2nd RMA and still busted

So I just received my G73 back from Asus Canada today with a note that said they replaced my motherboard and GPU for the second time now as well as a note that says it ran 5 hours of Furmark and never broke 84c. Fired it up and they'd reset everything back to factory images though they forgot to screw in my hard-drives to the frame so one didn't even show up at first on boot as it got dislodged in shipment by the looks of it. Loaded up Mudbox and started sculpting a character and it goes down like a sack of bricks with a black screen. Load up Bad Company 2 and about 10 minutes into gameplay same thing with a black screen and complete hard lock.

Video of the failure here

I'm at a complete loss of words at how a product like this can be sold to consumers or even sent back from an RMA without taking into consideration such simple things. After two trips to RMA I've lost a grand total of 32 business days waiting for this laptop to be fixed as it not only serves as a portable gaming rig while I am on the road but also my portable workstation to take with me on business trips visiting clients and showing off software.

 

. That's really bad. Sorry man. But it can only get better right? Lol.

 

It's unreal and I specifically told them on the phone to NOT send the unit back unless it was rock solid or to at least have a service manager call me to make sure everything is A-Ok. Apparently they didn't care to listen to the customer which I'm starting to find out is a trend with Asus and their customer service reps.

 

What ATI drivers are you running?

 

Tried factory drivers but I'm unable to use my work applications as there are features in 10.4+ that we use and bug fixes so I upped to 10.4 and then tried 10.8 all to no avail. I know what the response to that's going to be (use asus certified drivers) but sadly some of us like myself are strapped with technical requirements that force us to be on a specific driver or recent driver to have the functionality we need.

 

Did you install those newer drivers over the old ones? If you did then I recommend you boot into safe mode, and use a program called driver sweeper to eliminate all ati drivers/software, then perform a clean install of which ever of the newer drivers youd like. Personally I had success with this method back when 10.6 came out. With out the clean install and driver sweeper I would have a gsod or similar screen problems every so often

 

I would try the beta vbios that is out there along with 10.8 as it has helped some people. Along with CrappyAlloy suggestions.

 

I always use driver sweeper before I install any drivers on my machines. Installing new drivers over old drivers is just asking for bad news.

 

Hmmm... so blowing away the Creative Drivers seems to have stopped the black screen crashing. I stripped out a ton of the regular bloatware as well and just ran through some BC2 tests on High settings. No hard locks but I did notice some screen tearing/shearing during the cut scene events which I'm trying to track down what the cause of those might be.

Just re-installing some work apps now to check for stability there and will monitor over the next day to see if I can recreate the hard lock.

 

You shoulda bought a g73 from the states better quality jk

 

I'd just get a m11x if I were you tbh. Or a completely new G73 unit. I've got issues with my but nowhere near what you are experiencing. I was considering RMA, but decided to wait till a month before my warranty expires and then send it in hoping to get a free upgrade

 

I suggest u contact gary key and let him handle ur RMA.. he'll ensure it comes properly and quickly.

 

I had the same problem - 21 business days for the repair, not counting shipping times (over a month!) sent it in for a mobo problem, they swapped the GPU (and mobo) and now I have GSOD problems. That was my 2nd G73. It is back being repaired right now. If it comes back with more GSOD problems, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I'd like to mention too, that my first G73 was turning off from overheating. So I returned it to the reseller. My second, well ... this is it - and since all internals were changed, I'm going to just assume that I'm basically on my 3rd, waiting for it to come back (hopefully I get an entirely new unit? That'll be 4 g73s ...)

 

To OP: How about browsing this forum even a little bit and realizing that atm it is a known fact that no G73 unit (except very few exceptions, possibly) is compatible with newer Ati Catalyst drivers than 10.1. The problem is 100% software (faulty vbios) one and is finally being worked on by Asus engineers as I type.
No 100% solution has been released yet other than using old drivers or different manufacturers' vbios.

No RMA is going to help you here so there's no use to waste your laptops time there waiting for "repair" or replacement.

 

The M11x is just as many headaches as the G73 if not more. Trust me.

I got into it a little on the "would you buy a G73 again?" thread so I won't repeat myself here. But if you do a search on my posts you'll see I've written about it extensively how the M11x has been way more of a troublesome disappointment between PunkBuster not recognizing Optimus graphics and kicking you out of their games, to faulty and breaking hinges, to Dell's horrible restrictions on letting the end user update drivers but then being 5 updates behind so that we all have to have experts on these forums re-write INF files to get the regular Nvidia drivers recognized.

Picking Dell/Alienware over Asus expecting a better experience is not something that is going to happen. Believe me.

