Q & A for all issues on 8600GT

[Guest Lucanesti]

Ok, I have XPS M1530, 8600m GT, T8300, 120GB 7200 RPM HD

I've used over 20 drivers from here, on XP 32/64 and Vista 32/64. I simply CANNOT get World of Warcraft to stop stuttering on even the smallest spells being casted. Its rediculous.

Anyone else had this problem?

[wook]

lots of people with core2 processors have this issue..

Have you tried setting the affinity for WoW.exe to run on a single core and see if that improves things at all?

This may fix it also.. go here and follow instructions:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=261929

How old is the Laptop? the 1530 uses gel and not the heat pad, if they get real hot the gel may preish and will cause CPU to clock down.

Edited June 29, 2008 by wook

[idro]

lots of people with core2 processors have this issue..

Have you tried setting the affinity for WoW.exe to run on a single core and see if that improves things at all?

This may fix it also.. go here and follow instructions:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=261929

How old is the Laptop? the 1530 uses gel and not the heat pad, if they get real hot the gel may preish and will cause CPU to clock down.

Thats not a vista problem, only XP. I'm really tired of looking for a fix for 8600M GT.. I'll probably try to sell it and find some nice ATI. Someone wanna trade 8600M GT?

Edited July 1, 2008 by idro

[wook]

Thats not a vista problem, only XP. I'm really tired of looking for a fix for 8600M GT.. I'll probably try to sell it and find some nice ATI. Someone wanna trade 8600M GT?

I've never played Wow, so i can offer first hand advice.. not really into online games. Im pretty sure its not hte 8600GT, ive never had a problem with the grafix of my 8600gt. But, a new clean system will probably fix the issue.

good luck.

[Michael Marley]

I can overclock my 8600m GT to 580/450 without any problems. I could probably go higher, but I don't want to.

[Guest Jeff]

Hey guys, so after doing a lot of research on the subject and reading the forums, I decided to test 3 drivers on 3dmark06.

Here's the specs and results:

Dell XPS M1530

Windows Vista 32-Bit

Intel Core Duo 2.5GHz

4GB RAM

256 MB nVidia 8600M GT

3dmark06:

174.75 - 4498

174.93 - 4495

175.80 - 4534

So I went with the 175.80... it really wasn't too much of a difference though. I just got done installing RivaTuner, but I have a question/concern:

I get a warning saying: "Warning! RivaTuner has not been tested with the currently installed display driver. It is strongly recommended to upgrade RivaTuner to a new version, otherwise it may not work properly because the driver is not officially supported."

Is it OK to get this warning and still try overclocking?? I have RivaTuner v2.09

Thanks!

[Guest Jeff]

I also had another question in addition to the one above... I figured the warning was OK???

So I started messing around with some OCing stuff (I did 10%)...

Standard 2D

Core: 169 to 186

Shader: 338 to 372

Memory: 100 to 110

Performance 3D (what I'll be using for Age of Conan I'm assuming?)

Core: 475 to 523

Shader: 950 to 1046

Memory: 702 to 773

Do those numbers sound right and/or safe? Too afraid to get on Age of Conan ATM, want to see if it sounds OK :)

Anyway, thanks again!

[zipper]

"Is it OK to get this warning and still try overclocking?? I have RivaTuner v2.09"

Just ignore it.

Your OC is pretty modest. But it depends so much on the particular hardware; some doesn't allow more than a few percent, some do 20-30%.

[Guest Jeff]

Great! Thanks so much! I'll probably toy around with it for a bit...

OK, ONE last question! :)

Every time I start up my laptop, Vista asks if it's OK to let RivaTuner access my computer information. Seriously, is there anyway to disable this??

Thanks!

[wook]

yeah like zipper said. fine. rivatuner just covering itself. and when new drivers come out, rivatuner obviously wont have been tested with them.. thats all its saying.

as for the vista questions you can disable the 'bubbles' very easily. need to open 'security tab' and tell windows to stop notifying you of anything. UAC? yeah User Account Control. just press F1 then search for UAC.. open it up, and tell windows to stop. i see you have another post saying you dont want to do this. i don't know another way.

