* Asus N61JQ Owners Lounge *

Since March 30, intensive graphical performance has been terrible. I scanned for viruses and used Avast's boot-time scan with no yield. Windows' Indexing hasn't changed at all and the temperatures of my GPU and CPU seem normal, perhaps CPU is suffering from slightly hotter temperatures and hitting 100% (which I haven't seen before). I've System Restored to an earlier date when it worked, with no change and I've uninstalled and installed old Catalyst drivers several times but remains slow in high performance tasks. I cleaned and defragged the registry, but for some strange reason, Windows' Defragmenter will not open (buttons and links to open the defragger are active, but there is no response in clicking them). I've run DirectX Diagnostics and ran a disk check, again no response. Clean booting does little to nothing, except expectedly reducing RAM usage.

What I've done almost simultaneously (so it's difficult to determine the problem): installed Service Pack 1, attempted DirectX updates, installed ATI 11.3 drivers. At around the same time, Steam occasionally crashes randomly and generates a dump file (about 10 crashes in the span of a week). The Flash Player universally crashes at the same time as Steam when it does until the laptop is restarted.

So everything's just downhill. Normal usage is okay (slightly stuttery if things get more intensive), but everything else is severely crippled by 50% or more. I feel like I've tried almost everything, but if any of you have any ideas, I'm listening. I'm about to reinstall Windows 7 using the "Upgrade" option to see if it clears anything up, and if not, clean installing the OS. I really don't want to reinstall because I've installed many programs and OS customizations in the past 5 months to create a comfortable environment/workspace, but if it's necessary, it's worth a try.

Desperate; I'd appreciate any guesses!

 

guys any of you replaced your dvd drive ? mines refusing to play dvds / cds tried all possible fixes but i think its dead what brand should i go for i have the bluray version of the drive atm . thanks

 

Why not optimus? Apparently it's the way to go. 'cos the only thing i hate about my laptop is battery life and heat.
Oh and a 5850 or up will cost alot more. They will probably send your laptop off to Asus i can bet btw too. You'll lose it for 2 weeks or more..

I doubt doing an "Upgrade" install will fix it. Reinstalling windows sounds like it will. Otherwise it's a dodgy graphics card, and you'll need to RMA your laptop. And i know what you mean by 5 months of customisation. It won't take that long to get back to normal . If something like that ever goes wrong your just best to reformat. The same for an "Unknown Virus".

Is it still under warranty? I've heard you can just email/call them and get them to send you the part in some cases.

HP are just like Acer really. (yes that includes eMachines).
They're cheap, don't accept refunds/warranty's alot of the time, their customer service is absolute crap. They have crappy touch panel designs that are annoying and stop working after a while (No hotkeys for volume when that happens). They are hard to access, they're designed to rip off MacBook looks (the new DV series). They're designed to look metal but they're plastic (Old DV series).

Want me to continue?

 

no matt it ran out a month ago only had the one year uk warranty . so no rma for me unfortunately .

 

Wow, really? At least they are not from "white market" product like acer...

Also, it would be awesome if they just gave me a G73 as a reward for all my problems...

 

Can someone post a picture of their device manager with their Touchpad highlighted so I can see it. I cant seem to find it. Thanks!

 

It should be in "Mice & Other pointing devices" category.
It's called "Elan PS2 Port Smart-Pad"

 

Have you actually measured your temps? If they're over 95C, that might be the problem. If they're high, you can try blowing the heat sink out with compressed air. Do it while the machine is off, and to be safe pull the cover from the bottom (3 screws I think) when you do it. It makes a huge difference in temp.

I have to admit, I've had the exact same issue, and it turned out to be that I'd somehow switched the powerpro setting to something that only allowed the GPU to run at 50%. Press ctrl+space till you see it set to high performance, then give it a go.

Good luck!

 

So, Greg's ASUS N61JQ showed up yesterday. I needed to clean it up a bit but, so far, it is taking Ubuntu 11.4 Beta1 nicely. I am keeping my original N61JQ with Windows7 and using the new machine as a development box.

