Incredibly frustrated and angry with G73SW reformat results!

Hi everyone. I'm having some poor performance issues with my G73SW after reformatting and after "upgrading" with SSD and more RAM.

I want to list in detail what I did so that if there were any mistakes I made someone could tell. So WARNING, LONG thread.


To start off, I was using factory-installed settings with my G73 since it was purchased nearly a year ago. The performance was great and I had no problems. I decided to reformat because I picked up a SSD and some RAM upgrades. I have about 10 different G73 pages bookmarked that I read such as the "unboxing G73", "What to do with your new G73", "latest drivers and updates" threads etc. so I was prepared for what I was doing. Also, before I went ahead and did the reformat I upgraded the firmware on my SSD and performed Memtest86+ on the new RAM with no errors after 5 passes overnight.

So as you all know the laptop had to be taken apart to access the RAM slots under the keyboard. I followed the 3 different threads and the BTOtech video as well as the Official Asus manual in order to do this and I had no problems (Except the darn keyboard). I went only as far as accessing the inner RAM, and DID NOT DO ANY disassembly of the motherboard. Basicaly, as soon as I was able to see the RAM slots I installed them and started putting the laptop back together.

I followed the "Complete walkthrough for Windows 7 clean install" and it went smoothly.

Next, I followed the guides here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...rivers-everything-you-need-fresh-install.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/380681-asus-utility-bloatware-guide.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/539984-what-do-your-new-g73jh.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...-g73-series-driver-application-reference.html
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?1150-G73-74-53-Series-Driver-and-Application-Reference

I wanted to make sure that I did everything right and took my time. I installed the necessary drivers and programs from the ASUS driver disk, and then started updating the rest of the drivers per the instructions from the guides above. Now, the Intel drivers on most of those pages are VERY outdated and some so I was unclear as to which drivers to actually install. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with my problems, but I ended up downloading 3 different Intel drivers that I just guessed were what I needed. These were the Intel RST SATA drivers.

Finally, when everything was updated and windows completed its updates I started to download other software (skype, winamp, google earth, etc.) and "test my performance". I also unparked my cores.

The problems:

1) My CPU load spikes VERY frequently - and to temperatures the CPU that I've NEVER SEEN. When I was using the factory settings, the CPU temperatues never went above 63, and this was when I was taxing the CPU. Now I open a simple program and the temperature spikes up to 70s and the CPU load spikes as well. They eventually go down, but I find this very strange as this has never happened before. The same thing will happen randomly during idle as well. When I check resource monitor all of the processes using the CPU are legitimate processes. But for some reason they are heavily taxing the CPU! I really don't understand. My idle temps right now are 53-55. My previous idle temps are around 40. I just don't get it. When I was installing Diablo 3 my CPU ramped up to the mid 70s!!!! Just to install a game?!?!?!

2) I randomly get errors and crashes in programs. I can't give specific examples because it has happened to almost everything I've opened. Google Earth is the last one I remember. I don't even know what the error was it just crashed. Oh, Starcraft 2 randomly crashed as well. Stuff like this never happened in my factory install.

3) This seems to be specific to Google Earth, but for some reason my GPU doesn't seem to ramp up? It draws everything VERY VERY slowly. I have no idea why. Before the reformat it drew everything very quickly, and my GPU was working to do it. Temps would get to the 70s while working and the GPU. Now, I'm checking my GPU and it doesn't seem to be "working/stressing" at all. It's basically at idle temps and the GPU is running at 0-10% ??????

4) Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3. These are the only games I've been able to test because I'm getting poor performance from my system already. What's the point of testing other games when these 2 ran perfectly fine before? What I'm saying is that the games themselves are running decently, but I'm noticing that the GPU is not working optimally. Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I understand is that when you are running these games the GPU should be running at 100%. This means that it is running correctly and optimally correct? Well, when I'm playing D3 and SC2 they GPU is working at about 80%. They previously would be at 100%. Now for the CPU, the temps are in the 70s. Once again, this is unheard of. From what I remember while playing these games during my factory install, they never went over 60s. AFAIK these games are NOT CPU intensive.

Whew!

So basically the bottom line is - I was expecting performance gain with my RAM upgrades and SSD. However, I'm experiencing performance worse than my factory install. I'm very frustrated and angry since I spent 13 hours to do all of this. It took me 3 hours alone for the laptop disassembly (mainly due to keyboard), and the 10 hours for the rest was because I read all of those guide threads in detail. I took my time to make sure I did things right but instead things came out terribly wrong.

Does anyone know what might have happened?

I will be eternally grateful as this is causing me a LOT of grief right now.

Thank you

 

Saizo, do you notice any errors in your event viewer? Also B4 the SSD/RAM upgrade were you running with unparked cores? And what driver version are you using for the video card?

