My GPU crashes, I am desperate and really need your help.

Alright I've been trying to fix this for a while and posted everywhere and I haven't been able to fix it so I asked a friend where I could get help and he redirected me here. As a last try I thought I'd post a very detailed story on my laptops background and hope that some kind and loving soul will read it and try to help. You have no idea how much I would appreciate it if you would read it all and help me.

Before I begin I just want to say that I'm pretty sure it has to do with heating but you be the judge. Let's begin.

I bought this computer about 2 years ago I think. It's an ASUS G73Jh. i5, HD Radeon 5870, 64 bit win7. I played a lot of demanding games on it and it went fine. One day when playing Crysis 2 it just crashed, I rebooted and 5 minutes in it crashed. I took it to the balcony and cooled it down because I figured it was overheated. After this I experienced the same thing with any demanding game, Portal 2 etc. Sometimes I could play for a while sometimes I couldn't play for long, the intervalls were different every time. In the end it started crashing more often and I stopped playing demanding games. I stuck to HoN and then near the end, DotA 2, they worked. I noticed that the right vent in the back was very hot. So I suspected overheating and that the fan stopped working.

Before I keep going I just want to say I'm a lazy teenager and I did everything to avoid having to move my . I even had my warranty but I was too lazy to backup everything and send it back.. So this is really all my fault.

I didn't do anything about it I just stopped doing demanding things like playing Crysis 2 etc. Then last fall it crashed. I couldn't get back on. This time I think it was due to a virus or just physical problem with the HDD. It loaded to "Startup repair" and then did that forever. I got sick of this computer and stored it in the back of my closet. Used my old stationary. Now a few days ago my old stationary bit the dust and I thought I'd reformat this laptop and get back on it. I used the recovery partition on the HDD but it didn't work. I downloaded Win 7 on a USB it didn't work. EVERYTHING pointed at a faulty HDD so I bought a new one. Voilá! It worked. It installed Win 7 and my comp was back up running. I went to AMDs website and downloaded video drivers. But something was off. Pixels were dying on the browser and I googled to check what the problem was. I read somewhere on a forum that I should turn off "3d acceleration" in Firefox so I did, and it worked, browser stopped flickering dead pixels. Alas! I was close to playing DotA 2 again. I popped it open and the screen went berzerk. First it started flickering a little with dead pixels, then more, then more and in the end the entire screen turned into one color with stripes and then tabbed back to the desktop with a message saying "AMD drivers stopped responding and have successfully recovered".

After a lot of googling and frustration I went to the store and bought a can of compressed air. I opened the computer up and blew away. When I turned on the computer later it seemed great. I turned on the game and it worked without a single dead pixel for about 15 minutes until I turned the game and the computer off to go to my cousins for dinner. I also felt for the first time in a very long time a slight cool breeze from the vents at the back of my computer. I thought it was all solved. So when I got home I busted out Skype, called up my friends and turned on DotA 2 to play. Then it started.. It started flickering, more and more and more and then the dreaded one color striped screen came up and then tabbed out with the annoying message at the bottom.. After trying again later it did the same thing but not tabbing out, just sticking at the one color screen until I turned off the computer. I stopped playing for a day and instead just watched movies, played Minecraft, checked facebook. All went well. Then I popped up DotA 2 again to try (I know I'm stupid) and of course the one color screen came up after a minute or two. I turned on the computer again to play Minecraft and watch a movie but no, I couldn't. As soon as I popped up the movie it started flickering and 15 seconds later the screen came up. Tried several times and same thing happened. I waited an hour after that and tried again and now it works well again (to watch movies and minecraft that is, not DotA 2).

Now I'm here.. Suffering from DotA 2 and gaming withdrawal and don't know what to do. Help me.

Please, I really need help..

 

Sounds like the GPU and/or video memory is going bad. If you are out of warranty there is nothing that you can do about it. As a final resort you might be able to completely take the notebook apart and 'bake' it (search the forums for a how-to) but it is a last ditch experimental procedure that has a better chance of finally killing the notebook than actually fixing it.

Might want to search around to see if that notebook is MXM Compatible as you might be able to just replace the modular GPU with another 5870.

Outside of those options you'll either have to buy a new computer or give up your gaming addiction.

 

g73-JH is not MXM I would have to ask though is the bios the latest version? I think, if memory serves me well, there was a video issue with some of the early JH series bios's. If you have to update be sure you are no where near lockup temps. A lockup during an update will in the end give you an expensive brick.............

 

People were getting radeon 6970m (and 6990m) working in this laptop. The card was floating around $300 and there is a thread about it here. I've also seen used g73jh gpus sold for under $100 sold from upgraders. Not all is lost, take a look around... if I was you, i'd do the upgrade. Less than 1 hour of suffering for near new performance.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

What about a new Motherboard? My XPS was having some freezes and now it won't start. A friend of mine told me is a GPU issue, so I bought a new Motherboard through eBay (as I can see, the GPU is soldered to the motherboard on mine) and is arriving this weekend. I paid only $150 for the MB + $10 on an MX-4

 

The gpu on the g73jh is a pseudo-mxm3.0 in that you can replace it with an mxm3.0 gpu but that the stock card is fatter than it should be. No need for motherboard replacement on this one, at least not until a new gpu is tried

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

I'm a bit ignorant on this, so please correct me: what if the overheating "burned" some places on the MB near the GPU, or unsoldered some pieces nearby?. As I stated, I don't know much on this thing, but I like to know...

 

It could have, but your graphics card would very likely be totally non functional first. I would do the upgrade first because a gpu's circuitry is way more sensitive to heat

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I don't know how to check that. How does one upgrade it? According to dxdiag it says

BIOS: BIOS date: 10/30/09 15:13:23 Ver: 08.00.10

Seems old..?

Also I'm no hardware expert whatsoever but can it have anything to do with sensors? I mean when I use things like CPUID hardware monitor or speedfan etc etc I can't find my fans. The fans aren't recognized and it says "0RPM" even though I can hear my fans and when I opened it I saw the fans spinning. So I was thinking, can it have anything to do with sensors not telling the fans to speed up when it needs to? I.e. the fans beeing set on low thinking im idling even though I'm playing a demanding game?

 

I'm not sure how this forum works but a lot of forums have a system where if someone quotes you then they get a notification and I'd love for you to see my previous post above so I thought I'd quote you hehe. Cheerio!