*Official ASUS W90Vp Owners' Lounge*

My point is pretty simple: ASUS is the responsible party for using GDDR3 in a 4870 not ATI.

The GPU die is purchased from ATI but ASUS manufactures the rest of the card themselves and decides on their own who to buy the graphics RAM from. ASUS does also have the ability to modify the VBIOS of the card and offer different clock speeds....lots of companies offer both Nvidia and ATI cards at different clock speeds than the standard reference cards.

The barcode sticker under the GPU of the card on the right says MA4870 and 512M....I wonder if the MA stands for master.

 

cmon asus! i just returned my m17 for you, so dont let me down!

will have an eye on this machine on the cebit, i am courious, what the asus representatives have to say about the problems with this machine...

 

well said...

have you not learned anything? that typed piece of paper means nothing. nvidia did the same thing with a 8800m gtx/9800m gt

 

Well, i had a chat with asus about the new drivers today... here is part of the conversation:

BTSD-Donnald01> in regards with the video issue
NBTSD-Donnald01> the drivers will be posted as soon s the compatibility testing is completed
NBTSD-Donnald01> and the taiwan r&d has been notified of the issue

He also went on to say that once they recieve the new drivers from ATI, it would take up to 7 days to process it all....or something like that.

So maybe we have a bit longer of a wait. But hopefully im wrong!

 

Well Striker, I guess there's not much else to talk about. Not too much info on games if they won't run and no solution has been found to the problem.

But anyway, I'm here to help, so I'll run those memory tests someone requested before.

 

Another Quick update.

After my F9 reinstall last night, everything has been smooth (knock on wood). Games run fast and smooth. It crashed once coming out of hibernation but thats it (knock on wood) and I have been traveling around with it all day.

I am confident enough to start moving all of my files from my old Laptop to the W90 and make it my primary PC (knock on wood) .

 

I hope you're wrong too, lol. This news is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I can appreciate them not wanting to send out unstable drivers again. One thing is for certain, these new drivers BETTER BE PERFECT.

Although, I still must say I'm not feeling a sense of urgency from Asus, which is needed right now. My machine is essentially useless to me in this state, and they're letting me down.

 

Did you do the F9 reinstall?

 

Hm, an f9 install is working smoothly, interesting. That means you're running all stock drivers, right? And I'm curious, which games have run fine for you? (knock on wood).

I just got off a fresh f9 install, I'll try those games if I have them. Thanks.

 

Yea, I did the F9 reinstall and everything is good in the world (knock on wood) LMAO. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping and the Zombies are exploding (who could ask for anything more).

I am running all stock drivers and have played Left for Dead as well as COD4. I have a few more games I could load and try out but not many.

 

Oh yea, I've tried it all. Haven't had any working results. Well, apart from Jlbrightbill helping me get 9.2 working. Basically, we managed to install his modded 9.2 driver on one card. Everything was stable and games ran no problem, but the second card would not register properly. There was very hot air coming out from that card, and fearing it would be damaged, we went the next step and tried to get that card working. In the process, things went south and I needed a f9 install. Jlbrightbill did some great work though, he definitely knows his stuff!

 

i used to live chat...so i did not speak over the phone. however, the person i talked to seemed pretty intelligent.

 

Heh, mine was more than useless...mine refused to even start, or to load windows...i think i got one with a busted harddrive

 

Right Striker, I'm on a clean install now. But sadly now I'm in a really bad spot. I cannot for the life of me get into vista anymore. I've tried 8 times, I log in, desktop shows up, and it locks up. I'm on my macbook now as the w90 is essentially dead. I've no idea where to go from here except f9 again, but it's frustrating.

 

Thats exactly what happened to me yesterday that made me have to do the F9 install. Boots great then freezes on desktop.

I fixed it with a F9 install, but if you are working off of the F9 install... do it again? lol, errr and hope for the best?

And the worst part of it is, you have been reduced to using a MAC OH THE HUMANITY (just kidding)

Hope they release a fix soon for those having issues. Anything I can do to help, just let me know.

 

It seems I have no choice but to do another f9 install. I hope it works this time. Hehe, and I'm relying on this mac now. I've never had a problem with it and it's far more stable than the "superior" w90.

 

Alright, I did another f9 install and had some really weird issues. Like vista taking 5 minutes to load each boot and the whole system feeling sluggish. Also, the screen was behaving really weird. Needless to say, that was unacceptable. So I thought why not just try again. I did and now have a stable vista install (apart from one lockup, none since). Still can't get games to run, but I didn't expect that issue to magically disappear.

It's a good thing that f9 reinstall is so quick, I feel this won't be the last time I need it.

Edit: Oh, btw, these lockup issues seem more like power management than graphics driver. Is Asus also preparing a fix for this too from what you've heard? I feel this needs to be addressed.