 

I checked temps first thing when I initially experienced slow performance. GPU temps idle at 54-55C while they barely go above 80C at max. High Performance and ATI's Power Play Max Performance mode are all set, and all of the GPU clocks are at default. CPU temps idle in the low 60s (with High Performance) and I believe they don't go over 80C during intensive use.

Thanks for the help, nonetheless. I made sure to check all of the basics after reading three-fourths of the people having a similar problem have their power unplugged or their power setting at a lower performance one.

 

Still getting USB 2.0 speeds on my 3.0 drive... Any tips/drivers/etc to improve performance?

 

Try disabling PowerPlay in CCC (under the Power menu, uncheck "Enable PowerPlay"). It can be buggy sometimes and get stuck on "Maximize Battery Life" even when on AC, which dramatically reduces the clock speeds. If this is the source of your problem, you can verify it by running GPU-Z ( download) in the background and alt-tabbing to it whenever performance gets choppy (check the GPU and Memory clocks; they should be 650 and 800 MHz, respectively).

 

Been there, done that, Couldn't pay me to go back! CHEAP!!!!

 

I've had this laptop for months now, I would like to do a FORMAT and install a fresh copy of Windows 7 w/o al the bloatware where should I start and what preventions should I do?

I'm asking all of you guys that have done this method already, thanks for your time.

 

I JUST clean installed Windows 7 12 hours ago and finished installing the last of all of my favorite and necessary programs and modifiers. If you don't have a Windows disk, you can get a mostly-legitimate image of Windows Home Premium from here to install Windows without all of the bloatware. Download Windows 7 ISO (Official 32-bit and 64-bit Direct Download Links) My Digital Life (Thanks to the person who linked this!)

Just extract it, run the setup, and when prompted fill in your activation code and setup info. Note that Windows will automatically back up your Libraries and User Data/Program Data in C:\Windows.old if you have enough space. So, essentially, if you have any browsers or game saves or any program settings you want to keep, you can easily copy and paste settings from Windows.old.

It's all very nice. Following up from my complaints about poor high performance, clean installing fixed it all and made it smooth again. I don't know what the problem was, but I'll be avoiding 11.3 and/or Service Pack 1 for a while.

Remember to go to https://vip.asus.com/login.aspx and sign in as a Member to install the drivers: ATI Display Drivers, Power4Gear, ATK drivers, ExpressGate, Splendid, LifeFrame, and ELAN at the bare minimum for everything to function right (including keyboard shortcuts). There's many more utilities and drivers you can install, but I just want to tell you what you need to install. If you still have your drivers disk, you can use that as well.

 

Sound from my built in speakers is terrible. It sounds like it is searching for the right level, almost like there is a loudness sine wave superimposed. I have turned off all the options except equalizer. If I turn that off the variation gets a little better, but the sound is very poor and weak sounding. I have the latest driver installed. I am using windows media player. The mp3 files are ok because they sound fine on my portable player.

Thanks for any comments or suggestions.

/Dan

 

Have you turned off/on the "SRS Premium sound" 'cos for my music it sounds like crap. It's better off, you might like it better on. Otherwise it's just the laptops speakers yeah..

 

Hi there, windows say it can't find the driver for my bluetooth peripheral device... Anyone know where to find this? I can't even find the right link in the driver thread.

 

Hey guys.
I was playing a game without limiting framerate accidentally and my CPU went up to 75 degrees C for an hour to two. I'm worrying that my computer could possibly have been damaged at all from that heat. What's a maximum of safe temperature without causing any damage?

Also. Would it be a good idea to apply new thermal paste to, just in general, reduce the temperature? If yes, is there a guide with instructions on what to do?t

Thanks!

 

to what i hear you can go up to 100C on your cpu and 110C on your gpu, when they reach their peak it will shut down automatically.

dont worry about 75, i am always running my system at 85, few hours a day.

 

So what was the consensus on the average temperature for this model of laptop? I am kinda concerned about the ~60c idle (5% cpu usage). Not to mention it jumps to~66c playing 360p youtube videos.

Should i be concerned?

 

60C @ idle and 66C while playing youtube videos shouldn't be a cause for concern.

 

Neither! It's not such a problem for me as the generic driver will still send/receive files to my phone. As long as it's paired. (it is annoying in Device Manager though) It makes like 20+ "Unknown Bluetooth Devices"

Nope, those temperatures are quite normal. Mine sits on around 55c idle, and i don't know about youtube videos or anything. They're designed to run quite hot.

