My G74SXs' have been GREAT DISAPPOINTMENTS.

[Drakohl]

Originally I posted the problems with my G74SX-91325V in another thread, but as both (read on to find out about 'both') my laptops have given me so much trouble I decided to start a new one. Here is the link to the old thread http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?7905-Startup-but-BlankScreen./page2&highlight=startup

This is a long post, if you would like to read through everything, get ready a drink for yourself.

I have to say that I was extremely excited when I first ordered the G74SX. It is a stunning, beautiful, sleek black machine, and the specs that it has would make any gamer's mouth drool. Unfortunately for me, and for some of the other G series owners out there, it seems that the G series notebooks are only for looks.


Laptop 1
I bought my G74SX in December last year. From the moment I started using it, the space and backspace keys did not function properly. On the third day, I was playing Arkham City, which was beautiful and ran so smoothly, and suddenly the screen went blank and my laptop emitted a loud "BZZZZ" noise. I forced a shut down and switched it on again. The button lights came on but nothing was displayed on the screen. Restarted the laptop 3 times, still the problem remained.

Took it my local repair centre the very next day, and they said it was a motherboard problem. My laptop's keyboard was fixed and the motherboard changed, and I went home to happily play Arkham City once more. However, after the repair, the speakers were giving problems! There was a lot of fuzz when main characters spoke, and the background music became high pitched. I downloaded and reinstalled the sound driver, but the problem persisted! This problem did not affect solely Arkham City but Youtube videos, playing music CDs, etc. Even the speakers in my 4 year old laptop performed much better than this new model! The sound had been fine before I had sent my laptop in for repairs.

So the very next day after I had my laptop repaired, I went back AGAIN to the repair centre. This time I spoke to the supervisor, who was pretty clueless about my laptop model and the problems that entailed. He told me he would lodge a complaint for me to the HQ in Taiwan, but I told him I wanted a replacement. While waiting for him to get back to me, my space key started acting up again. A few days later, I asked him about the pending status, and he said that he spoke to his senior and ASUS would give me a replacement, but he was not sure when it would come in. After a week of waiting and no further word from him, I called him up and he told me "Oh, we can't help you get a replacement, you will have to organise that with the retailer". I asked him about his earlier words about helping me get a replacement, but he just repeated himself. I don't know why I restrained myself from shouting profanities at him.


Laptop 2
So I went to the retailer who was very unwilling to give me a refund, but said he would help me lodge a request for a replacement unit. I waited patiently for over 2 weeks, and the new unit arrived (on the 27th of February) . I tested the unit on the spot, and it seemed a bit slow, but I thought perhaps that was because I was starting Windows for the first time.

I went home and downloaded the necessary Windows and Asus updates. Everytime I restarted the laptop after the updates, the Windows startup process was actually very slow for a laptop with monster specs, and it loaded even slower than my 4 year old laptop with much lower specs! I thought that it was slow because the updates were being installed. I also found out that Laptop 2 went into hibernation mode much slower than Laptop 1 had. Now I definitely suspected something was amiss.

I installed Arkham City (AC) and started playing with 3D Vision enabled. I noticed lags as I was travelling around AC, but as I was so immersed in the game, I tried to ignore them. When I got into the fight with Mr. Freeze, the game lagged so severely I had to quit it (Batman was moving something like 10 steps ahead after 10 seconds). I disabled the 3D vision and started again, but, though not as bad as before, the fight with Mr. Freeze still lagged horribly. I now started to notice that it lagged a lot when I was in the external environment. There is a patch for the game and I was prompted to install it before starting AC, which I did. It then dawned on me that there was (and still is) something wrong with this new laptop.


Oh, I nearly forgot to mention two other things:
1. My keyboard backlights are not consistent. It's bright-dim-bright-dim-bright all across.
2. My Windows Messenger is in English (as expected since I chose 'English' as my language), but under a few of the options,Traditional Chinese character's appear! This also happened once when I was on the Geforce website. Everything was in English until I clicked the GPU Analyser, then the buttons which required Java to run changed into Traditional Chinese whilst the rest of the site remained in English!


I went to the Asus repair centre (they must think I really enjoy visiting them) just two days ago, and they ran tests on my laptop. They said they could not detect any problems with my operating system, nor with anything else (and they forgot to fix the backlight and it was too late to stay on to wait for them to do it). They said they would order a new motherboard for me and they will install it and see if it helps. I told them I wanted a completely-problem-free replacement or a refund. The representative I spoke to said he would get back to me the same day, which he did not. Nor the next day. So today I called them, and I spoke to the person in charge who has told me they will organise a refund with the dealer. So let's see how things go.