 

Our troubleshooting yesterday narrowed the problem down to plausibly 3 things:

-Crossfire driver configuration is the problem, since your single 4870 ran flawlessly on 9.2
-8.11 is the problem, since your single 4870 ran flawlessly on 9.2
-The machine is not feeding the cards enough power, which is why one card ran but Crossfire didn't.

I can speculate with some level of confidence that the problem is one reasonably connected to one of those 3. Unfortunately firebird34 and I were unable to isolate the problem.

johnksss,

Phinagle is right about the cards. ATI provides this alone to ASUS (RV770 chip):



ASUS builds the board, uses their own transistors or whomever they've contracted with, and selects a memory manufacturer. They also develop a custom BIOS which controls clock speeds and fan speeds. That chip is RV770 -- and is identical to what's on my 1GB 4870 desktop card. ASUS has sole discretion to program the clocks however they want and do what they want to the board / memory, but I want to reiterate here, the chip itself ATI provided to ASUS that is in these W90's is completely identical to what's on my full desktop card.

If ASUS tech support is right, ASUS chose GDDR3 from Samsung and not GDDR5 from Qimonda like ATI's in-house reference design uses. My theory, and I think Phinagle will agree with me, is that ASUS rushed this machine to market in order to win the performance crown and rake in the positive press about having a monster Crossfire 4870 notebook. The only way they could bring it to market so fast was to cut a corner and use Samsung GDDR3 memory. ATI's reference design is, and always will be, GDDR5 on a 4870, that's what makes it a 4870 and not a 4850. ASUS deviated from reference and thus that is why we are saying it's an underclocked desktop 4850. ASUS is responsible for this, not ATI.

To tie that in with what I said earlier, it's only because ASUS is an ATI board partner that they have the manufacturing capability and industry ties to push this card out so fast, just like ATI board partner MSI pushed the 4850 out as fast as they did (Albeit that card is actually a 4850 as named).

 

AMEN !!!!! some one set it straight now i dont have to type it

 

ATI allows their board partners to do whatever they want with their chips.

 

I think it's relevant personally since the laptop is having issues around something being wrong with the graphics cards or drivers. Since the 4870 is for all intents and purposes, supposed to come with DDR5 RAM and the cards in the W90 have DDR3, it adds further speculation as to real cause of the problems the current owners are trying to work through.

Is it possible for example, the DDR3 spec is causing the problems with a card designed for DDR5?

It all goes to the troubleshooting discussion currently going on.

 

Shouldn't be, because after all a GDDR3 4870 is almost by definition a 4850.

 

Nah, I don't think so
I suppose that AMD chip support GDDR3 too
I forgot, but I've read it somewhere

 

I think your fighting a loosing battle -=$tR|k3r=-. A noble one, but loosing all the same. It's hard to argue when your being ignored

 

I agree that the 4870s shipping with gddr3 are disappointing and misleading. Now, if there were no gddr5 cards coming out until the end of the year, then I think this would be less of an issue. But the 4860s having gddr5 came as a shock. I don't think people expected a "lesser" card in the naming convention to have superior memory.

Also, since the 4870s in the w90 are currently useless as far as I'm concerned, the memory has become the center of attention. If owners had some seriously high performance numbers to support the 4870s, then people may not complain. Besides, I strongly recommend overclocking both cards to 600/900mhz to squeeze every ounce of performance out if you're comfortable with that. They can certainly handle it thermally, and it's simple enough to do it and keep track of temps in Catalyst.

 

I think you can probably rule that one out, as based on the MSI GT725 with a single 4850 is iirc pushing into the high 10k in marks and thats with OC'ing of both the CPU and GPU.

If the consensus is the W90 4870s are only slightly better stock then the 4850s, I highly doubt the W90 could push the 15k+ in marks folks are getting on just a single 4870, if your theory was true. Not to mention this thing would score way beyond anyone's expectations even ASUS' who only claimed the w90 would be 15k in mark and I have to just give them the benefit of the doubt there.

 

Striker, you've got the wrong angle I'm sorry and you're being pretty defensive in your other posts about critisizing current owners. I'm merely joining in the discussion about problems and possible reasons. I thought this is part of the appeal of new technology?

If you read what I said again, I'm suggesting some possible reasons for the issues, I make no direct link to drivers and RAM together. I also never said you have the wrong gfx card. I made reference to ATI's card being spec'd one way, and Asus's in another.

Absolutely agree.

 

I'd really like to quote that comment, respond with a /flex, and be done with things but I've got issues and just can't let thing go that easy...


Honestly I'm not trying to berate or mock the people who've purchased a W90...I'm just genuinely upset with ASUS for claiming these cards to be 4870s when they're not manufactured the way ATI designed them to be manufactured.

