Why is there so many things wrong with my W3J?!?!?

Okay, by now, fustrated would be an understatement.

my W3J has caused me nothing but fustration so far.


My lastest issue? Again with the video card (I believe).


Okay, here' comes the same thing. I think my god **** W3J is overheating again. When I play Yeti's "gunmetal" not 1 min into the game, it freezes without fail. In CS, everything stutters... even if I switch everything to lowest... and then it also freezes... with the only thing left to do to restart.


Christ, someone help me. Why is there so many things wrong with my W3J!!


Note: I always make sure the vents underneath are not obstructed (ie, right now, my W3J is on the Fedex box that it shipped in and as ~1cm of space underneath)



Any suggestion? As some of you know, I recently just sent my notebook back to ASUS to replace the GPU as it had serious artifacting.... Could it be possible ASUS didn't apply enough AS5 or some error like that?

Will ASUS RMA my notebook (yet again) if it keeps on ****ing up when I try to game? (I mean the only reason I bought W3J is to have adaqute gaming)


Any help is appreciated





What would you guys do if your W3J kept on freezing up?

 

Sorry to hear the problems.

Can you confirm that no modifications has been made to the system, meaning software. All drivers updated, etc.?

 

thanks to the quick reply.


When I sent my notebook back to ASUS, it was in a state where I can't even re-install my OS. And there still was no OS when I got it back (seeing the screw problem with the battery bay, read more about it in the ASUS support thread) I believe ASUS didn't bother to install an OS.

When I recieved it, the first thing I did was to use a Win 98 CD (because it was bootable and had the format command which was lacked in the recovery CD) to format my C:. Then I used ASUS' recovery disks. Soon after that, I found out that I only scored 3042 on 3Dmark05. Seeing this problem, following the advice of others here, I downloaded the newest mobility catalyst drivers. My score jumped back to 4166, but whenever I game the troubles I described earlier occured.

Edit: Someone please suggest me on my next course of action becuase I'm really confused and fustrated now. Thanks

 

Have you tried changing video drivers? I use Omegas without a single issue. Also, AS5 is for the CPU, not for use with the GPU.

 

AS5 simply stands for Arctic silver 5.... I know for sure it can be used for GPU's since it's only for better conduction (I'm a desktop computer fanatic/overclocker) Rest assured, I have not overclocked my W3J in any way as problems pops up way too fast!

So you're saying I should try the newest omega drivers?

 

try those and i am not sure but are there any bios updates for w3j? i dont think so... but like u said definitely sounds like overheating. Maybe open up the underside and make sure nothing is blocking the vent...like for some macbook pros a piece of plastic was not removed and causing overheating (come to think of it didnt asus manufacture them ) hehe im playing the devil's advocate...

 

But as far as I know and Chaz has said Catalyst is a much better option than Omega for X1 series...
Anyway,didn't they give any comments about your notebooks condition?

 

First of all.. Asus doesn't use AS5.......... for the cpu or the gpu..... they use thermal pads (which is fine for the application of a mobile cpu or gpu that isn't going to be removed - as they're one time use things). Anyway, instead of getting frustrated, why don't you post some 3dmark numbers and compare them to other W3j owners..... if they're a lot lower than anyone else, I'd take that, along with accuate temps to Asus and see what they say and what they'd like to do. If you can give them information like that, they can probably tell you either what could be wrong, or flat out that they'd want to see it.

.... Don't get frustrated and understand if it's not working as it's supposed to, Asus will take care of it.... but they're the ones you need to be talking to from here on out... Some people in your situation just continue to rant on the forums and say they're too lazy to contact Asus...... don't be one of those.

 

No, it's not the low 3D marks, as I've already said, after installing the new mobile catalyst drivers, it ran 3Dmark at 4166 which I think sounds about right.

The new problem is that I think it's overheating!!!

And I'm even more sure of that now. I just froze from playing Lost coast... and right before it froze, guess what I saw. Yup, GPU memory artifacts. They look like black trangles stretching all over the place. Shortly after that, the game froze (mind you, I was play for max of 10min)

I know you may think I'm lazy and I'm just ranting, but I ALREADY DID send my notebook in for repair. I got it back yesterday... and they JUST SWITCHED the GPU!!! I can't believe they didn't even bother to load the new GPU to test if it works!!! that's why I'm fustrated.


Okay, so can I just confirm with you guys that this is not supposed to happen right? Ambient temperature here is like 28 degrees. My GPU is clocked at 446 Core and memory.


