G73 and Cat 10.5 GSOD Debug Thread

I decided to put the same energy into this as I did with the Creative debugging, and I've been at it all evening. Interestingly enough, my current progress has produced a stable machine with Cat 10.5 Mobility. (Users with no problems can skip this thread, you lucky sob's) I have one that will GSOD almost at will when 3D is on, and will even sometimes lockup during boot.

All my experiences thus far, and what I have read on many a forum, point me towards a hardware issue. And I've wondered if it's complicated by another piece of hardware.

BTW, I would like for those people who DON'T have any problems, to please list your model, and ID. (Mine is a G73JH-A1 ID: 1A BIOS 209) and if it lists any revision indicators.

OK, back to work... I started by minimizing what hardware was enabled to a basic core set so I can see if freeing up resources would help. Also, I have done a fresh Win 7 install to minimize junk.

Disable in BIOS: Atheros LAN, Touchpad, Bluetooth, Camera, Card Reader, TV Tuner (we have a TV Tuner?!)

Installed Cat 10.5, disabled Creative to make Kalim happy , disabled PowerPlay in CCC, set Power4Gear Hybrid to High Performance, and ran Dragon Age (Steam Edition) to test. And as usual, it would GSOD in under 2 minutes. or 10 seconds, or lockup Windows on boot, etc.

I read in other threads some people found success in changing the clock speeds using AMD GPU Tool. I tried 699/999, and that fails. Tried 750/1000, and GSOD's like usual.

However, 800/1100 worked beautifully. Played Dragon Age for 2.5 hrs. Not one hiccup, screen glitch, or even a driver reset. And rebooted a couple of times to ensure it wasn't a fluke. Still plays beautifully, even with Creative re-enabled. (Sorry Kalim )

Now, I don't know about you, but I find that weird. Tho it got me thinking that maybe it's perhaps due to the GDDR5 RAM that is used on some of the cards, or a combo of the ram and gpu. Or perhaps such an overclock properly disables PowerPlay. I dunno. Maybe you do? (and the purpose of this thread)

OK, terrific. Now what I need to start doing is enabling hardware and see when it starts to GSOD again. 800/1100 with all hardware on fails btw, so the culprits involved remain elusive.

Max Temps at 800/1100 are :

TSS0 - 82.0 C
TSS1 - 96.5 C
TSS2 - 88.0 C

If you have this problem as well, feel free to grab 10.5 and join in. More input the merrier.

Here's a link for Ziddy's v3 vBIOS.

 

Out of curiosity, I changed the clocks to 800 and 1100 using the AMD Clock Tool and downloaded 10.5 from the ATI site. I installed 10.5 by running the install program. I did not remove the stock ATI drivers prior to the install of 10.5 and the system did not require a reboot.

I've never had any lockups on this unit but it's only about a week old. This X2 from Micro Center came with Bios 206 installed. I updated to 209 using the USB stick from within the Bios.

Played some Titan's Quest Immortal Throne and Company of Heroes with DX10 enabled. I watched an episode of Criminal Minds on DVD and surfed a bit.

So far no issues. I still have the Creative stuff on here but never enabled bass boost. All the ASUS stuff is stock though Trend was replaced by McAfee. I did not disable anything or go through any of the other steps you listed. Time will tell how stable the machine is. I will completely shut down now and use it for work all day tomorrow instead of my Mac.

Thanks for the tips.

Cheers,

 

Have you tried running 3D mark as from reading other GPU over clocking treads people can get past 783 core for stability..

But it might try it myself cos being stuck on ASUS driver due to GSOD really sucks, especially loading Battlefield Bad Company 2..

 

As for me I have no issues, G73JH-A2, installed 10.5 over the 9.12 directly without uninstalling then rebooted. On 209 BIOS.

 

Absolutely no GSODs with gaming?

 

League of Legends and Bad Company 2 works flawlessly so far, all on mobility 10.5 and 209 bios. But I bet worst is yet to come, going to play DA:O and Mass Effect. I'll post the results later.

 

Never had any and still do not after upgrading to 10.5. Only played for a couple of hours since upgrading. It's only been a day so time will tell.

