Cooling G73JH video card, need help!

Ok so, I managed to get one thing and only one thing to run properly on this machine so far, and that was a monitoring only ati thing that showed me that my GPU temps wern't so great.

Well only running DFO (arcade style beat em up in 2d), I was sitting at 73C! I was pretty worried until I saw the fan speed was sitting on 30%, then soon realized I need something like my desktop has to handle this and lock it at 100%.

So I went lookin for stuff, and I found a few things that in the end didn't work at all. I tried ATI tools, which didn't have a driver sig so it failed to work. I then gave ATI Tray Tools a shot, and it BSOD's my comp every time I tried to run the program. Theeeeeen I gave RivaTuner a go, and it didn't have the options to mess with the low lvl settings to change fan speeds and such for some reason.

Then I saw that AMD had a tool like evga, called overdrive or something. I got all excited and downloaded it, ran it, and it kept failing to initialize! Apparently even AMD's own program can't run properly with it's own cards? Awesome company, imo.

Sooo, What should I do here to lock my fan speed on the card at 100%, and monitor the temps (perferably in my tray tool like with evga precision tuner) with my ASUS G73JH laptop, with it's Radeon 5870m??

 

Wow, ok. Now im actually getting graphic errors with my machine. I'm gettin the screen going black, and then getting grey/white pinstripes going up and down it. Then it all just goes black with a mouse cursor that won't move, and stays that way, sound still working just fine.

When I got this laptop, I upgraded to the latest official mobile drivers from the ATI site, but im assuming I need to go backwards now to the ones from the asus site?
Atleast I hope that's all I need to do, because if this cards a lemon, then im screwed. :/

 

Yup. Stick with ASUS drivers to avoid that problem. Or return it, if you want to ...

 

Zig brings up an excellent question though. . ARE there any fan controllers out there [preferably freeware, but not mandatory] that allow manual control of the fan, either on a scale or straight allowing you to manipulate base fan speed? I know macs have a couple of programs [Fan control and SMC fan control] but the only one I'm familiar with for PC is speedfan, and I don't think I've gotten that one to work on any machine in 5 years or so. . .

 

Fans are controlled by the system BIOS on laptops, unlike desktops where the GPU controls it's own cooling. I've heard of very little success finding software which allows you to control the fans speed, other than changing them in the BIOS.

 

well, 73c isn't really to be concerned about. My fans never run at full speed and I've been playing my ps2 games on here and it never went above 75c.

check out these threads to prevent your gsod's bsods or lock ups or whatever you are getting.

ati debugging thread

creative debugging thread

to make things short for you, a few options u can do. Upgrade your bios (I would make this last priority).

how to update bios at ur risk

download this and oc your gpu to 705/1100. I recommend doing this first. edit -> shows temps.

You can also revert back to stock ati drivers.

edit - I'll say this, there is no need for this thing to blow at 100% If you get temps over 75, either your room temps are a bit high, your fans are dusty, or something else is wrong hardware wise.

 

Ok, so, I uninstalled the caty 10.6 mobile from the ati site, and used driver cleaner in safe mode, then rebooted and installed the drivers from the ASUS site, and the result so far has been overall stable.

No black screening, no crashing, no artifacting.

I played mass effect 2 maxed out for a good 40 mins, all was well. I ran 3d mark vantage 6 times, and 5/6 went perfectly. The one time that did not, I hit start testing, the screen went black to load it, and it never got to loading it. Just hung around at the black screen. I was able to tab outta it tho to go back to the desktop and just close it out. It didn't even crash, it closed out smoothly. So im not sure if that's due to win 7 and the programs incompatability with eachother or not, but everything went smooth otherwise.

I have on my laptop, driver wise now, all the updates from windows, and from the asus site. Those are the only drivers I have changed on this laptop now.
So that's...

ASUS Site Updates:
Chipset update
Bios 209 update
Video card update

Windows:
Too many to list, got em all, lol.


Sooo, that takes care of that problem for the moment. I'm somewhat relived to know that it's just ATI/AMD being their fail-selfs as per the norm on drivers, however it bugs me that im probably trapped using some old manufacturer drivers for who knows how long, lol.
Watch, these ASUS ones don't work with SC2 when it comes out or something, and screws me over hard. XD


This however takes me back to the one question of what to do about temp monitoring.

FYI, the 73C I saw was well playing a very non-demanding game. It's hard to tell where my temps are going tho due to the lack of something like EVGA precision well actually putting the gpu at full load. If it's gonna sit at 100c well im playing SC2, then this laptops lifespan is gonna be cut seriously short, imo.

 

yea, the last thing u want is to reach 100c. Looks like stable ati drivers are working for you so I would leave it at that. Like I said though, ati 10.6 and oc ur gpu should show great results especially if you have bios 209.

 

I'll gladly add to that. . . I went google hunting after my last post. talk about a wasted 2 hours ><

 

I saw somewhere on these forums where someone said that these cards were made to run at around 100c. That's.. Too hot though honestly. It'd kill the cards lifespan!!
Not to mention things start warping at that point and melting and breaking.

Doesn't make sense honestly. There has to be a way to tweak these fans so our cards won't die out ina year of use.