W90 Graphical Glitches

I've come across a rather odd, yet extremely annoying problem with my W90. 2D interfaces, in particular Lord of the Rings Online and the 3DMark Vantage Loading UI will "twitch" and flicker. They'll twitch occasionally horizontally, or just flicker rapidly. In LotRO, this also happens with a lot of the textures in the game. I haven't overclocked my 4870s via CCC, nor have I enabled the TurboGear on the laptop.

I did a complete uninstall of the preloaded drivers and installed the updated ones off of the Asus support page Except I keep getting different version numbers from different programs. ie. GPU-Z = 7.14.10, Device Manager = 8.551.2.0, System Information = 7.01.01.838. Edit: Nevermind. Found out 8.55 was my driver package. 7.14 is my Direct3D. 7.01 is my 2D driver. (Probably should of checked CCC first..lol)

So, in conclusion, I have flickering/twitchy 2D ui's, and flickering textures. Also, my computer doesn't seem to know what driver it has installed.

If anyone could help, it'd be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Edit: I haven't been able to deduce if it's just those two programs that have the issue. Call of Duty 4 and Oblivion seem to run perfectly. I at first figured it was only LotRO, but then I started getting glitches in 3DMark.

 

Was able to pinpoint the problem to Crossfire. Disabled a card and all the glitching and twitching stopped.

Bad drivers, I guess?

 

Well, try with the newest drivers and you'll see

 

Attempted to use the 9.4 drivers modded by Vicious/eWrecked. If anything, the twitching got worse. =\ Could it be a bad card?

 

It could be a bad card but its hard to say . Did you flash your bios and use the guide that Vicious has put together ? . If you just straight up installed the 9.4s then that was only using one card and not 2 because of the code 43 error on anything after factory drivers.

 

Yea, I flashed my secondary to Master then installed the drivers. I've reverted back to my Asus provided drivers now, as well as reflashed my seconndary to slave. I'm going to contact Asus tomorrow and see if they can provide me with anything.

 

I have an issue that I only saw in what I would call "low 3d" things like the loading screen of vantage, and many game menu's but not in the game.

My issue was the screen would randomly "bounce" to the left a few pixels and then back again. Usually the lower half of the screen.

Im assuming a bad card or crossfire issue because nobody else had the problem, but now you may be the 2nd.

Runs fine in high 3d like while a game actually plays, only exception is warcraft 3, I guess its not demanding enough for high 3d clocks so it would do it in the game sometimes.

Its the reason I am going to RMA my unit.

Sometimes you just get bad luck, but atleast its nice and easy to RMA it via a Asus reseller.

Im still holding onto it for a bit longer to run it to the ground with some tests. I have a voltage bios mod to try (even though my cpu is not fast enough to really take advantage of it much)

Im pretty sure its not drivers/software on my side as I did a fresh install of Windows 7 and still saw it.

Oh one thing I need to do that somebody suggjested is to open the unit up and make sure the cards & crossfire cable are all seated well. Id imagine just one pin being messed up could cause sync issues and thats what it seems like. Its hard to have a card only bad in one setting like that though possible.

 

That is the exact issue I'm having, Vicious. Glad to know I'm not alone though. I'm going to see if New Egg will do their laptop exchange, since I know they can't accept returns on laptops. On hold with Asus right now waiting on a tech to see if theres something that can be done.

 

Well if I fix it I will let you know.

I should try to cut er' open tomorrow. In the day is doubtful but at night if I am not too busy at work I can find the time.

 

I just opened mine up, and everything seemed perfectly fine. Asus Tech is offline till Monday. Something about their computers being down. (*cough*ForTheHoliday*cough*).

Something also I thought I should mention. I haven't been able to confirm is this is with both video cards or if it could occur on just one, but I occasionally have a "video crash". I can hear everything working behind the crash sound-wise (music, games). But what happens is that the screen either goes completely black, or I get these weird, thick, vertical lines going all across my screen. Have to reboot to clear it. I'm going to run in single card mode for a day or two to make sure its not an issue that way. If not, I'd say its safe to assume we got bad secondaries.

 

I had that happen 2 times when I first got it one of both

However I had determined it was due to windows update loading something or starting a forced reboot. After I turned it off no more issues.

I have done much worse to the unit since then, but all the "hard stuff" is high 3d, both of those crashes happened to me while doing something easy I think like browsing the forums. Though its possible it happened in game once.

 

Windows Update? Weird. No idea why that would mess with my video. Like I said, I had complete audio going on in the background even afterwards. Even had people IMing me. Eh. Oh well. I'll either have Asus give me their take on it, or RMA it sometime next week.

