ASUS G73SW Owners' Lounge

I'm having the same experience with the G73SW-3DE , the keyboard layout is a lot different than my Dell 9300 . And fast , it's hard to believe but 14 seconds to reboot ! Programs seem to leap out at you even with every visual option maxed out . The Blu-ray drive is the only minor gripe , it's just too loud but all in all I'm loving it so far ...

Edit: I just tryed several different types of DVD's and CD's and most of them are fairly quite . The Dragon Age II DVD on the other hand is pretty noisey . Verdict - It's probably not the hardware but the disks . Anyone else having the same results ?

Agreed !

 

So I suppose you would not be happy with my 8 1/2 min boot-up on my desktop then.

Cheers,
John

 

Its called overscan. Usually the options are like fit, full, stretch, etc. The overscan settings are usually buried in the advanced setting menus. Some TVs allow you to adjust how much overscan you want. They do it to hide all the extra information crap included in broadcasts... looks like a bunch of blinking gibberish.

 

I forgot to mention that I'd installed the nVidia version 266.58 ,Notebook , Win7 ,64bit Display drivers for the G73SW-3DE a couple of days ago . the drivers are dated 01-07-2011 and version 8.17.12.6658 .

I choose " Manually find drivers for my NVIDIA products then...

Product Type: GeForce
Product Series: GeForce 430M Series ( notebook )
Product: GeForce 430M
Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit
Language: English "

Then of course I downloaded and installed them .

I know that ya'll could of figured all that out but better safe than sorry .

I've noticed some visual improvements especially while playing Dragon Age II ( yes us 62 year old guys play games too ) . Anyway here's the link in case any of you care to upgrade the newest nVidia drivers . Take care .


Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers

My Dell Inspiron 9300 took just over 2 minutes to boot up and I thought that was slow . But 8.5 minutes ! I hope you plan on upgrading it soon !

 

First off: THANK YOU! So many great comments, tips, advice, and thoughts about the G73SW. With all the stars in alignment, my G73W-A1 should be arriving on Friday.

If anyone has time, I would like just a quick sense of feedback on my "when it arrives" plan.

Step 1: Clean-install of Win7 Enterprise, AV install, VPN, etc. to meet corporate standard so I can domain join the machine for work purposes.

Step 2: Install/update the key drivers.

Step 3: Install the useful stuff per the Bloatware Guide.

Step 4: Work through the Core Parking stuff.

Step 5: Install Steam. Get 2 or 3 games installing.

Step 6: Take a long nap, see a movie.

Step 7: Go for a spin...

Any key step I'm missing?

 

Anyone else have any problems with the Webcam? I'd been hoping to use it for Skyping, and would be pretty fed up if it's not up to snuff.

 

Any reports of this machine actually in stock in the UK? Amazon.co.uk quotes it as in stock, but the supplier is in Germany.

 

Welp, been messing around more with the sound, there is absolutely nothing I can do to get rid of the pop/crackle. Even tried disabling powermizer to make sure its not from the video card downclocking and the pop/crackle still persist.

I guess if no one else has it, I'll just seek for a replacement once Amazon has them in stock again, or possibly send it in to Asus repair as it is quite annoying, though thankfully it cant be heard thru the speakers so it may just be the jack that causes it, even hooking up my external speakers thru audio-jack the pop becomes even louder.

O-well, this laptop is perfect/fast other than the minor sound prob, so I'm definitely am lovin it.

 

I must have missed your original post or already forgot what was posted ( what can I say , I'm getting old ) .

It sounds like you've at least narrowed it down to the headphone jack . Have you tried different earbuds or headphones ? I've had jack plugs short out on earbuds before . Also check you driver version and see if you have the latest version . You might also try unparking your processors , I've read several posts somewhere saying that doing so fixed their sound issues . You've probably already thought of all of my suggestions and if so just disregard this post . Good luck and if I hear of a fix anywhere I post and let you know .

