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ROG G15 AMD Advantage Edition

GrondStrong
Level 7
Hello all,

Solution:

For those who arrive at this thread later on, the solution I found to the crashing issues was to use a tool called MPT (More Power Tools) as it was the only utility I could find that allowed the lowering of the boost clock from 2600mhz as was allowed by the bios of the card to 2350mhz. It has been stable ever since the change with no adjustments to power, voltage, or anything else. Make sure to read all the instructions and tutorials when using MPT as it has the potential to really cause some problems if not respected and used within reason. Unfortunately, these means become necessary because AMD won't unlock control of their mobile GPUs for "normal" utilities to access.

Original post:

First time on the forum and glad to be here. I picked up AMD's Advantage G15 about two weeks ago and have been using it as a daily driver about 5 hours per day, every day. For the most part, it's been a good machine with minimal backlight bleed, beautiful RGB, decent screen (although I wish the QHD had been available first), and incredible cooling. However, there are a couple of things that I believe take this off the instant recommend list for me. They are as follows:

First and foremost the number one issue with this laptop has been driver timeout errors. After a ton of troubleshooting, DDU uninstalls, Windows reinstalls, and driver refreshing with no luck, it's my belief that the reason for the driver timeouts is an unstable overclock of the GPU. There are others who have the same issue and had it resolved only by making a small clock speed decrease, even in the realm of 25 - 75mhz. The base clock on the 6800M according to GPU-Z is 1981mhz. Game clock is 2116 and Boost clock is 2390mhz. However, this laptop regularly goes up to 2550mhz and stays there due to the thermal headroom that the cooling solution on this laptop allows. Normally, I would be thrilled, but in this case, I think that ASUS was too generous with the speed that the card is allowed to boost with the power that is being supplied. According to GPU-Z the GPU can draw as much as 192W alone. This is substantially more than the advertised 145W - 165W that is on the ASUS website and even AMD's listing of the card. It could be that the engineers of this laptop didn't thoroughly test the laptop in an adequate battery of tests to see if the card was stable at the voltages and clock speeds which they locked it into. Also, therein lies the problem. If this was a desktop card, I would simply lower the clock speed or adjust the voltage myself using Afterburner or another GPU utility. However, AMD has locked all those functions on their mobile cards, essentially forcing customers to use whatever profiles have been set up by the manufacturer. In this case, it's ASUS's unstable speeds. Unfortunately, this is a difficult error to replicate because of the silicon lottery, some models may be just fine while other machines are throwing CTDs. In my opinion, ASUS should have released a more stable clock speed for all machines instead of trying to squeeze every last MHz out of the card and leaving some machines vulnerable to instability. The resolution for this is to limit framerates in-game to keep the card use down, but that is not what I paid to use this machine for.
Example 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/nypr0p/driver_timeout_occuring_frequently_what_is_this_i/h...
Example 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/nypr0p/driver_timeout_occuring_frequently_what_is_this_i/h...
Example 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/HPReverb/comments/ldafqm/anyone_else_with_a_5700xt_gpu_experiencing_a/gq15q...
Of course, there could be some other solutions for this issue as well but this seems to be one of the surefire ways to halt it other than the blanket, "DDU drivers and reinstall" which really should be done anyway.

The second issue is that of software. Software controls almost everything in this model and will severely handicap the usefulness of the machine if one uninstalls Armory Crate, which in itself can be a task. ASUS seemingly does not want their customers to have an "out of the box" Windows experience and instead prefers to keep them locked into their software which can be glitchy and invasive at worst. The keyboard and LEDs on the laptop will not function without Armory Crate and there is no keyboard illumination lock in the BIOS as other laptops have. Speaking of the BIOS, while the UI is nicer than the majority of other laptops, functionality is one of the worst I've seen, with options kept to a minimum. I would go as far to say the majority of the functions that ASUS lists on their website and marketing is not possible without Armory Crate, essentially getting you half the laptop you wanted. Armory Crate can also be very difficult to get rid of. After uninstalling it, there are still instances of Armory Crate and pieces of it left throughout one's system. It takes a decent amount of file surgery or a fresh Windows install to get rid of all the Armory Crate pieces. Not cool. In some cases, it auto-reinstalls upon a fresh Windows installation because an unsavvy user wouldn't notice the sneaky BIOS option to turn the auto-installer off. It's on by default. Yikes.
Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/lip3d2/is_armoury_crate_better_yet/?utm_source=share&utm_medi...

The third issue is that of strange hardware buttons on the right-hand side and top of the keyboard. These are for pausing, playing, and skipping media only and are non-programmable. It would seem strange that a laptop meant for gaming would have media keys for streaming media only. Even if they were, there should be an option to reprogram them to something that is more practical. Like screen brightness or RGB brightness or cycles. Perhaps even the option to turn them into a hotkey or macro, but nope. These are for playing pausing YouTube and Netflix shows only. ASUS thought it important enough to fill up the laptop space with them. OK, no matter, I'll just turn off the Fn button in BIOS so I don't have to stretch my hand across the keyboard to adjust my screen brightness all the time. Well guess what, no option in BIOS to remove Fn necessity either. This is extremely frustrating. I probably adjust my screen brightness about 15 times per day as I take my laptop everywhere I go in all sorts of differently lit environments. This should absolutely be allowed to be a one-button operation and is on any other laptop on the market. (At least the 7 or 8 that I've had.) Also, the fan button and ROG button are only functional with Armory Crate installed. Go figure.

For all of ASUS's Republic of Gamers marketing, this laptop, while powerful and pretty to look at, doesn't seem to be part of a Republic at all. It's more the Tyrant of Gamers as it has probably the least amount of practical user accessibility I've had in a laptop in a long time. This laptop can be a decent experience, as long as you use it exactly how ASUS tells you to use it. For many users who are also custom PC builders and modders, that is simply an unacceptable business model.
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LeanAnderson
Level 7

Hey man read your post and it gave me hope again since i have a problem with random crashes  whilst playing gpu heavy games. I tried your way of using MPT but i wasn't able to add the MPT file to my bios. i tried using RBE (Radeon Bios Editor) to add the MPT file but when i wanted to load the Bios into RBE it said "not supported". Could you tell me which program you used after changing the values in MPT?