Asus G73jh Video Card Replacement

[Soylent Joe]

A few months back we bought a G73jh for $450. They stripped it of a 500GB drive and 2GB of memory, which should have been a warning sign to the fact that they sold us a broken notebook. The AMD Mobility HD 5870 is complete shit. Anytime you do anything graphics intensive such as gaming or a movie through a GPU-processing-enabled player it starts artifacting, screwing up on-screen text/objects, and freezes requiring a hard restart. We've been able to use it alright though, just for things that aren't GPU intensive.

Seeing that this isn't right, I'd like to replace the card. It's almost 2 years old now so RMAing is not an option. So some questions are: What interface is the card so I'll know what kind to look for? Also, where could I buy a card that would fit it? I don't care if the card is fast or powerful, I just want it to work properly.

Here's a video of how to get to the internals, but I couldn't even tell if the video card could be taken off of the motherboard...

 

[N-Gen]

Card is of MXM Type 3.0b, any card that uses that form factor should fit, but mind you, MXM cards are quite expensive. I usually find some good deals on ebay.

 

[brandonwh64]

This would be a kickass card to replace your tired 5870

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-6970m-GPU-MXM-3-0-Type-B-/120756103386

6990m Goodness

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Alienware-Dell-RDRGR-2GB-ATI-AMD-6990M-BACKPLATE-INCLUDED-M18X-M17x-M15x-/160672441683?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item2568d2e553

 

[Soylent Joe]

Oh hell I was looking to spend like $100 maximum, preferably less. I figured they'd be expensive since it's not a common form factor.

 

[brandonwh64]

I don't think you will find a decent one for under 100$ Black panther was looking for a 8800GTX for a while and those were still like over 200$

 

[Soylent Joe]

As long as it can run Aero and allow the CPU to do 1080p then it's fine. 8600GT, 9400GT, anything. There were like 6 on eBay that would work, all were expensive high performance ones.

 

[brandonwh64]

Maybe try baking your 5870 or reapply thermal paste, new thermal pads and cleaning

 

[Soylent Joe]

Well from what I've seen it's not running very hot, like mid 60's. Around the net there are a lot of people describing the same problem that I have. Most of them just get instructed to RMA. The computer does work for everything that is not GPU intensive, my dad is using it right now, so I'd rather not risk the usability by baking it just yet. If I get a replacement card then I can try baking since it won't matter.

 

[zithe]

This would be a kickass card to replace your tired 5870

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-6970m-GPU-MXM-3-0-Type-B-/120756103386

6990m Goodness

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Alienware-Dell-RDRGR-2GB-ATI-AMD-6990M-BACKPLATE-INCLUDED-M18X-M17x-M15x-/160672441683?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item2568d2e553

Oh my. I think I may purchase one of those for my G73. D:

 

[N-Gen]

Lower end cards will probably not be available, either because they have a different form factor or they're soldered to the motherboard. I remember wanting to get a second 7950 GTX for SLI, was about £500 back then, still expensive now...

 

[Soylent Joe]

It would be nice if I could sell it on CL again but I just know that whoever gets it will realize the problem and come back kicking and screaming, unlike how I did with the lady who sold it.

There's no way I can pay as much as I did for the notebook for something that a. is hard as hell to install and b. I won't even use (don't care about mobile gaming at all). How likely is someone on here to buy the laptop for say $400 shipped given that I describe the problem? Even with a $400 video card it'd be less than what a new lappy of this caliber costs.

 

[LordJummy]

When did it start screwing up, immediately after you bought it? Have you really tried trouble shooting everything?

Could be as simple as cleaning drivers or reinstalling OS. Could be corrupt software/drivers IMO. Just because the memory and drive was downgraded doesn't mean something should be wrong with the gpu.

I have the original model with the 8GB RAM, 5870M, 1TB HDD, etc. No problems with the GPU ever. I didn't use the original setup though. I clean installed mine with win7 64 using the key, and all is 100%. Have had it since February now? and not one issue. I don't use it very often though. Mostly use my wife's light weight MSI ironically :\

It is my opinion now that buying expensive gaming laptops is stupid. Mid range laptops are where it's at. Portability+battery+price is worth a small sacrifice in performance. I won't make the same mistake again.


ps: please check all the questions I asked.

btw if it was screwed before you bought it, you should definitely try and return it to the lady who sold it to you. take her to small claims...

 

[Soylent Joe]

When did it start screwing up, immediately after you bought it? Have you really tried trouble shooting everything?

