G73, Games freeze for like 1 second every minute or two?

Hello everybody. I've always visited this forum in the past for laptop help but after countless searching, I could not find an answer. So I decided to join, so I'll make this swift. I recently bought a G73 from BB about 2 weeks ago (This is the 14th day, so I can still return it if there's a hardware issue) and it was completely fine out the box. Games were running awesome, it was fast, cool, love the machine. Now I followed the W7 clean install and went fine but ever since then, every time I play a game (least the couple I tested it on), the game would freeze for about 1 second and then continue on. Here's a video I took of Half-Life 2 ( YouTube - G73) I dunno what's causing that but the games run fine, it's just that random freezing that's distracting. Any ideas what it could be? I appreciate the help.

 

This is annoying as hell, have you tried to use another driver for the GPU?
if the issue remain with different drivers then i suspect it's hardware issue.

 

Yes, it seems to happen no matter what drivers I use. I'm using the stock drivers right now, I don't understand what could have caused it, it was perfectly fine before.

 

check your device manager for conflicts between some devices and run dpc latency checker.. its probably a device power conflict causing freezing..
does it freeze on desktop or while playing video?

 

Alright I used DPC, I got a red spike watching videos and during games, not exactly during the freezing though. Regardless it looks like one of my devices is wonky so I started checking them all and every time I disabled and enabled my wireless lan device I got a huge red spike. Could that be the problem?

Edit: I left the Wireless lan disabled and I started just doing stuff and my latency shot considerably and stayed consistently in the yellow and high greens. I went to play HL2 again and there's still freezing. I left the game and just let it sit and the latency was still fairly high, I go to enable it and the latency shot back down to low levels. What is this?



When you disable it, this happens.



Whether you enable or disable it, the bar shoots up to the red but after if you enable it, all the bars go back to being low.

 

I had same problem with FIFA 10. Just download latest DirectX package from Microsoft site and update yours. That helped me.

 

Already on the latest DirectX.

 

If you used the auto-updater version of DirectX installer, I would suggest trying the Redist version. It will update more components.

 

Even I had a similar episode(Well, almost same). Dint get the continuous spiking in my G73. Only at an interval.You can read my thread on it here

You dint mention which WLAN card you have in yours. The Intel or Atheros. My problem was, ofcourse the WLAN. The Intel N6200 kind of caused the spikes when my net connection was interrupted by the router itself. So its like the wireless card is trying to obtain connection.

If your card is the same or an Intel, try updating the drivers from their website. I did this and my DPC latencies are all stable. Even while gaming or net problems. Hope this helps.

 

Nope, no luck. Also I have the Atheros card in mine.

 

Overclocking increases latency across the board? Can anyone else check that?

 

might be HDD stuttering, they were having that problem on some of the acer 5740g where the HDD would basically sleep and the freeze is the lag while the HDD spins back up. in any case worth checking out. we found that installing Quiethdd helped solve the problem

 

Indeed, Acer 5740G have the same problem as described here. Look this post last link that might help.
Good luck

 

Hmm, well after I did my clean install I added a secondary hard drive and installed all my games to that, a 500GB HDD at 5400rpm. So is it possible that could attribute to it?

 

Well I tried a couple things. I updated my wireless drivers and the latency has gone down considerably, there's still one red spike if you enable/disable it but after that it remains in the low greens consistently no matter what you do. So I guess that's out the way, thanks to the suggestion on that but the games still stutter unfortunately. Now as for the Hard Drive thing, I suspect it could it be this since this problem only really started after I started putting games on it. I downloaded the quietHDD program and I right-clicked it and disabled the APM. Now this really didn't seem to do anything, there was no indicator or anything to suggest it actually turned it off. If I turn off the other setting, there's a check next to it showing that it worked but with that, nothing. Also I can't tell if it's actually working on my secondary drive, it doesn't say anything. Any ideas?

 

Glad it helped. Did you know that You can rep people who help you. Just a suggestion.


On the hard drive issue, I am assuming you have two HDDs now and one is spinning at 7200rpm and the other at 5200rpm. I am also assuming that your games are on the slower one. i am not an expert on this but, is it possible for you to re-install your games on the faster one and see if the problem persists. If not, you might need to replace your slower on with a 7200rpm one.

 

Core parking, too!

 

Well, all my games are through Steam so I don't think I can.

What now?

 

Core parking is a win 7 and intel core series power saving feature where windows powers down cores of the cpu to save power when not needed, it has been known to cause occasional stuttering...