 

I suspect only this place might have them so far, got mine from them a couple of days ago:

G73SW - 8GB - 1.5TB - Win 7 Prem 64bit - 17'' 3D - B/Tooth - B/Ray - Gaming Powerhouse - Asus Outlet

 

Yup, thanks for the suggestions, all very good. I've tried about 4 different drivers, and 3 different formats of W7 and so far same thing. Though the core unparking thing I have not. Which I will try here in a bit, but overall, yup I've tried different headphones/earbuds and still have the popping/crackling.

I really didnt want this prob to bother me, but I guess now that I have tried everything to fix, and can't. I can't let it go until I do. Thanks for keepin an eye out.

EDIT: Looks like core unparking doesnt solve it either, and I now see that the speakers do the same pop/crackle thing, its just so low you have to put your ears up closer to it to notice. It's easily noticeable with earbuds though. Guess its probably just a bad audio-chip from the mobo, I even re-flashed the bios/set everything back to defaults.

Guess I will just look into getting sent a replacement from Amazon since that would be faster than going thru an Asus RMA at this point in time.

 

You'll want to install windows, install all patches/updates, and get ALL the drivers working before you load any software, so step 1 and 2 are a little out of order. Overall though, your strategy is sound, I just went through it with Windows 7 Ultimate on Tuesday. Download all your drivers beforehand, Asus site takes FOREVER to get them all, took me the better part of a night downloading. Also I'd suggest getting the latest nvidia drivers from their site rather than use the ones on Asus site. I also found an updated atheros wifi driver that made my wireless performance much better than what came out of the box and I didn't get it from Asus. As always, YMMV. Either way this system will blow you away!

Tom

 

Is it worth upgrading to Windows Ultimate? What do you get that daily Office/Interent use + gaming will benefit from?

Is it easier to set up virtual machines?

 

I've been wondering about that too . I see where you can just purchase a product key and then enter it from within the version of Windows 7 that you currently have and then the new features will be unlocked ( they're already there in all versions but just locked out ) . I just don't see where it would be work the additional money to the average user like me and you ( Office/Gamer/Internet ) , but maybe I'm missing something .

 

Not a ton of value really in general but I have bought my ultimates through friends who work for microsoft and get it through the company store and it's only 50 bucks for ultimate vs. 40 for pro. I need the ability to join a domain so for the extra 10 bucks it's a no brainer...

Tom

 

If you're looking at the UK website I linked you, it comes with Ultimate preinstalled, which would make the decision a little easier!

 

Not really. You can run a virtual XP but then you can get VMware and do the same thing for free. You get all the extra corporate domain stuff (active directory etc) which %99 of home users don't use.

 

There's new official WHQL Nvidia drivers 267.76 posted on nvidia.com
NVIDIA DRIVERS 267.76 WHQL

"New in Release 265 Drivers
Performance
Increases performance for GeForce 400 Series GPUs in several PC games vs. the latest Release 260 drivers.
Improves performance in Final Fantasy XI on GeForce 400 Series GPUs."

Dragon Age 2 runs a lot smoother now

3dmark Vantage score went up a little too
850core/1625memory
P10326
http://3dmark.com/3dmv/3013888

 

Thanks for the heads up , I'm downloading them now . I'm glad to hear that another forum member is playing Dragon Age 2 too .

 

Yes it is very annoying and frustrating but it is of my own doing, I just have a lot of security programs and stuff that all start in boot-up and as this is such an old desktop it's not really capable of doing everything together anymore.

I'm currently in a position to be upgrading and have been following this thread all the way from the beginning and the JW before that. I'm so torn between owning my very first laptop or building a new desktop. Building really appeals to me because you can build to whatever specs you want but to be honest I've already hit the $3k mark with my build and that is probably way over the top for a non gamer like me, but I do like quality.

I alluded to it a couple of pages back that one web review site in particular was not very complimentary at all to the Asus G73s and that they hoped with the announcement of the new G74 that this will be better than the G73 series.

They do have a point I suppose, and given how much I read about the Asus and the problems that people have encountered with them along the way. But then again for every problem you do hear about there is of course the multitude of people out there that don't have any issues at all.

