Catalyst 10.3 vs. G73JH

I just got one of these beasts yesterday. I wiped the HDD after I saw all of the junk they had pre-installed. During my fresh install of Win7, instead of ASUS's video drivers, I installed the hyped-up Catalyst 10.3 mobile pack.

Later when I did some gaming, namely Serious Sam HD, I got lockups/corruption very quickly. I would notice some flickering and then the whole screen would corrupt and the notebook would need to be powered off and back on. I thought I had a defective notebook. I was a bit annoyed to say the least.

But when problems like this come up, I troubleshoot and test. I got the Furmark GPU torture test and the freezing was definitely repeatable with it. But I found that the crashing wasn't temperature related because one time it crashed within seconds, before anything could heat up. Hmmm....

So I then began to wonder what else could be the cause, and thought of those Catalyst 10.3 drivers. I uninstalled them and installed the ASUS video driver pack from their web site.

And now all is good. Apparently Catalyst 10.3 does not get along with these machines, or at least not with my machine anyway. Anyone else seeing this?

 

Also the catalyst doesn't go well with the Power4 whatever app. I noticed improvements when I uninstalled it.

 

I am temped to try 10.3 just to see if I can eek a bit more performance from the G73, but considering how perfect my system is running I really am having second thoughts. I have not been having any heat problems, nor any lockups using the stock drivers. I'd like to hear if others are A)seeing performance gains with the 10.3 and B)if there are more people having stability issues.

 

I would hold off. I installed them, but I didn't get any jump over the leaked 10.3 betas from a month ago.

 

When I switched over the G73 that I have at work to the Cat 10.3a's, I would get complete color and image distortion when using an external display. The main laptop screen was fine though. It looked like 4bit color through a kaleidoscope. I would also get this wierd white/gray color fade in and out when switching resloutions on the external monitor. It kind of looked similar to the issue people have been describing with the faulty GPU's. Reverting back to the stock drivers fixed it.

Of course when I tried the 10.3a's on the G73 that I have at home, all was well. Including the external display.

The G73 that I have at work has been acting wierd for awhile, (dead hard drive among the issues) so I RMA'd it yesterday, just to be sure.

 

With mine runnning 10.3 it was insanely unstable, but with the ASUS vid drivers I am seeing complete stability now. Very strange stuff.

 

Keith - you get to use a G73 at work and at home? Wow I am envious. I'd always be trying to play a game here and there if I did my work on this beast

Sorry you have to RMA one of them, but at least it's the work one!

 

Been using the 10.3a cats without issue. Haven't done any benching but honestly it doesn't feel any faster. Doesn't seem to run any hotter for me. I have the Power4Gear still installed.

I would say some folks are seeing faulty GPU issues.

 

I've had 10.3 beta on this thing for a good solid week now with no issues

 

Yep.

I've got the X1 at work and I have a X2 at home.

 

That's because the improvements are under 10% in most cases. You aren't going to perceive a difference of only a few frames per second.

30 fps before -> 33 fps now (= +10%). That gets lost in the noise when you consider game framerates are unstable in general.

 

I've used the the 10.3 preview driver for 2 days - no problems so far.

 

Not disagreeing- that and I have been using the beta 10.3 cats before that. Just saying I'm using them, they work fine for me, and they're not the second coming of Christ... that's all.

 

I decided to give the 10.3a's another go because others have been saying they are fine. And apparently it's all good now because I've had no problems. I have no idea what was going on before, maybe some sort of screwed up install? Very strange because I had just installed Win7 fresh.

I ran Furmark and played STALKER SoC for about 30 mins without issue.

 

What's the temps with FurMark?

 

It seems to max out at 99-100C.

 

I got it to corrupt again, with Furmark running in a window. I'm back on the ASUS ATI drivers trying to get it to freeze up but it seems to behave flawlessly with them.

My G73JH on Catalyst 10.3a after some windowed Furmark (Serious Sam HD did it too).

 

Wow, how long does it take to get to those temps? The highest I've seen has been 78 after repeated Vantage runs. When I'm gaming it's much lower than that.

 

Have you tried uninstalling power4gear? I've been reading that causes problems. My G73 comes in tomorrow so I can test tomorrow.

 

Nope, uninstalling power4gear doesn't help.

It sure is strange how it is completely solid on the ASUS drivers....

 

You know these things are portable right? You could have just bought one and used it at both work and home. Meh your money...

 

Oh don't be jealous he has two....lol

 

What's more strange is how it works on some g73's and not others. Has to be a software conflict issue. The only Asus thing I have installed is ATK driver package and the 10.3's work fine.

 

I didn't buy both. My employer bought me the X1 and I bought myself the X2. I thought about using the X1 as both a work and play machine, but I wanted one that was mine to do whatever I wanted with.

At the moment, it's a good thing I went that way seeing as the X1 is out for RMA.

On a side note, my X2 has no issues with the 10.3a's. My X1 did. Thinking it may be a software issue or something, I installed my Ghost image from my X2 onto my X1. It still didn't work. That's what led me to believe that the X1 was in fact bad.

 

So,we should keep 10.3 Preview right?

 

I guess so. I'm reading up on other threads about the 10.3a drivers and some people say that they like the 10.3 Preview Betas better. Some say the older pack is faster, some say it's more stable, some say they are happy either way. But who really knows. Whatever works right?

