Not impressed at all. Constant locking up.

Hello, I'm coming here mostly for support, but also to vent a little anger, I hope you won't mind.

Now, I've been using laptops as my main computing resource for quite sometime, I've had an HP, Panasonic and my last was an Apple (overwhelmingly overpriced, if anything). But, I'm seriously starting to have my doubts and I'm considering joining the desktop camp.
My Asus G73J is my first gaming computer, per se. To say I was excited when it came in the post would be an understatement. However, a few things quickly became evident.

The Asus didn't have the type of performance I was expecting; medium to poor performance at high settings on new games, Mafia 2 and Metro 2033 are the only ones that spring immediately to mind. I was under the implication that the Radeon 5870 was the best mobile gaming graphics card available. Surely there can't be that much of a difference between desktops and laptops? If there is, then I've surely misplaced my money.

Secondly, the reliability is very low. In the last 2 months (I've had the PC for 4 months I would say, perhaps more) I've been experiencing lock ups. The entire system would lock up. I wouldn't be able to even move the mouse and if any sound was playing, it would repeat dreadfully loud.
This has been happening more and more often. It would happen once, then again in a weeks time, now it's happening all the time. Which is the main reason why I'm speaking here from safe mode.

Thirdly, and possibly related to the second point, whilst playing games, a similar lock-up occurs, but what appears to be a grey screen with lines throughout appears. The odd time when this has happened, I've managed to get it into Standby mode and recover it, but there are many visual artefacts on the desktop and Windows mentions something about the ATI driver failing.

Fourthly, and again very possibly related, it's very loud! The fans are almost at full blast about an hour's into a gaming session and every so often, it completely shuts down on me and refuses to turn on for the next few minutes or so. Before you ask, I was originally using it on my lap with a plastic lap-desk accessory and I presumed this to be the problem, so I moved to my wooden desk. On both places they are well ventilated.

And finally, the bloody plastic leg bits have come off again! Every damn time I get a laptop the same thing happens. Really? Is it that hard to use proper glue for these expensive machines?

All in all, certainly not happy with performance or reliability. It does look nice however, a bit bulky if I do say so myself. Frankly, with the battery life as low as it is and the performance being quite so overestimated, it would seem a better choice would have been to build a desktop. Not only would it have been arguably cheaper, I could have upgraded as technology gets better, not having to buy a brand new computer.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Just curious but to start have you read anything in the post Here and Here?

If you have not, I would recommend you start with those, read through them, perform the fixes from the GSOD blues thread, and then report back on how your system is performing.

 

I had skimmed briefly over these as the titles obviously attracted me, but although I have a rather firm grasp over computers, I'm not entirely sure what the BIOS is nor would I be entirely happy to start fiddling around with such things with out some type of walkthrough for "newbs" as it were.

The last time I poked around in my computer I accidentally replaced my explorer.exe file for one with a 32bit system and I had to poke around via the commands to find my old backup of the old 64bit. That was certainly a wet trouser job.

 

Also, I do have a flash drive, but I can't seem to find where I've put the blasted thing.

I do however, have about 200 writeable DVDs somewhere here. I presume that wouldn't be an acceptable replacement.

 

The walkthrough on the GSOD thread is quite in depth and detailed. If you are able to use a flash drive and type a simple command in dos, you should be good to go. Just read it... Then Reread it again, then follow the directions. It is super easy and should relieve you of a lot of headaches. Both those threads have a lot of detail on other things you may be experiencing in other areas so please read them before posting other problems because there is a high chance that many of them have been answered more than once.

The G73 is an advanced laptop with a lot of bleeding edge (for the time) hardware so things may not always work perfect right out of the box as with midrange cookie cutter laptops. A little research and knowhow can go a long way when these things.

 

You can make a bootable CD/DVD but the process to make it bootable is a tad different. Leme see if I can find the walkthrough I found a few years ago.

Errgh the stuff I used is not anywhere online like it once was. And as I am still at work I cannot go searching for it extensively atm. I would recommend a usb stick since it is much easier and faster to do since you have to make it bootable, have the win98 boot disk files (so you have dos), and to have your vBios update files all on one medium. with a boot CD you have everything in order before you burn it. With a flash drive its a simple point and click, then copy and paste the vbios files and .bat file and your off.

