G750JX - suddenly lagging, running slower - broken fan?

[ayne]

First of all, good evening! I kind of feel like apologizing for making my first post here on the forums one to ask for help, but before sending my notebook in for repair, I thought I'd go ahead and ask for help the old-fashioned way.

My G750JX is one year old now and never made any trouble until yesterday, where I had to notice that it's somewhat running slower and even lagging while playing World of Warcraft. I didn't play much over the holidays so I don't know if it's been since a while longer, but what I do know is that about 3 or 4 days ago, it shut down completely without any warning or telling me there had been a problem after booting it back up. My Notebook wasn't feeling any hotter than usual, and I'm saying feeling cause I don't usually check the temperature via software or tools, so I simply assumed Windows had been acting up.

I did some research prior to posting here, but so far, nothing could really help me. I checked my graphics card's driver (last update: 23.11.2014), tried playing with an older one, no luck.

Then, I noticed that my Notebook is not only slower, but also quieter. I know that the G750's are pretty quiet to begin with, but I always thought that you could still at least hear a little change after playing games for a little while. What I hear now is close to nothing, like I'm not doing anything at all, even though I always used to hear the characteristic sound of the right fan after just running, for example, Saints Row IV or Dragon Age: Inquisition.

To sum things up, my G750JX is running slower, I can't play any games without framerates under 40 anymore (which used to be around 70-100) and the lacking sound of running fans is making me a bit puzzled. Didn't find any viruses, and I also checked my two Samsung SSD's benchmarks with the Samsung Magician tool - please correct me here if I can't trust those numbers, or if you have any other idea what could be wrong.

Is there any tool I could use to check up on if my fan is currently running at all? I know there are some tools to look into that, but I'm always a little hesitant to download software without asking which tool I should use exactly. I didn't find pre-installed software either.

Thank you for reading, and sorry for the wall of text!

[hmscott]

ayne wrote:
First of all, good evening! I kind of feel like apologizing for making my first post here on the forums one to ask for help, but before sending my notebook in for repair, I thought I'd go ahead and ask for help the old-fashioned way.

My G750JX is one year old now and never made any trouble until yesterday, where I had to notice that it's somewhat running slower and even lagging while playing World of Warcraft. I didn't play much over the holidays so I don't know if it's been since a while longer, but what I do know is that about 3 or 4 days ago, it shut down completely without any warning or telling me there had been a problem after booting it back up. My Notebook wasn't feeling any hotter than usual, and I'm saying feeling cause I don't usually check the temperature via software or tools, so I simply assumed Windows had been acting up.

I did some research prior to posting here, but so far, nothing could really help me. I checked my graphics card's driver (last update: 23.11.2014), tried playing with an older one, no luck.

Then, I noticed that my Notebook is not only slower, but also quieter. I know that the G750's are pretty quiet to begin with, but I always thought that you could still at least hear a little change after playing games for a little while. What I hear now is close to nothing, like I'm not doing anything at all, even though I always used to hear the characteristic sound of the right fan after just running, for example, Saints Row IV or Dragon Age: Inquisition.

To sum things up, my G750JX is running slower, I can't play any games without framerates under 40 anymore (which used to be around 70-100) and the lacking sound of running fans is making me a bit puzzled. Didn't find any viruses, and I also checked my two Samsung SSD's benchmarks with the Samsung Magician tool - please correct me here if I can't trust those numbers, or if you have any other idea what could be wrong.

Is there any tool I could use to check up on if my fan is currently running at all? I know there are some tools to look into that, but I'm always a little hesitant to download software without asking which tool I should use exactly. I didn't find pre-installed software either.

Thank you for reading, and sorry for the wall of text!

ayne, it sounds like perhaps there is something wrong with your GPU cooling, and it is overheating and throttling the performance.

If you haven't already, download hwinfo64 (Sensors only mode) and TechPowerup GPU-Z (sensors tab) to run and log temperatures while gaming.

Then you can know what the temperatures are, how the cooling is working, and if the CPU/GPU are running at full / normal speeds.

hwinfo64 download
http://www.hwinfo.com/download.php

GPU-Z (ROG skin)
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2417/techpowerup-gpu-z-v0-8-0-w-asus-rog-skin/

If your cooling is failing on the GPU, and the Nvidia display driver crashes, it restarts in low speed mode until you reboot. Are you getting any display driver restarted messages? Otherwise you might only be throttling due to heat, rather than actually crashing the display driver.

You could run Furmark 15 minute burn-in mode to see what the temps are and if the display driver restarts.

Furmark download
http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

Please gather some more info and let us know what you find.

Once you have a measured failure with data to show Asus it will help focus their repair for your RMA. Which means it will take a shorter period of time for Asus to turn around your laptop repair 🙂

[ayne]

Thank you for the fast reply, hmscott!

I didn't get any display driver related messages yet, let alone any message in particular. For now, I downloaded the tools you recommended me and will now play a few hours to see if the temperature will rise drastically or not. Right now, GPU is at a rough 60°C (playing WoW in window mode and browsing the web), but the lagging framerate is still the same as it had been yesterday.

