S96J Graininess Issue Thread

I just installed the beta bios...HOLY **** everything looks sooo smooth and sooo clean. wow! Looking back at the way my screen used to look i would compare it to a 3-5yr lcd thats starting to die out. The difference is noticeable with EVERYTHING YOU DO. GREAT JOB KEN!!!

 

the "geared2playguy" (eddie) did not say it was a low quality screen, he said that everyone is too picky.

I said it in NBF and ill say it here too. The graininess was very distinct in FEAR, has the graininess been removed from fear also?

 

The problem was a buggy video BIOS, like I had suggested all along. This was corrected in the latest BETA BIOS.

This effects everything being displayed on the screen. It would be inexplicable for the issue to have disappeared in one application but not in another; it is a system-wide change.

 

Actually, Eddie at G2P is one of the heroes of this story. Give him tons of credit for empirically isolating the problem.

 

anyone else got this problem? The update turned my Core Duo T2400 into Core solo T1400 in Windows, RMClock and Everest?!

 

Reboots didnt help, but...

I tried going into the BIOS and just save without changing anything. That fixed the problem!

 

That's one of the steps in Ken's update procedures posted at NBF along with the rom files.

 

**** !!! ....am i still dreaming?..just look at the screen ..MANNN !!!!
Ladies and gentlemen put your hands together for the man of the hour..KEN !!!
FREAKING AWESOME MAN !!
Nothing in this world should be stopping you from buying this machine now

BIOS TESTED. Everything runs great, no graininess. Though i'll have to do a few benchmarks to see if it effects anything else.

Great work guys, Every single person contributed towards the solution.
Ken..hats off to you mate !!!

 

Just flashed my BIOS and I can see changes already...splashed gray in Paint and absolutely clear, no graininess. Everything looks crystal clear now, kudos to Ken!

 

Does anyone know when the official release of the bios update will be? I wonder if I will notice a huge difference since I couldn't notice the grainyness issue in the first place >.<. But yay for everyone!

 

The official update may take a week or even 2. This is only a beta bios and it wasn't meant to be released publically. I spoke to the guy who sent it out over at ASUS and he was shocked that so many people had it. He told me only one person had responded so far about it, and he'd only sent it to 2 resellers and tacked me on to it as well. So I gave him the reports from everyone here that it's great with no side effects that anyone has seen so far. He just says to remind everyone that its a beta, and as long as you don't sue them if something goes wrong it should be ok. Grainyness is solved, and my other problem seems a bit better, screen still flickers a bit, but not nearly as much and now only at very low brightness levels.

Someone asked if it had any affect on the benches, and at least for me it had none, not even 1 point difference on most tests from ones I ran a day b4 getting the bios:

'03: 6623
'05: 3841
'06: 1733

So we can have our cake and eat it too : ) - a great improvement for a great laptop.

Cat

 

It does increase the benchmarks actually but i was testing with the merom t7400 vs the t2600 months ago. He sent it out to two resellers becuase htose were the only two resellers who inquired about it. He did ask me not to hand it out till we tested it. I cant find anything wrong with it from first glance. Comcast.net grainy background is not frainy anymore and my tech said the picture quality is better however to be perfectly honest i cant see a dime of difference

 

pre BIOS update:4013 on '05
post BIOS update:4007 on '05

Same performance. I had this browser window open on second test.

 

Graininess is completely gone, I played Oblivion for a few hours during class today and it looked wonderful.

One issue I would like to bring up; I don't know if anyone else is having it.

Every once in a while my keyboard won't work properly. Some random keys just don't work. Only a full reboot will correct the problem. Currently, my "j" key is not working. I am using windows on screen keyboard at the moment to fill in my j's. This has happened to me with the original release BIOS, and the current BETA.

Could someone please bring this up with Asus so that they might fix it in the final release? It doesn't happen to me often, but it happens enough so that the on screen keyboard is on the list of the top 6 most often used apps in the windows start menu. Most often, the affect keys are curly braces and odd keys like that, which I use frequently when coding.

