G73JH-A1 problem: UVD causes hardware freezing! catalyst issue!

[St0RM53]

Hello. I'm a uni student studing Mechanical Engineering. Because of my course i am using intensive(power hungry) programs such as Matlab, photoshop, and various cad/cam/fea/cfd. Since i needed a laptop, two years ago i bought a G73JH-A1 as it was perfect to my needs. Everything was working fine (after the various driver/bios fixes) but some months ago i had an issue with Seimens NX (Cad) crashing seconds after i launched the program. It was a driver problem and i went to 12.x Catalyst to get rid of it.

Looks alright so far but it's not. After the catalyst update, i am getting hardware freezing "randomly". Since i'm an advanced user i located the problem to UVD activation. This is because when i'm loading a video with hardware accelaration (i.e youtube/or a video in wmp) i may get freeze. It does happen a bit rarely and happens as soon as it tries to play the video (as soon as UVD is acticated)

Let's get to the mods. Gary's vbios modified to allow overclocking(though i'm not using any), and different clocks. Re-pasted, 3rd time cleaned it (<60oC high performance both cpu/gpu)-(btw, before i opened up i thought the fans were pulling air from the top of the multihole vent..though it's just a fascia...wtf? asus was actually advertising this in their video..:@)
NO system/application error logs. I don't even get a BSOD. If i am in firefox, plugincontainer.exe stucks at 13% cpu (1 vitual core) and after sometime, or if i try to access uvd by playing a video as an example in freezes immediately. And lastly i used ATIMAN unistaller and other programs to make a completely new driver install. Though at any 12.x catalyst version i get the same thing.

All i can say is that catalyst trying to access UVD causes a hardware glitch or something..
I need help because this has started to get toooooo annoying after so many times.

Cheers.

[dstrakele]

1) What Antivirus, AntiMalware, Firewall, or Remote Access software have you installed on your system?

2) Are you running the ASUS Factory OS or a clean Windows 7 installation?

3) Have you tried any earlier catalyst versions (aside from the one that crashed Siemens NX)?

4) Have you posted your issue on any of the AMD/ATI forums? I do see reports of a UVD downclock issue.

5) Check out this thread: http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?8943-G73-Freezing-Crashing-Issue-WORKAROUND-FOUND The G73JH systems appear to be susceptible to the issue discussed. I would try the ThrottleStop workaround if I was in your situation.

6) Have you checked your system with DPC Latency Checker? DPC Latency can lead to a host of problems.

[St0RM53]

dstrakele wrote:
1) What Antivirus, AntiMalware, Firewall, or Remote Access software have you installed on your system?

2) Are you running the ASUS Factory OS or a clean Windows 7 installation?

3) Have you tried any earlier catalyst versions (aside from the one that crashed Siemens NX)?

4) Have you posted your issue on any of the AMD/ATI forums? I do see reports of a UVD downclock issue.

5) Check out this thread: http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?8943-G73-Freezing-Crashing-Issue-WORKAROUND-FOUND The G73JH systems appear to be susceptible to the issue discussed. I would try the ThrottleStop workaround if I was in your situation.

6) Have you checked your system with DPC Latency Checker? DPC Latency can lead to a host of problems.

1) Eset Nod32
2) Had the problem with both
3) Yes 11.x
4) No haven't posted this yet, and since i couldn't find problem which are exactly as mine i believe it may be specific to 5870m
5) I'll try it but i don't think it will work since this has almost nothing to do with the cpu nor the problems suggested in that thread (i.e. battery mode or idle). I'll give it a try and see how it goes. (if this program just un-parks the cores i've already done it)
6) Yes DPC is good, it was bad on wireless in the past with atheros, now i have intel. And this has nothing to do with this.

I've located the problem already, please give support to that. Either way i have a new theory that might be funny but it could be a problem. I have the battery always connected to the laptop. Though the charger is connected in a multi-plug with a 2000w electric space heater/fan. When its thermostat closes it's circuit in draws a lot of current for a split second. This causes my mouse (Asus rog g73 bundle mouse) to disconnect from the system..doesn't happen always though. There is a slight chance that when the heater starts and the gpu is trying to switch from normal clock to uvd to get to glitch or something. I'll have a manual try and see how it goes. Btw when this happens the gpu is stuck in UVD and if something tries to access the UVD or change the clock it freezes...

