G751JT-DB73 Third RMA Videos inside. Major issues with Intel AC-7260 wireless.

[Duhef]

So I am currently on my third RMA for my G751JT-DB73. I have been struggling through Asus' horrible customer support for about 3 months now with no resolution. Apparently no one can properly receive information in the service center or even send out an email for my review.

I have been having major issues with the Intel AC-7260 wireless card in this model. It refuses to hold a stable connection and will constantly spike to high latency levels rendering a rubber band effect while playing any games. I have spent multiple hours of my own time attempting to remedy this issues and have had no luck. From driver updates to voodoo fixes from forums, nothing with stop this thing from spiking. Have other laptops in my home and one console that I have setup wirelessly due to the convenience and neither of these items have any issues. On top of that, there is a horrible crackle when any sound is played, typically happens whenever any sound is initialized and when the sounds is over, there is a pop. And lastly, backlight bleed on this model is the worst. I have never seen such bright yellow coming through such large surface areas of a panel.

So I sent it out for an RMA, the initial issues were for the above and it shipped with two broken keyboard keys. I know, that this point I'm regretting not returning it and just getting my money back. But the G-SYNC and all of the other hardware were such a great combination. The wireless card was replaced, keys fixed, and a "hinge" was replaced to fix the sound. Nothing was done about the backlight bleed but I wanted to see if the wireless was at least fixed. To my surprise, the first game I was able to play had problems. Spiking latency and rubber banding every 3 - 4 minutes. So it was time for a second RMA.

Second RMA was terrible. Laptop was at the facility for almost two weeks. I finally decided to follow up with Asus after the RMA status page said "repair in progress" with no changes made for days. They told me that the service center had sent me an email. Check all folders and what not and no email was found. Fought with them for the entire day, probably around 10 calls after constant disconnections, which I am chalking up to their poor phone infrastructure. I was directed to email someone that could get in contact with the service center and send pictures to them so they could further diagnose the issue because they "couldn't find anything wrong and the laptop is in excellent condition". I sent them a picture of me pining home with spikes over over 200ms. They said that is fine due to no packet loss, which is a joke of a response. They sent my laptop out that night without doing anything further.

So now we are on the third RMA and the same exact situation has happened. I had even sent videos and pictures to a CSS rep by the name of Jhamaica which I'm guessing she never forwarded to the repair team since the videos were too large to send to an email, she said I could upload them to youtube and give her a link. Well based off of the view count of one of the videos, no one but myself has watched the video. So I followed up with Asus, rep tells me that they sent me an email and they couldn't find anything wrong. It pains me to know that at this point, I'm going to be stuck with a near $2000 paperweight. I bought the unit to use it as a laptop, not have to hard wire ethernet wherever I go. At home, it's too much of a hassle and I don't "competitively" game so I am okay using wireless. Or on the off chance that I bring the laptop with me for travel or attend a LAN party (I'll never be too old for a LAN party) I will be stuck with this shoddy wireless card. It's really too bad that the wireless card is on the back of the mobo because I would have replaced it already but I don't want to void my warranty just yet.

Here are the links to the two videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSw-l_Bic3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiq94qoL4CU

[MrRuckus]

I feel your pain on the Wireless Controller portion.

It seems the last couple of Intel controllers released aren't the best. Normally Intel is among the best if not the best, but their last previous releases have not been favorites. I have the Intel 8260 in the G752 and it looks to suffer the same problems.. Just to give some background, I work for a small rural ISP in the IT department and build my own desktop machines. I buy ROG laptops to game at friends houses/lans instead of hauling around my desktop. I also use my laptop for oncall work when I work from home.

One of the first things I did when I got my laptop was work from home. I noticed it was extremely slow when I remoted into my desktop at work. It was so laggy I had to get on my desktop, which worked fine. We have 3 desktops, 4 tablets, 4 cell phones, chromecast, Smart TV's, and some consoles connected at my house. I have the Asus AC3200 which I use at home on our cable connection which is 120mbit/12mbit. I have zero problems with any other device in my house, including my previous G751, so I know the problem is isolated to this machine.

