[GSOD Fix?] Beta vBIOS update for G73JH

yes Tho the overdrive is mostly vbios dependant

 

I did and i didnt have success with it. Cant get it to work. I do have a little buggy Bravia TV here in my apartment, but i tried all four HDMI ports and usually if it craps out on one the other works. But to be sure ill wait for Wagnard to test it himself too.

 

Ok, here is my results:

1) Flash BIOS to 209 from 211 via EZFlash
2) Reboot, flash the vBios to the unmodified Beta
3) Reboot, uninstall Asus 10.1 drivers
4) Reboot, go into Safe Mode, run DriverSweeper, remove all references to ATI
5) Reboot, run the ATI-10.7a Hotfix installer, install Express
6) Reboot, run Furmark 1.8.2, stress-test, Xtreme Burning mode, Post-FX

Results:

20+ minutes of Furmark without a single glitch, error, GSOD or problem.

For reference:

Model: G73Jh-A3
BIOS: 209
vBios: Beta unmodified
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (non-clean install, in-place upgrade from Home Premium)
VRAM: Samsung

I was unable to run any driver before other than Asus 9.12 or 10.1 without a GSOD in Furmark within a few minutes.

I will try 10.8 and see if I have problems, but 10.7a is working great so far.

 

Well the verdict can be seen quite easily in many previous posts: Asus beta vbios is neither a fix nor in any way better than stock vbios, perhaps worse. Stay away from it.

MSI vbios (file dated March 8th 2010) named br36532.018 works very well and without any flickering/gsod problems with every Ati driver and Asus system bios. You only cannot use hdmi/vga connectors using this vbios.

 

well is there a way to install the old vbio to my g73 so i can have hdmi right now i have the beta install

 

welcome to the club of the lucky ones!

I'm downloading l4d2 to see if it works, do you have splinter cell conviction to test it?

 

What do you mean by worse? It's not worse, if it gives GSOD for some1, just reinstall the stock VGA driver.

 

Yes that's what I typed, the latest one bricked my G73.

 

It IS better than stock vBIOS, so dont talk sh1t to others without testing it yourself!

 

One question The_Beast; Do you also have ATI HDMI Installed or not? I suspect you dont since you did a clean 10.7a install and If you dont could you install it (just run the stock 10.1 setup, its in there and its the only driver that will be installed if you run it) and test again?

The beta does have proper powerplay so i guess you could call it better if you ignore the GSODs. But im so used to changing power plans i dont really need automatic clocks switching anymore .

 

Even if he said they were useless, everyone would still download it and not bother what he said. I played BC2 for a couple of hours no issue in that. Running 10.8, i would say this beta is definitely a step better compared to the stock vbios but its not a fix yet. Alpha would be a better term to give it rather then beta. I like the fact that it auto downclocks on this in high performance.

 

is there anyway to get a green card in this laptop, even if i have to pay for it?

 

The new G73

 

let me rephrase.....has anyone taken out thier 5870 and replaced it sucessfully with a comperable nvidia...and if so, what did you do and how can i do this.....not only do i want to get a stable system but i would take some pleaseure in litterly taking a dump on this card.....i promiss pictures of the end result

 

So let me tell you that powerplay is not the thing im talking about. Sure it is a nice-to-have but with stock vBIOS Crysis got a GSOD after only 6min while the Beta one now runs it for more than one Hour without any GSOD. How would you call that? The one who says "Not better in any way" talks only sh1t and for me theres nothing more to discuss about that.

 

what is a green card?

 

Nvidia card.

 

It does not, I would have to see the assembly sources to know what the differences are. Chastity, any chance I could get my grubby hands on some source code? Btw, I'm a software engineer .

 

You need to ask that from Gary.

 

20 min at max settings in heavy rain witouth GSOD, it seems that this vBIOS fixed the problem in my g73.


even so I do not trust , because I have been playing games for 1 month with 10.6 and stock vbios witouth GSOD until one day GSOD appeared

 

I dont think we can have that. This is not open-source.

 

Hellcry, are you talking about the HDMI Audio support?

If so, then no, I don't have that installed from the 10.1 package, but I do have it installed from the latest Realtek audio driver release (I believe it is the 2.49 Realtek ATI HDMI). I am also running the latest Realtek audio driver as well (2.51).

If that is why you are all crashing, the uninstall it. That would explain a lot as why would you EVER run a 10.1 component with 10.7a or anything else???

Sorry, to say there is a problem because you mixed up driver componentry isn't valid.

I think everyone needs to post a listing of the software revisions they are running. I would really like to know if it is user error (like running 10.1 ATI HDMI with 10.7a or 10.8 drivers) or a still faulty vBios.

 

It was mostly in jest, I doubt ATI even gives their source to manufacturers. But I would be very interested in seeing how much the MSI and Asus vBIOS sources differ.

 

That is very interesting

 

GSODs could be related to the audio-HDMI output?. It seems that is some ASUS customization on the vBIOS that causes the problem.. And The most important difference between ASUS and MSI vBIOS is the HDMI and VGA output

 

And, for reference, I just plugged my G73Jh into my Mitsubishi 73" va HDMI and everything, including audio, works great.

 

probably something like that

 

I was actually wondering the same thing...

 

MY GOD what have we stumbled across?!!!

 

Impossible to say unless we knew if that was the only significant difference between the two. I tend to doubt it, it really seems more hardware related. I mean, my g73 runs perfectly stable with the stock vBIOS and reference drivers. I was even running 10.8 last night just fine.

