G73 Gsod....

stock drivers are stable with almost every unit....including mine...the real test is running furmark after updating to 10.4 or 10.6 and see if it GSODs...

ofcourse, if u are happy with the stocks, and dnt have any probs running ur games, one must wonder, why would u want to update ur graphics in the first place...

 

deleted by me, because I didnt read the whole thread

 

The problem with that is if someone went wrong how would you re-flash the video card to the backup vga bios to get it working again. I would definitely not recommend someone with a g73 to flash to a sager vga bios especially if you are not under warranty. With a desktop it's not too bad, if something goes wrong usually you could just throw in a pci video card to flash back the messed up video card, but in a laptop's case, there is no way to re-flash back to the original bios if something goes wrong correct me if I'm wrong.

I've been contemplating on flashing to the g73 vga bios in my w870 just so that I would have power play working, but decided that it's definitely not worth bricking my 5870, and all the trouble that goes along with it.

 

Could someone be so kind and post a pic of your CCC Information Page if you are using the stock drivers? Reason being is that I upgraded my drivers to the 10.4 Mobility Official release, and started getting the GSODs like mad. (I have the same GPU BIOS the the OP had originally)

So, I used the ATI Installer to uninstall 10.4, rebooted, and then used the Asus Installer on the CD to put back the stock drivers, and now I have this:



Since I never kept a copy of what it looked like originally, I cannot compare the two. I found it odd that Cat 10.4 is still listed, and some of the other components look newer.

Also, no GSODs. At all.

 

Ok, this is weird, I flashed my vBIOS from jortex, and still not getting crashes in 10.4.

I dunno, i still get the occasional flicker, but I guess o-well its still going back.

 

LoL, Nvm, it ran vantage fine, but did a heaven benchmark and crashed in like 20secs.

Welp guess that settles it then.

 

I'm using the 012.017 vBios and I have been the champion I guess of claiming how stable the GPU can be. I've been able to run Furmark with overclock and GPU temps steady at 87C.

Anyways, keep us updated for a new bios with powerplay support. No powerplay support makes me not like this new bios...

 

Ok, here's how to flash the new BIOS. Do this at YOUR OWN RISK but it has been shown to fix the GSOD.

Downloaded the new ATI video bios:

RapidShare: 1-CLICK Web hosting - Easy Filehosting

You have to create a DOS bootable (I have a DOS bootable USB flash stick from awile back) and move the folder to your DOS bootable.

Boot to your DOS bootable (floppy, USB, etc)

NICE thing is you can revert back to your old video BIOS. But before you run the update.bat in the above RAR file, first run:

ATIFLASH -s 0 origbio

and that will save your BIOS to the file name origbio so you can go back in the future if you want. After that just run update.bat. It will flash and you'll be updated in less than a minute!!

 

Since you've shown the old BIOS crashes and the new one works, why are you returning your system?

 

If you make sure to save your BIOS first, then you can flash back to it at any time. Follow my steps above to save your old bios first.

I agree though, this is risky on a laptop, do proceed at your own risk. The old BIOS never crashed for me, but my buddy was crashing like crazy and with the new BIOS, no crashes! Just for grins I flashed mine to the new one too and it works good except the issue with PowerPlay not working. Doesn't bother me since my laptop is plugged in all the time.

 

Honestly I think if you have GSOD problems, do what mew suggested, get it replaced.

Just research how low the success rate for manufacturing the 40nm architecture is. For ATi it's much higher than Nvidia, but it's still pretty abysmal for manufacturing.

 

Because the A2 is the same exact price right now with Bing. So its worth it to just return.

Also, to above, i would say returning is a good option to assure eventually Asus sees how many are going back so a official fix can be made.

But for now, ppl that dont want to wait if they bought it online can do the vBIOS flash and get good results.

 

Mine just died out on me with stock drivers. I had no programs running except for the usual startup (norton and ATI catalyst). I went to open up firefox and my screen went blank. When it came back on my screen was split in half. One side with scrolling black lines on a white background. The other side is the desktop with a rainbow of color distortion.

I did not want to RMA this....but now I have to. I am not sure if I want to repurchase this laptop, I will have to look at my options...Too many problems from too many people.

How did the RMA process go with Tigerdirect dkillone? Did they give you a hard time? I just hope they don't push the blame to Asus and make me send this to Asus for repairs....

 

You got the PSOD problem, it's happened to a few others now.


Dang though, that sucks,


Yeah TD was great, I called them, told them I needed a RMA on my laptop, all they asked is why, and I told them it has been crashing. They are even sent me a UPS return lable so i dont have to pay for shipping back.

All-in-all, Tiger Direct is awesome for RMA's anybody that complains just got 1 bad person. My experience has been great with them.

