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Dell Latitude e6400 and e6500 NVS 160M


veritas72

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Okay, so the basic problem is that none of the Laptopvideo2go.com drivers completely work on the NVS 160M on the latitude e6500. I am hoping it is something that can be modified in the .inf rather than having to rely on DELL for drivers. There are 2 (related) problems.

The first, and the most important, is that the drivers do not seem to allow the fan/cooling information to be read or modified. This can be shown simply by the fact that with the Dell-issued release (176.07), GPU-Z shows fan information, but with any of the 180.xx series drivers, the information is not there. Now it may or may not be that the GPU is still properly controlling the fan, I am not sure.

The second is that after a few hours of heavy use (e.g. playing World of Warcraft) the GPU will believe that it is all of a sudden 102 degrees C. I am 99% sure that this is not right, but the GPU clocks itself down to minimum settings, rendering the game (and vista) unplayable.

Two things to note -- one, it always jumps to EXACTLY the same temperature (102.0), and two -- the computer itself does not feel nearly hot enough for that to be right.

Also, the temperature sensor is ONLY reset properly on a hard reboot (no amount of sitting there idly or soft restarts resets the sensor.) Consequently, the GPU is unusable until I have shutdown, and turned the machine back on. Others on notebookforum.com have noted that the fan information is not accessible with the drivers installed, but I am not sure whether anyone has experienced the temperature "issue".

It should also be noted that the native NVIDIA system tools also can see the fan and set cooling info on the 176.07 driver by DELL, but is unable to on the 180.xx drivers. Although I have attached the .inf in two other forums, I attach it again for convenience in the hopes that someone can determine whether it is fixable by changing the inf (i do not know enough about it).

Last point -- before anyone comes up with the suggestion provided by mobilenvidia, simply putting the dell INF into a 180.xx series driver does not allow it to install (file not found error). If anyone knows a way to ignore missing files on an install to test the theory that it can be fixed with the INF, please also let me know.

Any suggestion is helpful here, I REALLY do not want to have to revert to relying on DELL. I have been using this site and its drivers for years, and it is one of the primary reasons that I stick with NVIDIA products.

nvdm.inf

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have the same problem. GPU intensive application (also WOW in this case). Once it heats too much it runs minimum processor, cools down nicely, but never returns to its normal operating speeds.

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I have the same problem. GPU intensive application (also WOW in this case). Once it heats too much it runs minimum processor, cools down nicely, but never returns to its normal operating speeds.

do you have any reason to think it is actually overheating? to me, it seems to be a sensor misread/malfunction. do me a favor to see if you are experiencing the same thing. Run GPU-Z, and see what temperature it says it hits, and see if when the computer is ACTUALLY (physically) cooling down, GPU-Z reports it as cooling down, or whether it stays at the top temp, and minimum clock settings. for me, it locks at 102 C, and does not move until i shut it off/down completely. let me know what you see, maybe we can figure out how to fix this (hopefully in the inf)

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It may depend on how the crash happened. I have had both behaviours - a recovery to normal state or a recovery to crawling state needing reboot. The latter mostly screws the temperature sensing system leaving the fan on high speed.

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It may depend on how the crash happened. I have had both behaviours - a recovery to normal state or a recovery to crawling state needing reboot. The latter mostly screws the temperature sensing system leaving the fan on high speed.

what do you mean by a crash? I certainly don't experience a software crash.

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Sort of, the video driver crashes and recovers.

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Sort of, the video driver crashes and recovers.

that isn't happening to me. it just thinks it overheats to 102 C and downclocks the gpu.

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So your screen doesn't go black for a moment?

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So your screen doesn't go black for a moment?

correct, it just downclocks, and will not reset the temperature sensor until i power it all the way off (full shutdown, not soft restart)

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Just like my ex Acer did - very irritating!

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the latest released 185.20 driver does not suffer from the above problems (or at least was stable for quite some time playing tonight). also, fan/cooling control is back. nvidia thinks that the issue was indeed a problem with the modded inf, so i would like someone's help if possible comparing them and figuring it out.

let me know

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So I finally got a chance to play with this. My temperature climbed up to around 72 or 73 C, and then eventually instantly jumped to 102 C. This put the gpu down to a really low output.