 

Im not running the ATI HDMI driver, im also using the realtek one so thats not it but im curious if it would cause any problems since ive been debating with Chastity if it could be that the lack of HDMI and VGA is making the MSI and Clevo vBios stable on our machines and perhaps its the working HDMI and VGA that are somehow causing problems.

And you cant put a nvidia card in here. The heatsink wont cool it properly becouse the chips and coils will be positioned differently and the whole card may be a different size even (since this Asus mob. 5870 is wider than any other GPU ive seen, Clevo mob 5870 and gtx 285m included) and the bios also probably wont support it since i dont see why Asus would add support for it.

 

I made a new thread to consolidate vBios results. Rules are. Answer the questions and ONE POST, NO DISCUSSIONS.

This is to help Asus to figure it out, 24 pages of random discussions searching for actual data is not helpful for them.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/513027-beta-vbios-results-only.html

 

Hellcry, could it possibly be a motherboard issue with your unit?

I mean, you are statistically in the realm of improbable for how many video cards you have gone through...

 

If it was a MB issue, the MSI vbios would not fix it. But it does for me and HellCry

 

What if there is a problem with the HDMI/VGA portion if your guys motherboards? That would explain it.

The video card routes through the motherboard for those functions.

Since the MSI vBios disables that set of functionality it wouldn't affect it.

 

Not necessarily since it appears that the cards that don't GSOD at all are in the minority.

 

Nice point but. YOu forgot that we have no GSOD with stock driver and HDMI is working

 

Actually, that isn't determined yet... not enough people have replied with validated results.

There is fartoo much "mob action" going on here. I would not say that it is determined that Hellcry doesn't have a MB issue. It seems that a ton of people don't want to do the work and actually do a proper installation to validate if a fix works or not.

 

No it's the opposite. It seems for overall, the G73 that have GSOD are less than 1%

Sorry to dash your speculation

 

Depends .... most people are too noob to install the new ATI driver and use stock stuff. so they do not gsod.

I have a g73 ans 2 of my friend and we all have the gsod.
All model are different me = A1 and others friend A2 and X(?)

 

I doubt that very much because with 1% Asus could easily give these video cards the broken status and put in new video cards or even deliver new laptops.

So it's definitely not 1%.

Could it be that the power supply of the laptop causes these GSOD's because some kind of interference builds up? For instance I haven't heard anyone from the Netherlands about GSOD but in some regions they might occur more frequent. So if they can't find anything wrong with the hardware then maybe it's bad power supplies that don't work properly in some regions.

 

According to whom? Yes, it's skewed here because most people here probably have some issue with their G73. But I doubt there are that few G73s out there that GSOD on reference drivers. Think about it. The average user probably doesn't update their drivers, so they don't GSOD. I think that 1% is very misleading.

 

When i got my G73 the stock drivers were already "old" so the first thing i did was upgrade to the newest (10.6) and that is when i started seeing my GSOD of course....my questions are as follows:
1. what version is the stock. (10.1?)
2. What do you lose if you stay on that version? (i noticed i coulnt play prey but what else?)
3. any one who has delt with asus can you tell me my options? RMAing and loosing my laptop for weeks, only to get back a laptop with the same problem, seems to be the standard response. has anyone been offered a replacement of a diff model or a credit toward a different model?

I dont even mind spending a little money if i have to, but buying whole new laptop is out of the question

 

1. Stick to the ones on Asus' site if you're getting GSODs, I believe these are 10.1.
2. You may not be able to play some games. These drivers are unable to run the FF14 benchmark, for example. You also miss out on many updates and fixes between 10.1 and the latest reference drivers. Performance gains are minimal, however.
3. I bought an RBBX05 from Best Buy so I was able to just return my g73s until I got a good one (that didn't GSOD on reference drivers). You could try for a replacement, but it very well may have the same issues.

 

so when the real Vbios coming out this week or next week or next mouth or a year lol

 

The thing that irritates me the most here is that this beta vbios seems to be another tweak rather than aiming for a real fix. We already know that 100% fix is possible because other manufacturers' vbioses don't show any kind of stability problem when used together with G73jh's. This includes not only gsod's but also flickering and screen artifacts that usually (not always) predate a gsod.

The excellent forum community here, led by Chastity, HellCry and Ziddy have already made tweaks that made our G73jh's more stable under general gaming conditions. With modded Asus vbios and slight overclock it was already possible to achieve ~95% stability. However, we have paid 100% and no fix other than 100% will be tolerable.

Gary and the guys helping here should first of all see that 'a tweak' isn't going to solve the issue because flickering and gsod's are not more/less case, they are on/off case. So you either have gsod crashes or you do not.

 

After getting that black horizontal line flash in furmark, and reading in the report thread that another person is getting artifacts with this vbios also I have switched back to using Ziddy's vbios.

 

Are you kidding? Here in Germany you have to wait one month after RMA and then you got an offer from asus for a full refund. Thats only the case cause they are already out of Graphic Cards. The People who dont want their money back have to wait over 2 Month to get their G73 repaired. That is what you called 1%? I dont think so.

Edit:

Well, i dont say that it is a real fix but you can not say that it is not even better than the stock one. Of course it is not 100% and im not happy with it but is it better? Yes, it is. So the only thing i mentioned was that they are going the right way, not that they are already done with this.

 

Well, updated to 10.8 drivers... Over 40 minutes in Furmark and no GSOD.

Played Starcraft 2 for 20 minutes... Same thing, it just flat out works.