Asus G53SW Owners' Lounge

Hi there

I'm planing one buying a G53SW-A1 and I want to know what are the DDR3 timings out of the box ? Is it CL9 or CL11 ?

Would it worth it to buy lower timing DDR3 ??

Thank you

 

the foil between magnetic equip and drives is probably mu-metal sheet, its a product with a very high flux density in a foil form factor used to shield equipment from emi interference. emi- electromagnetic interference. magnetic shielding yay. one of those ultra expensive bits though so for all i know they threw in tinfoil and figured noone'd be the wiser lol.

as to issues with sound, i'm assuming you have about 5 hd audio driver devices in control panel, fourish of those are actually the video cards audio output via hdmi fudgery. and windows gets stupid with audio especially windows 7. gotta check my history but recall reading about a user permission problem creating exactly the situation you describe The most frustrating Windows 7 audio problem solved | PC Gamer

might be worth checking that out, as well as insuring windows is using the correct hd audio device for output.

as for me unless its a hardware locked windows recovery with wpk scripts embedded deal i try to only do installs in a vm and build an install image to deploy to the machine later. more control means less oh-shi- and later.

uefi and acpi to a lesser extent seem like major buttpain to work with. just read through the wiki's or some of googles results on handling of shutdown functions for some hints on that. and make sure you copied the certificates from the preinstalled windows copy to your new installation if you intend to play with uefi.

as to drives, no ssd around to play with, but this bios does seem to make a lot of assumptions. god forbid you decided to get the optical drive to hdd bay and install an ssd there. google fed me some real bad time stories for people trying that. and for giggles try installing windows and booting from an sd card in the front slot.

sigh. sometimes the best you can do is throw out information in the hopes its something someone hasn't seen or tried, and beyond that wish the poor soul good luck. so to the uefi and audio or ssd issue for now, good luck to you

and to the lucky fellow with the stellar turnaround time congratulations and you have my envy.

 

anyone??

P.S. I bought a TurtleBeach Micro II and it doesn't work.

 

Performance will be minimally different, not worth it.

Also, just wondering, do you actually have a 1.5 GB GTX 460M? Can you take a GPU-z screenshot? I believe all G53SWs have 128-bit cards, the 1.5 GB is a 192-bit card.

 

I know you really didn't ask me, but I figured I would put up my 2 cents worth. Here is a screen shot of my gpu, see my sig for my model.

 

Hello again guys,

Just as I had feared, the service here in Poland is a joke... I get my laptop back today, I turn it on, and I notice that the CPU fan is kicking up to high speeds when I open programs or run FURMARK to test my GPU, I think hmmmm, CPU fan kicking up to MAX speed while GPU fan is just starting to speed up, maybe something is wrong. I run a ThrottleStop benchmark, BAM, 15 seconds into the test the computer shuts off. I look at the temps, above 102C. So I think ok, maybe a fluke, I open ThrottleStop again, run the benchmark, same thing happens. So I open a program that puts a slight load on 4 out of 8 cores, the CPU fan kicks up a couple notches, I put my hand behind the fan, nothing but ice cold air coming out, the GPU side on the other hand, as always, nice and toasty. I call the Tech Service guys and tell them the story, immediately cutting to the chase saying I am well versed in computers and such. After describing the symptoms and suggesting that either there was a terrible job on the CPU re-pasting (if one was done) or the heatsink was not screwed on properly, the Tech guy says he agrees, and wants me to send the laptop in again. Not to mention that after very close and scrupulous inspection, the laptop was not put together well, and even one of the clips (which even the guy from BTOTech in his youtube video on how to dissassemble the G53 says to BE CAREFUL about) that is behind the monitor hinge is broken. All in all, I am pissed but unfortunately can do nothing but sit and wait for the next RMA process...

Looks like I am never going to taste the sweet succulent nectar and ambrosia of that which is Skyrim...

Thanks for listening to my rant, have to let some steam off!

Bert

 

Crap. I'm living in Poland too and I'm scared...

 

That would of been my suggestion if you're looking for a optical out. What didn't work with it? Also, because that sound card has two outputs, did you select the optical as the primary out since it will not auto switch until you set it as a default to give it priority in the future.

 

All the G53SW's have a Nvidia 460M with a 192-bit bus. The G53SX's have the Nvidia 560m with 128-bit bus.

 

My G53SW-XN1 came with Hynix DDR3 PC3-10600, CAS 9-9-9-24, and probably not worth it. Since I've never seen a A1, I would guess its similar RAM. The G73JH comes with Kingston DDR3 PC3-10600, CAS 9-9-9-24.

