A few GPU clarifications for a new G73 owner.

Hi everyone. I'd like to apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I figured if I was going to start a new thread I should be as thorough as I can in what I want to discuss.

I've been reading this forum for about two weeks now leading up to my purchase of a G73 (the G73JH-X1 to be exact). Having taken the weekend to set it up and test it out, I've come to a few conclusions about the state of my particular G73, and just want a few opinions and clarifications about my specific situation.

I'll note that I've been doing computer tech work on a professional level for about 10 years now, so I'm pretty comfortable with terminology and with getting my hands dirty. I'd also like to note that this is the first ATI video card I've owned since about 1998, so I'm less familiar with that.

So here's my situation:
My G73 works great for the most part. It has the little flaws most people seem to complain about (dropped keystrokes, which seem to have lessened since I installed the latest driver from the Synaptics website), but I'm really not worried about any of that.

My big concern is, of course, the state of the GPU and these multi-colored screens-of-death people experience. I'm currently running Catalyst 10.5, and it runs perfectly stable on my system. I can play Crysis, GTA4, etc for hours at a time without the system so much as flinching at me. I tried both 10.6 and 10.7 and both presented me with GSODs (or red screens, or black screens, or lined screens, or whatever part of the rainbow the system felt like throwing at me).

So I can't use the latest drivers, which is fine with me (minus the disappointing fact that I can't show off my FFXIV benchmark scores on the older drivers, it crashes due to some issue with atiumdag.dll) as long as I can play my games (which does raise the question of whether FFXIV itself will run on older drivers). Since I don't mind using the older drivers and 10.5 is the newest version that runs after following the GSOD debug/fix thread, let's move on.

My big concern is with heat. For all my searching I can't seem to find actual specs on the Mobility Radeon HD5870's temperature limits. Running heavy-duty games (such as the aforementioned GTA4 and Crysis, both at near-max settings in 1920x1080 and running beautifully) I'll generally top out at about 90-95C according to HWMonitor. Running Furmark (stability test, 1280x1024, no MSAA) for eight solid minutes puts the temperature as high as 101C.

My questions are simple:

1. Are these temperatures generally acceptable for this video card? As in, should I just leave things well enough alone? And if not...

2. What's the best solution? To reduce temperature the main methods (not counting a cooling pad or the like) would logically be RMA or applying thermal paste myself.

Any insight, suggestions, or opinions on this situation would be greatly appreciated. My inexperience with modern ATI cards makes me nervous, and I just want to get some experienced input on the best path to take.

 

When trying 10.6 and 10.7 did you do a driver sweep, safe mode, install 10.1, then do 10.6 or 10.7 over the top?

I expect you followed the guide below

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/498015-g73-gsod-fixes-resources.html

Just checking as on mine 10.1 to 10.5 is fine, but if I then try 10.5 to 10.6 I get GSOD. Kinda like the drivers get confused if you do more than 1 update from stock 10.1. Once GSOD start happening downgrading back to 10.5 still got GSOD, needed to clean it all up then go 10.1 to 10.x!

I would keep the notebook as it has a 2 year warranty. Maybe catalyst 11 will solve GSOD, and if it needs a GPU sway would be better to wait till stock is more plentiful or you might get a very long RMA waiting for parts!

If your ambient temperature is hot then those temps are ok, otherwise seems a bit hot. If you are competent taking laptops apart then checking out the GPU seating and repasting would be faster than a RMA! Can't hurt to try and there are several good guides around.

 

Topping out at 95C is fine. Don't worry about Furmark if you don't go above 100C for long periods of time. The thermal protection shutdown is somewhere between 105-110C.

To fix GPU overheating (though I don't think it's necessary in your case), the best way would be to replace the thermal paste yourself.

RMAing it may or may not fix the problem. I sent mine in for GPU overheating and it came back with the same problem plus two loose screws on the GPU heatsink and the keyboard backlight cable plugged in backwards (that tells you something about the quality of the techs). Then I spent two hours redoing the paste myself and it's ran fine ever since.

 

First, thanks for the replies!

Second, yes I did fully uninstall the drivers and the Catalyst software, driver sweep, install 10.1, then install 10.x complete with reboots between each step as per the GSOD thread guide. Under these conditions, as I stated, 10.5 is perfectly stable, but 10.6 and 10.7 both GSOD VERY quickly as soon as I load any 3D application (games, Furmark, anything 3D will GSOD within 3-5 minutes at the most).

What I did overlook in my initial post is that I'm using Ziddy's v3 vBIOS from the GSOD thread, flashed via a bootable USB drive and ATIFLASH 3.79 (again, I was simply following all the instructions in the GSOD thread). It may also be worth mentioning that I currently have absolutely NO version of Power4Gear Hybrid installed, simply because I wasn't putting it to use in the first place.

After reading your replies, I don't think I'm in need of an RMA, or really even in need of better thermal paste. I think all I really need is a decent driver version (don't we all).

But until ATI gets their drivers sorted out, I'll live with whatever newest version works for me (currently 10.5, as I said). Maybe next month I'll have more luck with 10.8.

Thanks again for the quick replies. You've been quite helpful.

 

I have found some games still need an OC to be stable, while others play fine at stock speeds. (Go figure. ) You may just need that to stabilize.