[dstrakele]

http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-2068638.html indicates an AMD Clock Tool can be used as a workaround to unstick the UVD default clock. I not sure what video card you have, but http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1128/AMD_GPU_Clock_Tool_v0.9.8.html is a clock tool for all ATI cards.

Some say it is a problem with the video codecs failing to release the UVD clocks. Some say it is a problem with many of the ATI drivers, including the recent ones. I have read in posts that the 10.4 or 10.5 versions may not have this problem. This is why I asked if you had tried other versions. Sometimes an earlier version video driver may prove to be more stable for a particular application.

Other suggestions are to configure YouTube (or other video applications) to use software acceleration.

Do you have the battery in your laptop when plugged in? I would think the power draw from the heater would be insufficient to affect your system if it is, but then a power surge may have different effects.

[St0RM53]

dstrakele wrote:
http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-2068638.html indicates an AMD Clock Tool can be used as a workaround to unstick the UVD default clock. I not sure what video card you have, but http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1128/AMD_GPU_Clock_Tool_v0.9.8.html is a clock tool for all ATI cards.

Some say it is a problem with the video codecs failing to release the UVD clocks. Some say it is a problem with many of the ATI drivers, including the recent ones. I have read in posts that the 10.4 or 10.5 versions may not have this problem. This is why I asked if you had tried other versions. Sometimes an earlier version video driver may prove to be more stable for a particular application.

Other suggestions are to configure YouTube (or other video applications) to use software acceleration.

Do you have the battery in your laptop when plugged in? I would think the power draw from the heater would be insufficient to affect your system if it is, but then a power surge may have different effects.

Actually the heater causes a power surge because of overshooting which is enough to cause disconnecting of the mouse as i said though i don't think this is the case as i'm 99% sure that this is not the cause.

At the start i was thinking that it was adobe flash problem..after removing and trying different versions without any success i found out that it could happen with other decoders enabling UVD. Either way it's a driver problem as only though the catalyst drivers you can control the powerplay mode.

You don't know what gpu i have? I already mentioned that is a G73Jh with an ati 5870m..And i could already force different clocks in the vbios. Though i am here to solve the problem, not bypass it...It's like i am selling you a car without a working engine. You can always fix it, or go behind and push it. It's not the same, it's different even if the result might be almost the same.

[dstrakele]

I know the issue is frustrating for you. It would be so for anyone. But maybe if we work together here, we can come up with something, though I do believe you may find more specific help on the AMD forums.

Unfortunately, you and I are not going to be able to fix the AMD driver. The best you could hope for regarding the UVD downclock issue is to find a Catalyst version that doesn't have this problem (I've suggested a possible candidate), find a workaround for your current version, or wait for AMD to release a fix. It looks like folks have reported this issue for a LONG time and through many Catalyst versions.

However, others who've identified the UVD downclock issue are not reporting lockups. It would be interesting to find out why this is happening on your G73JH. Could it be possible that the Catalyst driver is just a bit player in your issue and not the cause? If it was the cause, I would suspect all systems running AMD GPU's would lockup on playing videos with hardware acceleration.

System Lockups are difficult to troubleshoot. As you are aware, they do not provide much diagnostic information and can result from many causes. Many times the best you can do is try to eliminate possible causes. Checking that memory is sound by running memtest86 and that the file system is sound by running CHKDSK C: /F /R are good first steps in the elimination process.

Conflicts between kernel mode drivers also frequently cause lockups. Antivirus, AntiMalWare, Firewall, and Remote Access software typically utilize these drivers. It may be worthwhile to attempt to reproduce your issue with Eset Nod32 uninstalled (unless you disable all of it's drivers and reboot).

[St0RM53]

I can't go with other catalyst because of Seimens NX..Eset has nothing to do with this. It is either driver or power surge. In fact i have Winxp installed as a secondary OS with modified catalyst drivers and i don't get the problem. The difficulty is that this thing happens when you are working with UVD but totally random. And powerplay always had issues...like flickering when the gpu core changes voltage even if frequency is the same...Anyway i need more time to verify that is not because of power surge. If i eliminate this i'll have to go to AMD forums..
Thanks anyway.

[St0RM53]

After the last post, i moved the heater to a different socket. No freezing from that day to now...SO IT WAS AN INSTANT CURRENT ISSUE where the electronics couldn't respond that fast enough! Glad i found out why