No, don't worry about thermal paste for a while yet, save your warranty...
And that's not too bad, as sonofCrake said its safe to use it for a bit at those temperatures. Constantly will kill it though.

Also, how does the frame limiter effect CPU usage?

 

First of all, thanks to all the replies my question got. Thanks!

I was playing minecraft (haha) and i heard that playing lower end games on higher end computers (such as the n61jq) causes the graphics card and processors to create a ridiculous FPS, overheating it. So putting on a nice cap on the FPS won't cause your computer to exert itself more than necessary.

 

I see, that's what i thought. But not putting the frame limiter on is so much smoother You could just limit it in power options, or if its plugged in don't worry about it.. If it heats too much it will downclock

 

Hey all, first BSOD here, and I'm kinda freaked out. The funny thing is that, when the blue screen came up, it only filled up a portion of my screen: in other words, the blue screen wasn't in fullscreen. Could this be indicative of the problem? Any help?

EDIT:Windows is actually helpful! It says that my ATI driver failed 1 time on 4/12/2011 (today). Is there something I can do about this?

 

Did you OC your GPU?

 

Nope. Do you think it's a heat problem?

 

Check your idle/load temps. And it should tell you..
Otherwise it could be the graphics card driver.. I'm getting bluescreens, it's definitely the graphics card for me..

 

Are you getting BSOD's? After my OS reinstall, besides some odd syntax error getting when enabling sys restore, it's all OK now. I will upgrade my PC is like 2-3 years from now.

 

Did artifacts appear on your screen before crashing? I've run into this several times before I fixed it, where the display driver would stop working and BSOD. It deals with atikmdag.sys or atiumdag.dll having problems according to the minidump. Most likely for you, it is too, because the failure for your ATI display driver to work means Windows reverted to the VGA adapter that is automatically 800x600 (a portion of the native 1366x768).

If it is a driver-related problem, download Driver Cleaner. Uninstall the ATI display driver using the Uninstall utility and reboot into Safe Mode. Run Driver Cleaner and select "ATI" for cleaning. Reboot normally and reinstall your ATI display driver and it should be all good. I'm not certain if Driver Cleaner is necessary, so simply uninstalling and reinstalling might work fine.

 

Right, thought that might have been the case. I've been to busy to actually bother. Just a side question, which drivers do you use? The Asus ones or the Generic ATi ones? ;D

 

hey all,
while playing nfs hot pursuit my cpu temp reaches 90°-92° c & gpu reaches 85° c . is it safe to run the laptop at this high temps for long duration?
also i m planning to buy cooler master notepal U3 notebook cooler, is this a good cooler for this laptop or should i try some other cooler?

 

I finished NFS Hot Pursuit. I didn't worry about temps.
I think it should be fine as long as your not just playing it for like 6+ hours straight...

Most laptop coolers don't work very well, you'll want one that cools down the section where the laptop sucks up air. if you feel underneath it while its running you'll see/feel it.

 

Goodness me... I installed Metro 2033 again, and I have desktop-features enabled in my modded 11.4 drivers... And guess how many FPS I'm getting...

In 1080p, Very High, DX11 w/ tesselation... 10+ FPS

In high, I get good 15+ FPS. <3 AMD!


In 3DMark 11 I get P1250 now with GPU score of 1120!

 

Desktop Drivers... Hmmmm
I think that's what rooted my old laptop... I sold it, but nevertheless you might want to be careful with them..
Just a warning

 

Nooo, they aren't desktop drivers! They are MODDED desktop drivers to work on MOBILITIES, with DESKTOP features enabled through some registry changess!

 

anybody upgraded their wifi card? what wifi card woudl you guys recommend?

 

Yes, i have an Intel 5100. I got it from ebay for $15, did have a few driver problems at first but it's all good now.

I see, that's good then! How much better is it compared to mobility drivers?

 

I don't know, since I couldn't install the preview drivers from AMD, so I found these modded ones, and I'm in LOVE!

