Official Asus G73JH Owners Lounge

I also noticed that snapping sound twice and my laptop is still ok. Since then, I made it a point to pull the laptop out of its bag using both of my hands.

You're hitting the CTRL + SHIFT keys simultaneously. Follow tailendforwards' advice and that should fix it.

 

No, you don't need it to use the webcam. Most software that uses webcams (such as skype) have their own means of using the w/c.

Also, the intel 6200 will fit in the g73 easy (simple install too). Don't get intel 6300 as it has uses 3 antennae and the g73 only uses 2.

 

Thanks, solved the keyboard..
Now i just attempted to play a game, and everytime i start to load up a game itll last about 30 seconds to a minute and then freeze up and crash to a blacks screen, and one time it went to a black and gray bar screen.

I take it i got a faulty GPU and i need to RMA now?

 

I'm about to pick up a Asus G73JH-RBBX05 and was wondering if there is anything I should know about. How does this version compare to the others?

 

Thanks for this aramis. I read what freedom said and I thought we were now on WHQL also, so I poured throught the release notes, but couldn't find anything to specify either way. Only the drop & drag transcoder was specified beta.
I didn't realize how useful the caddy was even for SSD until I had one, you will enjoy the security.

@ corpfan1, Yuxi, PhatBoyG, MaDence and tailendforwards, Thanks for posting thoughts and experience on the plastic pop.

Q

 

Since there's a 10.3 WHQL-certified driver available, can anyone please enlighten me if this particular version can play all current and old games without any issues? It will definitely be helpful to all of us still using the stock drivers if someone can somehow manage to make a list of all games running fine (and better) at 10.3 drivers.

 

Did you try and install the new drivers I linked a couple pages back? That might be the problem? Does it only crash with a game, and work okay otherwise? (my RMA crashed all the time, it just started the first time during a game). After it started crashing, it crashed on every bootup, not just during gaming. When i got my RMA finished, it was driver problems that caused a problem.

 

Yeah my mic sounds like I am in a tunnel. My husband has a HP laptop and his sounds great. Any suggestions on improving it? Or do i just need to use a headset all the time?

 

yea i have the new drivers installed. Its strange cause now im not having a problem playing.. well see how it turns out

 

Hey folks,
I was DYING to get my new G73JH and no one online had stock or projected stock with pre-orders until mid-May (Xotic, J&R, Best Buy, etc.). Getting ready to head to BestBuy to get a old one instead I checked the website and they had them available to ship and In Stock only 20 miles from my house. This was a big change from earlier this week.
I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up. This is for both the 500GB HD/6GB DDR3 ($1199) and the 1TB HD/8GB DDR3 ($1599) versions. Compared to the other resellers this was good price.
Anyhow, it was a great day to get my new platform and I hope my post let's other people know it is out there and maybe a little less expensive.
Best regards,
Matt

 

You should order with PowerNotebooks and you will have it on the April 20th shipment. Trust me it's better than getting from best buy...

 

It has a lower resolution (1600x9xx instead of 1920x1080), less HDD (1x 500gb instead of the two), 6GB RAM (vs. 8GB) and I believe the webcam is different.

The A2 has the full HD screen @ 1920x1080, 8gb of ram, 2x 500gb @ 7,200 rpm HDDs. I've heard the screen quality is not as good.

The A1 is like the A2 but it has a bluray player.

 

Get the A2 is so much better than the one from best buy! The screen was horrible compared to this hanspree one HSD is that one right? You have more workspace to use it with, cause we only don't use out machines for play but also for work and i think this would be a great work machine especially since it has a more conservative look. Plus you get more hard drive space, extra 500 gig 7200RPM and 8 gigs of ddr3 1333, Kingston.

