Nordmann grubler på en G73jh/ Norwegian dude pondering about the G73jh

Any well rounded in the laptop world in Norway around ?
I'm thinking about buying the G73... no idea which one it is
but the specs are 6GB ram,2x500 72k RPM drives and,didn't see a mouse (maybe it's still in the box) but there is a ROG bag with it
any of you mind telling me which one it is ?

and I've browsed and read around on the forums and see that there are several issues that people experience with the g73

I'm not planning on OC'ing it
will I be facing heat shutdowns ?
and the GSOD/VSOD issues,if I use it as is will they appear ?
tried looking around but what is the fn+esc problem ?
and how is the asus support in norway now ? saw some terrible posts here but they were from 2006-2007 are they still as bad ?


oh and before I forget again, norwegians: anyone know where I might get hold of a A3 version ?
the 2x500 hybrid drives version (is it worth it,seeing as there is only 4GB of SSD space on them) ?

or should I go a step down and take the one with single drive and install a SSD instead ?

any and all help is greatly appreciated

 

1) Make sure the unit was made in May or later. Reportedly have less issues, if any.
2) SSD is better than the hybrid drives. Faster and consumes less power.
3) Newer made units come with BIOS 209

 

Thank you again for replying

1) How do I check that ?
2) Hmm I see,so never mind the hybrids then
3) Newer made as in after May ? and I presume the KB light issue is not a problem then ?

 

An easy way to check your BIOS is just push FN + Esc. If your computer freezes, you're using the old BIOS. If not, you're at 209.

To check when it was made, it should say on the bottom of the unit on the sticker.

 

Ah ok,sticker bit noted,will drop by on monday and have a look (store has been keeping one for me,wonder how pissed they'll be if I refuse to buy it btw...and of they will be willing to order a new one if it turns out be an older version)

but just to confirm,if it's already 209 I will not lose KB light right ?

 

Correct. If you've already got 209, that means it was built with the new BIOS and should be functioning perfectly.

 

ok,thanks, wish me luck xD

 

Good luck.

 

I have to advise you against buying the G73JH.
Every single one has the same GSOD problems on the newer drivers. Theres a reason its cheaper - Asus uses cheaper parts for the GPU which cant handle the changes in the newer drivers and give GSODs (as well as saving on other stuff - the whole build quality is lower than any other notebook ive had and it misses a few things that youd want to have on such a laptop like raid, esata, firewire...). Theres also the issue with the keyboard / synaptics touchpad conflict, which causes the keyboard to miss keystrokes, and the only solution is to turn the touchpad off in bios. The GPU also runs hotter than on any other laptop with the same GPU. The lesser fan noise is nice, but its not worth it. If i knew what i know now, i would never buy it again.
So if you dont mind all the faults ive written, go ahead and buy it, otherwise i suggest you spend a bit more and get a Clevo W860/W870/D900F/X7200 (which fits your needs the most) and youll get a really solid system with great support, with which i am certain youll be happy with.

 

I should open a G73 Walk-In clinic

 

Honestly, mines fine on 10.6, but I'm not a hardcore gamer. A little Crysis here, a lot of Combat Arms there, occasional WoW and Photoshop, and since I upgraded to 10.6, I haven't had any issues. I ran Unigine Heaven and Tropics a few times in a row to see what would happen, but my temps didn't even go past 87 C and I honestly don't see a reason to continue pushing the computer beyond that.

If you plan on OC'ing the computer to ridiculous amounts or playing Crysis for 10 hours straight, perhaps you might run into issues. I'm not even using the modified vBios. I'm running 10.6 straight from ATI, using Bass Boost, I have PowerPlay on this and P4G Hybrid still. Since I installed 10.6 by 10.1+ increments, I have had no issues at all. Updating to 10.7 did give me a GSOD after two minutes, but 10.7 isn't that important for me anyways (neither was 10.6, but I wanted to update just to feel better about my laptop. ).

Honestly, If you plan on stressing a laptop system like this to the point where you receive a GSOD, you shouldn't be playing on a Laptop.