I will post a picture in my next post (I will go find an image hoster after I click reply)


Is there anyway I can get ASUS to pay for the shipment to them? I mean, I only had it back for 2 day from repair by ASUS and now I have to send back again... and it costs $62 bucks to send to them each time.... (I'm student [going to university in sept]... and $124 is a lot for me just to ship it back and fourth... I could have already gotten another gigabyte of RAM)


will get working on the pictures now


Thanks

 

here, pictures of my W3J


need more pictures... just post something.... but is it agreed that I should again RMA it?

If so, can I get ASUS to pay for shipping? since it has only been 2 days since I got it from ASUS repair....

Thanks

 

if it freezes one minute into the game its not overheating. it cant overheat in one minute not possible. if you have a fresh format and install and its getting artifacts. its either your GPU or GPU memory and needs to be repaired. tell asus but dont say its overheating because it wont in one minute. you have a faulty component make sure you state that. tell them first and formost you think its your gpu or gpu memory. also run some memory tests on your laptop memory. stress test to see if it could be that.

 

I think that was only 1 minute because my notebook was already hot... (I've been using the notebook for the whole morning)

So, realizing that there is no way 1 min, I then did the following.

I took my W3J up, took the underside apart to check that nothing was blocking the GPU vent and stuff. By the time I reassembled my W3J I can already feel that the heat pipes were cold.

Then I started it up and fired up Gun Metal. Sure enough, the notebook played well for ~15min, then it froze.

then I rebooted and tried it again, then it was around 10 min before it froze.

Edit: as I've said before, I just got my W3J yesterday back from ASUS repair for fixing the GPU. (acutally, they replaced it) think that could have anything to do with it?



What do I do now?

 

Check the memory with memtest , that is the easiest thing to do you can do right now.

 

okay, will do

 

okay, today is my birthday (yay, I'm 18) so I won't do any test to test if my W3J is overheating today.


Tommorrow I will test how long before I play Gun metal before it freezes, hopefuly, then you guys will suggest to me whether to RMA or not

Thanks

 

Sounds quite likely that overheating is your issue. You should be able to reproduce this with 3dmark. To test this, download Everest and run it up. Then load 3dmark and keep looping it to generate load on the GPU until you first see an artifact appear (the erroneous triangles as you described). Hit Escape to drop out of the benchmark and look to see what your GPU ambient temperature is showing. The GPU temperate is locked off in the trial version but the ambient is a good enough indicator. If it is anything approaching 100C or above then your GPU is too hot and that would give you a lockup in several seconds time

If they replaced the GPU its possible they didnt apply the thermal pad correctly.. If you have cracked open the case, did you want to post a photo of the GPU area just in case there is anything obviously wrong there.

 

OT:
Happy birthday man ... Welcome to the point where time seems to speed up so fast that suddenly you'll be 30 without knowing what hit you j/k .. enjoy your bday...best wishes to you

 

Thanks.

I am currently Running Prime 95 torture test to make sure that it's not the CPU's fault. I will probably run this for 4 hours or so...


I already cracked (figuratively speaking) the case and took a peek at the GPU, all I can see is that the thermal pad may be a little bit mis-algined, as it was sloping... but I cannot confirm that as my camera is unable to take a picture due to the cramped space. as far as I can see, there's nothing obviously wrong (like apple MBP with the plastic over the vents)

Thank you for all your help... especially in such a fustrating momment!

 

It is not overheating. If it overheats it will enter shutdown. You are still going about it all wrong.
1. Wipe your disk
2. Use the recovery disks ONLY and recover to the whole drive without any partitions
3. After you have recovered insall 3dmark05. If 3dmark gives you a score you can run it in loops
If you follow the procedure above and 3dmark makes the pc restart or freeze you shoudl test your ram and then the hdd. The chances of your w3j (you you can feel the exaust and you did not apply any paste to the gpu and cpu) overheating are none. After you have followed step 1-3 then you should come back and post the results. I already told you this once before i doubt you followed becuase you didnt reply. If you want professional help then you should follow the steps above otherwise i will just ignore.

 

Okay, I will give that a go after I stress the video card.

And I've jsut ran Prime 95 for 4 hours testing the CPU and RAM, and my W3J passed all the tests with no error.



Note: I used the "blend (test some of everything, lots of RAM tested)" torture test.