Cheers,

 

yeah, not one. Been on CCC 10.5 for a while now, since it came out.

 

As for me I have no issues, G73JH-A2, installed 10.5 over 10.3, which was over 9.12 directly without uninstalling then rebooted. On 209 BIOS.

 

Yeah same method with DCx, guess its better that way?

 

slightly off topic, but still relevant I guess. Anyone on the 10x drivers try connecting to an external lcd via the vga port? I bring it up because the last time I tried that with the 10.1s from asus sparked n burnt out my power brick. Hate to sound like a broken record here, but I need to use the ext monitor for presentations and would like to know if the issue has occured to anyone with the updated drivers. Thank you.

 

I use external via HDMI to DVI. Works fine. I only plug or remove while the laptop is off.

Cheers,

 

Forgive the newbish question, but what are the exact pros and advantages to upgrading to the latest Cat 10.5 drivers?

Are there noticeable increases in performance, lower temps, and better compatibility with games? I know the changes are listed in that changelog in that other thread, but in practice drivers tend to perform differently.

So since you brave souls took the plunge, care to elaborate on what differences are noticed compared to the stock drivers ASUS supplied?

Or are we stuck with the inevitable wait of waiting for ASUS to release a G73 specific update. Which would be a long wait at the very least.

Anybody went straight to 10.5 from 9.12?

 

@BumbleBoner upgrading to drivers is always a users choice. They are usually for compatibility with applications and games.
- Catalyst 10.5 officially has full DXVA 2.0 L5.1 support
- Fixed the problem with video preview in Adobe Premiere CS5
- Numerous game profile improvements
- They made changes to OpenGL, for the worse though. So if you use OpenGL games or applications, better off using 10.4a than 10.5 then until ATi rectifies this blunder.

And so on. Only you can answer if upgrading to 10.5 will be good for you. For the average user who doesn't game with the latest games constantly, using the same driver is perfectly fine and no upgrading needed.

That's not a driver issue. It's obvious you had some static electricity build up somewhere, had moisture or something loose to cause that shock. No drivers or GSOD will cause that and it's no the fault of Asus or the G73 machine. It's something you did or your environment. Sorry but the blame only goes on you or your environment on this one.

 

...unless it's a short in the hardware. But it's definitely not a driver/software issue.

 

As noted above, I wend directly from stock to 10.5 w/o any issue. Installed right over the original drivers; no reboot required.
I didn't really need to; just wanted to see if it had any impact.

^ That is important to note. Since I do not play FPS or the latest games, I have not experienced any of the issues referenced here but it was an interesting exercise since I've always been able to use the latest ATI drivers when I had a desktop I didn't understand all the issues being discussed here.

Cheers,

 

Ovewriting the drivers worked well, but the changes simply weren't there. For example, Bad Company 2 worked in dx11 mode only with fresh install of 10.5. With overwrited drivers, game was not able to display dx11 content at all (major differences in lighting quality and performance).

So I'm hanging on fresh 10.5 install and so far no screen of deaths.

 

I did too, 9.12 --> 10.5, straight installation as well, didn't uninstall first.

 

Upgrading like that is generally more successful than reverting to previous versions, since installer implementations may not overwrite files if newer versions are already found at the destination.

 

ok terrific, Day 2 Log:

Goal: to start enabling hardware, and see what happens at various settings

1) Enabled Atheros AR8131 LAN - noted that driver installed was 1.0.0.17 from Win Update. Updated to ASUS's 1.0.0.23 package.

@ 700/1000 - unstable, noted visual artifacting (precursors to a GSOD) within seconds. Shut down DA.

@ 800/1100 - stable. (I hate the fact that this works. lol)

2) Bluetooth BT-270 - driver 6.2.0.9403, upgraded to 6.2.5.600 (I find it highly amusing that the AzureWave unit Asus supplied is not recognized by Broadcomm's own updater)

@ 700/1000 PowerPlay disabled in CCC - glitchy
@ 800/1100 PPLay disabled - GSOD, PPlay enabled - stable

While digging around, I noted the updated ATK Package, 1.0.0004 , and installed it. Disabled the BT again to test.

