cpu as it only supports 32bit.

Also, my Corsair ram has 127 errors on it from test #6. I'll be sending one of those modules back it seems.

[edit] I've managed to run Gentoo x86 on this machine. However, the lan card is not found. Does anyone know the make of the ethernet card so I can find the right module for it?

Ciao,

some info about bios 0207A: the change log supplied by ASUS ( ie:
1. Change system fan starting voltage
2. Change Audio IRQ setting.
) referes to the previous version (206).
Actually I've tried 3 different BIOS: 204 (the one shipped with my A2K), 206 (described in the change log) and 207A. This last one seems to have important fixes in ACPI suspend: with bios 206 the suspend to ram did not work properly...now it works fine.
I've asked ASUS if (and eventually when) they plan to release a Win X64 compliant BIOS (=with APIC enabled)... in the mail I specified that I was using the latest BIOS. Their answer was: "Please, upgrade your bios!"

What's up with Asus tech support? The only straigh-shooting, knowledgable z80k tech support guy is Albert, it appears.