PS: your PC should NOT go to shut down... that's only if the CPU overheats... I don't believe the X1600 has an on die thermal probe unlike CPU's... so there's no way for the motherboard know when the X1600 is too hot....

 

by my experiences ocing desktop GPUS, lockups are from the core being too hot and artifacts are from the memory being too hot

reseat the heatsink on the GPU, you mentioned it is sloping and probably not making good contact with the core

 

yea, I'm a desktop overclocking freak too.... but this is my first laptop... so I didn't OC anything.


I just ran the real time high dynamic range... program... and yup, in ~ 20 min it froze.

I will re-test giving an exact time as to how long it took to freeze. Then I will do as P2G says and to use the recovery disks.


I will report back maybe a few hours later (guesstimating recovery disk time)

thanks for all your help people

Edit: Recovering now. If you're interested, after running the high dynamic range program, it failed after 8 min (timed it) before It froze I did not witness any artifacts (only saw those during HL2: Lost coast).

 

Sounds like the GPU is still whacked. Perhaps Asus replaced the GPU/motherboard when you sent it in but used the same HSF. If the HSF wasn't making good contact before it's probably not making contact now either.

I know you ran Prime95, but I'd still run Memtest86+ to make sure it isn't memory. If there aren't any problems with Memtest contact Asus.

Make sure they know if freezes up when the GPU is under load and insist they test with RTHDRIBL or looping 3DMark before they send back the notebook.

 

I just finished re-installing windows with the Recovery CD's.... first run of 3Dmark 05, it kicked me out giving me "an error has occured... would you like to send a report" right after the green spirit thing in the forest.

So I obviously tried again... at frame 900 of the dragon in the lagoon thing, my W3J again froze.


I will try to run 3Dmark05 again. If that fails, I'm going to run the high dynamic range thing again. If that fails then I'm sending it off to ASUS again...

Maybe you can't tell from the text... but I'm certainly NOT pleased by this.


Any advice on how to get ASUS to pay for shipping to them? this is the second time in less then 1 week!

 

Okay.

1. I didn't really "wipe the disks" as in format the HDD then reformat and such.
2. I did re-install windows using the recovery disks... I just "told" the W3J to boot from CD, and then the recovery program took it from there... should effectively "wipe" the disk..... but I didn't do any low level formats....
3. Ran 3Dmark05. First time, it kicked me out of the program saying that an error has occured... would you like to send report. Second time, my W3J froze at fram 900 of the dragon in the lagoon scene. Thrid time, it worked... score of 3919.


I then ran the RTHDRIBL The result? As before, it froze at around the 8 minute mark. First the image just stops (and the PC won't respond to any type of input) and then a black screen shows... by that time I just turn off the W3J.


Anymore suggestions?

I will wait for your reply untill tonight... if I don't hear from you I'll just request ASUS for another RMA.... hopefully they will pay for the shipping there...

 

Why not contact your reseller to see if they'll help expedite things, since it's only been a few days since you had the laptop.

 

my uncle bought it for me as a graduation/getting into university/18th birthday present.

He lives in HK which is why I got the messenger bag and mouse.

Unfortunatly, I live in canada.


so I have to send to canada's repair centre... and each time it costs me 62 bucks... since this is the second time in a week, that's 124 bucks!

oh yea, for those who still don't think it's overheating... look below....

Before, I ran VERY intensive GPU application, RTHDRIBL would make my X1600 beg on it's knees for 3FPS. now I "eased" it up a bit, so that I see artifacts before it crashed.... I think the results are pretty indicative of overheating (at least that's what I learnt from years of overclocking GPU's... no I didn't OC the W3J's GPU.... as I had problems with it from day 1... and dare not to touch powerstrip)

Click below



Believe it or not... this is the first scene (the army guys on the little pod thingy) of 3Dmark05, if you look below, you'll see the 3Dmark05 FPS counter



This is the artifacting I saw when running the RTHDRIBL (note, if you've never used RTHDRIBL, the green isn't supposed to be there)

Of course, I'm not going to believe one time things.... so I ran RTHDRIBL again.... to no one's suprise, this is what I saw



And to prove to you all that I'm not BSing that this is already my second time with GPU problems with this W3J, here's the problem I had with it a week ago. (clearly a different problem, this one being the GPU memory's fault)



that was me trying to install windows... I wonder if you can spot (pun intended) the problem?