I do supposed it is possible that it is my keyboard, but so far it seems to be rather BIOS related.

 

NOPES, not the bios, i checked all the keys with new bios, everything is gr8, maybe its your keyboard or the motherboard. I hope you didnt spill somethin on it.

cheers

 

My keys are fine as well...

Cat

 

Graininess is gone! Sweet! Not that it mattered to me much in the first place...

I'm having no problems with this beta bios in XP or Vista.

Thanks everyone for your efforts!

 

Impressive solution time, really. Have any of the other manufacturers with similar symptoms patched to fix it yet?

 

Nothing had been spilled in my keyboard.

The issue occurred in both the original release BIOS from July, and in the BETA I am currently running.

Issue does not seem to be the keyboard. Usually tends to happen to keys such as the open/close curly braces. Most people would not notice this.

The only thing that could be wrong with my keyboard if it is not the BIOS is the electronics end of it.

My reason for this is that the keys never fix start/stop working while the computer is on. Ever. Not once. When I boot up and the issue is there, it remains as such until I reboot. And rebooting always fixes the problem. Or atleast, if it is still there, it will now be affecting different keys.

 

Wow, don't check the board for a week or two and now there is a fix? SWEET! How do I go about doing it?

 

Step 1: Read page 49 of this thread

 

w3j owners rejoice!!! Ken just put the beta bios that fixes the graininess for the w3j up. get it here http://www.notebookforums.com/thread173555-8.html

i just flashed my bios, everything looks great. i believe it also has merom support, enjoy

 

hey guys, im not sure if this is part of the grainnes issue or not, but i've had this problem with the toolbars in some of my programs ever since I first got the laptop. If you look at the toolbars, they are a different shade of colour., theres a photo below to show an example.

All the video and win xp drivers are up to date. I haven't tried the new beta bios drivers yet. thanks!

 

I assume you're not talking about the difference between active and inactive windows and only the different panes in Photoshop?

In which case, I don't see the problem? That's how Photoshop CS for me too - or maybe i'm missing what your saying.

 

no no thats not it, on the top of the toolbar, the "file", "view", "edit", "help" etc buttons are all white instead of the grey. The pic is a bit small so its hard to see, but its more obvious on notepad in the screenshot.

 

Hayzee, are you using default Windows XP theme? Or did you modify it? I got similar problem if when I use the Royale XP theme, but when I go back to Windows XP's default theme, the different color in menu bar is gone.

 

Thats great news that they fixed the Graininess problem, now im more interested in buying a s96j. but do most of the retailers have this information..

 

hey robo, im using default. It has been like this since day one...

 

What Windows version do you use? Plain XP, XP SP1, or XP SP2?

 

Have you tried changing the windows theme in Display Properties?

 

That is definitely not the graininess issue or even an issue of the video card. Maybe it's your settings or there could be something wrong with photoshop.

Try reinstalling?

 

hey guys, I reinstalled the drivers and it didnt work. I went with the format as a last ditch resort and things are good now, thanks for the help! I still haven't updated the bios yet. Going to wait for the official release, any idea when that would be though?

 

No idea. People have stipulated times from a few days to a few weeks. Nothing wrong with the BETA. Haven't heard of a single person having a single problem with it yet.

 

WHOA GUYS!!!! HELP ME OUT!!!! I'm one of those ppl with severe graininess issue, and it seems like you guys found a solution! TELL ME HOW!!!

YAY!!!!

 

Ken from GenTech posted the BIOS fix here. Remember, you must burn the .nrg to a CD using the Nero (I tried PowerISO and it didn't come out so well...also, DVD-R's are questionable on this so use a CD-RW) and pop it in before you start up your comp. Anyway his directions are pretty good, feel free to give rep where its deserved

 

Do I have to do anything more fancy that just burning that file onto CD? No need to create a boot file? anything like that?

How about a Sticky with VERY explicit instructions for dummies like me?