Given they fact that WOW never really returned to normal frame rates, I had assumed that the gpu was stuck in minimum processor mode indefinitely. However, i closed WOW and in 7 to 8 minutes the temp dropped instantly from 102 C to 51 C. This was accompanied by a return of processing power according to GPU-Z.

When I have some more time I'll have to see if that return of processing makes a difference in WOW. Previously I was under the assumption that I had to reboot to get my frame rate back up to normal levels. I suspect that I would have never gotten the return of processing if wow was running. I figure that the computer won't drop out of the 102 C mode until it passes a threshold, and I bet that threshold is cooler than WOW allows it to run. Mine came back registering 51 C in this particular case.

I have no idea why it goes to 102 C, but i suspect that this is the fail safe mode that it initiates at a much lower temperature such as 74 C. I'll log it next time and see at what temperature it jumps up at.

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So I finally got a chance to play with this. My temperature climbed up to around 72 or 73 C, and then eventually instantly jumped to 102 C. This put the gpu down to a really low output.

Given they fact that WOW never really returned to normal frame rates, I had assumed that the gpu was stuck in minimum processor mode indefinitely. However, i closed WOW and in 7 to 8 minutes the temp dropped instantly from 102 C to 51 C. This was accompanied by a return of processing power according to GPU-Z.

When I have some more time I'll have to see if that return of processing makes a difference in WOW. Previously I was under the assumption that I had to reboot to get my frame rate back up to normal levels. I suspect that I would have never gotten the return of processing if wow was running. I figure that the computer won't drop out of the 102 C mode until it passes a threshold, and I bet that threshold is cooler than WOW allows it to run. Mine came back registering 51 C in this particular case.

I have no idea why it goes to 102 C, but i suspect that this is the fail safe mode that it initiates at a much lower temperature such as 74 C. I'll log it next time and see at what temperature it jumps up at.

did this happen with the 185.20 drivers? i haven't experienced any problems (yet) since using these drivers. also, do you have any reason to believe that it is actually getting that hot? a jump like that (which i was experiencing too) suggests it is just wrong. also, if you are right about the jump, it is initiating for me higher than 74C, because I have gotten it up to at least 77. if you are right about a failsafe, that would be a VBIOS issue, and is suggestive that dell has put in a maximum temperature that is WAY below the rated temperature for the chip.

Edited by veritas72
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Guest talzola

I have an E6500 with the Quadro 160M.....same problem but regardless of the driver. Even the stock Dell drivers cause the same issue (overheating after 10-30 minutes of ANY game). This, I dont think it is a driver issue, it is a Dell issue...ie poor cooling solution on the MB.

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I have an E6500 with the Quadro 160M.....same problem but regardless of the driver. Even the stock Dell drivers cause the same issue (overheating after 10-30 minutes of ANY game). This, I dont think it is a driver issue, it is a Dell issue...ie poor cooling solution on the MB.

if you are actually overheating, this is a different issue. This is a guaranteed false-positive situation, and it is DEFINITELY not actually happening. Also, reverting to the dell drivers fixed this problem every time. Further, it is not occurring since 185.20. Unless you are certain that you are experiencing the same issue, which sounds very unlikely, please open a new thread, or contact dell. If you open up the computer, the cooling solution is actually very good. You might want to reseat your heat syncs to see if that solves your issue.

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Dust accumulation can happen surprisingly fast leading to overheating.

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Dust accumulation can happen surprisingly fast leading to overheating.

which is all fine and well, but unless you intended to reply to the guy with the overheating problem, it isnt relevant to this thread. this is a false positive condition.

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With overheating problems software issues are minor compared to hardware problems - on the verge engineering, dust collecting and defective thermal continuity within the cooling system.

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With overheating problems software issues are minor compared to hardware problems - on the verge engineering, dust collecting and defective thermal continuity within the cooling system.

yes, fully aware. but you are either not understanding or just ignoring what this post is saying. there is not actually an overheating problem. it is NOT overheating, the driver control just THINKS it is.

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  • 2 weeks later...
yes, fully aware. but you are either not understanding or just ignoring what this post is saying. there is not actually an overheating problem. it is NOT overheating, the driver control just THINKS it is.

Any development on this ?´

I've tried 185.20 with modded INF but truthfully that gives me no graphical acceleration (Seems to be runniing on Windows Standard Drivers even though it clearly says Nvidia).

