Z84j Owners Lounge

Ahh ok. thanks.
My z84jp is now up and running. altough whenever I suspend the lap and open it againg, the wireless crd doesnt work. i have to disable it, then enable it again. Is it bcs its not an Intel crd?.

 

Drake, go to device manager and see what the wireless card is. I think it may be a driver issue.

Look here to find the driver first. Make sure you get the vista one.

If the wireless card in yours doesn't have a driver on the above page, do a google search for a driver using the exact card name + vista.

 

Here's the info I gathered from my machine Bobosaw:

Network adapter: Gigabyte GN-WI01GT

Driver information: Provider:ATHEROS Date: 11/04/05 Version: 4.2.2.4

Also, today my Aero dissapeared in thin air. after a restart. any suggestions??, it doesnt appear on the settings to choose.

Does anyone have this particular card?

I'll google a newer driver, if anyone has it. please let me know.

Thanks!

 

I have that card, it doesn't work with the mother board of Z84J well, I have it run under XP then it'll disconnect after 3 or 4 hours with the "connected icon" still connected but nothing seems to run over the internet.

I have 2 of those Atheros card and both of them doesn't work right with Asus motherboard of my Z84j. THe card work on my other Toshiba laptop though.

I'd recommend to get the intel one, it's cheaper nowadays.. search over google or ebay for good price.

 

Thanks Khanhfat.
I havent been connected that long on the internet to know if it will disconnect the way you said, but it certainly is annoying to have to disable/enable every time it feels like going in a comma lol.
As for the Aero I havent figured it out. School and work don't leave much time to work on it either.

Regards.

 

Here is a link to a more recent driver for your Gigabyte GN-WI01GT wireless card. Hope it helps.

About the aero thing. If you are running the Power saver plan, Windows sometimes turns off transparency automatically. If you don't want this to happen, you can switch to the Balanced power plan or higher.

Also, make sure that the color is set to 32 bit, the monitor refresh rate is higher than 10 hertz, the theme is set to Windows Vista, the color scheme is set to Windows Aero, and window frame transparency is on.

 

Thanks for the tips Bobosaw

The aero got fixed by changing the color setting(wich I dunno how it was changed). and the driver did not make the crd work.
thanks tough.

whats the Vista score on your machine people and for what is it?. Mine is giving me 4.9 on everything but the RAM wich is 4.6
does that sound about right?, is there something that might not be working properly?

 

Oh i don't know about Vista.

If your settings when close the laptop lid = means stand by , the computer will turn off wireless and other stuff to save power , which might result the reconnect of wireless like Drake Lycan experiences.

I usually disable this function.

 

Asus Z84JP T7400, 2 gb DDR2 667 Mhz, 160 GB 5400rpm, Geforce 7700 512MB
OS: Vista Home premium UK 32-bit

I have installed the standard Vista drivers available on the ASUS download site.

Windows Experience Index Base Score: 4.7 (= lowest score):
- Processor: 5.1
- Memory: 4.7
- Graphics: 4.8
- Gaming graphics: 4.8
- Primary harddisk: 4.8

3D Mark 06: 2333 with no overclock on GPU

I tried VISTA speedboost with an SD card placed in the internal cardreader instead of an USB stick. My reasons for using an SD card:
- I don't want to block continuously one of the four USB ports
- a USB sticking out at the site of your notebook is no problem at home but certainly not ideal when using your it on the move
- the two USB stick(514 Mb & 1 GB Corsair Flash Voyager) I had available were not fast enough

Of the two SD cards I had available speedboost did not work with an standard Kingston 2GB SD card, but it worked with the other SD card: APACER 2GB SD High Speed 150x. Vista advised to use 1860 Mb for speedbost. I had the impression that speedboost worked but could quantify it. So I decided to try this by running PC Mark05

After defragmenting my harddisk and disabling my Norton Internet Security 2007, I ran PC Mark 05 without and with speedboost, results:
- PC Mark05 without speedboost: 5215
- PC Mark with speedboost: 5314

So it seems that there is a difference. But I do not know for sure if I can really measure the effect of speedboost by running PC Mark05?

 

Very interesting result with Vista and Speedboost.

That GF7700 seems to be clocked at the right speed. Some 7600 is clocked at medium speed. I don't really play any games now, still waiting for Starcraft 2. ANyone play that game before?

 

If I understand readyboost correctly, it improves performance with small blocks of random I/O, like paging files, or puling other random, small amounts of data. So I was a bit surprised that I saw a difference of about 100 points with PC Mark05.