 

Guys, I"m on stock drivers as well. All I did was plug in my hdmi cable to my LCD TV. I guess I have the PSOD but funny thing is the picture on my LCD TV is fine. Can this be hardware related or driver related because wouldn't both screens show up with PSOD. I have the settings set to duplicate.

 

Its a LCD hardware problem, dang, guess its happening to more and more ppl :|.

Only solution is to RMA, srry.

 

Greaaat.... dam thing is only 3 days old and running perfect until I slipped in the hdmi... build date on it was 04/10, guess even the newer ones have this problem

 

Which makes this a bit more scarier. Before it was supposedly most easiest to happen when running games in lower resolutions.

But now with tim817 and you getting it, while essentially doing nothing. Well, I dunno, I remember reading it was a failed LCD hardware controller piece or something along the lines.

I doubt its too widespread, but it sucks to hear about more ppl getting them, especially on such a new build date laptop.

Gentech is good with RMA's from what I read too, so you should be A-ok there. Hope you get your replacement soon enough and again, sorry to hear it happened to you, especially after only 3 days, I'd be sad too. :cry:

 

Yeah it most like is the LCD is bad and video card seem working fine to me, I'll help you setup DOA replacement to get the new unit.

I've seen quite a few units has same problems and strange thing is only happens on G73Jh, other Asus notebooks does not have this problem.

 

Thanks again Ken,

Makes me glad I ordered from Gentech. I get answers even late on a Saturday night.

 

No point in me doing this.

I just figured out that you use GPU-Z or some other tool to get the VBIOS version. If I use GPU-Z I get the same version as yours. When you look in the BIOS you will get a different version. I think the default Asus BIOS you have is the same as mine.

 

Hi, I've owned an Asus G73JH for 3 weeks and 3 days ago I started experiencing freezing while playing Dragon Age : Origins, and last night I had a GSOD while watching The IT Crowd . I installed the 10.4 drivers 2 weeks ago and hadn't had any problems up until then.

I think that for the time being I'll revert to the stock drivers, but my laptop didn't come with a CD (or if it did, it got lost in the trip from the US), so I have to download them from the Asus website I guess? The thing is that the entry under 'VGA' that says 'Graphics Driver' is 243MB, whereas the ATI Catalyst drivers were less than 100 MB. Am I downloading the right thing?

 

If you're interested, I have the direct linked to the VGA drivers in "The Conclusion" section of the guide. See link in sig. Yes, the archive size is 237 MB (248,889,369 bytes) and is byte for byte exactly the same as the disc version.

 

correct me anyone if i'm wrong

if you have Ver012.017.000.004.035992, than anythings else than stock drivers by asus (9.12) will lead to GSOD

and if you have Ver012.019.000.003.035951, then you can go to higher drivers (i.e 10.1 and up)

and asus have not make the new bios available?

 

I agree with mew1838. My new A2 has not had any GSOD's with the 10.4 drivers

 

I guess the inference is you replaced yours.

 

Yes, sorry if that was unclear. I got my new one yesterday. I ran Furmark, Heaven 2.0, and BF2BC with the 10.4 drivers and had no GSOD's.

 

Bah this updating issue is complicated, I was thinking to update to 10.4 now I don't. I will stick with the stock drivers as long as it does not get GSOD.

 

Interesting., If you don't mind, which vBIOS version do you have? The information can be obtained from GPU-Z.

 

GPUZ shows "VER012.017.000.004.035992"

 

Hmm, that's the same version of the vBIOS that others have reported getting a GSOD when used with the Cat 10.4 drivers. It seems more likely that the vBIOS really isn't the root cause, perhaps updating the vBIOS is a workaround, but not the real solution.

BTW, that's the same vBIOS version I have.

Thanks for the info.

 

Kalim if you go back through the thread you can see that a lot of us, in fact majority of G73 owners don't have GSOD using the same bios.

I don't think bios or drivers are the problem. If you have a faulty GPU with GSOD, then RMA it. It's faster and less headache IMO. It happens, but I also do not blame Asus for this. Sure Asus messed up on some things, but ATi GPU is not one of them, I put the blame on ATi for this. ATi should test all their chips thoroughly before shipping them to Asus, Clevo, etc.

A good idea maybe is to have your RMA go through a reseller. I know GenTech has offered to help their customers with the RMA and tell reseller to have the replacement shipped to them for testing. So if it's no good on replacement they can deal with Asus and may go faster.

Also to those who think reseller does Asus repair are idiots, they do not. Resellers tell you to RMA it Asus... Not even with Sager. If you send it to them, I guarantee they send that Sager to a Sager repair center....

 

AFAIK, I don't either. Although, I haven't had any reason to update the driver.