As far as other issues that are reported, I have none. Being built in June, I think many issues have been resolved. No missing keystrokes, no trackpad issue, and it's not that hot. M17X's also idle at about 60 C which is what I idle at, and have a tendency to reach 89 C at stress (at least the guy's M17 that I'm looking at right now), and I have yet to reach that point on my G73.

I'm not a salesman and I'm not defending Asus. If in fact they used lower grade components, that just goes with the "you get what you pay for" motto. But personally, my experience so far has been amazing and I know that even though several users report issues with their machines, Asus makes solid and good computers, so to judge a company on one machine is a bit iffy, though their ROG flagship shouldn't have any issues as far as I'm concerned.

 

I agree with you Kaelang, I have had my laptop for about a week and it seems good so far. I was running 9.12 ATI and was not happy with how SC2 was running so I updated to 10.1 ATI and every 3 boots it would lock up my solid state drive. So I decided after reading through most of the problem threads to update to 10.7 and so far so good.

Was running SC2 for about 3 hours last night and every 30 mintues I checked the temps. The highest they got was about 90C and im running on all ultra. They seem to stay around 85C most of the time though. Plus I can only expect the temps to get better after the thermal paste does its burn in process.

 

Checked the computer today and it does have a 2010-06 thing on the bottom of the machine as far as i could see that was the only "date" I could find anywhere on it.

Not planning on overclocking it,what it is set as is what I will be using,
now advising me about Clevo (which I have never heard of) and on top of that giving me several machines.
Now I did mention how it will be in case of problems and the store did tell me that minor problems they can take care of,and in case Asus demands it to be handled by a uhm... official service place ? they will take care of it.
I did mention the bad paste issue and they said they can also repaste it if needed. now once I have it I will be running stress tests to see how it handles itself since I will be taking it with me to college and won't be home untill December the earliest, so I need to have a machine which doesn't randomly fail on me.

But from what i have gathered on the forum if it's a june 2010 build it will come with the 209 bios, and I guess I won't be noticing much of the other problems especially since I have no interest in adding custom drivers,beta,whatever to it, if it runs out of the box (obviously minus bloatware) I will leave it as is. simple as that

anyway I will keep an eye on this thread and keep on posting news so if anyone is curious on how my little quest with this machine went,they can read about it

Took a pic of the spec sticker on the side and if I've understood it correctly I'm a little pissed to get the 1066 RAM batch xD oh well doubt I'll notice any difference in comparission to them being 1333 instead

 

Alright...after assurances from the store and the helpful people on here I'm going for it! well...ok on Monday I'm going for it... It seems it will NOT have the 209,but if I do it correctly that shouldn't be a problem AFAIK...
No plans about overclocking or running "experimental updates" so here's to a problemfree adventure!!!
so this thread is officially been turned into the "The G73 and me" thread...again...come monday

 

Well first day in,ran Furmark, extreme overburn, not for hours and hours, but to me it kept stable at 90c...so far so good, LOVING this beast so far,and cant wait to start getting some gaming done on this.

 

*update 2*

Still no idea about what all the settings should be in furmark, but it atleast ran stable for 15 minutes with AA 4 ? and extreme overburn, didn't break 90,although it has been in the basement so ambient is pretty low.
Will run MW2 tonight,to see how that goes, also Avatar and Splinter Cell Conviction, not sure if these are demanding enough to fully stress the machine. but atleast they will represent the kind of stress I will be putting it under,since these are games I usually play.
did come across someone saying a driver update is needed to avoid load time in MW2 ? what is that about ? does it cut down the load time pretty good or what ?
if someone understood what I'm talking about please let me know.

 

MW2 is installed and put the screen to 1920x1080 (?) so far so good,did feel it get a tad warmer than it initially was,but in a low ambient room I think anything feels warmer than it actually is.
Will do some more gaming tonight and lets see how it fares.

By the way a mate of mine uses iStat for his system,and that little thing looks SWEET! problem is it's a mac application. by any chance do anyone know of a win7 kind of deal ? showing all info including temps in a nifty widget/sidebar application kind of deal ?

oh! and even if the spec sticker on the side stated 1033 I actually have 1666 ram!!! SWEET!!!