I am looking forward to see the PC Mark05 results with an 2 Gb Corsair Flash Voyager GT USB stick I orderd today.

Does anyone know if the performance of readyboost improves measurably with an 4 GB SD card or USB stick in stead of an 2GB?

 

Sorry JJAGP I am not sure about that.

What program do you guys use to overclock your gpu?

I used to use Powerstrip with xp but when I upgraded to vista I can't change the clock settings. I think it may be that the nVidia driver will not allow overclocking under vista yet. Has anybody run into this problem?

 

Bobosow, your not alone. I have the same problem with my GF7700. With the standard Vista Graphics driver I downloaded from the ASUS site you can't change the clock settings. On my old desktop PC with XP it never was a problem to change the clocksettings.

Alas I have not yet found a bettter/more recent Vista driver for my GF7700 !!

Has anyone tried to tweak Vista to increase the performance?
If so what did you do and by how much did the performance improve?

For those who are interested I found some interesting information on the following site: http://www.tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/index.htm

 

Hi!

First of all: do not order from XoticPC, I ordered my Z84jp at the end of February and it arrived to Chicago at the 15th of May! And they told me every week that it would arrive tomorrow...
Unfortunately it is still in the US because my friends who were supposed to bring it to me have been to Hungary already and the notebook was nowhere at that time... XoticPC again If they post it I'll have to pay an incredible amount of customs and tax ( half the price of the notebook). But fortunately I have found somebody else who is willing to bring it to me and if everything goes fine I'll will hold it in my hands in 4 days!

I think I'll be able to solve every problem thanks to your very helpful posts!
I have only two question:
- I have an ASUS PW201 DFP and I'd like to attach it as a second monitor. I bought an HDMI-DVI cable. What do you think? Will I be able to use my monitor at 1680x1050 resolution?
- Have anybody tried to plug an analog 5.1 sound system into it? Are the Jacks multifunctional ( for example the MIC is used as the REAR and so on...) or do I have to buy a system which supports S/PDIF?

Thanks for your help in advance!

 

Welcome meanboy. Hope you get your notebook soon in Hungary, that must be frustrating: first waiting that long and then having it in the wrong country

As far as I know the Z84J has no DVI connection port, mine certainly does not have one. At the left side my notebook has a:
- standard VGA compatible 15 pin D-sub monitor port
- TV out port: S-Video connector
- HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) port
but no DVI port. So you can't use the HDMI-DVI cable you bought!!!!!

I have not tried to connect an analog 5.1 sound system to my notebook, so I can't answer that question. I did however use the SPDIF output jack to connect to my home entertainment system, that worked without a problem.

The quality of the build in speakers is in my opinion also good (for a notebook)

 

Sorry meanboy, I was a bit confused

You can't connect a DVI cable to the Z84J because there is no DVI port!!

But of course you can connect a cable with an HDMI interface at one end and an DVI-D at the other end.

 

Bobosow, if you still want to overclock your GPU you could try it with RivaTuner. You can find a download at: http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner

I used this program once (last year) to overclock my GF 7600GT on my desktop PC.

Because of the lack of a good Vista driver I did not yet try to use RivaTuner to overclock my GF7700

 

Thanks JJAGP!
I'm still very curious how is it possible to connect an analog 5.1 system to the notebook.
Would someone try it for me? I would be very pleased!

 

Thank you JJAGP that program worked very well for overclocking the video card. It is going to take me a while to figure it all out but it did successfully raise the clock speeds. The slight overclock I used raised by Vista Aero score from 4.5 to 5.3!

Meanboy.....you can connect analog 5.1 speakers by using the front 3 jacks. I connected my desktop's altec lansing 5.1 self powered analog system to the Z84J. It is done by selecting 5.1 output. A diagram is then shown telling you which jack takes "Rear Speakers Out", "Front Speakers Out", and "Center Speaker and Subwoofer out". This is the typical 3 plug setup for 5.1 analog speaker systems.

Clearly, the Z84J wont power the speakers by internal power. The speakers must have their own power supply.

 

does anyone have any idea about the upgrade to SantaRosa for the Z84J ? I am almost ordering it via laptops4U but if it will be upgraded with SantaRosa en 8600 graphics i'll might wait.... But not for too long though.

 

no clue man... if they sports with something like 8600GT , it's awesome.

