poor performance with 7800 Go (Dell)

[Orz]

There are two problems:

1). It is absolutely smooth when game starts(fps:40~50). After like half a minute, as long as the fan goes, the performance suffers drastically!!! (fps:10~20). I experiences this in various games(Oblivion, Half-Life 2 - Episode One,....) All same problems!. I don't know if there is anything wrong the cooling system or something, cuz I think 7800 Go isn't that crap, rite? (Drivers are all updated. )

2)During games I feel like there are two games running at the same time but at a different pace!!! Sometimes faster and then slower!! I can't bear this anymore!! This was a brand new order from dell early this year!! Is it the same bug as AMD dual core?

My core components:

Intel® Core? Duo Processor T2400

256MB NVIDIA® GeForce? Go 7800 GS

1GB DDR SDRAM

other info:

Vid card Driver vesion:XTreme-G MobileForce 91.28-v2.40

Operatign system: xp home sp2

GPU temp at rest: 84

When gaming: ?higher?

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance!!!

Edit: Removed large text - Bill

Edited June 29, 2006 by Bill

[Fabrice Roux]

First of all... if you have trouble reading on your screen don't boost the font size... use the CTRL+Mousewheel to change the font size on your side.

Seeing that you are in north american I first guessed that you are using Farenheit as temperature unit. Then I converted 84°F to 29°C. This is a rather low temperature for a GPU... So I concluded that you meant 84°C. But given that you said it's the IDLE temperature... I get scared. So please confirm which scenario fits your setup:

1- When IDLE (doing nothing) your computer temperature is at 84°C. Which is about twice the temp you should get in those conditions. In this case dont look farther... YOU HAVE OVERHEATING ISSUES.

2- You live in a very cold area of Canada, the ambient temperature of the place you use the computer allows the IDLE temps to be as low as 84°F/29°C.

The next thing... instead of playing with the fire on those conditions... stick to a reliable driver such as the 84.25 or 84.30. Or in the worst case give Dell official 78.59 a try. For that point keep in mind that the last official driver for desktop GPUs at nVidia is the 84.21. The best driver for your card will always be the manufacturer driver if it's not too old.

On my desktop I have an Athlon X2 and I play with Oblivion, Counter Strike and Ghost Recon AW... they all work as advertised. No issue, no slowdown or whatsoever.

EDIT: Dell released a new official driver for the 7x00 family... install it.

Edited June 23, 2006 by Fabrice Roux

[Bill]

I also suggest not using that Extreme G driver stuff, uninstall that first before you install a driver from here.

You might also try changing which CPU core(s) the games run on, some games are just old/crappy and don't properly run on newer CPUs.

http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/

Check that out for some fan control/temp monitoring.

You should not mess with the fan stuff unless you really know what you are doing as the BIOS should handle it well enough, you can easily use the program to monitor temps, can now display CPU load, CPU tem, GPU temp, HDD temp, and fan speeds for both fans all at the same time on the taskbar, and now it records the max temp since the program has been running, could reset before a game, run the game a few hours then see what the max temp you had was.

I just installed the latest beta and its nice (been using the 2.2.0 version)

Edit: You need to not post text that big like that, if you need a magnifying glass you could just ask for one... :)

[beigedickies]

I have the same problem with my E1705.

It seriously overheats LIKE CRAZY.

IDLE TEMP is freaking 70 CELSIUS!!! almost goes to 90 when I play a game!

[Fabrice Roux]

Do the fans kick in correctly?

Use I8kFanGUI to view at which temperature a faster speed kicks in... and which temperature it stops.

On my I9300 with 6800 Go the fan starts in low speed by default.

Lo speed: stops at 41°C / starts at 53°C

Hi speed: stops at 53°C / starts at 65°C

When the high speed kicks in the temp stays in the 61/63 zone. So my max temp is 65°C but only for a couple of seconds.

[Guest foomanchu79]

I'm also have the same overheating issue with my GO 7800. Temps go up to around 81c then the fan kicks on. It drops down to about 60c but surely it gets back up to 80c+ after a few minutes. It happens quicker while playing video games. I can't even rest it on my lap, or even rest my hands over the right side of the keyboard where the gpu sits. Its very dissapointing that they designed such a poor cooling system for such a great graphics card.

This makes me think of how metal reacts to the constant heating and cooling, and how it'll effect the life of the gpu. I'm guessing one year of life is all we're going to get out of this video card.

[Fabrice Roux]

I'm also have the same overheating issue with my GO 7800. Temps go up to around 81c then the fan kicks on. It drops down to about 60c but surely it gets back up to 80c+ after a few minutes.

It looks like your laptop has only one fan to cool both the CPU and the GPU. While our laptop is huge (17" screen) and feature 2 fans one for the CPU one for the GPU. Those fans also have a low and a high speed.

There is little thing you can do... raise the back of your laptop so the fresh air intake is easier. Depending on your laptop you might have a program that overides the fan default behaviour.

[Guest Daire]

I have a dell 9400 with a Nvidia Geforce Go 7800, tried to install the new 91.31 driver. I downloaded the main file from Nvidia and the inf from here. Using the manual update method worked fine. Problem is the GPU fan wasn't turning on, GPU went up to 75°C. I rolled back the driver to the dell default and the fan kicked in immediately at top speed. I'm guessing the new driver messed with fan/temp control.

I'd really like to use this driver if possible, any ideas?