ASUS Z71V Geforce 6600 Go Overclocking Guide

Post by **Apoptosis** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 9:22 pm

The original video card drivers that come with the ASUS Z71V notebook are nVidia version 71.13. These drivers do not offer any clock frequency adjustment and are useless to those who want to overclock. If you are looking to overclock the Geforce 6600 that is inside the ASUS Z71V you must use desktop drivers.

I used the latest leaked drivers that I could find, the nVidia 80.40 Beta drivers. They can be downloaded here and have been repackaged down to 9.6mb for those on slow connections. While you are downloading drivers you will also need to download the new mobile INF file. I used the INF file that Peiter made and it worked fine on the ASUS Z71V.

How to install the nVidia 80.40 Beta Drivers:

1) Download the nvidia driver
2) Extract it to a directory
3) download the latest INF file
4) save it into the driver directory over the old INF file
4) Double Click the Setup.exe icon and install like normal

Congratulations you just upgraded your drivers from version 71.13 to 80.40 and have unlocked the overclocking features!

Do The nVidia 80.40 Drivers Perform Better?

I did some quick benchmarking running Doom3, 3dMark 2005, & Comanche 4 and after a number of benchmarks I found that the newer desktop drivers perform well across the board.

ASUS Z71V with default 71.13 drivers:

Doom 3:
640x480 - 112.6
800x600 - 68.3
1024x768 - 48.4

3dMark 2005:
Overall Score - 1706

Comanche 4:
1280x1024 - 55.42
1280x1024 w/ 4x AA - 42.86

ASUS Z71V with Beta 80.40 drivers:

Doom 3:
640x480 - 114.0
800x600 - 68.6
1024x768 - 49.2

3dMark 2005:
Overall Score - 1808

Comanche 4:
1280x1024 - 56.82
1280x1024 w/ 4x AA - 44.27

As you can tell performance increased slighty by just installing the new drivers. A free perfomance increase that doesn't require overclocking is a nice find. Now let's overclock this bad boy.

The default clock speed of the ASUS Z71V's Geforce 6600 video card is 250MHz Core and 500MHz Memory. When we took our ASUS Z71V apart we noted that the memory on the Hynix chips were HY5DS573222. After looking them up on the Hynix website we found them to be rated at 300MHz or 600MHz Double Data Rate (DDR), which means our memory on the video card is UNDERCLOCKED!

We let the nVidia driver utility find the optimal driver frequency for us and it set the frequency to 334MHz/669MHz. We tried this setting and foudn it to be unstable. After a couple days of overclocking we found 312MHz/740Mhz to the be happy medium. We were able to run some benchmarks higher at higher clock frequencies, but they were not stable.

Doom 3 Results @ 1024x768 with all effects on:
71.13 Driver: 48.4 FPS
80.40 Driver: 49.2 FPS
80.40 Driver overclocked to 325/700: 64.5
80.40 Driver overclocked to 330/750: 66.4

By overclocking the video card we got an additional 18FPS and smooth game play on a notebook with all the eye candy enabled. This is an increase of 37% in terms of frames per second performance.

3dMark 2005:

71.13 Driver: 1706
80.40 Driver: 1808
80.40 Driver overclocked to 300/700: 2324
80.40 Driver overclocked to 310/720: 2394
80.40 Driver overclocked to 312/725: 2419

In Futuremark's 3dMark 2005 we went from a score of 1706 to 2419 by just overclocking the video card. This is a point increase of 713 points, which is huge on 3dMark 2005. That turns out to be a 42% performance increase thanks to changing the drivers and overclocking a bit.

That's all for now! Expect an article on this in more detail coming soon. As of right now I am extremely happy with our norebook performance numbers. Having a notebook that scores 1700 points on 3dmark 2005 is nothing to laugh at, but now at more than 2400 points we have a great gaming notebook! Time to install and play... err i mean test the F.E.A.R. demo on the ASUS Z71V!!!