 

Much appreciated. Also, just so I'm clear, this BIOS update, would it improve my performance in games? Metro 2033 drops down to around 4 fps above ground on very high. This isn't of course in DX11, most desktops, if I'm aware can only handle around 20fps average on DX11.

 

The vBios may actually decrease performance give or take 1FPS. lol The main thing the vBios does is fix the GSOD (Grey screen of death) issue you were experiencing and allow you to actually play your games without it crashing on you.

There is a difference between a BIOS (Which it sounds like you need to update as well to version 211. and a vBios which is a Video Bios for the 5870m.

Also read in detail the main system bios upgrade to 211. You do not want to flash your bios in windows. If you place it on the flash drive that you are using for your vBios update, you should be able to do both of them before the next boot into windows. Just get into the bios, use EZ Flash to flash the system bios, reboot when done, then flash the vbios and then reboot again. Golden.


Also Metro 2033 is like the new Crysis. I would reccomend running it at High or less since even desktop systems cannot run that game at Very High settings smoothly all the time. (The 5870M is about the same as a 4870 or 5750 desktop chip so look at that for benchmarks to see what you can run at what settings.)

 

I don't suppose an iPhone would work? I might be able to find an old external hard drive. Would that work?

 

Eh.. The external drive would work.

 

I mentioned the iPhone purely as it also has a hard-drive option. Surprisingly very handy.

 

It may work. But as I do not have a iPhone I cannot comment on how it implements its USB mass storage mode. Technically if it works like a normal usb flash drive then it should work as well.

 

Not to worry, found my external HDD. I've got some old movies on there, should I delete those or will it run perfectly fine with them there? They're rather large.

 

You will need to format the drive as with big movies I doubt it is FAT32 like is required....

Damn and the size, there is a whole slew of crap you gota do to make a large drive (>128G to format in Fat32)

 

No, you don't have a firm grasp. Otherwise you'd a) know what a bios is, b) understand the importance of the updates, and c) know that desktop and laptop GPUs aren't similar at all.

 

Just doubled checked it's definitely FAT32. Shall delete everything on there anyway.

 

if it is fat 32 then you can try running the HP USB Disk creator that is in Here.

Extract both the .zip files then run the HPUSBDISK.exe file and point it to the extracted Win98 boot files. If you can create it successfully then you should be golden.

Once done copy all the files in that first zip onto the drive. (you may also want the files from here and you mainly want the G73JhAS.211 file which is the cooler running bios.

Follow the directions in here to update the system bios through the bios itself.

 

Firstly, I'd like to say thank you for your comment. It was very helpful to the problem I noted I'm experiencing in the first post. Secondly, by a firm grasp, I meant I can get around them with ease I've been using computers all my life and I generally don't have trouble accomplishing what I set out to do. I did not at any point imply I was good with the technical side of things nor did I imply I was familiar with the coding aspect. Secondly, did I mention this was my first gaming PC? I'm almost certain I did. That would probably lead on to why I was so bemused by the apparent differences between the two.
Such an aggressive first post, would it underline some buyers remorse, perchance?

Regardless, it's a tad irrelevant. Thank you again.

 

There are some cranky folks here. I occasionally am one of them, but not this time around. You seem well-spoken and eager to learn. My recommendation: get and use a flash drive. you'll save yourself a ton of headache. If you have a Micro Center near you, I believe 2GB flash drives are around $6. Money well spent, IMO.

 

Thanks for the recommendation, I've got a flash drive as I said, problem is I just can't find it. I'm using an external HDD for what IM0001 recommended, so it should work more or less the same.

 

Firstly, my mother, who uses PC once per month knows BIOS is some "blue screen when you press Del". Secondly, there is no difference between "gaming" and "not-gaming" laptops except for performance, so that won't work for you like an excuse. Thirdly, you don't have to be a genius to read a couple of reviews and forums, especially when you are willing to spent 1500US...

PS
I think it is possible that you could notice some performance and noise differences between PC and laptop throughout your "quite" long PC history.

