This G73JH has been a pain since I bought it. Why? GPU Question.

I bought my G73JH about a year ago, I have a 3 year warranty on it and have had it back to the place I bought it once. Nothing seemed to be resolved.

I wiped the computer on Thursday and did a full Windows 64 Home Premier install, drivers, 213, proper vBios flash, fast boot, NEWEST ATI Drivers etc

The same problem keeps happening. Games, no matter what 3D game, have miny crashes (Your driver card crashed and recovered). Screen freezes in game, goes black or grey for a few seconds, then presto its back. ? I didn't pay good money to have this computer do this relentlessly every hour while gaming. It had this, and only this problem before the reinstall and continues to have this problem now. (Everquest2, WoW, Rift, Aeon & SWTOR).

During gaming the system never gets above 66 temp, I don't even hear the fans ever kick in. I ran Furmark GPU Burn Test (85 temp was the high and it held there for the duration, fans working/sounding perfect) and Intel Processor Burn test last night and everything passed, no crashes, no nothing, everything came out fine.

So ? Should I just use this computer to bludgeon the guy who sold it to me?

I have the obvious specs in my G73JH that everyone else has, mine is 1600x900, not the full 1080p. Not sure if that is BB model by default, but I bought mine from 'Laptop Depot' in Edmonton, AB Canada.

Could the card be loose? Could it be a TDR problem? Aero Problem? Haunted Machine? Anyone? This computer has been a complete let down, and I would never buy another Asus at this point.

 

You mention proper Vbios flash is that V.93?

I saw a lot of grey screens when I was overclocking too much are you running stock clocks 700/1000?

The temp of 85oC you mention is that across the board? Or just the Diode. Check the MEM(IO) temp. Run HWINO sensors.

 

You might also have broken RAM. Check with a Memtest86 boot cd.

 

Yeah, its newest vBios flash provided at ROG.

I don't overclock, the clock is still 700/1000, never changed it. I assumed the comp would be strong enough as is to do what I do, I never play games on crazy high setting regardless of the system, I enjoy smooth performance over super high end graphics. I assumed wrong.

The 66 is a temp that I check in CCC daily, while gaming, stays at 66 after about 15 min of gaming and just chills there. The 85 was the temp Furmark got the comp up to (So where ever Furmark is taking the temp from) and it got there in about 3 min under their standard stress (burn) test and stayed at 85 for the duration of the test without a glitch or change in anything.

 

With 8g in the Comp and another 1 in GPU (I think) could a stick of faulty ram be causing this same hiccup crash over and over? The crash really doesn't happen on a set time, sometimes I can game for 3 hrs, sometimes 20 min, but once it happens, it will happen again unless I reboot.

And wouldn't a ram failure cause a Blue Screen? This is just a 5 second freeze/hang, quick grey screen, then its back to status quo, it doesn't ever even crash the game to desktop, let alone force a shutdown or reboot.

 

Just check again because you did not confirm it was V93 which fixed the Grey screen of death issue?

The 85oC is your DIODE the MEM(IO) always runs hotter and with the poor construction of the heatsink that could be anywhere from 1oC to 20oC. Check it with the HWINFO sensors which will show you all 4 sections of the GPU Diode and run furmark and check them again.

If it is hitting above 95oC on any sections after 5 minutes then you are going to run into problems

The memory error check was a good call also ^^ but the GSOD was always relating to the Video card.

 

Okay, when I get home I will do this.

But I must say, when I game, placing my hand near the fan exhaust there is next to no hot air being produced let alone the fans being over active, so a heat problem doesn't seem like the issue. This seems like something hangs for a second and cause the GPU to crash and quickly recover. I know that's not very technical, but I'm clearly not a computer tech, hence my coming to you guys, Hat in Hand.

This is NOT GSOD, I have the newest vBios, I had GSOD when I first purchased the computer and that was a Freeze and a Forced Restart, this doesn't seem related, but I could be wrong.

 

Just to make sure it is the right Vbios check by running GPU-z and posting your Vbios number here.

With stock paste my diode was sitting at 83oC and 101oC on the MEM(IO) it is a common problem with these cards overheating so dont go on the Furmark temperature alone it is very misleading as the MEM(IO) and Shader always run hotter.

P.S GSOD stands for Grey Screen of Death and that is what you confirmed it was in your first post..

 

I thought GSOD was a hard freeze and reset. Mine just flashes black/grey for 1-2 seconds while the card recovers. I guess GSOD is generic term for any blank screen crash.

 

The flashing and resetting is going to be the driver stop responding. Mine did that along with the GSOD before I had the latest Vbios. But then it could also be heat or drivers. Best to rule out the obvious first however.

GPU-z - Vbios version should show 012.020.000.032 which is the .93
HWINFO sensors - Will show all temps MEM(IO), Shaders, Diode, Disp(IO) None should be above 95-100oC after 5 mins of furmark.
Drivers - Uninstall using CCC facility, device manager right click and uninstall (tick to delete), run Drivesweeper and delete all Ati files. Restart and install 12.4 latest from scratch.

You could also do the memory check as mentioned above to rule out any memory related problems.

 

012.020.000.032.038352 is the VBios I'm running, says GPU-z

 

Cool and the temps on the sensors after 5 mins of furmark burn in?

 

Diode 105C
MemIO 105.5C

So now what? Should the guy at the store start making his will up to date?

 

Well we found the problem....

Stupid Asus with their stupid stock compound and poor application.

After applying IC Diamond myself I never saw above 75oC on any section with a full burn it pains me how these people get their jobs.