 

Just to let you guys know, I have the same exact issues with my w90. I believe I mentioned it a few times way way back in the w90 owners thread, but no one seemed to make a big deal out of it.

 

Well. That makes 3. Can you guys both confirm that the issue is resolved if you disable the 2nd card? This may sound stupid, but would they manufacture the secondary cards separate from the masters? Since they are flashed differently and all. Just figuring we all are just part of a bad batch, perhaps...

 

Next time I am on the W90 I'll test 1 card for you.

If its a crossfire issue that will show it fixed, but if your 2nd card is bad it will also show it fixed.

So it could be both of those things.

Now 3 people same issue, statistics are getting funny.

Its hard to think 3 cards are bad in the same way, its looking more like some kind of other issue. usually if a card is bad its just totally bad. However there are separate parts for separate things, so maybe there is a set of defective cards with just that one minor defect.

It definitly behaves like some sort of sync issue though, not a rendernig problem. If you ever lost sync on your tv before you know what I mean.

If your play a 4:3 game when it bounces the entire thing moves on the right edge but the left edge stays in place and the game just goes behind it.

 

Is there an ATI equivalent to LaptopVideo2Go? I'm starting to realize I don't see nearly the amount of driver support nVidia gets. =\ Also...is there something special I have to do after re-enabling the second card via bios to get them Crossfired again? Re-enabled, yet it only recognizes one card now.

4:30PM EST: So. More and more I play around with things, the more I'm starting to think the secondary card is bad. Playing the anniversary of Tomb Raider yields very dull black "shadowy" scan lines. It's hard to notice them, but I can only describe it as looking like a poor television reception. Once again, turning off Crossfire fixes the problem. I'm going to see if I can get Asus to send me a new secondary card.

 

So...tried the whole running in single-mode for a day...This crash still occurred. Windows Update wasn't running for me when it occured. I'm going to try to RMA this with NewEgg tomorrow. The graphics issues are just becoming too much of an issue. Really kinda upsetting. This is my third laptop in the last 2 months. The other 2 were both sent back due to their own problems. I've had the worst luck ever with laptops, it seems.

 

So, after a very long and lengthy RMA process (About 2 weeks), I've got a new replacement W90VP-X1. The graphical glitches no longer occur at all, confirming it was a manufacturing problem with the GPUs I had. One thing I do notice though is that I can't fully Overdrive my clocks without completely crashing. I have to go 10MHz under the max stock settings. This isn't an issue at all, really (Srsly. 10MHz. Oh Noes!). Just figured I'd mention it.

 

Thanks for mentioning it.

My w90vp-x2 is rma'd as DOA..
Funny that Asus techs said the same thing about the windows update causing issues.. After 3 recoveries, 5 techs later - and a system than would no longer install anything due to lock ups, the tech said it was a HDD issue and to RMA it ---

I dont know if they are right about the HDD.. It wouldnt recognize driver updates .. tried the 3/31/09 driver told me to download only to find out the next day that file on the site doesnt support the 4870x2 .. no modded inf file written in .. SO -- each tech gave me different advice. every call different scenario making the situation worse.

I was just at the point of disabling one graphic card, but then I got the lock ups trying to install Cod4, or WoW , or anything from a CD/DVD...

I'm not this techie to deal with the issues and really upset at this point.

 

Add 1 more X2 to the graphical glitches... though my screen displays vertical lines as opposed to horizontal.

Looks like I will be RMA'ing too...

 

Yea. This is honestly starting to me off beyond belief. Once again I'm RMAing also because of the vertical line issue. The flickering issue within games and 3d-apps is gone, but is now replaced by the vertical line issue that happens a LOT more than when I was on the first laptop.

Reason this upsets me so much is because this will be the 3rd month I've been without a dedicated laptop. For the past 3 months I've been RMA'ing, returning, and swapping laptops because each one I get has a deal-breaking problem.

ITT: Bad luck.

 

i have flickering but no crashes at all or verticle lines, if i run any games windowed they run absolutely perfectly but full screen it wigs out a bit

 

So, just sent off my W90 for the second time. Kind of a bit nervous, because it can equally go 1 of 3 ways: I can get a laptop without problems, I can get one thats exactly the same, or I can get one that's worse (As in reverting back to flickering AND vertical line crashing).

Talking to ASUS support, I was told that a manufacturers ATI driver is due to be released in the coming week or two. Whether or not this fixes issues, I'm unsure. However, I'll update everyone on my situation whenever I get the replacement.