 

Weird issue popped up last night. I had just played a little bit of the single player in BF: Bad Company 2. (I got through the first mission in Japan during WWII, and then a little into the first real mission.) When I exited out of the game, the laptop's sound went all wonky. Whenever anything played a sound in Windows, instead of the sound, I got a LOUD crackling noise that lasted for about 5-10 seconds. The sound was coming through the speakers, and it would make this sound even when I had the volume muted. It went away when I rebooted. The second time I played BF: Bad Company 2 last night, I had no issues during or after playing.

Between the two crashes I got a couple days ago and that weird sound issue, I'm a bit worried (I'm nervous about RMAing it if I have to because I'm deploying in the middle of May) but on the other hand, I haven't been able to reproduce either issue.

 

I have read the the crackling noise has been due to conflicting audio drivers. Which audio drivers do you have installed on your laptop?

 

I'm wondering if anyone can give me some info. I've been playing mass effect d/led from steam for a little bit. At first it starts out smooth but then the sound starts to act up. It will play gun shots over and over and the framerate takes a pretty big hit and it starts getting choppy. I think I upgraded my drivers to 10.3. I saw the link earlier, downloaded from the page and just followed the instructions on it. Do you have to save in any specific foloder? Even now typing on this computer it's really laggy and i'm not sure where the problem is coming from. But this problem only arises when playing mass effect. If anyone has any knowledge on what the problem all help is appreciated.

I have the A2 an only upgraded to an SSD 160gb drive and blu-ray.

 

i am finally a proud g73 owner :-D .i haven't been able to do much with it.everything seems perfect..games i bought are getting shipped in a couple of days..then i can really see what this laptop is really made of :-D

 

Just wanted to add some stuff. How do you know if all your video and sound drivers are up to date? Mass effect is just bugging out on me. I'm not sure if it is the game or the laptop itself. The sound will either repeat one note over and over or just die out and the video will start chugging along. I it because of that creative softwar or something else?

 

Man I hate to ask this, but I can't seem to get the drivers updated. I googled and found instructions that had me uninstall the ATI CCC, reboot in safe mode and run driver sweeper, then reboot and install the new drivers. I followed the instructions twice, and when I install the new drivers I keep getting the 8.712 driver installed. I've downloaded the 10.3 drivers 3 times, so I don't think that's the problem. It's driving me nuts.

I try to google these things as I don't have much experience with driver upgrades, but I'm just not sure what I'm doing wrong at this point. Can someone help me?

 

Well, I read that the Audigy software caused problems, so when I was debloatifying my laptop when it first got here, I uninstalled the Creative Audigy software. For audio devices in device manager, I just see the Realtek chip and the ATI HDMI Audio device.

 

Did you download the 10.3 mobility drivers? When you go to the ATI website, choose "Mobility Radeon" instead of "Radeon."

 

I'm pretty sure I just thought it up. Do I get a cookie?

FWIW, went to FedEx to pick up the repaired unit today (instead of waiting until Monday for delivery) and it came back with LCD replaced and all of my original data still on the drives! Seems to be working well so far, just as before.

Went ahead and threw in the Intel 160GB SSD for the boot drive and it's damn quick to say the least. OF course, the keyboard still sucks (I've had to backspace about 50 times to write this text). Maybe it will get worn in after a while, but I doubt it. Track pad is, of course, disabled since I'm using a G5 mouse.

 

The only thing I had on the laptop was games (I of course signed out of Steam and such, and cleared my browser cache/data/cookies) and several 2008 R2 VHD's that I boot for development. All the development I do is open source, so there isn't really anything they could benefit from there except maybe a license key to Visual Studio 2008 or something. NO biggie for me.

I do everything except game/develop on the Mac, so there isn't really any personal data on my G73.

 

Damnit!

Furmark crashes my laptop within two seconds at the default settings (1280x1024) - video signal goes out and I get nothing but a black screen.

At 640x480 it took about a minute to go all light brown/dark brown vertical lines on me. Just before it went out the temperature was only at 80* C.

Looks like it's RMA time for me too.

 

8.712 is the display driver version. 10.3 is the catalyst version.