I've been doing some research to see what I can find, and it seems this is not an isolated issue. It also seems the controller works better on a 5Ghz band over a 2.4Ghz band. The AC-3200 is a Tri-band router, so I have two 5Ghz bands and One 2.4Ghz. I tried both 5Ghz bands and they seem to work better, but I still get intermittent lag when I know I should not. Distance does not seem to make any difference. My desktop which has an Asus PCE-AC68 Wireless Adapter in it works fine right next to my laptop without the lag. Im starting to think the Intel AC adapters are not all that great. I think there may be an incompatibility issue between these adapters and some router chipsets maybe. Because the problem doesn't seem to be isolated to only ROG laptops. There are other complaints from various manufacturers with these cards like HP, Alienware, Sony VAIO, ect.

I may end up looking for a replacement and swap the wireless adapter out. Although it looks like the wireless card may not be that accessible in the G752 as it cannot be seen under the memory/hdd plate on the bottom of the laptop. Hopefully its not too hard to get to.

EDIT: Also, drivers have been updated directly from Intel, Bios is also 206 which is the newest. AC-3200 is also on newest firmware.

[Duhef]

Mr. Ruckus,
I never even noticed your post as I ended up posting the above to their Asus NA's Facebook. Resolution was quick and had a new G751JY on the way. Same issues. Said I was done and I wanted to be upgraded to the G752VY-DH72 to not get the AC7260 again. I was relieved when they said yes, only to un-box the G752 and moments into my first game the latency spike happens. Like I stated before, I bought this to be used as a laptop, not hard wire it wherever I go, even my own home. I understand the downsides to wireless gaming but I'm not at any highly competitive level and my previous Alienware & other consoles in my home on wireless have not had any problems like this. I have a decent AC router and a backup N and both have not remedied this problem. Thank you for the additional insight. Kind of at a loss at this point with the poor QC at Asus.

[JustinThyme]

One piece of the ASUS bloat ware does cause issues with the wireless in a bad way. I can't recall the name of it as its long gone from my machines. I havn't had any issues with the 7260 or the 8260. They have worked flawlessly for me. Double check the 5GHZ set up on your router. Open up the channel width. And there are some other tweaks that I did with the first wireless AC card I installed a couple of years ago. I have the ASUS RT 68U which I'm sticking with for now. There are faster routers but no faster wireless cards.

Mr Ruckus the wireless half PCI adaptor in the G752VY is not hard at all to get to. You do have to pop the keyboard like you were going to change the RAM in the non user serviceable area but don't have to go past that. It's up under the macro keys just to the right of left side fan. The antenna leads go up the left side display hinge. Hardest part of changing one is those tiny antenna connectors. My old arse had to break out a lighted magnifier to reconnect them.

@Duhef
Sorry to hear of all your problems. ASUS is not the only one that tends to send back machines with more problems that they left with Laptops are a PITA to work on but that's still no excuse. I had Dell at my house for my work laptop several times as we had a premium service agreement with them. Several different techs came and each one left me with a still unusable laptop. They ended up replacing it as the service calls were running them in the poor house. I know it's too late now but just some advice for the future. I always buy my machines from a source with a very liberal return policy even if it means paying a premium. The. I Proceed to dog the crap out of them in an attempt to make them fail so if they do I can return for an exchange then the repair is their problem. Seems quality control on electronics across the board has gone to the wayside in the past several years. Often it's not the fault of the manufacturer but the vendors they use for components. What the real problem is......No one will stand up and own it.

EDIT
ROG Game first III is what really hoses everything.

[Boxis]

Not sure, if you tried this fix, but, if no, then give it a try. It helped me, when I have these issues last time.

1. Open Registry Editor (Windows 8/8.1, right click where Start button was, click Run, type regedit. Windows 7, click Start, click Run, type regedit)

2. Head to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System\ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Class \ {4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318} [Be sure to expand the 4d36e.... folder]

3. Inside will be a number of folders named 0000, 0001, 0002, etc. Look through all these folders until you get one that says Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 in the registry.

4. Once the device has been found, search for a value called ScanWhenAssociated.

5. If you see this value, set it to 0 on hexadecimal. If you don't see the value, click edit from the top, select new, and click DWORD (32-bit) value. Rename this value to ScanWhenAssociated (exactly as shown). Make sure this value is set to 0 on hexadecimal.

