should I upgrade my ati drive?

Hi all,

I haven't upgraded my ati driver for about half a year. I suffered GSOD last time when i upgraded my driver and CCC to latest last year.. so I am quite reluctant to upgrade afterward.

below is my current driver status.


the reason that make me post here is that today I had a overheat shut-down while playing Assassin Creed :brotherhood (which I had nvr encountered before). I am playing on 1920x 1080 with vsyn 'off' and 'medium' effect.
so Please recommend me if there is a need to upgrade.

P.S my cpu is an old batch 720qm

 

Well two things, yes its recommended to update your drivers only if you update your vbios first, which I assume you havent done since last time you tried updating your drivers you had the GSOD

However, if your only doing this because of an overheating problem then my recommendation would be to first blow out the vents in the back with a can of air, I can infer by your post that since you havent updated anything in so long you also havent cleaned it in a while correct?

Anyways, give that a shot, if it doesnt give you your desired affect (of letting you run the game flawlessly) then update the vbios first (sticked threads) then update to 11.4 and you should be golden

EDIT: Forgot to mention, that if neither work, a repaste might be necessary, btw what BIOS are you on?

 

i often blow the vents out, and i could feel the hot air from there..so i don't think it could b the vent problem.

My BIOS version is 209 i had just updated once after i purchased. As for the vbios, where could I check my vbios version?

 

Then a repaste may be whats most necessary.

I would update your BIOS first to at least 211 if not 213 as they will help with cooling with respect to 209.

GPU-Z will tell you.

 

may Iknow what's a 'repaste' ? As u suggested, i had upgrade my bios to 211..but the boot menu dissappear, (when i press DEL) it won't enter into boot menu which means i can't update to ver 213. ;(.

Regarding with vbios, i had download chastity and hellcry but had no idea to upgrade them. do i have to upgrade them with EZflash too?

P.S Done upgrading to BIOS 213...my button press is delay and it skips the boot menu lol. As for the vent, do both of your vents have equal air flow becoz my left vent blows more air then the right...

 

Im pretty sure you press ESC to enter the boot menu (I might be wrong as I havent done it in a while), then just select the correctly formatted USB stick with the BIOS on it and the computer will do the rest

As for the vBIOS, follow this exactly http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/515309-how-fix-your-gsod-blues.html, but just substitute for the modded vbios you want to use (I would recommend Chastitys or Rucktenmarks...<-- probably butchered his name LOL sorry )

EDIT: Sorry are you asking what a repaste is or how to do it?

SECOND EDIT: lol Left as in sitting behind the screen or from the point of view looking straight at the vents?

 

i mean the left vent which is viewed from the front.(close to 3 blue-light buttons).

i totally don't get what u mean by repaste lol... what do I have to paste again?

 

That vent is for the CPU, what are your CPU temps? As that fan will run all the time, while the GPU fan may turn off occasionally, that may be what your experiencing.

repaste, as in re-doing the thermal compound that lies between the GPU die and heatsink, having good paste or a good paste "job" giving good contact between the heatsink and gpu die can be the difference between extremely good temps or overheating. there are several threads in this forum about how to do it on a G73, but if the BIOS/vBIOS/Driver updates work for you I wouldnt worry about it, I would however run a stress test like furmark (with GPU-Z in the background) for about 5 min to see how high your temps get. Below 95C is acceptable, 100C+ means you should strongly consider a repaste.

 

I think updating your GPU driver enhances performance and the latest ATI Catalyst 11.4 release which is linked b Chastity proves not to give BSOD ,as far as I have seen of course.
And for that re-paste job,I would rather get it done by an expert who did it several times before to avoid the worst out-comings....

 

thanks crappy for ur help so far.. but nth seems to work out now.. right after I upgrade to Bios 213, i got 1 Blue screen, and 3 freeze screen right after Login... so i downgrade back to 209.

guess i'll stick with this until the exam is over ...don't want to get a sudden frozen screen while I am working with my stuff. =D thanks and hv a great day

 

if your computer is randomly freezing, uninstall all Creative and Soundblaster applications and drivers, and then update your Realtek Audio drivers.

Creative/Soundblaster causes random freezing on the G73

 

Not necessarily true for everyone. Finding out why a machine crashes/freezes is like hunting the elusive Questing Beast of lore.

 

as for the record, i don't any more crashes or screen freeze or even BSOD after I downgrade my BIOS to 209 ver. the only issue is sometimes while i play AC:Brotherhood, my cpu overheat.... i guess it's due to either hot room temp or high resolution setting (even thou i get an average 35fps...)

 

^^ wait I thought it was your GPU that was overheating and thats why you wanted to upgrade your video drivers?

 

tbh, i don't even know which unit is overheated... the screen just turns black(with lights on) and 3sec later the comp completely is shut down. Both vents are as hot as heated charcoal... it is just my premature assumption that my old ati driver causes this issue..

just noticed from ur sig, has the new batch to G3jh change to LED screen by default spec?

 

Hmm then you should run HwInfo32 in the background to find out what it is exactly.

Well, LCD, LED Backlit lol

 

aight thanks.. i'll try the sensor logging ..
here's some brief info of my gpu and cpu temp logged by hwinfo32

CPU
4 cores of the CPU average around 80'C

GPU
both GPU thermal and GPU TS1(MemIO) averages 100'C
average temp of GPU TS0(DispIO) = 90'C
average temp of GPU TS2(shader) = 93'C

are those figures looking bad for my gpu? will it burn if i continue playing AC:Brotherhood with current vid setting?

 

I apologize for taking so long to reply, I never saw your most recently reply to this thread.

Anyways, imho both your cpu and gpu temps are too high, sure the CPU can handle up to 100C and the GPU up to 114C, but even during the most stressful tools, benchmarks or games, my cpu only hits high 60's low 70's and gpu mid 80's (for like crisis or homefront that keep the gpu load at 100%, much lower temps for other games) or about 95C for furmark xtreme after 5min or so.

So:
1. Your paste job on your cpu and gpu is drying up/going bad and needs to be redone.
2. Your heatsinks arent sitting correctly.
3. The insides of the machine are extremely dirty (particularly near the "radiator" part behind the fan, but you said you blow out the vents regularly so im fairly certain its one or both of the first two options)

Ignoring all else and simply answering your question, ATI/AMD specs the card up to 114C before damage is caused (I believe thats why the machine shuts off at around 110C, to avoid damage) so in the strictest sense, no, your gpu should handle it fine and be "okay" at those temps. But no one should just let it stay at them because in the end it will likely kill the gpu faster/quicker.