 

How about you follow gatordude123's instruction and read? Kens instruction are pretty clear. If you can figure it out i'd strongly advise you wait untill the offical bios is released.

 

Lol a little harsh there Vick

Really I had some trouble with the BIOS update too, so I can understand where he's coming from. To make this work, ONLY use Nero to burn the file onto a CD-RW or CD-R. You should be able to just double click on the .nrg image file and have Nero pop up saying it wants to burn to disc. Do NOT do something fancy and make it into a "bootable CD" or some other option. Do NOT use a DVD-R. Do NOT use any other program to burn (EasyCD Creator or PowerISO are no-no's). Heheh I actually tried all of these, because I'm the adventurous type...

Once you have burned it to disc, just pop it in your CD-ROM drive, restart your computer, hit ESC right away when you see the Intel logo, select boot from CD-ROM or optical drive, and the CD will start spinning and spitting out data. Then, follow Ken's instructions...I believe you had to type "update" on the command line, wait for it to do the update, and then enter the BIOS screen on the next restart by hitting F2 (you should see BIOS version 1101), finally selecting "exit saving changes". That's it, should be no more graininess. You may or may not get the detect new hardware popups, I did not.

 

OH MY FRICKIN GAWD!!!!! IT'S NOT GRAINY ANYMORE!!! YOU GUYS RULE!!!! YOU ALL RULE!!!!

I'm not holding back...I love you guys. My notebook is now a perfect piece of art.

 

Interested in purchasing the S96J, but I have a few questions...

1.Does it play Half Life 2/Doom 3/Battlefield 2 alright at high settings?
2.Does the screen have ghosting? (What is the screens speed?)
3.Anyone have any videos showing off what the laptop can do?

 

1.Yes, yes, yes*.
2.No. (60Hz refresh rate)
3.Maybe...do a search on Google, you might find an enthusiast with the bandwidth.


*Maximize RAM for best performance

 

Going back to the graininess thing

I don't know whether if this has ever came up, but I was playing around with the various BIOS versions on my A8J, and I noticed that when I revert back to the old 207 (March) BIOS with the new Catalyst 6.9 drivers installed, I got graininess too. The newest 211 BIOS is fine.

So it's possible that a lot of A8J owners are experiencing the graininess issue, but do not realize it.

 

Read some of my posts above. The a8j grainyness has nothing to do with the vga card. It is the actual screen that appears this way. Sparkly is what i would call it. Grainy is not really acurate

 

I don't understand... I think you've made it clear that graininess is caused by the vga BIOS related to X1600... yan has an A8Ja (which has X1600) and now you said that A8Ja is not grainy?

 

ok to sum up pretty much everything i said before.
a8j has 7600
w3j and 96j have x1600. Both had bios updates to fix the so called "grainy display" issue. The a8j will not have a bios update to resolve the sparkly display issue. Unlike the others the a8j display is the cause of what you see. it can NOT be fixed with bios. The actuall display appears sparkly. it is not caused by drivers or video card or bios. It is how the display looks. Sparkly. Kind of like someone smeered "fairy dust" on it. Sorry i cant explain any better. The display has no problems but some people may not like it.

 

I think there is a mix up. I am not familiar with the A8J series, but I thought they all had the 7600 in them. I do remember hearing someone claim they had an A8J with an X1600 in this thread before, and I think Eddie responded the same way he did above.

But then I think that the guy told him about the different A8J models and Eddie realized that there were A8J's with the X1600, but I don't remember.

 

if such a model existed it would only be overseas. In this where your a8j has an x1600 you would have the same issue as described here

 

Just look at yan's sig..... it says A8Ja. A8Ja has X1600, not nVidia Go7600. Trust me on this.

 

I trust you but some people may get confused. There is no a8j with x1600 in the states unless imported from overseas. People will ask how to fix their a8jm with 7600. There is no fix for that. There never will be. The screen is not fixable unless changed for a completely different screen

 

I have the A8Ja, with the x1600, because I got my laptop in Shanghai while on vacation.