 

Ah, that's something I overlooked mentioning too. I have been trying different clock speeds (705/1100, 750/1100, and 800/1100) and none of them have improved stability in 10.6 or 10.7.

But I admit I've never been interested in overclocking much, so I don't know a whole lot about it. The changes appear to be immediate. Is it recommended that I reboot before testing new clock speeds (I haven't been so far)? Or does it not make a difference?

 

no reboots. you'll reset to defaults if not using Overdrive

 

I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I'm on 10.7 right now with Furmark going steady for the past 20 minutes and temperatures never exceeding 103C.

How? Well, actually I just changed the vBIOS. Initially the new vBIOS was giving me instability on 10.7 too, but changing the clocks to 705/1100 have it going just fine for the moment.

Of course, I'm going to have to wait, do some actual gaming usage, and see if it holds up for me. But for the moment it looks good.

So what happened with the vBIOS? Well hopefully this will be interesting and helpful to someone. I was originally using Ziddy's v3 vBIOS like I said earlier, which I found via Chastity's GSOD Fixes and Resources thread sig link.

I found another version here: vBios For G73
It seems like it might be an older version? But it's been running beautifully so far.

I'm not sure what the difference could be, or if I could achieve this stability on another vBIOS. I don't really know enough about the hardware or vBIOS concepts to speculate.

I'd be more than happy to take the time (when I can) to switch things around to gather a little more information about the specifics of my situation, if it would be at all helpful in diagnosing the overall GSOD issue.

 

Thermal shutdown limit on 205 and 206 bios is 105C, and on 209 bios its 110C.
I suspect they changed it so theyd get less RMAs, but if id get anything over 95C or even 100C as you said id be very concerned, though some people dont seam to mind. Its a fact that the card will detiriorate faster if exposed to such heat for long, not to mention i would squirm knowing im just a few degrees from the thermal shutdown limit.
You can take it apart and repaste it yourself if you feel up to it, theres a good g73jh dissassembly video on youtube. Might be that some screw on the heatsink is a bit loose or the paste is applied badly...

 

I'd say 101C is worrisome. ATi has always had their high end mobile GPU's running hot. Some who cry about 95C guess haven't owned a gaming notebook ATi GPU before, they always ran in the mid 90s for me in the past there was no degradation of performance etc. Heck even MacBooks run in the mid 90s when they are actually used for something more than viewing youtube.

1). Depends on your ambient temperatures. Why do you think servers are always in a temperature controlled room? It's the same with any computer, you don't want them in a room where it's 90 F.

2). 2 suggestions. Get your notebook in a air conditioned room or room with ambient temps low 70s. The second is to redo the thermal grease and replace the thermal pads. This should cost you around $20. This will not void your warranty, don't tough the CPU.

If your temps are still high in a room with temperature controlled to 70-80, and with your thermal job, then yes I would think something is wrong and RMA it.

If you want to know more send a message to Xeven. That's his V2 vBios. The reason why I created the V3 version is because his version disables VGA output. HDMI is still fine on that one, but I needed VGA since the projectors at work use VGA.

 

the temperature we are talking here is the shadder temp?? or memory temp?? from the card..

 

I would RMA it. Ive been just running driver upgrades since the 10.4's. Never driver sweeped or cleaned first. I am now at 10.7 and never had a gsod ever.

 

You apparently got a smart monkey. What's your model's manufacture date?

 

I seem to be getting mixed input on the temperature issue.

As I said, it creeps into the 100-103C range only in Furmark. In any given game it won't exceed 95C (most games run at 85-90C, and even the ones that reach 95C don't necessarily stay there, it's just the max they reach).

If I do RMA, I need to do it soon. I'm selling my old laptop (a Dell XPS M1530) and I don't want to be completely machine-less while I wait for RMA.

Do we happen to have an approximate success rate for RMAs? As in, how common is it for a G73 to come back from RMA and still have issues?

 

If you have GTA4 try playing it, it is one of the few (only?) games I can think of that can push the max temp anywhere close to benchmark tool temps.

Don't think anyone has an idea of RMA success % since it's the first time I've seen it asked There have been a couple posters who sent their lappys in and the tech must have been high, since they got back defective units or units with cheaper/wrong screens installed, but that was a while back. Pretty much all we know is that g73 RMA's take FOREVER, you are looking at losing your machine for 3 weeks minimum.

 

I do indeed have GTA4, and running the latest game patch with the settings at their auto-detected levels, I get about 39fps in the benchmark and playing the game for long periods (at least an hour or two) is one of the few activities that push the GPU temp to 95C.

To my recollection, 95C is the highest temp HWMonitor has recorded while I was playing games (GTA4, Crysis, whatever). As I said, this is the maximum, and is not representative of constant or even common temps while playing games. Most games, as stated in my previous post, do not exceed 85-90C. The only time I see it go above 95C is when I'm running Furmark (Furmark is the only actual "real" benchmark I've tried).

On a related note, I saw mention in another thread here that Micro Center does ASUS warranty work. There's a Micro Center about half an hour from me, so I called to confirm that they do ASUS warranty work. They said they do, but that software issues are not covered by warranty.

I'd love to know if anyone has gone through them. And if so, is it faster than RMA? Was the service good? What should I tell them to get the work I need done? Etc.