Could be as simple as cleaning drivers or reinstalling OS. Could be corrupt software/drivers IMO. Just because the memory and drive was downgraded doesn't mean something should be wrong with the gpu.

I have the original model with the 8GB RAM, 5870M, 1TB HDD, etc. No problems with the GPU ever. I didn't use the original setup though. I clean installed mine with win7 64 using the key, and all is 100%. Have had it since February now? and not one issue. I don't use it very often though. Mostly use my wife's light weight MSI ironically :\

It is my opinion now that buying expensive gaming laptops is stupid. Mid range laptops are where it's at. Portability+battery+price is worth a small sacrifice in performance. I won't make the same mistake again.

I've done everything short of reinstalling the OS. When I got it it had a week old Win7 trial install on it with only the bare drivers installed. I updated everything and put on all the Asus stuff. I've tried wiping and reinstalling the video drivers a few times, nothing works.

 

[Neuromancer]

When did it start screwing up, immediately after you bought it? Have you really tried trouble shooting everything?

Could be as simple as cleaning drivers or reinstalling OS. Could be corrupt software/drivers IMO. Just because the memory and drive was downgraded doesn't mean something should be wrong with the gpu.

I have the original model with the 8GB RAM, 5870M, 1TB HDD, etc. No problems with the GPU ever. I didn't use the original setup though. I clean installed mine with win7 64 using the key, and all is 100%. Have had it since February now? and not one issue. I don't use it very often though. Mostly use my wife's light weight MSI ironically :\

It is my opinion now that buying expensive gaming laptops is stupid. Mid range laptops are where it's at. Portability+battery+price is worth a small sacrifice in performance. I won't make the same mistake again.


ps: please check all the questions I asked.

system came with no hard drive... so he fresh installed windows

However, not sure how it works with mobiles. Does the 5870M use system memory kinda of a hypermemory/turbocache dealio?

That might be worth looking into. IE, its not failing because of weak VRMs, or 3D clock mode, but from an increase is necessary memory caching.

Worth looking into at least.

(Was looking into this for a LLano setup I built for a buddy is why I thought of it mem changes resulted in no video, turns out its just a failure of Asrock).

 

[LordJummy]

system came with no hard drive... so he fresh installed windows

However, not sure how it works with mobiles. Does the 5870M use system memory kinda of a hypermemory/turbocache dealio?

That might be worth looking into. IE, its not failing because of weak VRMs, or 3D clock mode, but from an increase is necessary memory caching.

Worth looking into at least.

(Was looking into this for a LLano setup I built for a buddy is why I thought of it mem changes resulted in no video, turns out its just a failure of Asrock).

Actually they come with two drives retail so it had a drive in it when he bought it - just one drive though. He already answered that question, though.

The 5870M in these models use dedicated GDDR5, but some laptops with 5870M use shared resources. Not in these though...\


To OP: Try a CLEAN full install of win7 64 bit. Install drivers, but NOT the asus crap you don't need. Make absolute sure you have the latest drivers from the internet. Make sure you're not overclocking at all. You say all the temps are nominal? The ram and such are not getting too hot? If all this fails, I would definitely take it out and try and reseat/reapply TIM - but ONLY if it's out of warranty, they won't RMA, and the lady won't take it back.

Honestly though if she sold it to you broken, you should be breaking down her door to murder her.

 

[Neuromancer]

Actually they come with two drives retail, so no, it had a drive in it when he bought it. Just one drive though. He already answered that question, though.

The 5870M in these models use dedicated GDDR5, but some laptops with 5870M use shared resources. Not in these though...

My fault man. Good catch.

I do not disagree with your comment about gaming laptops though. Very few laptops have high resolution and a decent monitor size, as well as being able to fully support that res in all things, like a "gaming" series.

Its why I do not have a laptop though. Cant afford the ones I want, dont want teh ones I can afford.

cheaper for me to build two "gaming" systems and place them where I will be than porting a laptop around

 

[Soylent Joe]

Actually they come with two drives retail so it had a drive in it when he bought it - just one drive though. He already answered that question, though.

The 5870M in these models use dedicated GDDR5, but some laptops with 5870M use shared resources. Not in these though...\


To OP: Try a CLEAN full install of win7 64 bit. Install drivers, but NOT the asus crap you don't need. Make absolute sure you have the latest drivers from the internet. Make sure you're not overclocking at all. You say all the temps are nominal? The ram and such are not getting too hot? If all this fails, I would definitely take it out and try and reseat/reapply TIM - but ONLY if it's out of warranty, they won't RMA, and the lady won't take it back.

