Asus G72Gx

I just sold my gaming rig and bought a G72Gx as a dedicated gaming machine. This has the 2.0 GHz core 2 quad, 6GB DDR2 RAM, Nvidia GTX 260M w/ 1GB GDDR3. Starting to regret it. I can run a game for a couple of minutes on full 1440x900 / high detail, and it cruises along perfectly. Then it starts to get choppy and framerate drops to around 1FPS.

I read somewhere about BIOS or GPU drivers being out of date; I updated both, to no avail. I also read that this has to do with overheating, which would make sense that it seems to slow almost to a halt after a couple of minutes of gaming, but without putting a cooler under it, even when it's in full throttle playing a game and starts to slow down, the bottom of the notebook is barely warm.

Does anyone else have any experience with Asus G71 or G72? Is there a magic cure for this or did I just buy myself a $1300 gaming brick?

 

It's overheating... the cooling the ASUS G series is not good... you have to do some mods to lower temps... first apply new thermal paste like MX2 on the CPU and GPU... undervolt your CPU using the undervolting guide which is found on the forum... you can also undervolt the GPU... ppl on the ASUS forum can also help with all this... with G72 undervolted bios.... a notebook cooling pad will also help....

 

Run GPU-Z or HWMonitor and see what the temps are, especially at the point that it starts to lag... also, GPU-Z will show you the GPU clock speeds, so you'll be able to easily monitor if it's downclocking and how hot it is running.

Post the results and we'll know better what to tell you... it's possible you just got a bum machine and it'll need to be RMA's, especially if you don't want to open it up and void the warranty.

 

Have you considered buying a notebook cooler?

 

yeah a notebook cooler will help out a good amount. i recommend the NZXT cyro lx. it has 3 large fans blowing a good amount of cool air to the vents.

try out undervolting first since it's free and quite easy to do. i shed off about 5-8º C for idle and load temps on my CPU by undervolting. that and a cooler should perhaps get you at least a 10ºC difference... if you apply thermal paste that could drop your temps a bit too, so you're looking at a potential ~10ºC+ decrease overall

 

Thermal paste, laptop coolers and UNDERCLOCKING? Oh my.

Well, thanks for the feedback. I guess that just is what it is.

Thanks,
Andy

 

Go on the asus forum. I know the G72 + 71 have a bios problem where it downclocks once a certain temp is reached. There is no reason why you should be experiencing this after just a couple minutes. Undervolting is not neccesary

Edit: Get a G51 (no downclock after high temp)

 

Ugh... I have the sneaking suspicion that my wife would not be supportive of my buying a second gaming rig two weeks after I bought this one. I did read about how the BIOS throttles back the GPU when a certain temp is reached and I scoured the BIOS for a setting I could adjust to stop that... to no avail.

Thanks... I'll head over to ASUS forums then.

 

It's not necessarily overheating. Mine does the same thing sometimes, and I have yet to figure out exactly what it is. I think it might actually be a problem if you put the laptop to sleep, then wake it up and play games. It's done it to me in 3DMark (which certainly won't overheat the laptop in the 5 minutes that takes to run....), MW2, BF2, Crysis, etc.

I'm positive that it is not an overheating issue. It's happened sometimes only 1 or 2 minutes into a game. That's not enough time for it to overheat.... plus I use my Cryo NZXT all the time. It seems to do it less with the latest nVidia drivers... but if I stumble on a solid solution I'll post it here for sure.

 

That's plenty of time for it to overheat if something major is wrong, it won't hurt to at least check the temps.

 

Unless a heatsink is flat out missing, it's not going to overheat in 1 or 2 minutes... even with the fan broken it wouldn't overheat that quick.

I'm pretty sure that I haven't had the issue at all since I updated the graphics drivers... but I don't fully remember. It hasn't happened in a long while.

 

um what? the 260m can EASILY get to 100c in under 2 minutes with no thermal paste on the GPU, and the heatsink firmly fastened.

 

Sounds like Asus G1S, round 2.

 

Well of course. No thermal paste is virtually the same thing as not having the heatsink on at all... the air between the GPU and heatsink act as an insulator causing it to heat up more.

 

Do I correctly surmise that opening the case and applying thermal paste to the CPU would void the warranty?