 

I'm leaning towards tin foil or the something similar to dynomat as the top of the original hard drive was magnetized a bit. It was a bit sad to see a screw that I had left on the top of the drive didn't slide off when I tilted it. Granted it could of been over the magnet that drives the read head arm, but the screw was actually sitting over the platter area...

Luckily for me, I got a new 640GB 7200rpm Samsung drive for free so I just imaged my hard drive and threw it in and everything works fine. The XN1 doesn't come with the fancy Momentus XT drive so the Samsung drive was a slight improvement with a 0.04 lower seek time. Something so slight I won't even notice. Weird thing is, the XN1 that I got came with a second hard drive cage.

 

That really sucks! Man I'd be pissed, sad and a few other emotions. At least they admitted there was an issue. Sometimes they won't even do that. I hope it comes back to you soon man. I've never had to go without my laptop *knocks on wood* but I know if I had to I'd probably be going crazy as I rely on it for alot of things. Stereo, gaming, internet, skype, entertainment (blu-ray drive comes in handy there) all kinds of things. So yeah, I'm pretty sure I could still sympathize with you on how it sucks. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you man.

 

Field Value
North Bridge Properties
North Bridge Intel Sandy Bridge-MB IMC
Revision 09
Process Technology 32 nm

Memory Controller
Type Dual Channel (128-bit)
Active Mode Dual Channel (128-bit)

Memory Timings
CAS Latency (CL) 9T
RAS To CAS Delay (tRCD) 9T
RAS Precharge (tRP) 9T
RAS Active Time (tRAS) 24T
Row Refresh Cycle Time (tRFC) 107T
Command Rate (CR) 2T
RAS To RAS Delay (tRRD) 4T
Write Recovery Time (tWR) 10T
Write To Read Delay (tWTR) 5T
Read To Precharge Delay (tRTP) 5T
Four Activate Window Delay (tFAW) 20T
Write CAS Latency (tWCL) 7T

Error Correction
ECC Not Supported
ChipKill ECC Not Supported
RAID Not Supported
ECC Scrubbing Not Supported

Memory Slots
DRAM Slot #1 4 GB (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM)
DRAM Slot #2 2 GB (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM)
DRAM Slot #3 4 GB (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM)
DRAM Slot #4 2 GB (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM)

Integrated Graphics Controller
Graphics Controller Type Intel HD Graphics
Graphics Controller Status Disabled

three chips are hynix one is elpida. was a sw-a1 model but upgraded from 8 to 12gb so cannot say any are the stock chips. that was output from AIDA64.

Field Value
Graphics Processor Properties
Video Adapter nVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M (Asus)
BIOS Version 70.06.26.00.0A
GPU Code Name GF106M
PCI Device 10DE-0DD1 / 1043-2047 (Rev A1)
Transistors 1170 million
Process Technology 40 nm
Die Size 240 mm2
Bus Type PCI Express 2.0 x16 @ x16
Memory Size 1536 MB
GPU Clock (Geometric Domain) 50 MHz (original: 675 MHz)
GPU Clock (Shader Domain) 101 MHz (original: 1350 MHz)
RAMDAC Clock 400 MHz
Pixel Pipelines 24
Texture Mapping Units 32
Unified Shaders 192 (v5.0)
DirectX Hardware Support DirectX v11
Pixel Fillrate 1200 MPixel/s
Texel Fillrate 1600 MTexel/s

Memory Bus Properties
Bus Type GDDR5
Bus Width 192-bit
Real Clock 67 MHz (QDR) (original: 625 MHz)
Effective Clock 270 MHz
Bandwidth 6480 MB/s

Utilization
GPU 0%
Memory Controller 7%
Video Engine 0%

nVIDIA ForceWare Clocks
Standard 2D GPU: 50 MHz, Shader: 101 MHz, Memory: 135 MHz
Low-Power 3D GPU: 202 MHz, Shader: 405 MHz, Memory: 324 MHz
Performance 3D GPU: 675 MHz, Shader: 1350 MHz, Memory: 1250 MHz

also aida output for thee gpu. tired of resize snip upload post cycles on desktop images so text report copy will have to do .

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wish i could figure out what is required to become asus authorized for servicing their notebooks. haven't found any course or training or certification, yet places are "asus authorized". i tell ya, spending to test for the repair cert for their notebooks even if it cost for a proctored exam like the A+/network+/etc or any three microsoft certified individual exams, would save me a ton in headaches and be money well spent. i mean no worries over warranty voiding, and being able to insure attention to detail, plus no shipping time losses for the entire machine. anyone ever finds good information on that please let me know, and i will bow to your superior google-fu.