Honestly though if she sold it to you broken, you should be breaking down her door to murder her.

You're right about that, it came with just one 500GB HDD instead of two. Interesting that you find no mention on the Asus website about it being 2x 500GB in RAID, they imply a single 1TB drive.

I guess I can try the reinstall, though I don't want to. The Asus utilites aren't unneeded, they're essential if you want the buttons on the laptop to function as intended. Not overclocking, CCC actually doesn't give me the overdrive option. Reapplying thermal paste would be an extremely last ditch option, you can see in the video up top how hard it is to access.

 

[Law-II]

Hi

+1 LordJummy

I own one of these and found that the latest revision's of catalyst driver cause artifacts and had to use a recovery disk to put things right. After some research I found that a few people on the www recomended a vga bios update to cure this, risky for a £1600 lappy; So no vga bios update for me, just continued to use the drivers provided on the asus web site.

nb: you should be able to get all the utilities and such from the following: http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SLanguage=en&m=G73Jh&p=3&s=252&os=30&hashedid=8je5Ot4HBnKOdT81

hope this helps

atb (all the best)

Law-II

 

[Soylent Joe]

Alright bubs, I'm about ready to do a reinstall since there's nothing to loose. Is there anything I should remember while doing it? I figure I'll disconnect from the net while doing it to make sure that not even the Intel graphics driver gets installed. Which video driver should I use, the one from the Asus site or the newest from AMD? I didn't mention this before, but a month or two ago I put the latest BIOS on there.

 

[LordJummy]

You still haven't really answered my first question. When EXACTLY did the artifacting start? I wanted to know how soon after you bought it. Let me know.

Did it start AFTER the BIOS update? Mobo bios or video card bios?

When you do the install, try the default AMD drivers, then the ASUS site drivers if those don't work. That's the order I would do it anyways. Make sure you totally uninstall completely and reboot before installing the other.

Don't install any bloatware or 3rd party apps until you've got all the hardware drivers setup. You can install the laptop drivers for the keys and everything, but don't install anything else nonessential. Make sure you answer the questions I/we ask more thoroughly so that I can actually help you.

 

[Soylent Joe]

You still haven't really answered my first question. When EXACTLY did the artifacting start? I wanted to know how soon after you bought it. Let me know.

Did it start AFTER the BIOS update? Mobo bios or video card bios?

When you do the install, try the default AMD drivers, then the ASUS site drivers if those don't work. That's the order I would do it anyways. Make sure you totally uninstall completely and reboot before installing the other.

Don't install any bloatware or 3rd party apps until you've got all the hardware drivers setup. You can install the laptop drivers for the keys and everything, but don't install anything else nonessential. Make sure you answer the questions I/we ask more thoroughly so that I can actually help you.

It has always done it, so it didn't start after I messed with it any. The first time I experienced it was the day or two after we got it, and I installed CS:S for the stress test. Then after that it has done it on pretty much every other game, and sometimes on videos.

Something weird was yesterday we were watching some videos on it. On one episode of a TV show at a certain point it would freeze up and make me hard reset it. If I simply skipped over the exact second it was freezing at, it was fine. Other than that it was playing even higher res videos fine, there was just a notch in that single episode that would cause a crash.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Maybe try baking your 5870 or reapply thermal paste, new thermal pads and cleaning

I know a trick without baking, you use the copper slug from the middle of a intel stock cooler. I cut the aluminium fins off, and heted the slug up to 230c in an oven, and placed it on top of the gpu on a laptop gpu and it fixed it.

I have even used to slug to repair xbox's

 

[LordJummy]

It has always done it, so it didn't start after I messed with it any. The first time I experienced it was the day or two after we got it, and I installed CS:S for the stress test. Then after that it has done it on pretty much every other game, and sometimes on videos.

Something weird was yesterday we were watching some videos on it. On one episode of a TV show at a certain point it would freeze up and make me hard reset it. If I simply skipped over the exact second it was freezing at, it was fine. Other than that it was playing even higher res videos fine, there was just a notch in that single episode that would cause a crash.

I have to ask: why didn't you return it to the person you bought it from? Would they not accept it back? That is unacceptable that it came that way.

It seems like it's some kind of software problem or conflict to me.

Let me know when you have a clean install of windows, and drivers, and download furmark or something that normally would artifact.

 

[zithe]

TO THE OP.

With the g73, you can't use AMD's mobility drivers. You have to use Asus supplied drivers or it won't work. I just remembered that.