Having said all that though Asus would still be the only laptop of choice for me, it's just a matter of me making up my mind and not sitting on that fence forever.

Cheers,
John

 

Wow, you can overclock your 460m to 850/1650, amazing. The first time I turned the memory to 1500, furmark crashed immediately. I was a little bit scared. Mine can work stably at 800core/1400memory, I haven't tried higher clock since, don't want to fry it. The temperature seems fine, 74C highest so far. BTW, I haven't updated video driver yet, still with original 261.14, /blush. Will update soon and test again.

 

I can run it at 1625, sorry
It looks like it would run higher but that's the maximum in MSI afterburner... i should probably try Nvidia inspector or some other software.

 

Every computer model has some systems with issues, pound for pound this new laptop is insanely fast. My gaming workstation is more powerful than this, but having a laptop with this much horsepower is nice because I don't want for the workstation any time I'm portable (which is actually most of the time). That's really the big reason I could justify spending so much on a laptop, since I use it more than any other computer other than my workstation at work. Ultimately what you need should define what you get for a solution, if portability is a requirement you'll clearly want to go the laptop route, but if you don't need that you will get a LOT more bang for your buck with a desktop PC.

Tom

 

Ok, just opened my laptop and noticed it was at the screen that says, boot in safe, boot in normal, etc. It hard a hard time rebooting but it did and I got the following: Windows has recovered from a serious error (or something along those lines..) I cut and pasted... Anyone have any ideas????? I did install Adobe Acrobat X today.


Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 9f
BCP1: 0000000000000003
BCP2: FFFFFA8007214050
BCP3: FFFFF8000455F4D8
BCP4: FFFFFA800B9F3BD0
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\032511-38703-01.dmp
C:\Users\ASUS\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-72930-0.sysdata.xml

 

I just finished registering my new Asus G73SW-3DE in order to activate the Global two year warranty as well as the free one year accidental damage policy ( ADP ) .

Since there's been so many forum members in the last week or so get new Asus notebooks , I thought that I'd take the time to remind everyone to take care of the warranty . Here's the link to the activation website .

Asus ADW Warranty Activation Link - Warranty Activation

I hope this helps someone out , since it took me quite some time to locate the proper site .

 

Here's my 3dmark11 results with the new 267.76 drivers

Stock 675/1350/1250
P1828
Result

850/1700/1625
P2263
Result

 

It makes quite a noticable difference doesn't it . What program are you using to make the changes ?

 

You can use Nvidia System Tools
NVIDIA DRIVERS 6.06

MSI Afterburner
MSI Afterburner

The limits are higher on MSI afterburner but nvidia system tools is integrated in the drivers and you can set up profiles which use different clocks for different uses.

MSI Afterburner does have a built in monitoring and stability test.

 

Thanks ! I'll check them out when I find time . Do you adjust the voltage too ?

 

No, i didn't touch the voltage.

 

I talked to amazon about a replacement, they are great as always. Once it's in stock they will send it 1 day shipping and I can keep using my G73 now, so thats awesome.

I will just switch out the HDDs so that I can have 0 down time, now to just hope it wont take too long before coming back into stock.

@lpnowlan,

Nice scores, I'm going to have to upgrade my drivers as well.

 

That's great news ! I've had nothing but good service ( or luck ) with Amazon .

 

I'm not sure it's a good idea swapping the drives, they have serial numbers and I'm not sure if asus keeps track of what hard drives were installed in what laptops. Also though a remote possibility, the drives could be a contributing factor to your problem... You can use USMT or the transfer wizard to copy your profile and files over pretty seamlessly and though a pain to reload your apps, that's the approach that I would take. Remember too that the win7 serial that came with it is branded to that PC serial number, if you swap the drives over it will bring that win7 serial with it as well which could cause conflicts down the road with your OS licensing.

 

I'm getting a random blue screen of death, entitled "PAGE_FAULT_IN_UNPAGED_AREA", 0x00000050. After reading into it, it can either be drivers or faulty hardware, most commonly RAM or VRAM. Running Windows memory diagnostic on startup doesn't reveal any problems - are there any Asus hardware diagnostics I can run?