NAiLs · Post by **NAiLs** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 10:33 am

Sweet. I'm hoping I get that 6800 Go because this 6600 Go looks promising! It's better than my Radeon 9700. I'll need a new motherboard, but that's not a problem.

allenpan · Post by **allenpan** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:37 am

isn;t the asus mobo use MXM pci-ex? cna't u just buy with out any extra video card (aka use the i915GM) and buy the 6800go/ulta MXM card?

Post by **Apoptosis** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:44 am

The ASUS Z71A does not have the slot at all mainboard. Also they have 3 sizes of MXM cards, so a 6800 Go won't fit in the place of the 6600 Go.

MXM-1 - 6200 Go
MXM-2 - 6600 Go
MXM-3 - 6800 Go

In the above picture the 6800 Go is on the right and the 6600 Go is on next to it on the left. See the size difference? Notebook chassis are one or the other -- not both.

NAiLs · Post by **NAiLs** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 12:29 pm

Holy freakin' crap! That's insane!!!

Well, per Apops request, I got my Futuremark 05 score on my laptop. Just so you know, this was not a fresh boot. I also tried to overclock with the ATI Tray Tools, but it wouldn't do it. Oh well.

First things first... specs:

Dell Inspiron 9100
- P4 2.8 GHz w/ 800MHz FSB
- 2x 1GB PC3200 DDR RAM (Dual Channel Enabled)
- Sigmatel Audio
- 64MB Mobility 9700
- ATI's Mobile Catalyst 5.8 Drivers

I had HUGE problems with the Omega 5.8's, so I searched around and found the Mobile ATI drivers as the regular catalysts won't install on here. Well, they can, but you gotta play with a program.

Now, here is the compare URL:
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1228188

My final score is 1250, which isn't bad all IMO.

To clear things up too on the 6800 Go, I'm getting a whole new chassis.

kronchev · Post by **kronchev** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 11:09 am

Apoptosis wrote:The ASUS Z71A does not have the slot at all mainboard. Also they have 3 sizes of MXM cards, so a 6800 Go won't fit in the place of the 6600 Go.

MXM-1 - 6200 Go
MXM-2 - 6600 Go
MXM-3 - 6800 Go

In the above picture the 6800 Go is on the right and the 6600 Go is on next to it on the left. See the size difference? Notebook chassis are one or the other -- not both.

damn thats a difference. but, couldnt a 6600 go where a 6800 was? :p

Post by **Apoptosis** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 12:46 pm

you can always go down, but who wants to go slower!

EvilCloudStrife · Post by **EvilCloudStrife** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 5:21 pm

this opened my eyes to new possibilitys for building notebooks.. i thought about it a long time ago.. i think it still would be cheaper to go with a dell though, correct me if im wrong

Post by **Apoptosis** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 5:29 pm

building a gaming notebook is cheaper on your own. If you want integrated chipset graphics then going with a solution like Dell would be cheaper.

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 5:40 pm

not always, my laptop cost me ~1300 and the cheapest dell with simmilar specs was 2400, gateway had something simmilar for 2000.

1.7ghz @ 2.26ghz
1gb ddr2 4300
100gb hd
8x DL dvd-rw
14.1" WS ultra bright screen
b/g wireless
2nd bat giving me ~9hrs of batt time
under 5lbs

pabrimmer · Post by **pabrimmer** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 8:03 am

Apoptosis wrote:The ASUS Z71A does not have the slot at all mainboard. Also they have 3 sizes of MXM cards, so a 6800 Go won't fit in the place of the 6600 Go.

But the Z71V does have the slot, correct? It's a an MXM II isn't it?

DeusEx · Post by **DeusEx** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 3:08 pm

i dont understand how to use the inf file. when i download it, it says 8040. even when i put it into the extracted folder, it wont let me install saying i dont have the right drivers. should the file name be 8040 or something else ?

Dano523 · Post by **Dano523** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 9:39 am

You need to unzip the zipped 80.40 file to create the 80.40 folder with files inside.

Then you will drag/drop the unzipped new mod'd info file into the 80.40 file, and get a message asking you if you want to overwrite the older info file in the 80.40 folder. You click yes, and now you will load the new drivers for the video card using the installer inside the new 80.40 folder with the mod'd info file.