 

Information from the ASUS site: http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=6716
ASUS Offers Complete Notebook Series Based on Intel's New Generation Centrino® Processor Technology: A7S, A8Sc, F3E/S, G1S, G2S, W7S

If you look for a 17 inch notebook (Santa Rosa) you could always consider the G2S

 

JaHoe

at www.mycom.nl I saw today the following ASUS notebooks:
- Z83S-75010C: 17 inch, Core 2 Duo T7100 (FSB 800MHz, GF 8600 M Turbocache 512 Mb (shared)
- Z53SC-AP021C: 15 inch, Core2 Duo T7100 (FSB 800 MHZ), GF 8400M 256 Mb

And at www.btonotebooks.nl they have a new 15 inch notebook: BTO 15W25+ with:
- GF 8600 M GT 512 Mb
- you can chosse the core 2 Duo processor (FSB 800 MHZ): T7100, T7300, T7500, T7700
If I am not wrong this is an ASUS noteboook with an BTO label

So maybee the Z84J will be available soon in the Netherlands with an 800MHZ FSB core 2 duo processor and an GF 8600 M GT GPU ????

If I were you I would call BTO and/or laptops4u with the question if the Z84J will soon be available with the better CPU and GPU

 

Hi all - love the information on this forum.

Some feedback on my setup and a couple of questions.

Got my Z84jp from Excaliberpc for a lot less than the other sites. Ordered it over a weekend, and it was delivered that Friday. Yes, it does have the Nvidia 77000 and the power supply does run hot (can hold it but wouldn't want to). I'm running XP Pro just fine, particularly after downloading all the updates from Asus. Security suite is from Kaspersky. (Most probably haven't heard of it, but it's used by several big corporations because it's an integrated suite of virus, spam, firewall, and ad blocker. It also doesn't hog the machine, only checks files it hasn't scanned before, and it won't kick off a high priority scan while the system is busy like M or N does.) Other particulars: using the standard Intel wireless card which performs just super and is really reasonable from Mwave, 2gb of memory, and a 7600 cpu. Lastly, put in a 7600 rpm sata drive even though the specs say 5400; works fine!

As to questions:
- has anyone found a copy of the assembly manual? I have one for the Z96 but haven't found one for the Z84.
- I've seen some references to the HDMI interface, but has anyone really figured it out?
- I have a iGO universal ac, 12v, and airline power supply. Has anyone figured out what adapter fits?

Thanks all for the great forum!!!

 

beasleym, I struggled some when I put mine together because I had never assembled a laptop before but I did take some pictures as I was doing it so if you need anything along those lines let me know. I'll have to see if I can find them now

Nathan

 

Thanks Jagged1980, but please don't go to the trouble.

Mines up and working fine, the request for a manual is a pre-emptive thing in case I might have to do anything more complex to fix a problem. (E.g., fix a keyboard.)

 

Beasleym try this:

From page 3 of this lounge.

 

anyone have the Z84J working under linux?
i have it installed, having probs with the mmc, and the pcmcia stuff...

 

sorry can't help you with linux, am working with Vista Home Premiun UK

Has anyone experienced a gradual decline in battery power when your Z84J has been shutdown for 24 hours or longer ???

My experience with the Z84JP:
- I charge my batterypower to a 100% and shut down the notebook
- I lose approx. 3% battery power a day, while not using it and with the notebook completely shutdown
- total loss over 3 days: approx 9%

Found some earlier threads concerning powerloss with ASUS batteries:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=104497&highlight=battery+loss
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=48194&highlight=battery+loss
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=121307&highlight=battery+loss

What are your experiences with the Z84J batteries????

 

im also having a problem with the keyboard, after a while it will go non-responsive, i have to reboot, and on the reboot, the computer hands and i have to pull the battery to reset to get to boot..
anyone else??

 

I have never experienced the type of problems you describe.

But there is another way then pulling the battery to shut down your notebook when it hangs. If your OS cannot propperly TURN OF or RESTART then you can press the (emergency) shutdown button at the Bottom Side with a paperclip to shutdown the notebook. You can see the position of the hole in the user manual. By the way the (emergency) hole is at the left front bottom side.

 

beasleym,

have you looked at this thread http://forums.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=69841&page=8
If you need to know how to replace your keyboard you should drop your question there

At http://www.synnex.com/sid/bto.html you can find a very basic assembly manual for an Z84Jc. But only for things like: CPU, harddisk, memory, ODD en WLAN

 

Hi, you might want to look at my posts earlier in this thread. I'm running Kubuntu Feisty Fawn on it and am VERY happy with the setup!

I don't know what you mean by MMC and PCMCIA.

There is no MMC port, but there is SD, and that works just fine. I stick in a card, and Kubuntu pops up a window asking me what I want to do with it. Just as if it were a USB memory card adaptor.