If my notebook will run without crashing, I'll do a Furmark test later and see if that will bring some results. Either way, I'll post an update later after I got some results.

Thanks again, I really appreciate it!

[hmscott]

ayne wrote:
Thank you for the fast reply, hmscott!

I didn't get any display driver related messages yet, let alone any message in particular. For now, I downloaded the tools you recommended me and will now play a few hours to see if the temperature will rise drastically or not. Right now, GPU is at a rough 60°C (playing WoW in window mode and browsing the web), but the lagging framerate is still the same as it had been yesterday.

If my notebook will run without crashing, I'll do a Furmark test later and see if that will bring some results. Either way, I'll post an update later after I got some results.

Thanks again, I really appreciate it!

ayne, if you have done an Nvidia Custom=>Clean driver install recently, it will set back all your Nvidia 3D settings to Defaults... you might look and see if the 3 performance tunings in the Global 3D settings have been reset, and make sure the 3D settings panel is set to use the Global Settings, like this:





If your 3D settings have been changed, the load on the GPU will be less, which would explain it running quieter, at 60c the fan isn't going to make much noise 🙂

[ayne]

Hey and good evening,

after playing some hours yesterday, I found that the GPU temperature never rose higher than 80°C at max, which should be an okay temperature? It was still lagging and I couldn't really play games with better graphics than WoW at all, but it didn't shut off and I still didn't get any error messages or anything like that. I have to admit that I didn't run a FurMark test yet, but that's only because I'm a little afraid something could overheat. It probably won't, but you know how it is. :rolleyes:

Anyways, I fiddled around with the energy settings after nothing really changed and strangely enough found a way to make the low framerates stop.Normally, I have my Notebook on the "Power4Gear Power Saving" setting without any problems, but after changing it to "Power4Gear High Performance", the framerates in my games were back to normal and my Notebook wasn't running as slow anymore. Temperature sunk at least 10°C lower, too.

I find it a little odd since I've always thought that my Notebook was just fine on the "Power Saving" setting on its own (at least when I wasn't playing games). Also, the fan in the Power Saving setting is still silent, and by silent you could also say that I can't even feel a draft coming out from the right side only.. That normal?

I also compared my settings with the ones you so kindly screenshotted me, I had to adjust some things, but as mentioned before, my Notebook is only having problems if I don't run it in the "Power4Gear High Performance" setting. Every other plan seems to be off for some reason?

I apologize for making so much fuss over this when the solution to my problem might be easy, but my last Notebook broke because of a similar problem I had.

Once again, thank you!

[hmscott]

ayne wrote:
Hey and good evening,
after playing some hours yesterday, I found that the GPU temperature never rose higher than 80°C at max, which should be an okay temperature? It was still lagging and I couldn't really play games with better graphics than WoW at all, but it didn't shut off and I still didn't get any error messages or anything like that. I have to admit that I didn't run a FurMark test yet, but that's only because I'm a little afraid something could overheat. It probably won't, but you know how it is. :rolleyes:
Anyways, I fiddled around with the energy settings after nothing really changed and strangely enough found a way to make the low framerates stop.Normally, I have my Notebook on the "Power4Gear Power Saving" setting without any problems, but after changing it to "Power4Gear High Performance", the framerates in my games were back to normal and my Notebook wasn't running as slow anymore. Temperature sunk at least 10°C lower, too.
I find it a little odd since I've always thought that my Notebook was just fine on the "Power Saving" setting on its own (at least when I wasn't playing games). Also, the fan in the Power Saving setting is still silent, and by silent you could also say that I can't even feel a draft coming out from the right side only.. That normal?
I also compared my settings with the ones you so kindly screenshotted me, I had to adjust some things, but as mentioned before, my Notebook is only having problems if I don't run it in the "Power4Gear High Performance" setting. Every other plan seems to be off for some reason?
I apologize for making so much fuss over this when the solution to my problem might be easy, but my last Notebook broke because of a similar problem I had.
Once again, thank you!

ayne, good debugging 🙂

Glad to hear you found the issue. I have found that Power4Gear isn't necessary, and tends to jump in and override the settings I prefer. So I have uninstalled Power4Gear and use the Windows Power Plans directly. The G751 series doesn't ship with Power4Gear.

You can use the Windows Balanced Power Plan most of the time and still get great performance. I only use the High Performance Plan on occasions when I am trying to get the best results from Benchmarks and Performance tests.

The High Performance plan runs the CPU at highest frequency all the time, and doesn't drop down the speed when idle. This makes it most responsive for performance testing, but isn't needed for normal use.

The Balanced Power Plan takes you to the maximum frequency quickly, and drops the CPU speed quickly after there is no work for the CPU to complete. The reaction time costs a little performance, measurable, not noticeable for interactive use. The CPU can cool off between work, and this means it runs cooler overall, requiring less fan activity, so it runs quieter.

Getting control of the settings controlling your laptop isn't difficult, and pays off with peace of mind that you know what is going on inside your computer.

Have fun 🙂