 

Normally, after installing windows and doing the updates, your CPU spends some time compiling stuff in the background. Installing the .net framework packages does that, give it a short while and check again, normally, you should see your CPU usage at idle go down.

I can't say about D3, but SC2 is rather CPU intensive, what do you think is responsible for the AI, position, damage, etc. calculations. Newer drivers mean performance improvements as well, your GPU will be working as much as it has to depending on your settings. Are you running everything at max settings?

As for the crashes, they do seem to be video driver related, what driver version are you running?

 

Yes, there are errors in the event viewer. I don't understand what most of them mean though. Is there something you are looking for in particular?

And yes, I was running with unparked cores before the upgrade.

I'm running everything at the same graphics level as I did before the reformat.

My CPU is still spiking with high temperatures with mundane tasks. Like opening Microsoft word, or even starting Google earth. Resource monitor shows huge spike in CPU usage although it does eventually settle.

I'm really trying to find out what step I messed up on that is causing my laptop to run so poorly.

As far as the crashes, they're just random stuff. I really don't even know. I have the latest video card drivers from Nvidia's website.

As far as my graphics card goes - I'm not sure what the problem is. Before the upgrades when I was using google earth it was as smooth as butter. Now when I view things it has very bad framerate and I don't understand why. Paired with that is the fact that my graphics card isn't even working hard. My GPU is still not caring about what I'm trying to do and is running at 20%.

I know that my GPU and CPU are more than enough to do these simple things.

 

As of writing this post - google earth just crashed and I wasn't able to copy down the error in time. I also can't find it in the event viewer.

There are TONS of errors and stuff in the event viewer. I really don't understand why!?!??! All I've done is perform a fresh install and update drivers. This shouldn't be happening.

I'm about to break down and try another fresh install. I feel like smashing this laptop.

 

Just a FYI as to why I keep using google earth. This way I dont' have to keep launching games and tabbing out - fullscreen or not.

Also, if I can't even run google earth fine, I'm not convinced that other programs are going to even run well.

 

Update: Blue Screen while testing SC2. Unable to see what it was with BluescreenView.

Upon startup there was an error about a bootable drive I didn't understand. I reset the system and it booted fine.

Why is this happening to me /cry

 

Can you try and see if you can find a string that says nvlddmkm.sys when BSOD? If it does mention nvlddmkm.sys then it's related to your 460M.

 

I'm unable to reproduce the BSOD at this time. I'm also not able to find that the BSOD even exists in the Event Viewer as well as BlueScreenView.

I'm assuming that this is due to the fact that after I got the BSOD my computer would not start up and displayed the error message about not finding a bootable device or something like that. I had no choice but to hard reset and upon booting up from that I couldn't find any evidence of the BSOD.

I'm probably going to wait a few days to see if anyone can come up with a solution. After that I'll try to reformat again.

Also as I mentioned previously, there are a LOT of errors in the Event Viewer. I'm almost certain that some of them are causing my issues, but I'm not sure how to post details of them?

 

Bump.

My last chance before I attempt another reformat.

Is there anything that I could have messed up on during disassembly that may have caused all of these problems?

 

I see your issue right there. You decided to unpark cores, unparking also means doesn't let the CPU go into idle mode. That's why your CPU runs at 55C when nothing is loaded. Switch it back to allow core parking and you'll see the temperature drop at less 10C while idling right away.

 

I actually unparked the cores after the temps went crazy. For some reason I thought it might help.

I just reverted back to parked cores, but I'm still getting the same temps with even higher CPU loads.

 

What was the temperature like before the reinstalling of Windows 7 when you were playing Diablo 3? Are you sure it doesn't go above 60C? Even a 3610QM can hit 70C easily when playing SC2/D3.

And after you allow core parking the idle temp is still hitting 55C?

 

The temps before the reformat were amazing - I was very impressed with my stock performance of the G73. They honestly never went above 60C EXCEPT when I was running my ESET + MBAM + Spybot SND. During gaming, the only thing that got warm was the video card. I've never hit even close to 65C with CPU while playing SC2 or D3 at near max settings.

 

It also could be that the thermal compound dried out, however there's a warranty sticker on the one of the CPU heatsink screws, wouldn't recommend repasting unless the warranty is expired.

 

I still have a year left for my warranty.

During disassembly, I noticed a thermal pad under the keyboard tray thing. What is that for? None of the disassembly videos said anything about it, and I wasn't able to find any information on it?

Could that be the problem? I'm sure I had it seated back on correctly, but I'm curious what it is for exactly?

 

It's for the Intel PCH (Platform Controller Hub).

 

And it's crucial that the thermal pad stays there.

 

Is it possible that this may be a contributing factor to my problems?

 

If the thermal pad is in place, nope, if it's not there, possibly.