pocky Posted November 10, 2008 Report Share Posted November 10, 2008 Hey all, first off I'll just run you through my system; It's a Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop, an Intel T2330 CPU, 4GB RAM, 8600M GT (can't remember how much RAM's on the GPU). I'm running Vista 32-Bit. So here's the problem: I was using 169.XXs for AGES and I do mean AGES! I was perfectly happy with them until the newer games started to chug a lot on it. (FC2, Crysis etc.) So I came here where I've faithfully come seeking drivers for ages (never saw a reason to upgrade though till recently :) ) and after a bit of research I find the 179.13s which I promptly d/l and install. Great, fine, no problems at all and oh wow! Games are running quite a bit faster now! Until......... The invevitable happens. Stuff starts to crash or slow down or become unresponsive... A couple of issues I've had are listed below. WoW - 169.XXs used to be able to handle everything on MAX with few slow downs and unless I was in a very intensive battle, generally there were no problems... Today, however, I've had one random "crash" where the screen locked up and then re-rendered then locked up again, showing me only some strange far away textures (For any of you that know what I'm talking about, I was in a SWP raid and when I entered the raid instance, 5 seconds in it showed me only the lowest floor and some grass off to the horizon... Kinda like the starting stages of map construction for a FPS game...) This hasn't repeated, however slowdowns are now being experienced... these also feel familiar: It's less a slowdown of game frames generation, though there is some degree of that, but controls start to become unresponsive... I'll turn the mouse and it'll actually follow that about a half second later. I used to get this in some FPS games and it's really annoying. CoD 5 - Amazing game by the way; I've had several crashes which weren't unrecoverable but I couldn't see task manager or anything to close CoD. Screen seems to freeze up and stops doing anything for a while and then all I hear is the music playing. Once, it actually locked my system up and the screen resolution went weird (kind like 3:5 resolution where the picture actually squeezed itself inwards!) I've scoured through the forums as much as I can trying to find a solution but can't seem to find anything specific to me... I've looked up how to turn of powermizer (I don't even know what this is) but after looking through the registry I don't even think I have it. Heat shouldn't be an issue either as I've used this laptop for a long time now (well... less than a year but still long enough!) and I keep it propped up on a book so that air gets under it. Also the "laggy mouse input" is a problem I'm having a lot of and it gets very bad in some FPSs to the point where it becomes unplayable (crysis sometimes does this.) Sorry for the wall of text and I hope I've given enough information here to resolve this issue. Thanks much in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morris Posted November 10, 2008 Report Share Posted November 10, 2008 8600m gt downclocking issue, call dell if your laptop is still under warranty, they should replace it for you. most 8600m gt is experiencing downclocking due to new driver trying to keep the card last longer, since the 8600m gt is using crappy material and does not last in heat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galdere Posted November 10, 2008 Report Share Posted November 10, 2008 WoW thing might just be that since the Echoes of Doom patch (v3 pre WotLK) the game is more graphically demanding. One big thing is that draw distance has been increased, try adjusting your settings lower, which will be the equivalent of what you had before the patch essentially. CoD problem could any number of things, try different recent drivers from this site and make sure you clear out the old ones properly. Also update your sound drivers etc. You can check your temps with a free prog like CPUID's Hardware Monitor. Propped up on a book isn't really ideal, get yourself a good cooling stand like the Zalman ones. Claw has the link to an easy powermizer switch on\off prog in his sig, although take note of the previous poster mentioning the solder issue with some cards that need replacing. Bottom line is that it's trial and error to get the most out of your card for higher end gaming, making sure you have the right drivers, patches and setup, overclocking if you wish and managing heat issues etc. Be aware of the limitations and don't expect to be able to have decent FPS in crysis on a 8600 mobile. Having said that I have read - "Problem: Crysis mouse sensitivity problem /mouse unresponsive Solution: The desktop resolution should be the same as the game?s resolution. If that doesn?t work, set your desktop resolution to 800×600 and run the game" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pocky Posted November 10, 2008 Author Report Share Posted November 10, 2008 Hey thanks for the advice. On that note; a couple of things I forgot to mention... 1) Wow runs fine since patch 302/3 but it seems to be having the problem a lot of people are getting which is that after a while of play it downclocks or whatever... 