 

There's a way to troubleshoot the actual dumpfile as long as it's set to be stored. You can google around for it, it can be a pain but some forums out there folks have the debugging tools and will have you post your dumpfile from which they will do the debugging for you.

 

Robly,

Look at my last post. My machine is less than a week old. I did update the windows files and Win 7 SP1 among other things and all seems well.

I hope this is not a bad omen. First time any new laptop i have had crashed within a week of owning it.

This thing is super fast and responsive.

I have 14 days to buy the best buy extended warranty and am thinking I will!!

The warranty ASUS provides for machines from Best Buy are 1 year and thats it.

Post further.

As far as the memory dump, my error gave me the file where the dump was but I use CCcleaner and got rid of it. Next time I will hold on to it for further evaluation from someone in the know.

 

Hi guys, I have returned the G73SW with the chipset affected by the recall to CompUsa and they have already credited back my payment.
Now based on info from another thread, it looks like the guys with more recent orders from TigerDirect (same as CompUsa) got the G73SW revised models.

I really like the G73SW and I'm thinking of ordering again, what do you guys think ? Maybe TigerDirect / CompUsa realized their mistake and are now shipping the new ones with revised chipsets ...

 

The XT1 is nice, I didn't need the blu-ray drive that's why I went with the XA1 instead.

 

ljc0810,

Tiger Direct does indeed have the NEW REVISED Corei7 chip.
ASUS G73SW-XT1 Laptop Computer - Intel Core i7-2630QM 2.0GHz, 8GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, Blu-ray/DVDRW, 17.3 Full HD, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, Black, 2-Year Warranty / 1-Year Accidental Damage at TigerDirect.com

The new chip logo sticker is different. The sticker has a yellow line across the middle and the old one had the top right of the sticker in yellow.

Plus the spec sindicate as such anyway.

I will add the following as well:

For $200 bucks more than the one I bought at Best Buy (1299) you are getting:
Full HD
Blue Ray
2 year warranty (vs 1 )
1 year accidental (not offered on best buy)

I have a 750HDD but thats it. Main reason was best buy had 18 months zero interest.

Go online to Best Buy and they do offer the same one as Tiger Direct but its out of stock and they said at least two months (but that was last week and things change real quick).

Good Luck

 

Alright so I've run memtest86 which found no memory errors. So I downloaded BlueScreenView, and it seems that both blue screens were caused by ntoskrnl.exe, described as "NT Kernel & System". I'll have a bit more of a look into it and post if I find anything more.

 

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the reply.

Portability is just more of a convenience at the moment rather than a direct need. But having borrowed a laptop for a short time to see how I went with it so to speak, I did enjoy the fact that I could just set it up anywhere at home and so long as I could access the wireless network I was fine.

So ultimately the choice for me is the convenience of portability (or not) and not having to decide on every single aspect of what goes into it apart from the usual upgrade decisions, compared to having to decide on every single part of a new desktop build.

I'm a terrible one for making decisions and must always have the best of any given options (not that I really need the best) but am one who has always payed a little extra if I believe that I'm getting better quality, and we all know that paying more is not always a guarantee of getting better quality.

I had based my new build cost V the laptop cost of buying from the US and paying shipping and GST to get it here to me in Australia.

My pc build cost at the moment for what I want to put into it is about $Au3k compared to about probably about $Au2.4k with shipping GST and wanted upgrades.

I know at the end of the day I have to make the final decision and it would be oh so easy to just buy the Asus and be done with it, but then again now the G74 has been announced maybe I should wait and see what that has to offer? (still sitting on that fence)

Cheers,
John

 

I now have a new G73SW-A1 at home. Replacement for my now dead Sony VAIO laptop. I've been reading the owners forum about what to do with a new laptop and it's been enlightening & educational to say the least. I am impressed with the detailed information being shared so openly.

