Jump to content
HWBOT Community Forums

Testing the water cooled ROG GX700VO - 4.16GHz CPU, 1427/3800 GPU, 1444 XTU


Recommended Posts

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to get familiar with the ROG GX700 notebook. There are a couple of things that got me interested in this massive device. First of all, of course the water cooling. It's a huge device you can hook the notebook up to. Secondly, the hardware. It features not only the first mobile -K processor, the Core i7 6820HK, but also a desktop grade GeForce GTX 980 GPU and 64GB of DDR4 memory. A beast of a notebook, in other words.

 

Soon we will have a SkatterBencher video up showing you how to overclock. In this thread I just want to share a couple of results and findings for those who are interested.

 

attachment.php?attachmentid=4006&stc=1&d=1457666671

 

 

OVERCLOCKING - CPU and GPU

 

The overclocking part is quite straight-forward. You can use the ROG Gaming Center to switch between Standard, Turbo, Extreme and Manual mode for CPU overclocking. Extreme and manual are only available when you have the notebook hooked up to the water cooling.

 

The CPU runs by default at 2.7GHz and turbos up to 36x ratio (or 3.6 GHz). The turbo rate is unlocked up to 41x as configured by the notebook's BIOS. I've seen other notebooks support 46x ratio, so it seems to be a design choice. Inside the software application you can increase the BCLK from 100 MHz to 105 and 110 MHz if you wish to do so. Bear in mind that only at 100MHz BCLK you can enable XMP. At 105 or 110 MHz, the XMP option will be grayed out.

 

(XTU has more options, see section below)

 

As for GPU overclocking, there is a bit more headroom. For both the GPU and the memory you can go up +300 in the Gaming Center application, which is also the limit in Nvidia Inspector. By default the GPU is running at 1189/2505 under load. When you hook up the water cooling, the turbo frequency automatically increases to 1227/3500 MHz. Through manual overclocking I was able to increase it even further to 1427/3800, maxing out the memory but still with some headroom on the GPU. 1.4GHz turbo boost with a notebook is pretty darn impressive in my books.

 

OVERCLOCKING RESULTS

 

So, here are my results:

 

[TABLE=head]Setup | XTU | Fire Strike Extreme | RealBench

Stock (3.6G/1189/2505)| 1078 | 4790 | 84094

Water Cooled (4G/1227/3500) | 1148 | 5683 | 84231

Overclocked (4.1G/1427/3800) | 1271 | 6665 | 103741[/TABLE]

 

// insert screenshots when I find them //

 

PUSHING THE NOTEBOOK

 

As I have done with all the hardware that passed through my hands, I had to find a way around the limitations in the ASUS software and see how much performance I could squeeze out of this bad boy. I found the XTU gave me plenty of ways to go beyond the limitations, but I also found it particularly stressful. Before you continue, I want to emphasize that using XTU to overclocking this notebook is ONLY for advanced users. There are no easy clear CMOS tools for the notebook, so in case your system is unstable you might have to go extra lengths to get it back up and running. I've made some suggestions to the notebook division on how to improve. The key points that XTU will allow you to do is:

  • Increase the BCLK beyond 110 MHz (+ add granularity between 100, 105 and 110)
  • Enable XMP when overclocking the BCLK

 

[hwbot=3137739]submission[/hwbot]

attachment.php?attachmentid=4003&stc=1&d=1457666257attachment.php?attachmentid=4001&stc=1&d=1457666165

 

To measure performance I used XTU because that's where most of the 6820HK action is. For my final score I achieved 1444 points at 4160 MHz which is currently the top result in the hardware category. Yeey, golden cup! The trick is to enable XMP and increase the BCLK beyond 110 MHz to have extra memory frequency. I see some folks with better CPU frequency, so there's no doubt this score will soon drop in the rankings.

 

But as I said ... disaster almost struck after this session. I tried increasing the memory frequency further and it was unstable. After reboot, the settings stuck in the BIOS. Because the BIOS didn't reset (even with the long-press on the power button) I was forced to open up the notebook and remove two of the memory sticks to force a BIOS error.

 

 

RECOVERING FROM FAILED OC

 

(I will add the video once it's available)

 

If you are using any other software tool than the ROG Gaming Center to overclock the GX700 notebook, chances are you will be looking at this section, pulling your hair, to find out how to un-brick your notebook. There are two ways of forcing the BIOS to reset. 1) force a BIOS error by for example removing memory and 2) clearing the BIOS by removing the battery. Both approaches will require you to open up the notebook.

 

Here's how you do it.

 

Remove Screws Part 1

 

attachment.php?attachmentid=3998&stc=1&d=1457666022

 

Remove Screws Part 2

 

attachment.php?attachmentid=3999&stc=1&d=1457666022

 

Remove Memory or Unplug Battery

 

attachment.php?attachmentid=4000&stc=1&d=1457666022

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Together with Blu3 we played with the same laptop for a moment last weekend on IEM, made a quick 1276 XTU at 4000, but there were lots of other people at Asus stand so we couldn't go to great lengths pushing it. We were impressed by its performance, but I think it's not really affordable, even if we split the cost. :P

Edited by phobosq
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...