You did it correctly the first time, now you have learned about the diff in version numbers between catalyst and display the hard way

Check out "release notes" link towards the bottom of page

Yes, chocolate chip for a well named problem , sorry about your keyboard woes, but the other stuff is good news. Did your keyboard always act like this?

Q

 

Fedex picked up my unit today at just after lunch, about 1:10 p.m. ASUS has paid for overnight shipping, so they said it will be there by about 12 p.m. on Monday.

Crossing my fingers.

From what I have read I am worried that I should have sent it to NCIX and waited for the new one... am worried that it might come back with more issues than it went in for and/or get damaged and/or take longer... = /.

 

If you're worried due to MarkS issues, you'll need to understand while he originally only had a keyboard light failure, he updated the BIOS successfully I believe to 206 and for some reason tried 205 next and bricked his G73.
It was fubar'ed going in and it's just a shame Asus sent it back still fubar'ed.

I would have figured you were going in for a replacement due to my experience, but since others have said their screen was replaced, Asus may have screen parts now that they didn't have for me. So, hopefully, a screen replacement won't create more screwups.

Q

 

Yeah, it's just not as sensitive to touch as my Apple aluminum keyboards that I use everywhere else. I'll probably just get another Mac keyboard to use with this one and call it good.

 

What do you guys think? Is crashing in Furmark RMA-worthy? What are the chances that it might just be software issues (drivers, etc.)?

 

Does it crash with any games?

 

All I know is that when I first get mine, I'm not running any stress tests on it. I'm gonna load some older games (and some new ones), enjoy the awesome FPS I get with them, and test out all the functions and abilities of it. Once it seems that everything seems to be working right, I'll probably run some 3DMark tests, load some more newer games, and enjoy it more. I don't think I'll ever stress test it with Furmark, it just seems unnecessary (I know, it's useful for gathering data about temperatures and stability, but Furmark is a bit extreme for my tastes).

Like Quag said, see if it crashes on any games. If it doesn't, then just don't run Furmark

 

Furmark rocks! It really doesn't bother me at all, you just got to monitor temps and also of course correctly paste your cpu and gpu with either arctic cooling or OCZ freeze which is much better.

 

Hi there.

The G73JH is finally making it to the Netherlands but mine has 2 problems so still in march Asus is not able to produce these things in a good quality.

Problem1:
The right fan for the CPU comes on almost immediatly( within 5 minutes) and then it comes on at full blast. So the speed controlling of the fan is dead. The sound is high and anoying. I know it's on at full blast because if I use Intel burn test to crank up the stressing the sound doesn't change and at idle the right fan is making so much more noise then the left one.

Problem2:
After turning of the keyboard backlight with the button it refuses to some back on when pressing this key. It lights up when starting the laptop during the BIOS post but after that it doesn't come back on no matter how hard you try.

So I'm pretty pissed off right now. How can they still not have these problems figured out? It's going back and I want a new one. I'm pretty sure the fan controller is on the motherboard so replacing the fan isn't going to help.

 

Turn on the keyboard lights with Fn+F4?

 

That did the trick but after you press the button to turn off all the lights and turn them back on the keyboard stays dark again.

Now I still only have the problem with the CPU fan being on all the time.

 

Yep happens to me as well. That button turns off ALL the lights or turns on only the back blue light, not the keyboard lights.

 

OK,

I tested some more. Intel Burn test didn't work properly the last time I tested because the power plan was set to battery saving which prevented the Core i7 from going to maximum.

Now I did a real good Intel burn test on 8 threads and the fan on the left side started doing it's job. So the left side is the CPU fan and the right side is the GPU fan. It seems the GPU fan isn't working properly

 

The button you turn the light off (top left) CANNOT turn the keyboard light ON... you can only turn it back on using FN + 4

 

In my case.. the GPU fan mostly will on and spin @ low speed... it will run high when GPU temp reach ~90C....

you can see the difference of low speed and high speed of GPU fan if you run Furmark....

