G73SW NVidea GTX 460M Tearing and rude ASUS tech support

So I bought the G73SW with the new nvidea GTX460M display card. second day of ownership and ASUS live update, offers new updates to BIOS and display driver and other things. two hours later, massive tearing and crash problems on any game i try to play occurs(only had two games installed). me and a friend tried rolling back the way we knew how, but the problem was not fixed. called asus tech support and was guided through a more thorough roll back process, but couldn't tell u details since my friend was on the phone with the tech. this did solve the issue, but then i was afraid to update anything due to what might happen. 10 days later, after not updating a thing and barely surfing the net(i mean barely) the same tearing issue suddenly re-appears for no reason. i called asus tech support and a very rude asus tech guided me through a very complicated process of getting a new VGA driver. now it works again, but i am wondering, am i gonna be dealing with this kind of thing every 10-20 days?? having to call asus tech support to be guided through some process to which i have no idea what i am doing?? if so that g73sw is going back in its box and straight back to where it came from (ordered thru Tiger Direct so u all know) and i am getting my money back. i did NOT pay all that money to have some ASUS support tech tell me i am "inconvenient" (yep he actually said that to me). If anyone can offer some advice or helpful comments in anyway, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks for you time, Salvus(a very frustrated ASUS and Tiger Direct customer)

 

Oh, wow, and I'm about to buy that exact same model.

 

Sorry to hear your problems with G73SW mate. Alienware m17x r3 is calling your name....

 

Salvus, sorry to hear about your issues.
1.IF you keep it never use lve update; many here use http://pcaudio.ath.cx/
to get updates, this is from the mirror link in Chastity's signature
2. Your machine should work without any issues out of the box but to get optimal gaming performance video driver updates, etc may be necessary
3. This was my first gaming notebook (I have an earlier model and it took about 6 months and a lot of hours of installing software, updating BIOS, B4 I was totally happy with it).
4. The great thing about this forum is the excellent advice you will get here and no rudeness.
5. IF you call support again make sure to get the person's name, if it happened to me I would report them to supervision.

Jubei Kibagami nice try... AW fan boy

Salvus see the Alienware forums "B4 you make that leap" to quote Brandon Flowers.

 

Asus just made the hardware. If you have these type of issues, sounds to me two things. Use V-Sync if you have tearing issues. Secondly, hit the Nvidia boards and find out what are the best drivers for you and the methods to uninstall and install them.

Yelling at an Asus rep who is not an Nvidia employee won't do you much good. Asus doesn't make their GPUs, they designed the board etc according to Nvidia's specifications. They are just a board partner, so they are allowed to fab their board, but that's all.

 

I take it that updating video drivers is something you aren't comfortable with. Unfortunately, it is something you will be dealing with whenever you use a PC to game with, no matter what brand you buy. If you do not want to deal with this, then I suggest getting a portable game console.

If you are up to the task, , then follow this simple procedure with the nvidia drivers:

1) Only use Mobility packages. NVIDIA releases new ones in two flavors: desktop and notebook. Use the notebook version for your machine.

2) Download the most current release (currently 270.61 WHQL) and run the installer. Select "Custom" Install, and you will see all the options. The important one is a checkbox for doing "A Clean Install" What this does is that it will first uninstall all the old drivers, and then install the new ones with default settings. This is considered the best method as it prevents any legacy drivers or settings to potentially mess you up.

Follow up with a reboot, and you're done!

PS- Welcome to the Asus family! Sorry for your previous experience, however, all the techs in the world are also human, and aren't perfect. I hope your future experiences are better ones.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone,
To Chastity - Yeh I guess the most straight forward and sensible thing to do would be to go to the NVidea website and get the latest driver there. I was not aware that ASUS Live Update was not a good route to take for updating. I assumed that by clicking the Display Driver Box in Asus Live Update, that I would be getting the latest NVidea driver that way. Since that was what i thought, i was reluctant to go download the latest driver from the NVidea website after the first problem was resolved, since i thought it was this self same driver that caused the tearing in the first place. Question - IF Asus live update is not giving me the latest Nvidea driver, then what on earth IS it giving me? Also, the asus tech brought me to the asus website and took me through a process to get an updated driver from there, he informed me that it was a driver upgrade and not a rollback, so what is that? is asus just hyperlinked to the NVidea website or what? did he set me up with the latest driver now? all i know is that it works again. but r u telling me that i should leave things as they are until i run into another issue and THEN go get the latest driver from NVidea, or should i go get the latest driver from NVidea right now regardless of the asus tech support "fix"?? I am definately not what you would call computer savy, but i have updated drivers before on previous computers which i have owned and am not really that uncomfortable with it. all the previous CPU's i have owned were desktops (not sure how much that has to do with anything) but i have never run into these sorts of issues with them before, which explains my complete confusion. and to set the record straight, i was not yelling at the asus tech support guy. i was in the middle of trying to figure out which of the many codes and number variations on the bottom of my laptop was the serial number(since it doesn't say clearly 'serial number: 1A2B3C4D<--example') and instead of telling me which number to look for, the tech support guy told me i was being inconvenient, and i simply replied that it was inconvenient for me that my brand new computer doesn't work, and i wasn't yelling either. I SHOULD have asked for his supervisor but he got lucky. anyway, chastity, if you could answer the few questions i have above, it would greatly help me. thanks again to everyone for taking the time to reply. and thanks for the welcome! i dont want to return my lap top and would much rather fix it and enjoy it.
Till the next time, Salvus.

 

1) Paragraphs... makes it easier to read

2) I do not know which driver he showed you, but more than likely it was 261.14, which is "old" in driver terms. I would definitely download 270.61 WHQL. It works very well, and offers some games a nice performance boost. You can find it on my Driver and Application Reference linked below. Many people use my driver page for getting updates.

3) The Asus Auto Updater needs Admin rights to perform properly, and it's not configured that way by default by Asus. It would be better if you did the updates manually, since you can also set options, like doing clean installs.

4) Paragraphs are your friend.