Can anyone supply me with a link to the 185.20 drivers that actually works for the NVS 160M card or a fix of somesort for this problem.

Its a very annoying problem, and one that Dell ofcourse will take no responsibility.

So i'm also guessing there wont be any new releases of the driver from Dell in a very long time (if any)

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Added information:

On a Latitude E6400 with a NVS 160M card i found that the 185.20 video drivers did not work.

However the 180.70 drivers with the modded inf does work properly for me.

Drivers can be downloaded here: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/vista/180.70

Aswell as the modded inf.

Remember to not use the setup.exe (Some reason this f. things up), instead go through the Devicemanager and update the driver manually.

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Any development on this ?´

I've tried 185.20 with modded INF but truthfully that gives me no graphical acceleration (Seems to be runniing on Windows Standard Drivers even though it clearly says Nvidia).

Can anyone supply me with a link to the 185.20 drivers that actually works for the NVS 160M card or a fix of somesort for this problem.

Its a very annoying problem, and one that Dell ofcourse will take no responsibility.

So i'm also guessing there wont be any new releases of the driver from Dell in a very long time (if any)

can you explain more what you mean, and whether you have an e6400 or e6500? I used the 185.20 drivers and modified .inf straight from lv2go.com, and found that it worked perfectly, and increased my WEI (for whatever that is worth). dell will never bother to release new drivers, and nvidia says that the drivers should work correctly with modified infs (ive spoken to them at length).

Added information:

On a Latitude E6400 with a NVS 160M card i found that the 185.20 video drivers did not work.

However the 180.70 drivers with the modded inf does work properly for me.

Drivers can be downloaded here: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/vista/180.70

Aswell as the modded inf.

Remember to not use the setup.exe (Some reason this f. things up), instead go through the Devicemanager and update the driver manually.

can you be more specific when you say the drivers do not work? what precisely doesnt work?

Edited by veritas72
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To be more specific.

I have Dell E6400 with a NVS 160M (256) card from Dell.

The problem i've been having is that games for example WoW usually runs fine for 10-15 minutes and then starts to experience insane FPS loss (It get's unplayable) and the only solution is to reboot the system and it runs for another 10-15 minutes tops.

So i've been searching the interwebs for a solution and found this thread which describes a similiar phenomenon (spellcheck fail).

So i've tried the 185.20 Drivers from lv2go.com with the modded inf as suggested in this thread but this has only resulted into that games are now unplayable since they run with extremly bad graphics and low fps from the start (Most like what happened after running WoW 15 minutes on the Dell provided driver).

So i then went aahead and installed the 180.70 driver with modded inf from lv2go.com which seemed to work fine !

But however i must inform that it did not perform aswell as I had hoped since it started showing similiar problems after 15-20 minutes (But not as sever, just some minor loss of fps etc).

My question now is: How the heck to get the 185.20 drivers to work with my E6400 - NVS 160M card.

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To be more specific.

I have Dell E6400 with a NVS 160M (256) card from Dell.

The problem i've been having is that games for example WoW usually runs fine for 10-15 minutes and then starts to experience insane FPS loss (It get's unplayable) and the only solution is to reboot the system and it runs for another 10-15 minutes tops.

So i've been searching the interwebs for a solution and found this thread which describes a similiar phenomenon (spellcheck fail).

So i've tried the 185.20 Drivers from lv2go.com with the modded inf as suggested in this thread but this has only resulted into that games are now unplayable since they run with extremly bad graphics and low fps from the start (Most like what happened after running WoW 15 minutes on the Dell provided driver).

So i then went aahead and installed the 180.70 driver with modded inf from lv2go.com which seemed to work fine !

But however i must inform that it did not perform aswell as I had hoped since it started showing similiar problems after 15-20 minutes (But not as sever, just some minor loss of fps etc).

My question now is: How the heck to get the 185.20 drivers to work with my E6400 - NVS 160M card.

it definitely sounds like you are experiencing the same problem. go ahead and check with GPU-Z to see what temperature and what clock settings you are experiencing after the slow down. what strikes me as weird is that it was happening with the dell-provided driver -- I don't know of anyone that has had that problem yet, so your issue actually may be a true issue of overheating. so get gpu-z from http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ and enable logging before you go into the game. play through it messing up, and save the log and upload the results here.

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