And my sincerest condolences to the OP. At this point I'd be hassling them for a completely new machine. See if they'll upgrade you into a G73JW and tell them you want that since ATI's GPU's are clearly faulty (not saying tha'ts true, just implying to say that to get into a G73JW

Either way, tell them you want a new machine. Complete exchange. I have a trouble free G73, they do exist. I do not however have a trouble free m11x and am waiting for them to build me a completely new system as is their policy to do an outright exchange if they have to issue 3 service calls.

Call Asus, tell them Dell has a policy that if the unit needs a 3rd service call, then Dell just exchanges the unit for a new one and you want and expect Asus to match this as a purchaser of their most expensive and highest end notebook.

Trust it will get worked out. Buying notebooks is a lottery. It doesn't matter what make or model. Every CPU and GPU is different. Every overclocker knows that. That same logic should extend as to why some notebooks of the same make and model have better stability than others. Check the forums of any brand here. Clevo, Sager, MSI, Alienware - you'll find plenty of threads under each brand with equally severe issues. It could almost be argued where you buy is more important than what you buy as a place like Xotic or like places can apply upgraded thermals making sure there's no issues from factory assembly.

See if you can get an exchange first. Then look into selling it for something else if that doesn't work out. But I'm telling you, when you buy any brand of these high end gaming notebooks, it's a bit of a lottery. And sometimes you just have to keep exchanging until you get one that's solid.

It's not just notebooks. I went through 4 IPhone 4's at the Apple store because I upgraded for their famous retina display and each one of those 4 IPhone 4's had a dead pixel.

The more complicated the electronics or tech with multiple parts that run hot, the more it's a lottery.

Just how it is.

Trust it'll work out. I believe it will for you.

Cheers

 

I wouldn't know since I've never had one. Every single laptop I've had so far has been an Asus. OP mentioned he travels a lot and does software demonstrations so I recommended something that is reasonably powerful and much more portable than the g73.

 

Don't get me wrong. When it works right, it's fantastic. I really love it for exactly what you're saying. Portability. But the hinge issue has every owner freaked out here in fear that the hinge will break after the one year included warranty expires.

Admittedly I still like the machine enough that I might get the refresh when it comes as there's stronger GPU's in the pipeline and as powerful the m11x is, it could still use it. That, and the included display panel is pretty mediocre for what ended up being a $1500 system.

This one is already going to the wife. So if the R3 version of the M11x has a significantly stronger GPU and especially a better panel included, I will seriously consider picking one up. But if Asus or Toshiba or the like comes out with a worthy competitor to the M11x, I'll be looking hard at those too.

 

Believe me I've browsed every forum out there and spent a lot of time on here browsing through the threads about anything greater than 10.1. I work for one of the largest CAD/CAM/3D software development companies in the world so unfortunately I don't have the luxury of sitting on old drivers as many of our applications require the user to be fairly current so sure I can sit on old drivers but I lose all sorts of functionality and fixes required for my daily usage.

The original RMA was sent long before any of us figured it was a vBIOS feature and it was also RMA'd for a bad keyboard that wouldn't register a string of keys (not ghosting, just completely missed key entries entirely). The only reason I sent it back in the second time around was because I couldn't do anything longer than 10 minutes of GPU intensive tasks before the whole system crashed (read my 6 seconds into Furmark comment).

I finally got through to a decent agent last night who has escalated my issue after having a very civil chat with them about my situation. We agreed that another RMA seemed out of the question as replacing more components costs them money and me being out of a work laptop for another 16 days costs me money as well. I indicated that I'd basically like a refund on my purchase or a replacement of a model with equivalent specs of mine though the only likely candidate is the G73JW which I honestly don't see them doing a swap for as it's not even released yet.

I've looked at the Alienware boxes and I'd probably look more at the M15X to be honest as the M11X is great portability wise but if you've ever tried running Maya, Max, Softimage or Mudbox at the M11x's resolution you'll tear your hair out

Anyone outside the US dealt with Gary? I had thought about firing him a message but wasn't sure if he was dealing primarily with the US facilities and customers. Typically us Canadians get routed through Asus Canada which operates out of Markham for all of our repairs, inquiries etc to my knowledge.

 

From your description of your usage, you might want to consider a notebook with workstation graphics card.

 

My desktop works fine for that but while I work in OpenGL primarily in my applications my end destination for a lot of my work is DirectX so it's a bit of a trade off for me in using the consumer level cards for the stuff I do. I've got an M6400 issued from the office from a few years back that has the 3700M and it's a terrible card that loves to crash just as often as my G73. I work with a lot of games studios so for me it's a bit more practical to have a GeForce/Radeon card so I can be level with them.