My situation - I have never done a clean install before - never occurred to me with the VAIO (now 10 years old). So I have some questions about the process:

- is this done with the restore disks to be created (I have the DVD +RW disks)? Or is it possible to purchase clean install disks somewhere? I did not see such available from my reseller.

- I've been looking over the websites recommended for driver updates to dload the appropriate files - do those get burned onto a CD or saved to a thumb drive for later install after the clean Win7 install?

- all other s/w I want to load should be done AFTER the clean install & drivers are re-installed?

- anything else I should be aware of or should do for this process?

Thank you in advance - as stated above, I have very much enjoyed reading the posts (all 75 pages!).

 

Good points, I actually have a ultimate key, so dont have to wrry about re-activating windows. AFAIK, asus wouldnt know or mind if serials of the HDD changed as long as it was the same hdd essentially.

Ofc, thanks for the reminder, maybe I will just re-transfer things over like suggested to be on the safe side.

 

Hi,

Is circuitcity already shipping the revised B3 G73sw? Where can I guarantee to get the revised XT1 model?
Thanks
M

 

Unless you can view the blue sticker on the box of on the computer itself, you have really no real option.
ASUS has a place on their web site giving one a place to check their S/N for the need to be recalled.

I saw one box marked with the blue sticker at my local Best Buy and two others box's without them, a sales guy told me all their new ASUS G73SWs have the new motherboard and updated chip. But I have read many that have been shipping from many online sites are not the updated computers.

 

I've been advised some quirky things like uninstalling my antivirus, reinstalling drivers, that kind of thing - left my laptop on overnight to test, and surprise surprise i find it in suspended mode with a new blue screen dumpfile.

I'm going to do a clean install, it seems like the only way - kind of didn't want it to come to that (I'm rather lazy) but it's the only solution I can think of. Going to install all drivers from portable HD first, using my PC to download them. Followed by antivirus, followed by software. With a reboot between every single install. If anything goes wrong after this, I know it's not drivers and may have to consider those 3 letters no customer dare speak!

RMA... shudder.

 

First thing I did with both my G73HJ and my new G73SW is to remove the antivirus programs. I installed all the Windows updater files, so far all has been well with both systems.

 

I'm going to assume, for now, that it's remnants of bloatware stuff that's caused it, either that or uninstalling too many things to start with. Finally got round to starting the clean Windows install...

I've kind of secretly fancied doing this since I got the laptop, so I could sort out the stupid partitions that come as stock - why would anyone want both HDDs split exactly into 2? I'm personally removing the boot partition and having a boot, programs, and one data partition on the first drive, with the entire second drive in one partition. Though I suppose everyone has their own drive partitioning habits/preferences!

 

hope to read more from you, as you get the system up and running.

 

I'm glad someone finds it interesting! With any luck it'll eventually become helpful to people who have similar problems in the future anyway.

Somehow Windows took about 10-15 minutes to install from DVD rather than the 2-3 hours it usually takes - I don't understand, but I'm not complaining!

Then came the drivers, mostly from Asus' support site but with the video driver 267.76 from nVidia's site.

After getting all the drivers on (with a reinstall between each and every one), ran Windows Update followed by restarts as many times as was necessary until it showed nothing but language packs (this took a fair few restarts to get through them all).

Finally, I got Kaspersky and Firefox installed. I don't think it's possible to have a cleaner install than that, so I'm going to leave it on overnight again and see what happens. Fingers crossed!

Edit:

For some reason driver 267.76 doesn't allow me to set up 3D Vision using the built-in IR emitter. Even tried installing the 3D Vision Controller from the notebook geforce driver cd 266.58 (available from the "3D Vision" category on the nVidia website, as opposed to "GeForce"). After that, the 3D Vision setup program would inform me that it's a built-in notebook IR emitter, but then the glasses would not start working during the test section.

Solution : Clean install of full nVidia driver package and 3D Vision controller (above mentioned 266.58); Set up glasses using the 3D Vision Control Panel; Reboot; Upgrade install of 267.76 driver (which retains settings); Reboot. Seems to work fine now, but time will tell - anyone else experienced any similar issues?