 

Can any one of you use the GPU Observer Windows sidebar gadget and test if you can measure the fan speed ? I can measure the temperaure, the load, the speed setting but nog the fan speed. Stays 0.

I just ran furmark and it does change the fan speed a few gears higher. But my Ati idles @ 62 degrees with a high fan speed that is audible 3 meters away.

Either they forgot to put thermal paste on or I have an Ati that is pretty crap. Eitherway I want a replacement. I bought this thing to be silent when I don't play games. This fan irritates the hell out of me.

 

What gadget do you use to measure temps? (gpu and cpu?)

 

I use this one:

http://windows7gadgets.net/gadgets/system/gpu-observer/

@idle The left fan half of the time doesn't run and if it runs it runs at a low speed. The right fan doesn't stop at all and produces more airflow and noise than the left fan. After 15 minutes of ideling from cold boot it out noises the 2 harddisks in the front and at that point it's noise has become very, very irritating.

 

In everest, is ST500420AS HDD or SSD (temperature) (and why only one temp reading, not two?)

and all i need to care is DispIO temp for GPU, and not memory or shader, right?

edit: its HDD, why SSD doenst have temp sensor?



EDIT 2: Can someone give me link to the software, which keeps battery at 40% and lets charge it to 100% whenever i need it? I remember someone posted in one of the G73 threads, but i cant find it...

 

Hey everybody, I'm going to get the G73JH from best buy for $1,200 soon and I had a few questions. How easy would installing an SSD be? I've never installed a hard drive, only upgraded ram a few times. Also, what SSD would be the fastest/best for the G73? My budget for the SSD is around $225, and I'm assuming I won't need that much space on it. (only need Win7 installed and a few programs, the 500GB drive can have the rest) Thanks!!

 

Its easy to change SSD, i think there were 8 screws in total - 2 for cover, 2 for removing HDD bay, and 4 to remove HDD from the bay Nothing hard, you'll be fine

For SSD i dont know, maybe Intel 80gb? Overall, all SSDs are much quicker than any HDD, so whatever you buy, you will be fine

 

Well, it started crashing again last night and now its still crashing a minute into a game. Everything else works without a problem, only when i attempt to play games =/

 

Thanks phemark, that makes me happy to hear. After you put it in, what do you do? Just use the Win7 recovery disk and install it to the SSD? (Also, with 2 hard drive bays, if I put the 500GB hard drive in the second bay, and the SSD in the first bay, how will that work? Will it recognize the SSD as the primary and install on that? Or do I need to leave the 500GB out while installing Win7?)

Sorry for all the questions lol, this will be my first time replacing a hard drive.

 

My first G73 crashed in both Furmark and in games if I ran any video drivers newer than the ASUS pack (9.12 beta).

I replaced that notebook and have one that's rock solid now no matter what I try to run.

It's up to you but I don't mess around with paying big money for defective hardware.

 

I assume you have 1HDD only. Then remove it from first bay, put it to bay 2, and put SSD in bay 1. The put recovery windows7 dvd and install windows as normal (i suggest deleting all partitions in that HDD). After you finished installing and it asks for 2nd disk, just restart. After that, you can insert driver disk and manually select what to install and what not to (lots of bloat you dont need or is even harmful (creative etc.)

 

Somewhat proud owner of the G73J-A2 (I use somewhat because I had ordered the A1).

First thing I did was install and play a few games. I am thoroughly impressed with the games when playing with everything turned up at max. I also LOVE the screen! Windows 7 allows for some pretty cool looking modification. I'll play more with this later since the second thing I did was format it.

Formatting it is when I realized an ugly truth: My disappointment with ASUS for *NOT* providing RAID capabilities. Lack of RAID 0 is going to seriously slow down this beast. HD access is by far going to be the biggest factor in performance loss. A RAID 0 configuration would of provided a much "needed" boost in that area.

Oh.. Gota go.. More on this laptop later..