@ 700/1000 PPlay Enabled - GSOD, PPLay Disabled - GSOD
@ 800/1100 PPlay Disabled/Enabled - stable

 

Curious how do you get 800 1100 to stick so that it's set permanently?

Cheers,

edit; also why bother turning on each component Individually since the problem persisted even with all of them off? That would seem to indicate the other parts are not the problem.

 

*sigh*

I installed 10.5 hoping that the 209 BIOS might change something and allow them to work (I know.. several posts said it wouldn't).

My process was simple. I backed up m data and did a clean install of Windows 7, ran Windows Update, installed 10.5 and then installed and ran Furmark. Poor machine didn't even last to the 5 minute mark.

So now it's either RMA time or I bring it to the local Asus repair shop (there is one 30 min from my house). It is just beyond frustrating cause I -really- don't want to loose my machine but I can't accept paying for a notebook that can't even run reference drivers. I actually play games that these newer drivers address issues with, not to mention the performance gains in the newer drivers. I have written asking if ASUS plans to update the video BIOS on these hoping that I could hold out for that and see if that fixes it but haven't heard anything back.

If I could get my money back I would. My only hope is that others read these forums before picking one of these up.

 

Something I noticed, using the event viewer, I have constant errors popping up "WHEA-Logger event 17" when the cats (any version) are installed. Obviously a driver conflict, not a hardware problem, I was wondering if other people are experiencing this as well? It happened on 10.5 and 9.12 or whatever asus stock drivers are...

Hmm. A quick look at the search function, makes it appear that this is a fairly common problem. I guess it's looking for a non existent "PCI Express Root Port", and it isn't causing any problems... and no one has solved it. I thought I'd ask if we were all having it, just in case someone knows how to resolve it.

 

Update:

I got tired of doing it all 1 at a time so I just disabled whatever I felt I didn't need to use: Camera, TV Tuner, and Bluetooth (based on earlier findings, plus it's AzureWave BT )

Everything else I updated drivers for, plus I rolled back my Intel INF to 9.1.1.1025, since it's what is recommended by Intel for laptop chipsets.

Anyhoo, the big secret to success here seems to be overclocking the vRAM, and not the GPU. 705/1000 fails, but 705/1100 is rock solid, just to show as an example. I'm too tired to see how high I need to go up to get it stable.

For the time being, I'll contact Asus and try and get someone with a clue on the phone, and I'll try to do a RMA of the vid card to be done at my local ASP. this way, they will ship the part to the ASP, and the guys there can do the swap, so no need to send it to Asus, and play Roulette with the laptop. Besides, the screen is gorgeous, and I got 1333 RAM modules. Or maybe not... Maybe I can get the tech from the ASP to inquire about an updated vBIOS. Maybe the general public can't get one, but maybe their ASP techs can.

 

Oh, and what happened to Xeven? he poofed away!

 

You might want to read this here, it's long.

 

Thanks, I had stumbled across that earlier this evening, and I'm glad that I'm not the only one aware of the event log. So far, it hasn't caused me any problems (well, I can't install/play starcraft 1 on my machine, it freezes after installing, and DVD Decrypter freezes if it plays a sound at the end of ripping...), but if it does start causing me problems I'll rma it.

Two year warranty, after all. If they don't step up to the plate and issue a fix (and it causes me problems), I suppose they'll end up having to replace it with an upgraded model to fix it properly.

Does yours have this too, Kalim? Chastity? (The WHEA-logger error 17 - in the "event viewer")?

 

In which event log? There's a lot of event logs

 

To tell you the truth, I can't look at the Event Viewer in Windows 7 long enough before my eyelids start to close. Nothing like Windows XP were you had basically three things to look through and could find what it was you were looking for. Sorry, I have no idea where to even begin.

 

Well, after 1 day of gaming, freshly installed 10.5 started to G/R/B/YSOD's on my machine. Back to april asus drivers.

 

Event Viewer -> Event Type "Warning" -> Source "WHEA-Logger"

Anyone else see errors here?

 

Can't you just use ATI Overdrive for the vRAM overclock? If you just save that setting it automatically applies the overclock when you boot the system.
In that way there is an effective way of stopping the GSOD right?

 

So it's in the summary...

None of those errors/warnings on mine.