I just played L4D2 for a couple of hours yesterday with no interruption. Picking it back up today it went choppy after about 5 min. I will monitor temps... now that I think of it, though, yesterday probably had a cold boot, whereas today the laptop woke up. Given the couple of hours of trouble-free play yesterday, with no other factors changed (settings, BIOS, drivers, ambient temps, etc.), I'm inclined to believe that this is something funky unrelated to overheating...

 

When I woke up the laptop this morning, about 5 min of L4D2 caused the GPU to underclock (or whatever happens) and letting it cool down didn't help. It hit about 70C, came back down to 64C at idle, and still wouldn't run L4D2, even after stopping & restarting. Hosed.

Then I rebooted and the GPU never got up to about 78C after about 30 min. of L4D2. Still running smoothly.

This definitely has something to do with the BIOS, or Win7, or NVidia drivers or Asus bloatware... something is hosing the GPU for reasons unknown after the system comes out of sleep, but the same situation does not occur after a reboot.

Hmm...

 

It's probably just a sleep issue. Honestly, it's a pretty common thing with laptops. My old Studio 15, for instance...after a reboot, I could play L4D2 or MW2 on that thing for hours and it would be just fine. If I put it to sleep and woke it up, though, my frame rates were nearly unplayable.

Just learn not to rely on sleep so much if you intend to game.

 

Yeah, well, that's clearly the lesson learned. The only reason why I take exception to this is that on my old rig - a home-made ATX tower (that I sold for a song and now I regret doing so), with Vista Home Premium, I could let the thing sleep for days, even weeks... I probably played 50 games on that rig over the last two years and only rebooted a handful of times. Sleep was always just fine. So it's a little odd that the laptop has so much trouble with it. Perhaps it's a Windows 7 issue?

 

my laptop does fine playing games after awaking form sleep and it has win7.

 

Andyman, have you updated your drivers to the latest from nVidia? I have not encountered this issue since updating... but then again I rarely put the laptop to sleep.

 

i recommend that u download a copy of windows 7 and do a clean install using the OEM key below on ur laptop's base..... then install the latest ASUS drivers... and BIOS... and the NVDIA 186.81 drivers...these are the coolest NVDIA drivers and there should be no problems with them....u can download windows 7 here...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=428068

perfectly legal..

 

Well, at this point I would suggest you follow 'sean473' advice.
It's quite possible some of the software (bloatware) is slowing down the system.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case (then again, something else might be at fault).

Try a clean OS install, latest drivers (well, Nvidia's 186.81 for the gpu) and also applying a new thermal paste to your cpu, and undervolting (not underclocking) the cpu/gpu.

 

The latest drivers at nVidia are v195.62... these are the ones that have proved best for me so far.

 

On the G71 very early bios there was a issue of downcloaking when it reached 83C, was not overheating was just a mistake from asus in the bios that was fixed with later release. That said the problem was still present if you let it go to sleep, so you had to reboot to not have this issue, im not sure if this is present on the G72 though.

I would probably still montior temps to see if the temps are fine. Something like HWmonitor, just open it before you game, and if you see same problem check what temps was it at or reached. I didnt had any problems with any games while i had my G71, but i never played anything as demanding as crysis.

 

Those are probably beta drivers. It is usually better to use the latest WHQL ones. I bet you will find WHQL 186.81 / 82 ones to be much better.

 

I don't get why your even messing around with it, take it back and tell them its a pos.

 

yeah, if it's new, just exchange it and see if the second one does the same thing. If so, just return it and get something different.

 

I agree.... maybe it slipped through quality control but who would have known.. It is an "Asus" its suppose to be super duper because its an Asus.

 

No, the latest version, 195.62, is WHQL... If they were beta I would have said so.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_winvista_win7_x64_195.62_whql.html

 

Take it back and get a new one, don't regret not having it replaced or choose something of greater quality.

 

Oh cool, my bad. I will have to test these ones out then.

 

Fair enough. Maybe I will. It is wicked fast when it works though... and it's definitely not due to heat. I tested that theory and it's not that; it downclocked the GPU when it wasn't even into the 70s, then it ran fine for a couple of hours of straight gaming. The issue is directly and explicitly related to reboot vs. sleep. I have updated to the latest BIOS from ASUS and the issue still persists. Maybe they'll get it right sometime soon. I'll keep my eye out for new BIOS to install. Until then the workaround is to do a cold boot every time I want to play.