6. Restart the computer. This is important. The changes won't take effect unless you do.

[Duhef]

I've tried all of the fixes. Even had a Network Engineer I know look at it. I've gotten rid of game first and the other bloatware that is said to interfere. The 7260 had very blatant issues and it didn't matter what manufacturer used the card. There's even talks of a class action against Intel. What is odd is that again, I have no wireless issues with any other devices. I like the new machine and it was very gracious of Asus to take into consideration upgrading me after I had probably only had the G751 in my possession for 2 months after 4 months of ownership.

@Justin
I know QC has gone by the wayside but, like everyone else will say, I've been a longtime supporter of Asus. All of my builds, peripherals etc were purchased from them. It's just sad that as a consumer, I can't have faith in buying something that I do for my hobby. This has been a tiring battle back and forth and at this point, I've just hardwired the laptop and I'm not looking back. Though when I travel I will be at a loss. I can tend to be a chronic complainer sometimes with electronics but I never remember things being this bad. Monitors have exceptionally bad backlight bleed lately, things aren't soldered well, the list goes on. Whatever happened to quality, especially when you pay extra for it.

[JustinThyme]

Preaching to the choir on QC from anyone at this point. I'm afraid the problem lies in the last word in the Made in line printed on the card. They just don't care. If Intel drops them they have a 100 lined up and have no qualms of continuing to make the cards anyhow as they already have the IP and will simply saturate the market though other channels with unauthorized chips. They are doing it already as there are tons of fakes out there made in the same plant with the same procedures using inferior raw materials. They have ripped multiple cars IP and produced their own versions from Mercedes to Lexus to Hummers and Jeeps. Dont know how much time you have left on your warranty or if you just want to say screw it but these card are not at all hard to replace and you can use any card that has two antenna leads and the half PCIe form factor. Not hard to do, hardest part is getting the keyboard off.

Video to get the keyboard off, no need to completely pull it, to the point this vid take you to replace the RAM is sufficient. Then its just a matter of sliding the keyboard to the front a enough to get to the card. One screw holds the card in. The antenna connections are a bit challenging as they are tiny but even my old eyes with some light and precision needlenose pliers can accomplish it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x7px8mx5LU


Image of motherboard with card circled in red.

[Julskey]

I have a G752VT with AC7265 wifi adapter. I'm using a NETGEAR dualband router and so far, I have no problems with internet connectivity. You already have two different laptops with two discrete wifi cards (since they are both on different units), but still exhibiting the same problem? What game have you been experiencing these problems? It may be possible that the dropouts in connection may be from your ISP to the game server. Can you do a ping test to your router and on another computer in you network? Better yet do a ping test to a known server. Just type ping ex. ping 192.168.1.1 or for continuous ping, type ping 192.168.1.1 -t .You can also do a ping test and speed test at speedtest.net

If your ping does not drop out in LAN ping test, it is probable that the problem lies at your isp/gameserver and not your card.

[MrRuckus]

Its specifically with these Intel cards Julskey. I think there is just some incompatibility or other issue with the cards and certain chipset of routers. I say this because I can reproduce the problem on one router and not another. Being that I work for a small ISP I have the ability to test on MANY different brands of routers from hi end to low end. These Intel cards also have sleep issues and latency issues and the problem is across multiple brands, not just ROG laptops. I'm going to give the above fix by Boxis a shot and see what it does for me as I haven't seen it before. I'll post back after I give it a go tonight. Remoting into my work box from home is the time I see it most, so I'll give that a shot.

And again, I can switch from the G752, to my desktop right next to it which is also wireless, and the connection is flawless. The most aggravating part is a speedtest will show no problems. Its only latency intensive applications whether it be gaming or remote management of a desktop where you see blips of latency every 5 to 10 seconds.

[JustinThyme]

Interesting information MrRuckus. I have the 7260 in 2 laptops with zero issues from throughput to latency. Makes me wonder if its not where the cards were sourced from. Something else I noted long ago while following issues with the same card elsewhere is there are multiple setting within the connection that will enhance performance as well as router settings. Im fairly certain it was in the notebookreview forum but its been a very long time since I looked. I know one big advantage was seen by opening the 5GHz channel bandwidth on the router to 80MHz, they all come default set to 20/40/80MHz. I'll poke around some more as there are also several setting within the adapters setting that also alleviate problems.