There is no PCMCIA port, but ExpressCard. I have not yet tried an expresscard, but considering that it works with either a USB or PCIe interface, depending on the card you put in, I strongly suspect it will work just fine.

 

I have experienced the battery loosing power when the system is shut down too. Mine looses charge at 7% per day. Never left it sitting unused more than two days so I can't really say how far it will go down.

 

I have been experiencing this problem of the dead keyborad and also having to reset or remove the battery on my lap also when it has slept for quite a while. I'm still trying to figure out the problem. Similar thing happens with the audio sometimes, where it will not detect audio devices after I'm playing music and put the lap to sleep.

 

I have PCLinuxOS installed on my system. I like it better then Ubuntu for the graphics, but not all the hardware is completely supported yet. I figured out though that the kernel needs upgrade from where I have it and it should work.

If you want a distro that works with Linux, Ubuntu works great with this laptop.

If you want to keep your distro of linux though...

Check this site out. http://acpi4asus.sourceforge.net/
It is the module that Ubuntu uses with their kernel to get the hardware to work on ASUS Laptops.

 

To make HDMI work on your HDTV, you need a compatible cable. Some cable supplied with ur dvd player works some doesn't. I would recommend to get the HDCP compatible cable for best result.

After plug in the hdmi to the HDTV and the laptop,

Right click, on desktop, choose properties/ settings.

Click on ur 2nd square for the 2nd screen, check on Extend my desktop to this monitor, click apply. It'll send the signal from ur HDMI to ur HDTV and display the images. I recommend you have a 1080p TV to get the most accurate resolution for the screen and quality.

After that your TV starts to pickup signals , but the picture won't be fully display on the screen because of different resolution.

From there. Right click on Desktop/ Properties/ NVIdia display/ then your Laptop display or HDTV display. You can run the TV wizard to confirgure the resolution of the screen as a clone of your laptop so you don't have to drag the windows around to the desktop.

Changing the resolution of the screen to HDTV resolution might cause your laptop screen won't display properly.


The car adapter that fits would be the Walmart one for 20$ or something, just look in the car sections. Don't buy at RadioShack, they're overpriced. I got one but i haven't tried to run it with the laptop, but I tried with my computer speakers +sub on my car once. You should look for the adapter support at least 100W output to fully power the system on the go.

 

Would like some feedback from fellow z84 users on cpu temperature readings.

While putting my notebook together I used the heat pipe without modification - in other words I used the factory supplied thermal compound that was on the heatsink. Using the speedfan utility I got readings running up to about 140F on both processors when pushing the machine with both processors in the 60% range. Seemed a bit hot to me considering the Intel max is 100c (212F), and a cooler CPU is a longer running and less failure prone.

Round 2 - added some standard thermal heat sink compound from pentium days. About the same results.

Round 3 - really cleaned everything off and buffed the copper, then used Artic Silver 5. Much better readings, usually in the 90c range, jumping up to 115F at 60%, and in the low 80's at idle.

Would any of you mind running speedfan and reporting back the temperatures you get?

 

mine runs cool..i didn't monitor the temperature during high loads. The GPU is freaking hot.. i want to put some AS5 on it .

removing the keyboard: Please check the guide of remove the A series of 17" notebook.

If you want to remove the whole plastic cover on the front to get the full access to the compartment, it's kinda hard to pull out that piece of plastic.

 

Khanfat, thanks for the response.

On the cpu temp - you might still check the cpu temp. I didn't think there was a problem until I measured it and checked other reports on thermal compounds. The issue didn't surface until I ran speedfan. Note that others running pentiums don't see temps over roughly 130F even though pentiums are way power hungry in comparison. Yeah, Asus is meeting specs with their solution and tape is way easier. I want mine cooler and suggest that others do the same.

As to the GPU - Yeah it runs way hot. If it uses the tape solution too there's room for improvement here as you suspect. Also, I see that the heat pipe to heatsink and to fins is pretty much all physical contact (crimp). That's ok, but there's a lot of room for improvement here by using silver solder in the right places. OEMs don't do this because of cost (more for labor but silver is expensive) as long as they meet design criteria. As a retired planning engineer for a big silicon company let me tell you there's more to thermal issues than is commonly known.

My next steps - check GPU and see if AS5 can help here. May have to put in a temporary diode and external circuit to see what's going on if I can't find where the BIOS keeps the values. After that, look at contact area on the heat pipes and run a few calculations to see if there's room for improvement by some judicious use of silver solder to improve thermal transfer.

One challenge is that I only have one notebook. Having feedback from others would really be helpful and I'm willing to share solutions to all in return.