To Gear2Play, this is why I got pissed off by what you said... clearly there is a HUGE problem with the GPU before.

and close up



This is during POST/bootup



Why am I cursed? If ASUS is reading this, I hope they will pay for my shipping back to them.... I grow more fustrated day after day.....

I mean.... don't people buy ASUS for quality? then then don't people buy the W3J for better quality then the S/Z96?

what went wrong with mine?

If you're reading this ASUS, do the right thing and accept responsiblity. I've already paid the premium for a quality product. You should hold up your end of the bargin!

 

Ok i didnt say anything for you te get pissed at. I just said that if you want my help you follow my instructions. This time i think you did. I beleive your gpu is probably bad or one other possibility you have bad system ram. Since you already stress tested it its prolly the gpu. As a last resort run mem86 http://www.memtest.org/download/1.65/memtest86+-1.65.iso.zip
If it passess after one hour without any failures its safe to conclude the gpu is bad. On a side note i noticed you got a score of 3900? I did say use only the recovry disk and base drivers. Not sure if you followed that. But it looks like your pc was freezing even on base drivers. You can also remove the modular gpu and check if all the thermals are attached in place. I cant recall if it requires lifting the cpu heatsink which will void the warranty. But i think if you covered all your bases you should rma it. Call asus and speak to a manager. The lead support will not have an accent. They will pay for your shipping if you make yoru voice heard

 

during all the video tests you were posed to use the base driver on the recovery disks. Did you do this?

 

your gpu or memory is toast if there are artifacts on POST

 

On Post for sure but that was the problem first time around. i dont belive this is the problem now. If qwester kept his posts clean and to the point people would actually read and understand

 

yes I used all stock drivers


Right after the recovery, I just installed the benchmarks and ran them.




PS:What I mean, was that a long time ago, you implied that ASUS would just ship my W3J back to me since you thought that the turn over was too fast and therefore they must of just shipped it back due to there being no problems (because I was too stupid to identify the problem) which was blantly obvious (GPU memory problems). I know that you have not seen the picture and my case is particularily rare so I do no hold any gurdges or anything of that sort... in fact, I'm extremely gratefull you're always here to help me and the community and I know that was just a misunderstanding.


Thanks P2G and all the members on Notebook review

 

Sorry for posting again, just wanted to keep things clean

Isn't a score of ~3900 normal for stock drivers? I mean both the reviews on notebook fourms here got ~3900

Seen:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3053&review=W3J+Review
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2995&review=Asus+W3J

I already opened up the cover on the notebook, but I did not remove the GPU to check how it was seated...(didn't have any AS5 on hand... and the AS5 may be too thin fro the thick thermal pads they use) and yea... I was afraid of voiding my warrentee when I didn't do anything and it already broke.

 

I did not say any such thing. You thought i had implied it between the lines. All i said was that it is possible for them to return your notebook without fixing it completely. Nothing else implied. I didnt even read your posts or your problem becuase you were acting very compulsive and posting like a maniac. Unfortunately what i said "MAY" happen is exactly what happen. Its not just asus the same with any manuf applies. This is the main reason why we do all our own rma work. Too many times have i seen stuff like this happen to barebones we sent back to them. i got tired of it and as it turns out the attention to detail we have in house is alot better and less time consuming. Also cheaper and promotes happy customers even ones who have to return a notebook for repair.

 

he makes so many threads it gets confusing to read

 

Do not under any circumstance apply as5 to either the cpu or gpu. Not only will it void your warranty but it will not change a thing. 3900 i belive was the score with overclocked drives. How did you get that if you used base driver?

 

If you're saying that what "may" happen is what happend that aSUS just sent it back, then unfortnately that's not the case...


ASUS switched out a new GPU (saw it on the recipt they give back)


so this is actually ANOTHER GPU that's failing in my W3J....

 

how is 3900 overclocked?

I already showed you a picture of the 446MHz core and memory.... and the people in the following reviews did not mention anything about overclocking and still got 3900

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2995&review=Asus+W3J
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3053&review=W3J+Review

 

Dont know i seem to recall a normal score was about 3600 just like the z96j. with omegas it jumps to about 4000. Youre wasting your time. Rma it if you are still seeing these anomalies with base drivers

 

G2P, i got 3955 with stock drivers

 

Eddie, how would the Z96 and W3J get same scores, if hardware is practically identical, except the clock speeds on the memory for the Z96 are much lower? 450/450 for the W3J and 450/370 for the Z96. If the Z96 gets about 3600(I actually get around 3850 stock) then the W3J should be getting around 4k.