PS2
Please don't behave that way to users with several hundred posts, nobody likes it. Thanks,

 

davtex... seriously.. the 2nd useless post in this thread.. Please unless you guys can help or give simple moral guidance here, let this noob learn in peace. He is doing quite well thus far and should be up to speed shortly.

 

I'm glad she was able to learn that. Good thing she wasn't too busy learning about that and wasn't able to teach you manners, eh?

No, there is not. However, this is a large difference in how people approach them. Therefore, before hand I was not interested in the difference of GPUs merely how fast my computer was able to perform doing mundane tasks, etc.

I spent ooh, around £1,650 and I read quite a few reviews and they rated it as their best laptop. Thus why I was wondering it did not perform as well as my desktop buddies claimed theirs did.

Well, as I said (I'm not sure if you can read, so I'm just making this crystal clear) in my original post, the majority of computers I've had are laptops. I've actually only had the one desktop and that was about 10 years ago. Would you like me to point out the differences between that one and my current laptop for you?[/QUOTE]

I found this quote the most amusing. The fact you've made more posts than I, grants you no gain over I. In fact, all it may allude to is that you've made several hundred useless and aggressive posts that are completely off-topic.
Your hierarchy that you've formed within your mind and placed yourself somewhere along the top is meaningless and laughable to an outsider like I.

 

Quit talking , flash your bios/vbios, update ATI to 10.8 and also realtek drivers, remove bloatwares and you're good to go with your games. Do refer to the sticky threads, they are very detailed and step-by-step for anyone who can read English to understand.

Like what many others had said, once you get past creating a bootable flashdrive, everything is going to be easy.

 

Done all that already, thanks very much. IM0001 was very helpful in instructing me via IRC. Everything seems stable at the moment, so only time will tell.

 

Metro 2033 definitely will not run perfectly smooth in very high, DX10 or DX11. For smooth playback you generally want 30+ FPS - which you can find out using FRAPS or some other program. I ran Mafia 2 on highest settings fairly easily. Try the vBIOS and BIOS update as mentioned, and download the newest graphics drivers.

Regarding the temperature situation, you may want to search and download a temperature monitor like HWiNFO32. The laptop shouldn't shut down just from playing a game - you may, unfortunately, need a repaste of the GPU heatsink. I'm not sure if ASUS rma can do that or not, depending on where you bought it from they could do it. You can also do it yourself, but it is sort of complicated [there are videos and pictures of the whole process though].

 

My GPU is currently at 77C idling. I've got around a dozen firefox tabs open but that's about it. It was around 83C earlier.

Reckon I could get my local repair shop to do the repaste?

 

Deep breath. Be nice. I know it's frustrating but you'll do a heck of a lot better if you go through these things calmly and with a "I'm gonna enjoy this laptop a lot more when I fix everything myself" attitude. Try this link out, it does a very good job explaining exactly what you need to do. This is what I used and succeeded. YouTube - G73JH GSOD FIX

 

@Mousti:

Also, because it's a notebook, the default power management settings aren't necessarily ideal for a gaming-class notebook like this.

Make sure you're running on a high performance power management profile - especially when gaming.

To set a Power plan, go to Control Panel / Power Options...select the "Power4Gear High Performance" or the Windows "High Performance" plan (the former being the best choice). For the selected power plan, click "Change Plan Settings" then click "Change Advanced Power Settings"
In the list of available power management settings, set the following settings for "plugged in" mode:
Processor Power Management - Minimum Power State: 100%
Processor Power Management - Maximum Power State: 100%
PCI Express - Link State Power Management: Off
ATI Graphics Power Settings - ATI PowerPlay Settings: Maximize Performance

 

This is a very nice machine if you take time and go through the fixes one by one as stated in the already mentioned threads. But in terms of performance, a desktop is still far superior and that performance wise cannot be compared. Provided you spend the same amount of money on the desktop. Your idle temperature does seem a little high. Sadly the only way to go about fixing that is to do a repaste of your card. Its quite an annoying process. Things that should be done would be to update your bios to 211, vbios to the fixed one in "gsod blues" sticky thread, update realtek drivers or use the modified one posted about a week or two back. Oh and try to avoid winflash... All the best...