 

could you source a link for the AMD modded driver.

thank you

 

These are the ones I have always used but haven't tried them on the N61JQ:
ATI Catalyst Drivers 11.3

Well, it looks like Omega hasn't released any for Win7 64Bit yet. Crap! I am also interested in which ones Phistachio uses.

 

After digging my History in my firefox, I finally found it!

These are the ones I'm using :

AMD Catalyst 11.4 (8.84.2 RC1 March 23) Win7 x86/x64 - Page 2 - Guru3D.com Forums

That's the thread, the mobility mod is in post #27.

Direct DL link : AMD_Catalyst_11.4_Preview_Win7_Vista_March23_MobilityMod_asder00@Guru3D.7z

Also, I recommend you doing this, it enables a couple of desktop-only features in mobilities : How to get MLAA, etc to show up in Cat 10.12 CCC2 - techPowerUp! Forums

 

I came across those but the beta status kept me away. Have you tried modding the 11.3 with ATI Mobility Modder Version 1.2.1.0 Released

 

It's not quite beta... it's a full driver but not full... Pretty much like that

It works like a charm with my N61Jq, and only did good things. Benched and got a off-the-roof improvements. I have P1250 compared to the P1170 on my default N61jq drivers , and BC2, Crysis 2 and TF2 run MUCH smoother now.

Believe me, I recommend you getting these drivers. It's the first in the "Codename Mjolner" AMD project.

 

You are right. Those Catalyst 11.4 early preview drivers are great. I am using them also on my notebook (N71JQ) and desktop PC (Radeon HD6970) without any trouble.

Actaully AMD themselves highly recommended people to use these over the 11.3.
You can read about this in the twitter posts from catalystcreator: Twitter and here: @catalystcreator 29Mar

The catalystcreator is head of the Catalyst driver development team.

Actually you don't need the mobility moded ones. The original ones from AMD installs directly on notebooks without needing to mod them.
Here is the link: AMD Catalyst 11.4 Early Preview

Catalystcreator mentioned this in his tweat from 28th March: @catalystcreator 28Mar

AMD lately has been releasing lot of these so called "Hotfix" and "Early Preview" drivers. As far as I read the WHQL process for a driver takes 2 to 3 weeks. So by the time they release an official driver, it is already old because in this time the driver team had already fixed some new bugs and added improvemets for some new games. It seems that by the time they release one driver the next one is almost ready to be sent to Microsoft for WHQL process. Recently they started to release those newer drivers as "Hotfixes", 1 or 2 days after the official one comes out.

 

Hey so for a complete nub like me, you guys recommend installing these drivers over the ones they give you on the ASUS N61JQ Driver site?

Do I just download and install them and they'll overwrite the ones I already have? (I'm currently using the drivers from the ASUS website)

Thanks a bunch!

 

Hi,

This is my first post here, I'm from Venezuela and always keep an eye on the forum

I have some weeks trying to solve a sort of BSOD and artifacts that appears only in 2D enviroment.

I tried catalyst 10.5 10.8 11.2 11.3 and Early Preview 11.4. I keep 10.8 (More stable for me).

Today I finally found something, problems appears to be video memory (Not overheating problems) I never touched clocks before.

I downloaded AGP Clock tool and set memory clock to 750 instead of 800 (Default clock on 5730) and walla no more problems.

I tried to get the Rom with ATIFlash, WinatiFlash and GPU-Z.

GPU-Z no sucesss
Other two, no valid files

So can someone make me a big favor, and try to dump your vBios rom with Gpu-Z and send it to me?
EDIT: Noob question, I noticed that Video Bios updates with Main Bios Rom.

Attaching some screens.

 

Okay Turbo. I will try them. How ya been anyway?

So, GregW popped a SDD in the Toshiba I traded him and has it running pretty nicely. Now I'm jealous! I gotta get an SSD now!

 

Hi!
Yes lately I have been missing from the forum. The last 2 to 3 months were quite busy with my new Postdoc job that I started after completing my PhD.


The WHQL version of the 11.4 drivers should be coming next week. You can try the 11.4 preview driver or wait for a few days.
Hopefully they will also release some 11.5 preview.
On my notebook, I am not updating the GPU driver every month, but on my desktop gaming PC I try to keep it up to date.