Trouble in Paradise

I recently acquired an ASUS G73JH-A2 and at the moment I'm not quite satisfied with my purchase. This is largely due to the fact that I'm consistently not able to attain the performance I've seen in videos featuring this model. This could perhaps stem from a lack of support (this is my first forum post however so fingers crossed)- no matter what I search I can only seem to find reviews on the laptop, a few performance related comparisons and specific problems like backlit keys not work and so forth. I find this incredibly frustrating and it generally leads to me spending alot more time uninstalling and reinstalling drivers and rebooting my computer rather spend anytime actually playing something. I personally have the following issues:
1. My "TwinTurbo" button does not work on at least a cosmetic level- I can see no difference to performance and I have no idea whether it is on or off (I will come to the reason for that later ).
2. I get "terrible" (<30 dipping to 15-20 on Lava and maps with plenty foliage) fps in games such as Starcraft 2 on anything but Medium graphics. I realize this could be due to the fact that Starcraft 2 since the beta has hated on 5000 series graphics cards but on my PC with a 5770 and a AMD 965 oc'd to 3.8ghz I get a stable 60+ on Ultra. This problem could also stem from problem three.
3. I can't update my 5870 drivers. I've no clue if there's a different procedure to update Laptop video cards but I've tried to install at least 6 different versions of CCC 10.7 and 10.6 the corresponding DD's and each time the installer ignores installing the display driver aspect. This leaves me with no option but to run with the basic 2009 version that comes with the laptop.
4. The audio drivers just suck. I get terrible sound quality when producing music with programs such as Reason and FruityLoops and the only way for me to update my drivers is to download them on my PC then install them on my Laptop (when I download the Realtek HD driver it gets stuck at 99.9% and just sits there no matter which program I used to get it- Chrome, FireFox, IE).
5. This isn't really a problem it's more of a question but, is it possible to RAID 0 the 2 500gb HDD's included or possible even just merge the partitions? I find having 4 partitions completely unnecessary and infuriating to look at .

Thanks for any input, I'm desperate at this point and I'd really, really hate to have to send it in for repairs or what not.

Ransem

 

no RAID support

none of us can update our driver (well a lot of us)... if we update past the 2009 asus ones we get a GSOD, comp just freezes. asus is working on it. but you sem more like you need to use driversweeper etc to clean out your old install

my realtek install did the same... dunno what to tell you there. i am having troubles hooking up my hdmi audio etc. so i am stuck too.

twin turbo needs a program called power4gear installed to work i believe

run 3dmark06 free trial and let us know your score

 

Ransem, #5
I know the feeling - frustrating
the best you can do is 2 partitions, (C and D). I would sugggest a full system image B4 making any changes like this also to an external HD . You will also lose the 19 Gig 'hidden' factory recovery partition (thus the image necessity)

Also look at you BIOS (F2 after turning it on) to insure you are on 209. If not you may want to update but please search for the thread in this forum B4 making ANY BIOS CHANGES!!!!!

 

Ransem: check my 3rd sig link for a link to Asus 10.1. This is the latest stable vid driver package. Anything newer from ATI is risky, but if you want to, there is also a link there for 10.7a hotfix.

Run the installer, do a complete uninstall of the old drivers. reboot and then run the installer again and do a complete install.

 

As far as updating drivers, you need to choose notebook graphics on AMD's website. This will direct you to the catalyst mobility. If you get the normal catalyst it will not list the driver during install like you are experiencing.

Of course AMD's drivers may give you freezes. One thing you can try is setting the gpu clock to 705/1100. That solved my problem for the ff14 benchmark at least.

I've only had my g73 a couple days so I can't say anything for the frame rates. I wasn't expecting there to be so many problems with a laptop that has been out for awhile now, but hopefully a vbios will be released that will get rid of the GSOD.

 

Sounds like you have something wrong with your computer. I was running 9.12 and now 10.1 ati drivers and I get some really good results with SC2. All Ultra and a few High settings and I get 62fps durring in-game cutscenes and drop to about 50 in the lava levels your talking about. I was also able to install the new Realtek drivers with no problems.

 

Quick possible fix: Set all your power management settings all the way to max performance, and check in the bios to make sure turbo is enabled.

Grab CPUID and the AMD clockset utils as described in other threads here. Check your clocks to make sure everythign is running at the top end settings and not throttled.

Or be 100% sure you dont have software issues and do the following;

Blow it all away, install win7 fresh without any of the asus crap.

During install delete all the partitions and format the drive. You will no longer have the instant boot functions from asus, so if you like all that junk you may not want to do this.

Install only the following from asus website;

Chipset (reboot)
Video (reboot)
Realtek audio (after reboot remove the SRS package)
ATK (reboot)

Set all your power management settings all the way to max performance, and check in the bios to make sure turbo is enabled. Download windows updates (reboot)

Grab CPUID and the AMD clockset utils as described in other threads here. Check your clocks to make sure everythign is running at the top end settings and not throttled.