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post scriptum: skyrim is dx9. in a very serious sense its fallout3 in a different era. heck many of the game mechanics are exactly the same. from the fast travel to visited locales, to combat, heck even the looting interface is practically the same. reskin the window and remap two keys and voila.

but hey big world to play inside if you already tromped all over fallout3. and on the bright side by the time your machine is back and completely healthy skyrim should have patched up most of the major pain in the bottom bugs. already a couple major patches out now.

 

Thanks for the support guys! Hopefully my computer will come back soon and will work as it did before it broke!



Bert

 

Hello you all.

I'm not sure if this is the right place for me to post. I own an Asus G53S laptop which I bought on the 27th of September. On the 29th of September I had to go back to the shop and have it replaced since it was a defect model.

I received a new laptop, and 5 days later, when I tried to boot up, I got a black screen. While the laptop was working (it made the login sound), the screen remained black. I fixed this problem by pluging in a mouse and moving it. The problem never occured again.

2 weeks ago, I just received my laptop back from the Asus repair shop (I spilled beer over it), and it was working perfectly for the weekend. However, when I took the laptop to school, I received the same problem as mentioned earlier. A black screen all the way, and this time I couldn't fix it by simply pluging in and moving a mouse.

When I moved classes, I tried booting up the laptop again. It worked again. However, when I then again moved classes, I got a red screen when starting up. On the main screen, colors were very bright with shades of red. In pure frustration, I hit my desk, and colors went back to normal.

I then found out that the laptop boots up with a black, red or normal screen depending on shock. If I move it, chances are it may boot up with a black or red screen. When it experiences a shock at this point, the screen goes back to normal.

I decided to update my graphic card drivers, and then the problem didn't occur for a week. Until yesterday.

Now the same problem occurs, and I have to shut down my laptop every time, shake it around, and hope it boots up correctly.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

 

I would look at your hard drive also. If it's not in all the way, nice and snug chances are it may be causing issues as well. You may just have a dead gpu too. I would ask the shop (since it should be under warranty) to replace the gpu. You could have just gotten a lemon or several lemons if you already had it swapped. It's one of a few things: gpu, screen is bad, the hard drive is lose or the sata connector on the laptop for the hard drive is lose or a ram module has come lose. Check the hard drive first though and go from there. But for pete's sake, since it should still be under warranty, STOP hitting it to boot. It may seem like it works, but you could just mess it up even more or worse, they think you messed it up some how and won't cover it. Hope this helps out some.

 

fans pushing air out when it actually boots? are they actually pushing air when the screen isn't working right? might be a stuck fan causing a thermal issue.

beyond that thought would pretty much agree with dragonwolf. could be a spindle drive problem, and hitting it is NOT a good idea with equipment of this sort.

the only oddity is the red screen imho. black could simply be a failed boot or the backlight not starting properly. normal is normal. red points to a whole other kind of bad which is why he indicates maybe get the gpu replaced.

next time its a black screen try placing a very bright light source right next to the display surface and see if you can make out any images or text. lcd's actually draw the display even when the backlights off if the rest of the machine is working, but need light passing through to make that image visible. if you can see something using that external light source on a black screen boot that can settle if its actually dead or just not triggering the backlight on properly. useful info to pass along if you send it for service again.

 

@Dragonwolf: Since I am a rather big retard with any technical stuff, I am kind of skeptical about trying to do any of these things myself...

@steelblueskies: I will try the light thing next time I get a blank screen and report back about the results. The fans are working correctly and blowing out air. At times I am actually able to log in (you can hear the windows login sounds).

The laptop is indeed still in warranty. I will be sending it to have it repaired. My only problem is that I bought the laptop in Denmark (where I currently live), and in order to have it repaired it has to be send to Sweden. With exams coming up, this is not a solution as I need it to complete my exams and the earlier I can send it is after my exams.

As an update, windows problem center detected 10 problems which could not be solved. They are all the same, here is a copy:


Windows
Problem: Video hardware error
Files that help describe the problem:
WD-20111028-1457.dmp
sysdata.xml
WERInternalMetadata.xml
View a temporary copy of these files
Warning: If a virus or other security threat caused the problem, opening a copy of the files could harm your computer.

URL to copy of these files:
C:\Users\Hans\AppData\Local\Temp\WERABCA.tmp\sysdata.xml

And:
C:\Users\Hans\AppData\Local\Temp\WERABCA.tmp\WERInternalMetadata.xml
(don't know if this is visible for you guys)

Thanks for the help so far, I hope this new information is of any help.