 

After walking him through the process he is now up to date both Bios and vBios wise. So now only a repaste looks to be a bit needed in his future. Other than that he should be over the GSOD issues.

 

Mousti, in a nutshell, the thermal paste/compund between the heatsink and main video card chip was poorly applied or is of low quality. You can send this back to Asus via an RMA process, but this take a long time and does not guarantee a better result...

Another option is to exchange the laptop from your retailer and see if the exchange has lower temperatures.

The third option is the best: purchase a high-quality compund (such as IC Diamond 7 or ICD7) - should cost you only $7 US (not sure Euro-wise). You can then follow the process or have a technical friend who has worked on repairing laptops to come help and follow the youtube videos posted earlier to clean and reapply the thermal paste on it.

After that, you will have a cold video card, great stability, and no more shutdown nonsense. It's a shame you have this issue, as otherwise I agree with the others that the G73 is easily the best laptop I've ever owned.

 

@mousti

I saw you have a few different problems. Most advice here is about solving the GSOD issue and performance issues. 1) Start with that.

2) Your temps are too high. Known problem, you'll need a repaste one of these days (could be now...) but in your case it means RMA back to ASUS as you don't have any experience taking PC's apart.

3)Finally you have a problem I've had from day one and for which I have not found a definitive solution despite scouring this forum for the past 2 months: Locking. There is a thread with a solution and it helped. But after going away for a while the locking reappears whenever I install something. It happens while using the computer but also when it is iddle. The most common place is at boot, a minute or so after it reaches the password prompt. Sometimes my first touch of the keyboard will trigger the lock up. I have updated (not necessarily in that order) Power4gear, ATK package, kb filter, video drivers, vbios, bios, realtek, creative (now gone but more lockups than when present), chipset drivers. I have checked the disks for errors, SMART conditions. I have applied a special MS Hotfix for lock ups... no solution.
My temps are on the high end for GPU and normal for CPU, but it often happens at iddle, when my GPU is no more than 60...or in gaming when I know I reach high 90's
This morning I woke up with the plan to back up stuff and reinstall from scratch.... a real time waster but at the same time, the computer is not totally unreliable and hard rebooting 10 times a day is messing up my programs and windows.

So, tackle your issues one by one and when you work on lock ups, let me know if they go away...


PS:If you really have lock ups... it's a pain. Because your comp will run great for days... and then start locking (tends to be murphy's law... either when I am away from home and under pressure to deliver something for which I need the computer or when I finally have managed to get through a difficult section in a game...just before I can save)

 

wow, the replies of some of the people on this thread are something else. talk about the non-consequentiality of the internet :l

anyways back on topic, its great that the majority of your issues have been resolved (kudos to IM0001) for being very helpful. as for the overheating issue, blaydes99's third option is the best. although i wouldnt recommend you doing the repasting yourself (unless you have VERY dexterous and gentle hands and good organizing skills) having a friend who knows how to do these sort of things will turn out with the best outcome.

if you have no choice though, just keep in mind that RMA'ing your laptop to ASUS will mean that you'd have to wait at least a week (judging by the experience of most users here) and theres a chance that your overheating problem will not be resolved. Asus uses good quality thermal paste, its just the application that seems to be the problem. other users have also reported scratches and other physical defects on their units after they got it back from Asus.

i sincerely hope you decide on a solution that will ultimately get your laptop up and running in perfect condition. you havent made the wrong choice in getting this laptop (unless spending at least a thousand more pounds or dollars means nothing to you).

 

Just to point out: The HD5870M is the equivalent to a desktop HD5770, with lower clocks. So this puts it at about a mid-grade desktop card.

If you want high-grade desktop performance in a laptop, you would need a 5870M in Crossfire configuration, which are 2 GPU chips working together.

 

Ah, alright. Thank you for clearing that up. I'm currently getting some awful overheating problems and I was just reading up on your experience with repasting both the GPU and CPU. I'm currently idling and my GPU is at 76C and my CPUs are around 66C.
I live in Northern Ireland, I'm not sure if there would be any Authorised Asus repair shops near here (I ordered my Asus from an online service based in England) and the thought of going through what you did, is frankly worrying.

