Asus G73JH-A1 - Weird performance issues

Long post incoming!

I have been fairly happy with the speed of this laptop, but there are some very weird performance issues when I do common things that shouldnt be slow given the spec and the fact that its faster then my desktop across the board.

[rant]

1) When coming out of sleep, the HDD lights are constantly on and is always stuck at a black screen forever; I have heard that this is an issue in the 206 bios and is fixed in 209 bios, but I only heard a single post about this. (not a big issue since hibernate works somewhat, see below)


2) When coming out of hibernate, it can go to the desktop but the HDD is always thrashing for about 30 minutes for god-knows-what reason as well as using approximately 75% of the total CPU time to do 'unknown hardware interrupts' (I am using process explorer to view this). This 'unknown hardware interrupts' happens every so minutes, which seriously hampers performance across the system, such as audio being time distorted/cracking, video having frame freezes/errors, the mouse becomes extremely choppy (think Windows 98 using a PS/2 or serial mouse), etc.


3) Windows 7 'Switch User' is SERIOUSLY gimped from the windows XP version 'Switch User' version. I say this because in XP, all it 'does' is just reload the login screen WITHOUT killing internet connections, swapping active programs into the swap space and suspending every program that is running under my user name that Windows 7 does. In windows 7, when I re-logon, some of my applications will have already crashed due to the above issues and every program that uses an active internet connection (say Steam, IRC or various chat clients) will be disconnected. I currently dont know how I can resolve this but this is quite an important issue for me.


4) Rendering 2D acceleration in some programs don't work. A very good example of this is viewing any documents in Adobe Acrobat; even with its '2d acceleration' turned on or off or in Firefox, its pitifully slow where older computers can scroll smoothly without stuttering issues. (think using Windows running only on its own stock VGA drivers but only affects some programs)


5) Some 3D games have occasional pauses/drastic slowdowns, although disabling core parking barely reduced the frequency of this issue, it still occurs quite often. (HL2 engines)


I am guessing that the 2D acceleration or maybe the 3D stuttering issue might be the problem for using stock video drives (9.12) but from most of the threads I have read, people dont talk about these software performance issues or that I am looking at the wrong threads. (think using Windows running only on its own stock VGA drivers but only in some programs)

My system is fairly stock; fresh install of W7 pro using the provided driver disks, and fully updated system patches (along with any driver updates it manages to provide). Swap file is disabled in C: drive but enabled in D: drive to reduce possible I/O bottleneck. No viruses/spyware on this computer (I am quite security conscious so its loaded with appropriate software for prevention so please dont mention that its some viral code going amok).

[/rant]

For now, there are the only issues I can think off the top of my head, as I am sure there might be more but I currently cannot recall them at this time yet; I will update the thread if it comes back to me.


Anyone have any ideas/suggestions or do the owners accept these issues as-is?




EDIT: Oh, a reproducible BSOD when you enable Jumbo Frames for the gigabit NIC during file transfer, anyone have this issue as well?

 

Sounds to me you have either hardware stepping on each other, or some serious DPC Latency. I would suggest d/l'ing this app and check what you are getting. A good system is about 100 us or less.

DPC Latency Check

If you get high latency, then a number of things could be causing it:

1) A program not being nice with other apps or resources (Gigabyte apps are notorious for this)

2) A driver is being too hoggish with IRQ / Memory access. (Common issue with crackling of audio playback) for example: NIC drivers

3) Hardware conflict / not sharing properly

You would have to experiment is closing apps or disabling hardware to locate the culprit.

 

Average latency is about 250+ us during id;e, which is still within the green zone. Is the 100us value that you have is from your G73JH or is that just a common goal for any system to strive for?

Hardware is all stock as well, but if I am probably the only owner that has these issues, it might be a mix of bad software and/or drivers or possibly the BIOS since it has supposedly fixed the keyboard IRQ problems. Going to go and take a look at what I am running.

 

My lappy has anoccasional 512 us peak, but is usually 150-250 us. Basically, if it's under 500 you're ok.

Seeing that, I suggest you start disabling unused hardware in BIOS and see if that changes anything.

 

That's a neat little program, thanks.

 

Whoever has HDtune handy, see if you get something like this:

Looks like a RMA will be in the works, sigh...

 

I've got a single 1000ms spike, but otherwise it's under 250. I'm not running much of the vPro management software, and a bunch of things in the device manager aren't installed, so....

@evtsai.km2: What am I looking for? My 2nd HD doesn't register in HD Tune (looks just like your second screen shot), but does show up in HD Tune Pro normally. I'm blaming it on the software - update to HD Tune pro 4.5 and it ought to show up.

 

@evtsai.km2

Thank you for your consideration.

 

FYI Upgrading to the Catalyst 10.4 official drivers fixed the sleep/hibernation issues I was having even when I was still on the 206 BIOS

 

I get a BSOD when enabling jumbo frames as well.

 

thats a neat tool. I get around 150-180 with a jump to 564 while just browsing the net. occasionally I get around 270. sometimes 350's