Here is how you disable it..

btw did you ever try underclocking the gpu to 100mhz to save battery life, coz when i had done that once the computer crashed and then even after restoring factory clocks, the comp would freeze after inactivity, but video card driver reinstall fixed that..

 

I never tried anything on this thing, I've pretty much just used everything it came with. Anyway, I disabled that and wow, performance is noticeably better, both in and out of game! Laptop boots up faster, programs aren't as slow and games are a little smoother. But again lol...it still does that freezing thing every now and then. I've noticed it freezes when it has to load new stuff happening on screen. Maybe my HDD really is too slow? It seems like I'm fixing every single problem on my laptop except the one I set out to fix in the first place. XD

 

Bump! Still need help. D:

 

You mentioned your games are through steam... Maybe u want to take a look at Chastity's creative debugging thread. The creative driver was said to have conflicts with steam. Or for a start u could try to enable "CMSS" in creative first then give it a go. That was the work around she discovered in her tests. I wouldn't uninstall it as u can't download the drivers from asus.

 

For the record, Chastity is a girl and not a guy.!!

The creative drivers havent caused any lagg in steam games as far as i know. The known issue is audio crackling and steam crashes. But worth a try. If you have the drivers CD, you can safely uninstall that crap(If you really need creative later on) Honestly I dont even notice any sound quality difference without it. Then again Im not an audiophile.

 

Oops now thats something i wasn't expecting... Sorry about that.

 

I think I mentioned this, but I did a clean install of Windows, I followed that guide that's somewhere on this forum. Meaning I never installed the Creative drivers as well as the other useless ones.

 

As someone had mentioned earlier on in this thread, have you tried to unpark all your cores? If not, I suggest you look in to this first.

There is a thread on this within the forums. LINK

 

I actually just unparked my cores, and i have to say, damn is it responsive... I'm liking it very much.

 

I think it's the HD speed. I'm a Steam newb- using it for the first time, but why can't you uninstall and then re-download/install again with Steam? It keeps track of your purchases.

 

Yes I mentioned in an earlier post that I did that.

 

Are your power management settings ok (set for performance)?

For your selected power management plan...

In the "Processor power management" section, are the min and max processor states both set to 100%? If not, they should be. Setting either of these lower isn't really appropriate (and degrades performance) for Core i7s (lower settings for battery may be appropriate for low-power use on battery but not for gaming).

Also, in the "PCI Express" section, if link state power management is set to one of the power savings settings, try turning it off.

 

I see you've been reading Kalim's placebo-induced rhetoric about the usefulness of Creative's MB addon. :sigh:

 

Yes all my processor settings are fine and everything. I'm pretty dead set on that it's my Hard Drive. So I'm going to install Quake 4 on both my Hard Drives and see if it stutters on the HDD that came with the G73. I'll report back later.

 

Its too bad for him then... I actually like the creative drivers, even by just playing music with the built in speakers, can tell there is a difference. I don't know how to explain exactly, but i feel the sound from the creative is more refined..

 

Like I had said earlier, it must be the slower HDD's fault. Hope this is it, coz then your problem can be fixed with a new 7200RPM HDD.

Btw... Thanks for the +rep. Appreciate it..

 

Well good news everybody. I put Steam on my primary HDD and played a couple games, no freezing whatsoever so it seems that my problem is solved. I guess I need to get a faster hard drive though lol, thank you all that helped.

 

Good for you , mate.. Happy fragging..!!!

 

my laptop seems to do the same thing ,fraps is showing 40-60 fps but the game freezes for like 1 second,it seems that it freezes exactly when the hdd led is flashing ,activating quietHDD does seem reduce the freezes from like 1 or 2 seconds to maybe half but is still anoying . is there any way to know for sure if it's my hdd or something else? damn even writing this text seem to freeze if im tipeing without quiethdd.

 

Everyone who was having the same problems as the ones stated in this thread (or even solved their problems!), please go to the following link and report your hardware (MBP stands for Macbook Pro, go to "Other" for PC).

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmGtkXs5maUvdHlYQ1hNNEpMMXp1Y3pLNmJMeDJBc1E&hl=en#gid=14

Seagate will most likely replace your Momentus XT if you send it to them, now is a good time to do so!

 

what drivers have you used? I have tried 2 sets of drivers, and one causes a BSOD, and the other connection problems.

 

And which forum is this linked too, I have the same issues with my G73JW as well and that the lag spikes mostly appear when I play MMO's and rotate the view.
But also in silly old games like War3 and Postal when similar things happen.