Which actual log are the warnings being written to? Should be in the "Log" column...

 

Thankfully you found it. I was looking in the column tree opening branches and couldn't find anything. My eyes almost closed until I read what you wrote.

I also don't see any in the warning summary.

 

It appears that they're being written to the system log. I'm going to try a fresh install, perhaps I've missed installing something like the KB_driver ... *shrugs*

 

Two days after moving to 10.5 I rcvd my first BSOD. I had forgotten to change the vram to 1100 before doing anything. After a hard boot I made sure I bumped it up to 1100 and was able to play 2.5 hours of DX10 goodness with Company of Heroes.

How to I make the setting stick so I don't have to remember to use the AMD GPU Tool each time I startup a gaming session?

Cheers,

 

I believe you have to re-flash the vBios to have persistent settings. Perhaps there's a way of getting it to re-apply at startup, but I'm not familiar with that.

Also, I'm still getting flooded with warnings in the event viewer, after a fresh reinstall (x64+ATI drivers does it... x64+MS stock VGA=nothing, and x86+ATI does not throw up errors, either).

 

I take it you are trying the 1100 Workaround for this? I didn't know you had GSOD issues.

 

Here are the step by step instructions in order to have the GPU overclocked every time you boot.

1. Open Explorer and navigate into the "AMD GPU Clock Tool" directory.
2. Right-click over "AMDGPUClockTool.exe" and select "Create shortcut".
3. Rename shortcut to "AMDGPUClockTool".
4. Left-click and hold down the mouse button on the "AMDGPUClockTool" shortcut.
5. Drag shortcut over the "Start" button, "All Programs" and "Startup".
6. When the "Startup" branch expands, release inside.
7. Right-click "AMDGPUClockTool" and select "Properties".

Without changing what is already in the "Target" field (press End key once), add a space and then paste the following:

-eng=800 -mem=1100​

Once this is completed, press the OK button and you're done. Now every time you reboot the laptop the GPU will be running at 800/1100.

Enjoy.

 

I did not until I decided to try 10.5 as part of your testing. I cloned my drive and have been running with 10.5 and your 1100 workaround just to see if I could validate your results. Today is the first time I've had a crash since loading 10.5 on the day you posted this. For me it did not crash at all while running VMware and all my work apps under the VM even w/o 1100 set. However, tonight I forgot to set it and within 20 minutes playing Titan's Quest Immortal Throne I had my first crash. I find it very interesting over-clocking the vram improves stability.

Someone else mentioned ATI overdrive. Do you know what that is?

Outstanding! Great way to make this work-around more persistent.

Cheers,

 

If anyone is worried about temps, you don't have to do such a large gpu overclock. I found that 705/1100 works just as well, and keeps the temps at stock levels.

 

Tested it.Works greats.No GSOD with my G73 now.Thanks man

 

Those that are having troubles with this drivers are the ones that were having trouble with 10.4 also right?

 

Thanks Kalim...this was very helpful.

And goodluck to Chastity...will be keeping a close eye on this and Xaven's thread for any updates.

 

Correct. Anyone with 10.5 would have the same issues with Cat 10.3 or later.

 

Here's a link for Xeven's latest 5870 vBIOS v2. (I hate waiting for silly download timers)

Features included some added timings for better battery life, and ATI Overdrive is enabled for easy clock modifications.

 

And this one works with HDMI? I skimmed the other article, but didn't see mention of it.

 

Fantastic.
Kudos to Xeven for his hard work on the vBIOS. I hope he stays encouraged to keep developing it (even after Asus finally release a fix) and optimize it for ultimate stability and performance.
Thanks again Xeven and everyone who helped him!

 

I am trying to get confirmation from Xeven if this v2 vBIOS is based on the stock Asus one, or if it's from another OEM.

 

WHEA Logger Event 17 appears in the event viewer (by my troubleshooting) only when Catalyst Control Centre is installed. If the ATI driver is installed using the device manager, it does not have the error.

Just FYI (as a resolution to my problem).

I still don't understand why I get the error and others don't, using CCC, so there may be some sort of underlying problem that CCC enables WHEA to detect. But now my system log isn't filling up with 40 events/second.