Cheers,
Hans

 

Sadly that's what I was doing to my laptop when the hall sensor was preventing my screen from lighting up but the computer was starting up normally and you can hear it. If you really need to use your computer and to test if its the video card or the screen that's busted, hook up a external monitor.

I know you have a lot of different things going on there, but I would try the following to rule out certain things.

If you hook up an external monitor and the computer starts up fine with no problems on the external screen, then it's probably a bad LCD screen or hall sensor. If the external screen also has all the miscellaneous colors and what not, then it's probably the video card.

Afterward, if the first test suggests the screen, then yeah if you can still see words and other stuff on the screen with a help of a external light, then it's the backlight on the LCD(which is highly unlikely as the LCD is LED backlit not the traditional bottom mounted light), if it's completely blank and you definitely hear the computer turn on then it's the hall sensor which is one of the fault things on this model.

Lastly, did you say you spilled beer on that computer? Wow... I don't know what the warranty company will say if they can still smell it.

 

Appart from what you said, Asus did actually completely cover all the damage incurred by spilling beer over the laptop ( from transport to the replaced arts...)

 

Do you use any battery monitoring app? Just wondering how to maximise battery's life

 

I use HWMonitor to see the wear level of my battery. Ive managed to take care of my battery. It alternates between 1-2%

 

CRAP. My wear level is... 4% after 2 weeks... I used baterry maybe 3 times (discharged to around 5-10%) and I'm under cable all the time. Lost 2268 mWh

 

Can anyone please help me out with this.
I've got Asus G53SW. It hadn't been even a month or so and during one of my usual days, the thin charging pin inside the charging point of the rog came out with my charger. I don't know whats to b done, battery doesnt charge. (
I hope you guys got my issue.

Will this case be covered under warranty?
I have a 24 month global warranty with my rog

 

Weird... It says today 97% and not charging... Does any one know what the hell?

 

It will stop charging around 95% to prevent damage by overcharging.

 

K. But how did I wear and tear it by 4%? Not possible...

 

Does anyone know where I could find the 90* charger tip adapter? I have tried to back track and search this thread(which frustratingly doesn't function at all apparantly). Nevermind found it!
http://www.amazon.com/Right-Angle-Degree-Converter-Connector/dp/B004L74PGI/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Is it possible for anyone to make a image of the recovery partition? I would really just like to go back to stock, and tackle this BSOD thing... I have the regular drivers disk. I just wouldn't know where to get that recovery image, since when I reinstalled and swapped drives, I erased it.
EDIT: Nevermind... everytime I get stumped I stumble upon something. - http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

EDIT: This one is better - http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-digitalriver-windows-7-sp1-13-languages.html

(Now time to orginize files, back them up, make sure drivers I have stored are uptodate, install.. set up.. D: god this is gonna be a busy day (potential final today and going to work).

 

In Bender's words, "Your boned." It should be covered under warranty, no problem, but since you have the warranty, your best off sending it to be repaired, the only other way to repair is to do it yourself, but I do NOT recommend do it yourself as you will void your warranty, contact Asus and tell them what happened and be ready to send it in. Good luck!

 

Guys I've got question... Will bluetooth from Toshiba A200(2007 model) will work with Asus? ;P If yes there is no point of buying new card...

 

I don't know if it was a fluke, but I downloaded Nvidia Verde 285.62 Drivers and was ready to use a modified .inf file when it went through and installed flawlessly. Did Asus finally fix it so the gpu driver's aren't proprietary or was that just a fluke?

 

Im running those same drivers and never had the need to use a modified ini file. I dont think this has anyhting to do with ASUS but with Nvidia finally recognizing our card haha

Im skeptical about updating to the latest beta though.

 

Yeah looks like it, but I would be skeptical as well. Think I'll wait for stable release and try then.

 

I'm thinking about getting Starcraft 2 as I love RTS (I'm a new pc gamer got this late november)

Will I be able to get 45 FPS on average with high settings 1920x1080?

 

Crap UFEI = no audio . WHYYYYY!!!

 

May be able to do better.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

If you look for the Starcraft 2 it shows the fps's, if you click on the green numbers it shows what computers got what.

The G73JW
Intel Core i7 720QM @1.9GHz
GeForce GTX 460M (675MHz), 1536MB (1250MHz) Shadertakt: 1350 MHz, GDDR5, 259.12
12288MB RAM

There are differences between ours and the 73JW, but this should at least get you started:

Got almost 69fps on high. That depends on the resolution it used. I'm not 100% certain, but from the looks of it you will average 63fps on high and 35fps on ultra, ultra is even playable as 30+ fps is good enough, from what I heard the average human eye can't tell the difference once you hit like 40fps, so anything beyond that is just bragging rights. In a nutshell, you should be able to play no problems. I haven't tried to play it. So I couldn't tell you for sure. But the numbers show you can.