While others, in an attempt to reduce or eliminate GSOD issues have had some success changing the vBIOS, at the cost of losing other functionality, I have long suspected the root cause of the GSOD issues was the result of a weak or bad gfx card.

I agree.

 

I don't think a faulty graphics card is the issue.

On my G73, as well as a friend of mine's G73, we both get the GSOD when trying to run Windows Experience Index with any DRIVERS other than the stock Asus drivers. Cat 10.3, 10.4 and leaked 8.74 all had this issue.

As soon as we updated to the CLEVO BIOS the problem was gone!

Now it's possible the new BIOS is doing some trick like applying a little more voltage or something, but why would DRIVERS change the behavior if it is faulty software?

Anyway, looking forward to having Asus update the video BIOS to one that is stable AND supports the HDMI port!

 

yeah......just dont hold your breath....

 

Just to add my grain of sand to the issue: Last week I was experiencing occasional freezes and GSODs while playing Dragon Age and watching videos in Media Player Classic. I did a clean install 5 days ago and installed only the necessary drivers (no bloatware nor Creative) and the 10.4 catalyst drivers on top of the stock ones in the Asus VGA driver page. I HAD to install the 10.4 drivers because the performance in Dragon Age of the stock ones was abysmal (I'm talking about going from choppy approx. 10 FPS to fluid > 30 FPS).

I haven't had any GSODs or freezes since.

 

Hmm when I first saw Xeven report the same with his two G73's I though it was just funny but now I think I will make a poll and see if other get simlar results when they overclock their G73.

 

Well, slap my and call me Sally! Getting fed up with the lousy Catalyst issues, and suspecting something with Asus' OEM setup is probably b0rked, I decided to do a fresh install of Windows 7 and see if I can get a recent Catalyst running.

And I am now proud to say that I have been able to run my first Heaven 2.0 benchmark with no GSODs, blips, hiccups, driver stopping, or whatever bad, using Cat 10.4 Official. And no modified vBIOS

I'll list all the drivers and apps I've installed:

Using:

ATK Package 1.0.0002
Power4Gear Hybrid 1.29 (High Performance)
Realtek 2.48 Audio drivers
DirectX Feb 2010
Intel INF for 5 Series 9.1.1.1025
Intel RST 9.6.0.1014
MS Hotfix for KB975243

Stock items installed from Driver CD:

Keyboard Filter, Bluetooth Utility, Camera, Intel Turbo Boost Tech, Multicard Reader, Splendid



(Now mind you, previously, I couldn't even run Heaven, and would even GSOD/lockup on Aero desktop with 10.4 Cats)

I'm still tweaking, and still get the occasional gsod, but at least 90% of the time the driver recovers, and I can at least do something. But this is alot more stable than before.


I'll let you know how Dragon Age fares once Steam is done.

 

Meh, not as stable as I hoped, tho at least it doesn't bork on me in seconds like before. Temps are not extravagant, so I can't say it is due to poor cooling. Bugger.

 

You could always try going back to the stock 9.12 VGA drivers.

 

Try the 10.1 (V8.692.1.0) driver from ASUS:
ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Support-
It works fine for me w/o GSOD, whereas using any AMD drivers 10.x were GSODed.

 

I just get the sneaky suspicion based on here, plus what Xeven and such contributed, that the unit isn't being fed proper voltages under load. Which is probably why people report stability when overclocking, as the driver "power table" is probably supplying higher voltages at those clocks. Either that, or there's a faulty voltage regulator.

 

Thanks, but I know about those. The idea here was to try and get later Cat 10.x releases working.

Hmm, after reading the thread on fixing keyboard delay due to some oxidation of the keyboard cable slot, I wonder if the MXM slot is oxidizing?

 

Thanks jortex! You're my hero. Flashing the VBios did it for me!! Now i can use CCC 10.5 !

 

So you flashed to the Clevo vbios I assume? And from the elation, it worked?
Did you happen to test the VGA or the HDMI port for functionality?

 

There is a new VGA driver release from ASUS: Version V8.700.0.0 . Have anybody tried to install it? I failed to install this version even after Driver Sweeper&CC cleaning. I'm looking forward for any ideas or suggestions?

 

I also tried newest ASUS VGA driver but without success. Looks like some parts are missing in that one. Even the size of package is shifty small.

 

Ok, it looks like something wrong with a driver package itself, I'll mail to ASUS then...

 

Upps, just found out this driver is not supporting 5870M...

 

I think I'm the one with strange case here. I'm getting GSOD on 10.5 everytime I play Dragon Age under 2 mins. This is not the case on 10.6 (I installed the Full Software Suite). WEI, Dragon Age, and Left 4 Dead 2 doesn't cause any GSOD anymore for me.

I'm thinking of downgrading to 10.5 and back to 10.6 just to check if it really fixes the GSOD issue on my G73.