However, I really can't play any games at the moment. Booting into any game seems to ramp my GPU up to the late 80C's in a few seconds. After about half an hour, it gets to 100C at which point the computer shuts down.

What would be your recommendation to do?

 

Welcomes to ASUS Techincal Support Portal for United Kingdom & Ireland

You can call the Ireland support line and find out where their ASP's are.

 

You're kidding right?

Here is the break down
Desktops = Cheap Overpowered, cheap parts, lots of room for addons, mods. If you don't need a laptop GET THIS.
Laptops = Expensive Underpowered, desktop with same specs would cost less than half. So portability is a high price.
Netbooks = Cheap Super Underpowered, simple uses, great to watch videos on airplane, because of the great battery life.
MacBooks = Expensive Underpowered, hardware costs half of the item, the rest you're paying for is the build quality and it is great (never owned one).
Sage/Clevo = Expensive Overpowered: "True" desktop replacements, most hardware is replaceable, including GFX cards. But because of size, it should not be called a "laptop" but it is somewhat portable.

A laptop is not a desktop and a desktop is not a laptop.
If you were really thinking of getting a desktop then don't get a laptop.

 

It took me a week to figure out why my laptop was crashing.
At first I tought it was my SSD Drive that was faulty.
But finaly, no. The crash happens only when my External HDD is plugged.
I hope there will be a new driver released to fix that.

 

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/Drivers/Chipset/Chipset_Intel_WIN7_32_64_z9111027.zip

Decompress and open a command window in the directory folder.

Run "setup.exe -overall"

This will force update you to the .1022 versions of the drivers for your laptop.

 

How can people complain that "gaming laptops" are loud? If it was too quiet then it would be running too hot then what?

 

My G73 has never made a peep...ever. I can't hear it at all, even during intense gaming. If I put my ear right up on the thing I can hear the very low sound of my HDD's but otherwise this thing is dead silent and at the same time still manages to keep cool. One of the reasons I love this laptop.

 

Second, Even tho I usally hear the fan(gpu) instead of my hdd's.

 

I know this is off topic but I didn't want to start a new thread to ask a question. Tried seach too and this thread came up the most.

What is a good setting for Metro 2033 on the G73JH or the perfect setting? I run it on high in DX9, I'm scared to try otherwise. How would it handle DX10-11 and on what setting? Oh one more question, is there a way to enable vsync? I don't see it in options or will I have to do it via CCC?

 

SF...

YouTube - Asus G73JH Metro 2033 DX10 vs DX11 800 Overclock Overlay Normal Quality ATi 5870m
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...537100-metro-2033-delivers-g73-beating-3.html


http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...ards/501113-histidines-metro-2033-review.html


These may be of some help with Metro 2033. I am glad you asked about it, I looked at the first link and am downloading the demo now.
PS. the Giants will not beat the Phils this year!!!!

 

Maybe the fans just seem loud when they play at work...

 

Heh, nice bump there! The fan noise I was complaining about was most likely due to the fact my thermal paste was incorrectly applied and the fans were running overtime. I've since got it repasted, but it's locking up every now and again and CCC seems to enjoy underclocking my GPU to 400Mhz instead of the normal 700Mhz.

On top of that, I'm getting some graphical artifacts on the newest version of WoW (may or may not be a problem with the game itself) and Steam pops into "Not responding" mode every time I try to interact with it.

Originally, Chasitity informed me was most likely a driver legacy problem, so I rolled that back with her instructions which seemed to work for a while but not too long.

From what it sounds like, it seems like I've got some other hardware fault, so I'll be taking it back to the shop where I purchased it and asking them to take a look at it for me.

 

The clock will drop down to 400 when idle. If it happens in game, then that is a different problem entirely.

 

Ah, I'm just checking whilst it's idling. Thanks for clearing that up.

Now, just to find out what's causing Steam to crash, WoW to display funky graphical glitches and double check that everything's in order on the hardware terms of things and I should be fine!

 

There is a conflict with Steam and the stock audio drivers on G73JH models.