Firstly sorry for the lengthy post as I have never had to explain this kind of thing before and am not very savvy with computer issues but I'm trying to learn.
I sent my G73JH laptop (i7 720, 8GB 1333 RAM, 5870 GPU) in for warranty service approx 2.5 months ago due to this issue and long story short, my laptop was smashed in transit. They finally agreed to repair it at their charge (as they arranged and provided the courrier service to my house for the warranty service), and now I have it back with a new video card, new case, new LCD panel - but the same original problem that I sent it in for.
I brought this system as a desktop replacement as I used to be a gamer and needed a laptop for university so I thought that this seemed like a good option to treat myself with to possibly game with in the future. Only recently (after owning it for over a year) have I attempted to play games on it due to uni commitments. I started with The Witcher, which runs perfectly on my wifes ASUS A43S laptop - which is far inferior (specs wise) to mine. The game will run on max settings (auto detected) on my G73JH, but it loads and goes through the intro cut scene with multiple freezes of the display. I mean that it will play the movie but the screan will freeze for a fraction of a second every 5-10 seconds or so - like a big lag spike. This behaviour continues when attempting to actually play the game where you would proceed to run around and attack enemies, but lose your bearings as these freezing glitches would interfere with the game so much that you would lose your bearings and be unable to get any fluidity with the game. I tried lowering the video setting to minimum (low) with nil changes to the continual freezing issue. I initially thought that it might be a driver issue, but updated everything to the latest drivers and flashed the BIOS to 213 and the 93vBIOS as per the ASUS video instructions to get the latest ATI driver CCC 11.10. This made NO difference at all. Still the same problem with intermittent freezing during games. This problem has occured despite a replacement Video card (I feel like they addressed the damage in transit issue without looking at my original problem). I only got it back on 10/11 and had brought BF3 and pre-ordered Skyrim thinking that my problems would be fixed after the repair. It has not. BF3 runs on high settings beautifully if it weren't for the same issue as happens with the Witcher (intermittent lag spike regardless of video settings). I then discovered the EXACT same issue with Skyrim. I checked the Temps of the Video card which maxed out at 72 degrees celcius and have ran all games from immediate start up at 50 degrees. I have never had to diagnose this kind of thing before and would really appreciate some learned advice as this is knew to me. I will be calling in to the service centre on Monday but would like an idea of what the hell this might be??? I am yet to use any program to monitor the CPU temps. Could it be an issue? or the System board? Any suggestions on possible causes/ fixes would be greatly appreciated.