Also, in rivatuner there is an option that you can set rivatuner to run at startup. use registry startup not 'startup folder'

This will set clocks when you restart computer. (note if the power is off, and you turn your laptop on, rivatuner wont set the clock speed. only after a restart will the changes be kept)

as far as overclocking goes, i had mine set to

Core: 830

mem: 845

so your settings are pretty safe. lately i have been hitting 93 0c, and dell is replacing my heatsink, fan. (I'm not overclocking)

Edited July 2, 2008 by wook

[Michael Marley]

That is a ridiculously fast clockrate! Great job at achieving this!

EDIT: With a little bit more pushing, I hit 600 on the GPU. I am scared to push higher, though.

[wook]

That is a ridiculously fast clockrate! Great job at achieving this!

EDIT: With a little bit more pushing, I hit 600 on the GPU. I am scared to push higher, though.

haha.. sorry Michael bit of a typo there..

core- 630

mem- 845

i'd be stoked if i could get 800 core. but thats 8900GT material.

can vary it..

600 core and 880 mem work ok too.. but is dependant on the game i am plying. Strategy games work better with a higher memory setting I find.

EDIT: i send you a message about your latesly news post.. link added for XP driver download 175.97 whql

Edited July 2, 2008 by wook

[Michael Marley]

That sounds more like it... I would try to get my memory higher except I have old-fashioned DDR2 RAM.

[zipper]

i'd be stoked if i could get 800 core. but thats 8900GT material.

8700M GT/Quadro1600M default to 625 but can clock upto near 800, perhaps some examples over it, too. My chip hiccups on about 780-790 depending somewhat on how much memory has been clocked; it goes from 800 to near 1000 and perhaps a little over. That's 20% - over 25% speed increase, quite nice bonus.

[wook]

yeah the quatro range is basically for 3d work. CAD etc. So, they have a more stable heat range.

My work desktop has that card, and its better for games.. with only a single core 2.0 Ghz with 1 GB ram. Only worth about $500

Depressing..

[zhe90]

hey i'm running xps 15, t8300, 4 gb ram, 1440x900, 8600m gt

right now i've undervolted my cpu so that i'm running 1 V at max and oc'd gpu to 575/880 with 175.80

gpu temps go up to 78~79...good range and aiming for 80

any other suggestions to decrease heat/up the oc?

also for powermizer:

right now perfser is at 3322 with everything else default

i'd like for both ac and batt to be dynamic>>>low 2d setting unless the system requires power

is there anyway to do this?

Edited July 10, 2008 by zhe90

[wook]

you could disable speed step in the BIOS, that makes the CPU run a little slower... but for games, it doesnt really matter, as 30-50 % of CPU is used MAX.

i just this moment had a techie over and he replaced y mother board, (including everything attached.. 8600 GT etc) heat sink, fan.. am about to test to see what temp. its running now, as it was running 93 Oc then would crash.

i'll let you know how it runs after the full replacement....

EDIT: Ok.. techie has been and gone.. has replaced the motherboard, fan, heatsink. (this includes 8600GT chip which is 'onboard gfx')

now my temps are 78 Oc and with my laptop cooler pad 73-74 Oc (peak temp.)

When he left, i took off the fan and put AC5 paste back on, and my modified fan.. But it did'nt change the temps... might have a little play later cause it should have... anyway i have reverted back to factory fan/ pads...

Thats a massive change in temp. Im guessing that is was just the fan not spinning as fast/ or the thermal pads were old/ cracked

Edited July 12, 2008 by wook

[cyclone93]

is there a way to use 100% of dual core processors at once? like to improve fps in crysis?

[kalby]

Hello Driver Gurus,

I was wondering if I could get a little help, I have a Toshiba Satellite X200-(PSPBUA) with dual 8600M GT cards running Vista 32bit Ultimate, sounds great in theory but in practice I found that the 256mb of memory that the cards share wasn't sufficient for gaming. I'm not sure what I can do to increase performance but I was hoping an updated driver might help, I am using 171.16 driver which seems to work ok but I just can't get good performance in Age of Conan. AoC is a bit bugged I think but I'd like to try things out to see if I can improve performance. I will try 174.74 and post back here if it helps, I will also run riva tuner and see if I can overclock. I have also noticed that my nvidia control panel keeps pulling my cards out of SLI mode, I haven't been able to pinpoint when it is doing this but even in SLI with settings put to performance (no antialising etc) it still runs slowly. Any advice or help would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Kalby.