 

Hello All,

THanks for this thread. I will post on my config and purchase experience soon. Wanted to get a question out of the way first. I saw this briefly alluded to in the thread and was wondering if anyone had any more info.

I am having problems with my microphones. Neither the mike next to the webcam or the microphone jack will work. For testing i have tried to use skype and ventrilo, but nothing yet.

The only thing i've seen is that i have one uninstalled device in my system devices under device management. (WinXP Pro SP2) This device tries to install at bootup but cannot, and i am still not sure what it is. Doesn't seem like it would be related, but i thought i'd mention it.

There are no !'s under the webcam or soundcard in the dev manager.

I would prefer to use the mic next to the webcam, seeing how i hope to use Skype with this laptop often to talk to family. What is that device called when you go to select it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I am loving the laptop so far. Just wanted to have it a couple of weeks before i wrote on my experience.

Thanks,

Matt

 

Make sure your mic is not muted in the sound manager.

If that doesn't work, try to get the name of the device that is not loading at startup and post it here.

 

Yeah, its not muted. And it appears that the System device was unrelated. It is something called "remote" on the Asus driver disk. I installed that and it went away.

I'm not sure if my laptop integrated microphone is even showing up in the lists. But on top of that the microphone jack isn't working either. When i plug in a mic in the jack i get this loud pulsating interference and it records no sound.

Under Control Panel > Sounds & Audio Device Properties > Audio. Sound recording lists 2 options. Realtek HD Audio Input and Modem #0 Line Record. On the Voice tab under Voice Recording it lists the same choices.

The integrated mic near the webcam doesn't seem to be either one of those choices. But at the very least i was thinking that my external mic plugged in to the jack would work. THe sound card senses it every time i plug it in.

How does that integrated mic show up on the list for you guys?

Thanks

 

Mcbmail, I'm assuming you have windows xp by where you were looking at your audio configs above.

If this is correct, go here, click the + by utilities, and download/install the UAA bus driver and Audio Driver (is a single download).

Then go here again, click the + next to audio, and download/install the new Audio Driver.

The Realtek HD Audio Manager with the new driver should be able to give you what you need to view and use your mics.

 

as a noob im asking is there a way to use the camera for video or a possible driver/ program available. also is ne one willing to start a running updated drivers list.

 

I have had my Z84j for about a month now and am running Windows Vista 32-bit OS. I am having trouble getting the HDMI port to work. I seems like it is a driver issue. I have downloaded the latest audio drivers from support.asus.com but I still can't get it to work. Has anyone else had this issue? Any suggestions on how to fix it?

Thanks,

M.T.

 

TRy this step from previous page. The main thing is you need a real HDCP HDMI cable... other cable won't work.

To make HDMI work on your HDTV, you need a compatible cable. Some cable supplied with ur dvd player works some doesn't. I would recommend to get the HDCP compatible cable for best result.

After plug in the hdmi to the HDTV and the laptop,

Right click, on desktop, choose properties/ settings.

Click on ur 2nd square for the 2nd screen, check on Extend my desktop to this monitor, click apply. It'll send the signal from ur HDMI to ur HDTV and display the images. I recommend you have a 1080p TV to get the most accurate resolution for the screen and quality.

After that your TV starts to pickup signals , but the picture won't be fully display on the screen because of different resolution.

From there. Right click on Desktop/ Properties/ NVIdia display/ then your Laptop display or HDTV display. You can run the TV wizard to confirgure the resolution of the screen as a clone of your laptop so you don't have to drag the windows around to the desktop.

Changing the resolution of the screen to HDTV resolution might cause your laptop screen won't display properly.

 

I have gotten now gotten the HDMI port to work while booting up the computer. However, once the Windows Vista logo appears and Vista fully loads, it stops working. It seems like a driver issue. I can't get either video or sound.

I've downloaded the latest drivers independently from Realtek (6.0.5413 5/10/07) and NVIDIA Geforce Go 7700 (7.15.10.9802 1/19/07).

Any other advice?

M.T.

 

I am running Vista Ultimate. When I shut the lid or hibernated the sound would be shut off. I could not get it to work unless I rebooted. So...I went to device manager and hit update from the net. It solved the problem. I had installed the audio drivers previously. It is a bit of a mystery to me. Maybe it reinstalled what I had previously installed; or something new (haha). Anyway - it works!....vern

 

A question about the WebCam. How do you turn the darn thing on? I checked the drivers and they are up to date. I thought I installed the software. But...cannot find evidence of software. Unfortunately I am on an extended road trip and do not have access to my disk that came with my
Z84JP. Any ideas?....vern