 

Don't you mean 1333 RAM?

GPU Observer is a great little gadget for Win 7 to display GPU info. All CPU Meter is for CPU monitoring, and works with Core Temp to display temps.

 

Its either 10 66mhz or 1333mhz. Its highly unlikely you got 1666mhz ram. Youd be the first to have it than.

 

I just wanted to let you know that your gadgets are upside down. This is the way they go... :yes:

 

Jody, if I could reach you, I would hurt you.

 

ehe...oops! yeah I meant 1333 instead of 1066... honest mistake. So Chastity....that looks exactly like something I'm looking for...
thanks for coping with me,the noobie

 

LOL! :wub:

 

1 hour of Modern Warfare 2 on high GPU showed 80c the second I got out...now its 70 and sinking... so what does the pros in the game have to say about those temps ?
the CPU shows 50 btw

 

Those seem like good temps. However, game settings are so variable that I really don't have a way of knowing. The only sure fire TIM test that I personally know is to run Furmark at 1920X1080 with Extreme Burning and Postfx enabled. When my paste was bad, my GPU would hit the 114C shutdown limit after about three to four minutes. While gaming I never had a shutdown but Crysis would put my GPU over 90C. After replacing the paste with ICD7, I can run Furmark as long as I want and peak out at 89C even if the ambient in the room is 27 or 28C. I idle at 54C to 58C depending on the ambient temp in the room. If you want to know if the thermal paste is any good, that's the only way I know to find out. Before repasting, my machine would idle around 67C.

 

I have run Furmark for 15 I think it was, and the fans kept the temp at about 90, hell occasionally it dipped to 87-88 but it never broke 90.

 

*Over a month into using this beast*

Have finished MW2, no problems at all

Did have Ventrilo freeze the whole thing but that's gone after updating the soundcard drivers.

CPU idles at from 51-55C

and GPU at 64C at 700/1000 @ 1.15
on battery it goes down to 61C at 300/1000 @ 0,95

Have experienced coming back from classes and the machine doesn't want to let me turn on the screen or keyboard lights (old habit, I turn off the screen when it will be left alone for several hours) hard reboot and it boots up again just fine. think it's a hibernation thing,where it somehow freezes the computer ?

Occasional squeeks from the keyboard but that's about it, perhaps I'm a slow writer but haven't experienced any missing keystrokes.
or touchpad going crazy (use the mouse which came with it mostly)

That's my adventure with it so far
ah! other games I have ran ME2,Warhammer...something but didn't like the game so I uninstalled it after the first mission.
Second Life (I know....friend insisted I had to try it out)
Leagues of Legend
and that's it.
Besides this it's been 720p and 1080p movies and shows. no glitching or anything while watching

 

Just finished about 3 hours of ME2
HW tells me GPU peaked at 92C while the highest reading on CPU is 74C

 

lol i hit 80C in BC2 in 3 hours.. u need a repaste.

 

...not a word!!! T_T

 

meh, my gpu hits around 93 in furmark. I don't think its too bad. Idle around 54

 

Took the step and updated both bios and vBios....was easier than I thought.
noticed the GPU downclocks itself to 405/1000 @ 0.95 at occasions.... hmmmm
and temps went down to 61-62....not big difference but still...

 

Nah, it depends on their ambient temps. In 30-35 degree weather, 92 is a great temp!

 

and a tiny update,although very few care

took the liberty to hoist up the back of the machine with my glasses cover.... it's now idling at 57C O_O SCORE!!!!

Update 2 (closing in on 6 months)

Depending on the ambient temp I get idle temps from 40s to 60

have had some random freezes, really can't say I have managed to find the reason but I do think it has something to with skype,can't be sure though, besides that I'm happy with my machine, currently got the window right behind the laptop open, weather widget claims -9 outside and idles on both CPU and GPU is in low 40s

 

2 Years down the road

It's been quite the ride with this beast ^_^ been less gaming to be honest but it hasn't let me down, except freezes which i still believe is hibernation related or something....