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As my notebook is rapidly approaching its 2nd anniversary, I updated pictures, benchmarked with the current video driver I'm using, noted battery wear and changed the thread title.

cool.

I was looking at your screenshots, are you running vista? If you are, what/where drivers are you using? Big thanks if you can help me out.

nope, sorry. I've got a dual-boot system of Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. However, smilepak is running Vista on his Z71v, so if you send him a private message, he could tell you all the drivers he used.

Yea, this laptop is over 2 years now! Wow!

The Z71V runs quite well with Windows Vista Enterprise version. World of Warcraft seems to be smooth during game play with the max / native resolution

The touch pad problem I had with scrolling seems to be resolved with Windows Vista. The GPU fan doesn't go crazy when scrolling in Vista, like it did in XP environment.

Right now, using AC power, the CPU hover around 55c. When playing WOW, it hover around 68-69c w/o under volting.

What I dislike about it is the nVidia in it. Thought Window Vista rate it 3.7 out of 5, which is impressive giving a laptop that is over 2 years old, it does get rather hot to a point of unbearable to be on ones leg while playing game. This sucker output tremendous amount of heat it is unbearable on the leg. The performance is outstanding, but I think nVidia needs to scale down on the power. I am not even overclocking the video card too...


I have a WUXGA LCD I just purchased off ebay for 130.00 which came from a Dell 8200. It should fit perfectly. Made by Samsung. I will be replacing it in the coming weeks to bring it up another notch.

As for Z71V running vista, Most of the devices are compable with Vista w/o needing a special driver. There is a sticky in the Asus general of this forum with the link to all of the vista drivers.

For the nVidia driver to work under vista, go to http://www.guru3d.com. There is a vista compable drver which work nicely. The other driver you need would be the on the sticky mentioned earlier. I only had to install 3 device drivers not already existing out of the box from the Vista OS.

I got fooled since you have some nice looking skin lol. Thanks so much for all the info smile. Really appreciate it!!

I used this driver for Z71v in Vista

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1530

you could try this one too

http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/GRA...755-Beta.shtml

I run gentoo on my laptop, and I undervolt it, it requires specialized kernel sources, but the laptop runs quite a bit cooler with undervolting, since I could undervolt it stably from 1.396V to 1.150V, which I think is a pretty good drop, that's how I lived with my laptop for 6 months with a dying cpu fan, lowest speed mode and undervolting. If my laptop was idle at 2.13ghz mode, it would idle at 60-65C, which might be a bit hot, but that is on the highest speed setting constant, not dynamic speed settings, which is I think what ubuntu does for example. Not sure if it is possible to modify the ubuntu sources of the kernel for the undervolting, but I used what's known as emission sources on my laptop. Just thought I might mention that, though I have finally sent it in for repair to get my hard drive, ac adapter, main battery, and cpu fan replaced, I ran it into the ground, and yet I ran it in that state for 6 months, so, meh.

JDGBOLT

you're right, Ubuntu does allow for speedstep dynamic settings. It also theoretically allows for patching the kernel with Linux PHC to allow for undervolting. In fact, I was able to get it to work under Dapper (Ubuntu 6.06), but for some reason it won't work on Feisty (Ububtu 7.07), which is what I'm using now. I'm not sure why not.

Now a day that the Intel Pentium M 2.26 is cheaper than a few years ago, I finally got one from Ebay. A true 2.26 and no longer have the need to overclock a 1.8 anymore hahah..

How's the temps and undervolting with the "official" 2.26 Ghz CPU? Any better than with the 1.8 overclocked?

Parts of me miss that laptop... but then other parts of me are glad I sold the Z71V replacement for money on a desktop build (and got an Eee too). Killer puter though...

I own the sister laptop z70v. My battery wear is 82% after since owning it in Aug 2005.

I got a new battery for my Z71V near the end of 2006. It's currently got 27% battery wear and lasts around 2.5 hours on its own. With both it and the modular bay battery, I can get close to 4 hours. So it still gets me through my 4-hour long classes okay if I put it in standby during breaks.

And review updated.

This happened to my z71v a little over a year ago, but thanks to my 3 year warranty I bought, I was able to send it back into ASUS and get it fixed for free. This and the battery problem are the only issues I have had with the laptop, and it's gaming prowress is not something I care about anymore, since I don't even really play PC games much anymore. I am looking forward to starcraft 2 though