I'm a cynical SOB and when things aren't kosher I'll let you know in a matter of fact kind of way. I'm not the spoonful of sugar guy...I'm the guy that makes you swallow the medicine by holding your nose and mouth shut until you run out of oxygen and have to gulp down that last breathe of air.

All praise the anonymity of the intrawebs that allows me to be the way I is.


Fact of the matter is ASUS's redesign may very well be the cause of the lock-ups and I'm not just being an arse.

If the cards are genuinely just overclocked 4850s then the crashes could be associated with Turbo Gear further overclocking the cards.

Or it could be that the drivers aren't working because they're expecting the bandwith of GDDR5.

But my sneaking suspicion is that the VBIOS on these cards still needs to be set to master and slave and they're not....which would be supported by the fact that a single card runs without problems.

 

Well, a single card did run without problems. But that was under the modded 9.2 drivers, not the stock. It likely functioned because of the new driver, not the fact that it was in single card mode.

 

No worries, we're on the same page for the most part, but Phinagle sums up my thoughts much better than I did -

I also agree with his comment that those non-owners of us are in no way getting at current owners, we're more p'd at Asus for releasing something that obviously has not had proper QA time.

 

Does the driver have anything called crossfire option inside? Suppose one driver are able to support 2 at the same time...
And yes, Asus use ddr3, then what's the matter? Reducing power from referrence design is ok I think, not only Asus, some other producer also sometimes reduce speed from reference design due to thermal solution matter (such as silent module). Specifically, AMD card is pretty hot, well Nvidia also hot too, thus if follow the reference design, thermal solution may not be able to support, especially for long time.
They may use DDr3 to reduce some cost... as it is cheaper, I just hope the driver update can help disable one of the card to reduce power consumption in batt mode...
In the end, Bravo striker, you've done great jobs

 

^^^^^^ This

And somewhat PO'd at ASUS for releasing a GDDR3 version of RV770 that is quite literally a 4850. Below desktops specs at that. And further on top of that, I've gotten 14,000 on a single desktop 4850 back when I still had it (Albeit with a quad core) so you can imagine my disappointment when this ASUS with Crossfire "4870's" only pulls another 1k on my single 4850.

 

*like you told me in another thread one time.. *
i said that exact same thing but with less words. i thought the short explanation was enough. a few 100 post ago.

now, that gddr5 stuff might fly for the desktop cards, but not true on the mobile cards. your already looking at a 4870 mobile card.... i did agreed about the possible rush to market to get it out then comeback with the more powerful card when it was either ironed out and working or the protype was going to production. (all speculation) gddr5 does not make it a 4870 when dealing with mobile cards...that's more of an owner of the product thing. and when i talked to them. they said they had NO gddr5 ati cards at the moment. when asked why they had two versions...basically it was a brush off. ill be calling back tomorrow when i get more time to talk to about 4 or 5 other people through asus and ati.

not sure about that under clocked desktop stuff because it's a mobile card. so as of today it looks like an over clocked 4850m to me. and until they fess up and say that...that's what im going to look at it as. had i bought that machine and seen that in there. it would have went back.(that's just me. i want what i paid for and settling just aint in the cards) now if they said they would give me a free upgrade or charge me like 100 bucks for the higher end cards once available...then that's workable....but talking about paying full price for gddr5 cards is ridiculous.

long story short...asus or ati pulled a fast one...plain and simple, now how they go about correcting it is what will define either one as a respectable odm/oem or a bs one. (when dealing with this situation only)

go asus! i got a formula maximus board. runs great!

 

it's mostly a bunch of speculation as well striker. and no one i talked to is confirming anything right now. the same exact thing happen with the 3870's
asus has a spec sheet on their products. and it says everything that machine has or can come with. it's a simple read and explain. none seem to be doing that today at least...ill be calling back tomorrow.

 

I don't think it's anyones intention to rain on your parade Striker as I've seen here. Consumer forum sparked wildfires on a thread like this provide valuable knowledge for possible customers who seem to have been mislead about the GDDR5 and should wait until Asus irons out the lock ups. The criticism and probing here serve to enhance consumer pressure on Asus to correct their mistakes and faulty hardware...

 

Your right, somehow potential customers just wanna shout
"Where is the W90Vp that I want"
We want to know further about the truth, while all of this are speculation and value judgement (well, some facts are there still)
But I wonder whether ASUS really care to read it... (they should, somehow, to improve the product) cos if not, they might loss this all potential customers though

I wonder the A1 version going to be...

 

sorry but i love this thread omg FTW

 

For the record I do like Asus, my desktop has their motherboard and their branded GPU.

 

im still holding off on this id love one but im gonna wait a bit longer for hopefully a fix.