All I can tell you is that I can not get any sign of trouble to appear with the ASUS ATI drivers which are based on 9.12 Beta. When I install 10.3a, I get a lot of repeatable instability. I will have to try the 10.3 preview beta when I get a change.

10.3 WHQL is due any day now though. Those are based on preview beta, I believe, not 10.3a. 10.3a is likely a halfway point to 10.4 (or later perhaps). ATI's driver releases are not as immediate as they seem. There is a lag time between development and release (that's why they do these occasional hotfix packs).

 

Some of these run a lot cooler then others....hottest I've seen on mine is 96

 

Furmark gets mine to sit around 99-100C. That's probably hotter than a game can get it though.

My older game notebook with a 7800 Go GTX runs about this hot too so I'm not worried about it.

 

Ok I tried the 10.3 Preview Beta too now and it did the same corruption + freeze deal. It was actually the white screen freeze deal. The end result varies. White screen, black screen, horrible corruption screen.

Unless I'm on the ASUS ATI pack which operates completely flawlessly! I sent a message to ASUS about this but am not sure what to expect. I'm considering returning the notebook to Newegg for a replacement.

10.3a - bad
10.3 preview beta - bad
ASUS ATI pack - ok

I did some Google searching for issues like white screens with Radeon HD 5770 and 5750, which is the same chip as this Mobility 5870, and there are many such cases around. I'm thinking that ATI is having problems with these GPUs.

 

I havent updated to 10.3 but i did update everything else on my system and have not uninstalled power4 and havent had any issues except the screen above twice when dealing with taking out the power outlet from the wall and it resets the computer for a sec (turns off screen not the entire thing) then when it repops it flashed the screen nothing a quick restart didnt fix... Other than that nothings wrong with it decent temps.

 

I get temps that get as high as the 90s when just playing Dragon Age. The fan will kick up to very high on and off as well. Same thing with Half Life 2 using Fake Factory mod. I don't think the temps stay a constant 90s but I hope it is ok that it gets that hot.

 

I've played several hours of games on this note now just fine with the ASUS ATI drivers. But if I install any 10.3 set, I can get it to freeze up pretty quickly.

ATI actually released a hotfix that reduces this problem for some of the desktop 5800 cards. There is apparently a fix in the works for the 5700 cards too. Frankly I think that there is some sort of hardware issue that they can't tame or can't figure out how to debug.

 

Called up Newegg and I'm doing a replacement RMA with them. I'm not messing around with keeping faulty hardware. We'll see if the next notebook works correctly.

 

My temps also hit 110 in furmark. Just sayin'.

 

I use stock drivers, but when i played for example BFBC2 or Cryses Warhead it showed max temps 99-101 degree (i didnt notice any problems during playing).
The strange thing is that when i get out of the game and look in HWinfo i never caught higher actual temps than 80-85 degree, just the max show that high numbers.

 

The 10.3 drivers are absolutely better than the stock asus one in terms of game performance. I get much better frame rate in MWF2, crysis, dirt2. have no problems using it so far.

 

Hi,
could someone post a few benchmark running these drivers over at latest Heaven DX11 benchmark?


Thanks!

 

Just look up a desktop 5770 running it and expect a bit lower performance.

 

I received my second G73 now. I had RMAed the unit from Newegg due to GPU corruption and freezes, and bought the Best Buy model.

This one had a blue vertical streak on the LCD. Didn't even bother to go further with testing and just returned it. Best Buy just refunded me on the spot.

Seriously. Two units with unique defects in a row. ASUS has some awful QA. My luck sucks too though lol.

 

The stock drivers are better than the 10.3 ones. It actually made my gpu run hotter when gaming. On the stock drivers, it tops out at around 85C. The temps drop quickly during cutscenes or low actions scenes to around 76, 77C.

If your gpu is hitting 90C or higher then I think there is something wrong with either the gpu, thermal paste, cooling system or a combination of sorts.

By the way, I have the laptop on a passive cooling stand when playing games. It topped out at 85C playing BioShock 2 on the desktop.

 

Just my two cents, the LCD distortion happened to me on stock ASUS drivers even before touching 10.3. Beta or otherwise. In the process of RMA and am getting a replacement A1 for my defective X2 ftw.

 

That's why there are none available for retails sales. But, good for you...!

 

I got a working G73 now. It took 2 replacements. The first replacement had a defective LCD with a vertical blue line.

Cat 10.3 works flawlessly.

I actually went to a Best Buy model instead of the Newegg machine because I want a lower resolution LCD. Keep the GPU load down so it's usable for more than a year. I did this with my prior Dell Inspiron 9300 w/ 7800 Go too. I just wish we had 16:10 LCDs and I could get 1680x1050 instead of this x900 stuff. 16:9 is not appreciated by me .

At 1600x900 the GPU really tears up games. I was running Oblivion with 4X super sampling AA and it was quite adequate. STALKER CoP however can still get a little choppy at max DX11 settings. I've been playing the whole STALKER series on my 8800GTX in my TVPC at 1360x768 so I know that the two newer games are rather demanding. 1920x1080 is pushing it with anything less than a top of the line desktop card.