 

I wasted a WHOLE DAY on that myself - rumour has it that for reasons unknown, none of the current soundcard drivers (including microsoft generic) can 'hook' to the UEFI BIOS properly.

In the end I just turned off UEFI, and reformatted and reinstalled win7 - maybe in six or twelve months we'll see the sound working under UEFI

 

I wasted a whole night and day . I swear MBR windows installations on this laptop cause my SSD to freeze up and take windows down with it . BSOD and such. I had zero issues with UEFI. I have no clue where to fix that either, since I would like to use my laptop as it was intended, able to hibernate with out having to worry about it crashing, or freezing during use. As well as improperly going hibernating/standby then BSOD for an "Internal_Power_Failure".

 

Well my G53SW is a brick for the second time. Black screen. Computer boots fine, but the NVIDIA 560M is shot. Seems to be a common problem.

Had this happen 6 months ago. RMA'd and fixed but it's happened again.

I called and their RMA system is down and the can't process my service request! ARGH!

Such a great machine, I miss it already.

 

Sucks, but you may have meant 460M not 560M the 53SW's came with the 460M's, unless you have a 53SX in which case you'd be right or when they repaired your 53SW the first time they put the 560 in which would be messed up, because the 460m is better then the 560m (at least in Asus's model, since they used 128-bit ram.) Had to clear that up for new people reading the forum.

Anyhow, that sucks that it happened, I know I'd go crazy without my laptop. Hope you can get it in soon. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you man.

 

One question, what the heck does UEFI stand for? I know a decent bit of computer jargon, but am apparently behind in stuff a little, that and I have only gone into my Bios once to change my hard drive settings so I've never seen UEFI. Seen it mentioned before on here and meant to ask. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

 

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

 

Seems like despite the fact it's supposed to be a step forward in BIOS tech, it still has some concerns case in point the g53sw seems to have issues with some people. I've been lucky so far on the windows partition, and not had the problem. But obviously others have, seems like UEFI is still in it's infancy. Might explain why I have problems booting some Linux Distros though. Since UEFI can be used to "lock down" a computer to an OS. Does it hurt to disable it? I mean I see others doing it, but if either your not having issues or the issues are more along the lines of trying a different OS would it mess the computer up to disable it? Like Windows will no longer work right and such?

 

Most installations still use MBR, so disabling it likely wont have any effect unless you have a custom UEFI installation, or some installation that has already implemented the setup like OSX where it would connect to apple servers download the latest version of OSX and install over what ever you just did after you reboot.

 

Yes I mistyped 460M is what I have. Thanks for your feedback. Appreciate it.

And now to top it off ASUS support Canada database is down and they can't issue me an RMA until tomorrow!

I need it back before Xmas!

This is the second time this has happened. Any ideas if they have any type of 'lemon" policy? 3 repairs get a new one??

 

Ouch! That really sucks, I'd be looking into that lemon policy thing and seeing if they have that. It may differ from country to country. Anyhow, I'm still gonna keep my fingers crossed for you man.

 

K. i just installed a 2nd hard drive(SSD) into my computer. I followed this video:

ASUS G53JW 2nd Hard Drive Install by XOTIC PC - YouTube

Now, i turn on my computer, and it says:

"Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key."

I didn't mess with the hard drive already in place, so idk why it isn't booting from that one, so i went into the bios. In the boot tab, it didn't detect any hard drive, jut had the dvd drive. I saw the sata configuration was AHCI, and changed it to IDE. Now it recognized the 750gb hard drive that came with it, but it says:

"A disk read error occured, press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart."

Does anyone have any idea what I did wrong, I'm going to try and open it up, and check, but i was sure i was careful with everything, so idk what to check for. Please give any input you can if you read this. It doesn't make sense to me that both hard drives can't be booted from.

edit:

I just removed the SSD, and it booted fine, imma try ad put it back in and see what happens.

edit2:
I put it back in, and what i just explained repeated again, is my ssd bad, or am i missing something?

 

It sees the drive as the primary drive. This happened to me, I used windows setup and then I just installed windows to the drive I wanted.

 

I want to update the firmware tho, since they said it has bluescreen issues without the update. I can't update the firmware while windows is on it. In the bios it doesn't show the ssd, it just shows the 750gb hard drive.

 

What brand and drive? If its OCZ there is a custom USB drive ran live CD linux distro on their forums. It handles almost any SSD maintenance that you would need.