Video Artifacts

[Dukat]

Hi,

Ever since I got the laptop I've been getting random video artifacts.

Sometimes windows boots, I hear the login prompt music, keyboard is responding but the display is black. Reboot required to get it back to normal.

In windows, sometimes while gaming, other times on the desktop with the browser open I get video artifacts. Usually it's grainy squares or patches of horizontal lines. The artifacts usually go away in a few seconds although several times they went full screen and locked the PC requiring a hard reboot.

Any ideas? I hope it's a software issue that will be addressed with a firmware or driver update; however it's been over a month and asus hasn't released a single update. I'm afraid the problem is hardware related.

As the problem is intermittent and can't be reproduced at will I have a feeling if I sent it back to Asus they wouldn't find any problems and send it back.

Ideas? Recommendations? Love the laptop but these issues are making for a horrible experience.

Thanks

[iluvatar]

It does sound like a hardware issue, especially the booting with black screen part.
Try to run a benchmark like furmark for some time. If it is has to do with a gpu going bad, the artifacts should appear after some time. Let it run for long enough and analyse the temperature of your gpu with gpu-z.
If nothing happens, it might be driver related so try and update it, but I really doubt that.
Artifacts showing up and pc freezing are normally a sign of a dying gpu.
Good luck!

[Brian_ROG]

I agree with iluvatar, sounds like your gpu is faulty. My gtx 460 in my desktop did the same thing with the weird artifacts and i replaced it, which fixed the problem. If this is a new G75 or G55 and you are within the time frame to return for a replacement, i would do that.

[Dukat]

I found a way to reproduce the problem most of the time by running Cinebench 64, Open GL test or 3DMark 11.The artifacts appear in seconds when running Cinebench most of the time, followed by a reboot. After that Windows either blue screens or loads up with artifacts all over the screen, followed by an autoreboot and another blue screen. If I power off the laptop for more than 15 seconds, Windows boots fine, no artifacts.

Called Asus. They said they'll give me an RMA but the problem may be my fault for installing my own HD and not running their image. Installing my own HD may count as some customer induced problem and may void some coverage. Ridiculous.

(update)
I was able to get the error code from the bluescreen. Web searches seem to indicate it's a video driver issue, although it could be related to system memory as well. I'm running the nvidia drivers from the Asus website as nvidia doesn't offer any drivers for the GTX 670M. If it were a driver issue I'd think a lot more people would be having this problem.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.4
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 116
BCP1: FFFFFA800EEB7010
BCP2: FFFFF8800FBC2FD8
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 0000000000000002
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 256_1

On Sun 6/3/2012 4:52:58 AM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\060312-6864-01.dmp
uptime: 00:00:09
This was probably caused by the following module: nvlddmkm.sys (nvlddmkm+0x1B1FD8)
Bugcheck code: 0x116 (0xFFFFFA800EEB7010, 0xFFFFF8800FBC2FD8, 0x0, 0x2)
Error: VIDEO_TDR_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\nvlddmkm.sys
product: NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 296.44
company: NVIDIA Corporation
description: NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 296.44
Bug check description: This indicates that an attempt to reset the display driver and recover from a timeout failed.
A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: nvlddmkm.sys (NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 296.44 , NVIDIA Corporation).