Problem with G50 Graphic Card

Hmm wasn't able to find my issue with the search so I figured it might be worth asking.

I've had my G50 for two years now, and today after playing some League of Legends, I noticed that for the first time that the graphic card overheated, which was due to my carelessness, with the card reaching 105 degrees.

After noticing a huge framedrop and black flickers on the screen while playing, I decided to give the laptop a long rest.

After this long rest, I tried to play League again however the flickers returned, where as they had never appeared before. I checked the temperature log, and it was around 96-97 (even on my zalman cooling pad), and usually the flickers only showed up then.

Is there anything I can do, or am I out of luck? I ask because I know the warranty for the system has pasted, and I doubt Asus will repair my 9700 card.

Thanks for your time.

 

Have you tried cleaning out the vents? Grab a can of compressed air and have at it. If you take off the back panel and gently hold the fan in place (you don't want to make the fan spin too fast while spraying) hopefully you'll get most of the gunk out. I personally have gone as far as taking a cotton swab with rubbing alcohol and swabbing out the inner fan housings, too.

 

Yep I have cleaned the system out with compressed air, cotton swab and all!

However, it has not made a difference sadly

 

Flickers like that usually indicate memory failure on the GPU, so your VRAM may have been damaged, whether it's temporary is harder to say, I guess you'll find out...

If the flicker doesn't come back, you should put some new thermal paste on that thing ASAP, but you'll need a copper (or aluminum if not) shim because it uses a thick thermal pad.

 

I'm assuming if it's the VRAM eventually the card itself will give out? How exactly will I know?

I'm just curious because at the moment the card is working fine (Civ V works fine), it just seems to get these flickers (that's the best I can describe it) while playing League of Legends. It doesn't hinder the game or the fps, but it's distracting.

If I need to put a new thermal paste on, could Asus do this for me? I ask because my hands are very unreliable (medical reason)

 

It could be the temp it gets to or just a bad chip of memory or two that causes that. If you see higher temps when it happens it could possibly be solved with new paste since ur fan isn't failing and you cleaned the vents. If it is out of warranty you can bring it anywhere you would trust to service a laptop if you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself.

 

Ah alright, I will look into getting a new thermal paste and seeing if that helps. It might even be possible that Asus does it, since they are willing to look at the laptop for free, so they may do it for me

Thanks for the advice!

 

Well, after trying League again, I have noticed that once the flickers/distortions appear that fps does drop from 60 to 30ish, and that through the game I've noticed slowdown that wasn't there yesterday.

The distortions themselves seem to be a bit more frequent, I'm assuming this is leading up to the VRAM failure? If it is the VRAM, would Asus have to replace the whole card itself?

I'm assuming that this does not bode well for me.

 

You might want to stop pushing the card, it sounds like it's overheating.

The memory can take a relative beating, but it's hard to know if it's damaged. If the RAM is shot, your card would have to be replaced, there's no way to swap out memory on a GPU.

Whatever you do should be absolutely minimal non-3D use until you get some new paste on the GPU. If it still fails after that, you need a new card, and they aren't easy to get.

If you bring it somewhere for service or send it out, make sure you have all your stuff backed up.

I hope it doesn't come to that, good luck. Let us know how it works out.

 

Yeah I'll try and go to Asus tomorrow and have them get it looked at. For now I'll just keep it to web-browsing and word-processing.

I'm hoping it is just overheating, allowing it to be fixed, because I'm sure that they don't make the 9700m anymore, and I doubt a new graphics card will work with this mobo, and I doubt I could afford a new mobo for this anyway

 

If the frames are dropping it's definitely overheating and clocking down, but the question is whether your RAM is fried or not. If you haven't pushed it for weeks like this it might be OK...

 

I only noticed the frame drops and distortions this week, however I have been using the laptop for gaming for the last weeks, but mostly on the zalmon cooler.

It was fine running Civ V earlier today for about 10 minutes, but once I started playing League of Legends it went down hill.

Today was the first day the card went over 100 degrees, and thats because didn't have the cooler with me, most of the time when gaming it sits around 93-96 degrees, and when not gaming, around 59 to 65.

 

Got my G50 Back in working order.

They said that the fan in the system just died, so they replaced it and changed the cooling paste, and all seems to be well, with temps back down into the 80s and no graphical errors.

Asus said the GPU was fine, and it seems they even replaced my keyboard. Plus they didn't charge me for out of warranty either, so thank you Asus Canada!

 

That is good news. If only Asus UK were as helpful and charitable. Congrats on your getting your G50 put to rights.