[wook]

is there a way to use 100% of dual core processors at once? like to improve fps in crysis?

yes there is... get two applications called CPU-Z and RMclock

it will let you know what CPU and motherboard setup you have.. (multiplter, FSB, ram, etc) then with RMclock you can set the mulitiplier.

This will make the CPU go full speed and stop the multiplier going lower.. eg. x8.0 at all powersettings etc...

hope that helps..

[wook]

Hello Driver Gurus,

I was wondering if I could get a little help, I have a Toshiba Satellite X200-(PSPBUA) with dual 8600M GT cards running Vista 32bit Ultimate, sounds great in theory but in practice I found that the 256mb of memory that the cards share wasn't sufficient for gaming. I'm not sure what I can do to increase performance but I was hoping an updated driver might help, I am using 171.16 driver which seems to work ok but I just can't get good performance in Age of Conan. AoC is a bit bugged I think but I'd like to try things out to see if I can improve performance. I will try 174.74 and post back here if it helps, I will also run riva tuner and see if I can overclock. I have also noticed that my nvidia control panel keeps pulling my cards out of SLI mode, I haven't been able to pinpoint when it is doing this but even in SLI with settings put to performance (no antialising etc) it still runs slowly. Any advice or help would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Kalby.

Changing the dirver/ forceware might fix the SLi issue... Post this question in a new thread (if your issues are not solved here), you will get more traffic, and some people that use SLi might have a fix for that issue..

1) 174.74 is a good place to start.. overclocking will obviously increase performance also... if its under warantee then overclock as much as you want.. but if its not, i only recomend 10-15 %

2) 256 of shared memory is not a lot.. thats going to be very restrictive.

3) also try 175.80 as thats has good feedback for 8600. 177.41 maybe be good to try also

[kalby]

Changing the dirver/ forceware might fix the SLi issue... Post this question in a new thread (if your issues are not solved here), you will get more traffic, and some people that use SLi might have a fix for that issue..

1) 174.74 is a good place to start.. overclocking will obviously increase performance also... if its under warantee then overclock as much as you want.. but if its not, i only recomend 10-15 %

2) 256 of shared memory is not a lot.. thats going to be very restrictive.

3) also try 175.80 as thats has good feedback for 8600. 177.41 maybe be good to try also

Thanks Wook, I tried 174.74 and I was able to overclock 10% (I didn't try further), it ran quite well but I still have the stuttering issue, it gets worse when I increase the view range in game so I beleive the problem is not frame rate performance at all and that 256mb is just not enough to load all the high res textures as I move around, if I want to increase the view distance past 50-100m in front of me I'll have to lower the settings in game. It's irritating but even at 50m I still get some stutter, really strange.

I also moved my page file to my other hard drive and made it static, as advised somewhere else on the forums.

What I don't understand is why doesn't it just load a whole bunch of textures to system RAM in the background from the Hard Drive, System RAM should be fast enough to read from if the graphics card runs out of memory right? I guess that would be something the developers would have to do. It may do it already, I'm just guessing.

It's such a waste to have dual cards with only 256mb RAM but this laptop is a media centre after all not a gaming machine. I will call Toshiba Support on Monday and see if I have any options to improve the performance short of buying a new laptop.

A lot of textures are blacked out in a different game with 174.74 so I might try 175.80 to see if I can solve that, thankyou again for the help! If you have any other advice I'd love to hear it. :)

[kalby]

I tried 175.80 and it fixed the texture issues in one of my games but Age of Conan runs atrociously with it for some reason, jumpy from 2 to 18 fps when standing still, it would lock for 5 or more seconds if I tried to move. I'll give 177.41 a shot.

[wook]

Yeah that does sound about right.. the ram is not enough to buffer every possible pixel...

i think 174.74 is the better of the two drivers, but feel free to try the other ones suggested, as my system is different..

glad to help...

[wook]

Yeah just try another driver.. or do a search for AoC and see what others are using... its become a popular post these past 4 weeks.