 

hummm, i thought you knew already...this goes on in all the high end laptop threads..your just now seeing it... everyone has an opinion on everything up under the sun...whether it really means anything or not...lol. although i will agree the gddr5 thing is pretty irrelevant right now. has no baring on getting the machine fixed (speculation of course) it could need the gddr5 to work...wonder how that would be explained... .

but no, it's a driver issue. and the driver is not really compatible with the 4800's since they are built slightly different. passable... at times. so driver modding would be in order. and you seen this in the ocz forums...that is still a floating issue.... and they are still waiting on their certified drivers...

 

yeah!, but we owe more to finding solutions and helping our fellow members out more.. then discussing the why's and why not of a bunch of companies we will never ever get to really know..might be a hand ful of people that actually do...but for the majority...not likely to happen.

on topic...so where are we with your machine now...

 

Twice? What spending you make?
Randomly boot looking, if the suspect is one of the driver, try disable it if possible (like msconfig, untick the startup, or device manager, disable/uninstall). Of course, don't disable graphic card, but PowerGear can be disabled, I suppose?

 

striker, if you feel offended by my questions about ddr2 im sorry.
it was not my intention to rain down on your parade.
in 2 weeks i expect my money back from the alienware m17 and im just in the market for another heavy beast. and the w90 looks just interesting to me, as its expected to be anounced in my country by the end of this month. thats why i am here in this thread, even if i dont possess one atm. but am i still allowed to read7write in this lounge? not sure if i get you right.

im not so sure about this. didnt you think, you received a 4870x2 card, with 1 pcb and 2 gpu´s on one card, and with 1gb videoram? so im im not so sure, if all knew that if one ordered a hd4870x2 would receive 2 cards with rv770 and gddr3.

about the naming convention on this card, and the ddr3-ddr5-thing i totaly agree to what Phinagle said, its quite obvious to me. nevertheless i dont think its affected to the lock-ups and freezes.

this would frighten me a lil bit more. by now, the whole discussion is only going into the "a new driver will cure all" direction. but as stated Jlbrightbill before:

i think the lock-ups on start, and the workaround with removing powercord or battery, would fit quite well to problems with delivering enough power to the graphiccards. hopefully im wrong, and this is not the case. and hopefully asus is not going to correct the problems by reducing the clockrates to the level of the 4850-cards.

please excuse me for my bad english-skills.

 

Don't worry minime about your english. You speak heaps clearer than a lot of US speakers here anyway.

 

Under powered? Maybe they can replace their adapter to higher "even bigger" power cord and adaptor (or adapter, why english is so hard).
Plus changing internal power supply and so on, or they may decrease the power even more (still another speculation).
The power bricks is pretty big though, and I think it is, eh, where is the picture I got??? Battery pack is pretty powerful though
11.1+ volt 8800mah, plus 93 WH, don't know what it means.
If it is really power problem, why it still can work for sometimes, or run using battery mode?

Suggestion, If it still fail, enjoy the entertainment using Asus Express Gate for awhile

 

it more than likely has enough power since that guy scored 20k clocked at 4.0 ghz with over clocked gpus....although i haven't heard anything else from him since then....

but this is why ati or nvidia didn't like doing drivers for notebooks. way to many different variations of the same basic driver would have to be created and tested. very time consuming. and each notebook manufacture has their own line of specs ....usually

 

Woah, yeah
Many producer actually either down clock or change some architecture of chips to meet their notebook capability
Doing driver for notebook from original producer may cause unexpected conflict probably, with many custom hardware inside a notebook
And minime, Lucky you, I just re read your post, and the product is going to be available in your country! No wonder you would like to find out more about this product and its solution! Congrats
Not here though, it won't be available for quite a long of time...btw, where are you from minime?

 

At the risk of igniting a flame war I would be interested in learning from somebody here who really KNOWS what the differences are between DDR3 and DDR5 in the CrossFire application.

I assume there are power and timing efficiencies with the newer memory; is that correct?

Also there seems to be some thought that having the two GPUs on two separate cards could be a performance issue. Obviously Intel and AMD have gone multi-core rather than just multiple CPU for reasons of efficiency and enhanced performance, and again I assume the same is true of GPUs. IF these cores were on one card would they address a shared pool of memory rather than 2 discrete 512MB blocks, is that what you guys are saying? Signal paths would of course be shorter, etc.

In other words I'm confoozed - anybody want to enlighten me?

 

you mean, the 4780 X2 in W90 is really a dual-core 4870?
i read the previous post, some guy said that 4870 X2 in W90 is not an X2 card per se, but 2 GPU card crossfired.

 

oh, btw, forgot to intoduce myself
i'm new at NBR forum. so, hi everybody

i really appreciate if i can get +rep as a welcome symbol