To be honest if you are confident you could do it yourself do it yourself, plenty of guides including mine not to mention its a good experience as long as you take your time and do it properly. But if you are within warranty RMA it or if you had it done at a repair place take it back in with a tube of ICD and get them to redo it properly.

No heavy long gaming sessions until it is done you are verging on thermal shutdown with those temps. If you haven't cleaned it in a while you could clean the vents with compressed air first and see if there is a change. If a ton of dust comes out could be a clogged fan as you mentioned that no hot air was coming out that could be the problem. If still no hot air is coming out god help the bloke who did it if he did not reseat the heatsink properly.

 

Here's some advice, NEVER buy a notebook that has radeon graphics. Radeon is notorious for their absolute crap drivers, don't blame the notebook as a whole (only if Asus uses a crap paste), blame radeon. Asus is smart for moving on to Nvidia. But not smart for making a dust magnet notebook.

"Nvidia, the way it's meant to be played."

^ That's actually true. If Nvidia's drivers have issues, they'll FIX them.

 

This right here should have told you there was a problem. Cooling systems that don't put out hot air aren't cooling your system.

 

You have no idea what you're talking about. Please refrain from offering any further advice.

 

Indeed a heat issue. Either the temperature sensor of your GPU fan is broken or it's a bad paste job.
Did your fan start to really work while running furmark? If not, then it might be the fan at fault here, if it did, then it's a bad paste job.
As you seem to have 3 years warranty, I'd send it in for checking and repasting. They shall in any case repaste it!

 

Radeon was never ever the problem it was always Asus others using the 5870M were able to not only overclock much higher had much lower temps. It was solely the compound application, compound and poor heatsink construction with a good cooling system.

Nvidia made no difference to the temps at all apart from the fact they switched to mid range cards that gave off less heat and by doing this also prevent problems occuring should they run into cooling problems again. Laziness of the highest caliber, they also created a heatsink that actually fitted the card...

ATI drivers were fixed long ago and the new 7970M puts Nvidia to shame.

@OP HWINFO Sensors will show you both Fans are running (if they are) under the RPM section. If really no hot air is coming out and fans are working go with compressed air you could have a dust bomb waiting to explode. Otherwise repaste is the only option.

 

That's what they said 2 years ago. What was your last driver issue?

The 680m will mop the floor with the 7970m. Nvidia is the Intel of graphics cards. Why do you think radeon is cheaper, it's because the performance is always lower (and somehow faster on a couple of games but that's negligible) than Nvidia. Radeon did however have their time in the 4800 and 5800 series and Nvidia was like Intel in the pentium series.

So what's up with the hype of what comes out the earliest, only to realize it's just going to be outperformed by something coming out later on? It's like smartphone releases. A smartphone with great specs is out, people buy it, and then feel terrible they didn't wait a little longer for the phone that supersedes the one they bought.

 

Please show me where the 680M is wiping the floor with the 7970M? The 7970M has just matched the performance of Nvidia latest 675M SLI.

6990M vs 580M 0-5% difference in terms of performance but near double the price. So your claim that Nvidia is more expensive because it performs better is totally wrong why do you think the 6990M sold so well.

Same goes with the 460M that was released in the JW and SW for 2 years and still the 5870M was outperforming it. Your argument is totally backwards and drivers alone do not mean that a card is better especially when that argument died long ago when AMD starting releasing fixes quicker than Nvidia did. My last driver issue was pre G73JH so 2009.

You cannot blame AMD for Asus failures.

 

I said "will". The 580 hasn't even been released yet. Radeon likes to be quick on their releases to gain market share, but Nvidia is still dominant. The 460m was slower than the 5870m because of fermi's crappy architecture. Nvidia made the 560m that was what the 460 should have been, but nobody cared anyway, even if it's much faster with Nvidia's superior driver support. The 5870m was the king during that time.

If radeon really did fix their drivers and if the 7970m really is faster than the 680m... no no I can't finish that sentence.

 

The 560M was the 460M just higher clocked??

Nvidia's superior driver support...

 

Do you want more shader cores or a better memory bus width (I heard that the g73 had 128 bit).

 

Because they are different the 5D architecure meant the 5870M's 128 Bit Bus width with 800 shaders produced a higher bandwidth than the 460M's 192bit...60gb/s for Nvidia vs 64gb/s for AMD. It was the same with the 560M.

 

Let's keep it civil please and keep on the issue at hand. 680m vs 7970m should be discussed in a thread on that subject.

 

No hot air coming out from the back?

1. Fans broken, happened to me 2 times now = RMA

2. Dust buildup, clean with compressed air.

3. Repaste


I´m getting ready for my 3rd RMA, no keyboardlight!!

But I´ll problably keep this troublesome machine anyway, but just because of the awesome 920XM rocking all the way, up, up, up. Thanks Dall... ehhh... "Yiddo"

 

Regarding keyboard light, have you checked the thread with the usual problems+solutions for the g73jh?
There are quite a few known issues with the keyboard light, including solutions.

 

Yes, thanks, I checked them all...

The KB light was gone after the last RMA, Asus repairboys broke something, probably the contact on the mobo.

 

ACTUALLY there are hundreds of thousands of ppl going through EXACTLY wut he is speaking of, ATI drivers and/or CCC does NOT work with MOST of the products they are put in when it comes to notebooks, look up the GSOD problems as well as the fact that I have a G73-JH bought for 1000, that I can't even update after cflashing it like crazy

Nvidia>ATI (not at all times with hardware....but because when the hardware is faulty, or drivers mess up, they DO FIX IT)