2) laggy mouse I've had issues with on many different computers... I'm not sure if it's just me doing something wrong or...... I dunno... first time I had it was on my OLD OLD OLD computer on half life *1* using direct3d (or was it opengl I can't remember which one gave me the issues) but yeah... And yeah I'm not expecting 100 FPS in crysis but it should at least chug along on 15-20 fps which is... *just* about playable. The issue, as I said, is more to do with the mouse lag so that aiming is a nightmare. But I'll try what has been suggested for that, thanks. Also with powermizer; I REALLY don't know if I even have it as, in my first post, I mentioned that I looked through my registry and it doesn't come up with an entry for anything remotely related to powermizer. I don't even know what powermizer is! haha! I'll have a bit more of a dig through the forums though and see what I can see... As to Morris' reply about faulty 8600M GTs... You said about new drivers trying to keep the card longer or something... Should I call Dell then and tell them I have a faulty card and demand a replacement or...? I wanna cover myself on all sides in any case. Thanks :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galdere Posted November 10, 2008 Report Share Posted November 10, 2008 (edited) Only time for a quick reply atm, but if I was you I'd go with 178.24 DOX's modded version and INF, then download RivaTuner and force performance to stop the chance of any downclocking. Use the search function for these forums if you're unsure of how to acheive that. A lot of 83/4/5/600s were made with dodgy materials that can't handle heat cycling properly. If they fail they should replace for you. Otherwise Dell et al have released bios updates i think, that up the fans to try and prevent that happening. Edited November 10, 2008 by Galdere Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pocky Posted November 10, 2008 Author Report Share Posted November 10, 2008 (edited) Thanks! Is that 178.24 as in what's available for download on this site in the 17X series subforum? Oh and is it of any consequence that I've never had this problem before with my 169.XXs? thanks! Edited November 10, 2008 by pocky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galdere Posted November 10, 2008 Report Share Posted November 10, 2008 Dox's 178.24 - http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index....t=0&start=0 Dox's 180.43 - http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index....showtopic=21398 RivaTuner - http://downloads.guru3d.com/RivaTuner-v2.1...wnload-163.html The downclocking is often associated with certain drivers, or should I say certain laptop BIOSes not liking unofficial changes. There are a lot of threads here about it to read up on, but as you have experienced, it is worth finding a workaround for. Happy optimizing :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pocky Posted November 10, 2008 Author Report Share Posted November 10, 2008 Thanks! I think I'll give the 180.43s a go... Been looking around for how to use that riva tuner thing... from what I can tell I can overclock using it but... not very confident with that so I'll probably not... don't wanna burn out my gfx card!! Not sure what you meant by force performance though... searched for riva tuner performance without any relevant responses (though I could jsut be missing something!!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pocky Posted November 10, 2008 Author Report Share Posted November 10, 2008 (edited) Well.. I tried the 178.24 and CoD5 still crashes mid game... I'm actually in the last (I think) level - the Reichstag and it just randomyl freezes... though this time I got a little further before it did with the 179.13s... I'm guessing it's a problem as you described then. Gonna try the 180.43s from a clean install and then fiddle about with riva tuner... still can't figure out this force performance thing though.. edit: Ah I just checked dell's online drivers and there was a bios update from revision A06 to A09 So I installed that.. gonna try it again now! Hope something comes of it! :) edit2: Ah.. I got so caught up trying to search in NV forums I didn't check google :P Seems to be all sorted! I enabled forceperformance on rivatuner using the power user settings and worked like a charm so far! :) Let's hope it stays this way! Thanks for all the help! Just a couple more Qs though: Is it safe to keep this on? I read, whilsty trying to google it, that if you leave it switched on it might overheat your card... and 2nd question is how do i check my GPU temperature and what's "too high" and what's "normal"? Thanks! Edited November 10, 2008 by pocky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galdere Posted November 10, 2008 Report Share Posted November 10, 2008 (edited) Nice one. Well played. You're welcome. :-) This is the temperature monitoring prog i mentioned: http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php This thread is about overclocking your card, but you can get an idea of what sort of temps it can handle from it: http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index....showtopic=16595 By preventing the down clocking you are only ensuring it performs as it should, and not overclocking it, so if it should fail because of the possible inherent fault we've mentioned it is not your fault and Dell would have to replace it even if it's out of warranty. They (nVidia) have set aside a lot of money expecting to do this, so there shouldn't be any argument. Here's hoping that never happens and you can use your laptop as it was intended and to your satisfaction. The BIOS update will make the fans work longer and harder to keep it cooler now. Check back here at LV2G for the proper BB2 180 drivers etc later this\early next month. Edited November 10, 2008 by Galdere Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pocky Posted November 10, 2008 Author Report Share Posted November 10, 2008 Will do! :) Thanks again and hope I don't have those problems too :) Thanks for threads too! I've found my weekend project! :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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