In a nutshell:
Laptop 1 had problems with the screen, motherboard, speakers, keyboard.
Laptop 2 has something wrong with the system, even though the employees at the repair centre could not find anything. Caused my Arkham City and MW3 to crash a few times at startup. (Both laptops have the exact same specs, and games ran smoothly on the first unit, so I can't understand why they ran so badly on my replacement unit).


I really don't know if it's the fault of ASUS or the dealer, Thundermatch (Malaysia), (I once saw a 'questionable' practice at their outlet where I collected my laptops), but either way, it reflects badly on ASUS and has left one customer immensely unhappy.

[CapnKirk]

:cool:

been through 5 so far!

[MrRuckus]

Thats very strange. Sounds like you guys have had some problematic units. Sorry to hear about that. Im curious, what retailer did you guys get them from? Maybe we can find somekind of common ground between the 2 of you with issues? I have seen 4 G74Sx's in a very short amount of time and have not heard of any problem with any of them yet. All within a month old. 2 Co-workers picked up the G74 as did I through CDW since this is who our company deals with for our office products. Its a purchase program through my work. The other I purchased for my father which came from Amazon. Two of the laptops are the DH71 variant and two are the DH72. All 4 have been flawless so far.

I recommend throttlestop in the sticky post here in the forums. Its a much needed utility on these G series laptops. I had slow downs in SC2 on my previous G53 which I did not know them was related to throttling. I did not see the same in this G74 yet as it does not get as hot as the G53 did most likely due to the extra real estate in the 17inch chassis.

Again, please let us know where you guys purchased them from. I hope your troubles get resolved.

[Drakohl]

MrRuckus wrote:
Im curious, what retailer did you guys get them from? Maybe we can find somekind of common ground between the 2 of you with issues? I have seen 4 G74Sx's in a very short amount of time and have not heard of any problem with any of them yet. All within a month old. 2 Co-workers picked up the G74 as did I through CDW since this is who our company deals with for our office products. Its a purchase program through my work. The other I purchased for my father which came from Amazon. Two of the laptops are the DH71 variant and two are the DH72. All 4 have been flawless so far.

I recommend throttlestop in the sticky post here in the forums. Its a much needed utility on these G series laptops. I had slow downs in SC2 on my previous G53 which I did not know them was related to throttling. I did not see the same in this G74 yet as it does not get as hot as the G53 did most likely due to the extra real estate in the 17inch chassis.

Again, please let us know where you guys purchased them from. I hope your troubles get resolved.

Hi MrRuckus, I puchased my 1st unit, and obtained my replacement/ 2nd unit, from a IT chain in Malaysia called Thundermatch Technology. I'm not trying to tarnish the reputation of this company, but at the particular outlet where I got my units, I saw a dubious practice by one of the staff. So call me suspicious, but both the laptops I received could have been messed with somehow before I got them. I don't have any concrete evidence to back this up though. Either that or Asus just figures Malaysian customers don't deserve quality parts and service (refer to the link mentioned in #1, as well as my experience with the repair service staff in the same post).

Regarding Throttlestop, I appreciate your suggestion, but the thing is, my laptop should be running flawlessly without any additional software or programs. Again, please refer back to my first post, where I mentioned my 1st unit ran fast and smooth, and the gameplay and graphics for Arkham City (AC) on it were enjoyable (the Mr. Freeze boss fight ran fluidly, as it is meant to on a laptop with high specs, but this fight and gameplay in other parts of AC lagged severely when played on my 2nd unit). This 2nd unit takes nearly 2 minutes for all the desktop programs to load, whereas my 1st unit fully loaded up in about 30 secs. I had more programs and games installed on my first unit, but on the 2nd I only had AC and some other small programs like Skype and Steam.

Then there is that issue with the traditional Chinese characters appearing in the Windows Live Messenger (WLM) sound options, which nobody at the service centre was able to explain, and I can't seem to find anything about this on the web. Could imply that there is something wrong with the operating system. My laptop has been reformatted twice (last Monday and last night) and there has been no improvement in performance nor have the sound options for WLM reverted to English.

I thought that the G74SX was a gaming monster, but it's been nothing but problems for me so far. I paid nearly US$2k for this, and I am severely disappointed. Asus, do tighten/ improve/ enhance/ increase/ better your quality control and customer service!