HP HDX9250EA with GeForce 8800M GTS Driver Problems. Advice Needed.

[Guest Guest]

Hi Guys,

Now, I know my way around a PC, but when it comes to graphics cards and settings, I admit I'm a total n00b, so I'm hoping the experts (that's you lot) can help?

I have an HP HDX9250EA Laptop with a nVidia GeForce 8800M GTS graphics card, which I understand is a pretty good card for a notebook?

Anyway, here's my problem. If I play most games with the originally installed driver from 13/12/07 7.15.0011.6753 I can play most games without any "artifacts", games such as Unreal Tournament 3, Left4Dead and Call of Duty World at War play fine, however Assassin's Creed and Fary Cry show triangular shaped "artifacts" coming from some of the non-static graphics.

When I first ran Far Cry the game informed me that my graphics drivers were out of date and I should update them. I downloaded the latest HP/Compaq driver (179.32 24th Dec 2008) from this site and installed it. However, after I updated the driver to the latest version Unreal Tournament 3 and Left4Dead now have the "artifact" issue while Far Cry is no better.

I don't understand how updating from a driver over a year old to the latest driver is making some games worse than before?

I'm sure I must be doing something glaringly wrong, as I see people with much poorer graphics cards than mine play these games without any "artifacts".

Any advice or help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in Advance.

CJ

[sssniper]

Hi Guys,

Now, I know my way around a PC, but when it comes to graphics cards and settings, I admit I'm a total n00b, so I'm hoping the experts (that's you lot) can help?

I have an HP HDX9250EA Laptop with a nVidia GeForce 8800M GTS graphics card, which I understand is a pretty good card for a notebook?

Anyway, here's my problem. If I play most games with the originally installed driver from 13/12/07 7.15.0011.6753 I can play most games without any "artifacts", games such as Unreal Tournament 3, Left4Dead and Call of Duty World at War play fine, however Assassin's Creed and Fary Cry show triangular shaped "artifacts" coming from some of the non-static graphics.

When I first ran Far Cry the game informed me that my graphics drivers were out of date and I should update them. I downloaded the latest HP/Compaq driver (179.32 24th Dec 2008) from this site and installed it. However, after I updated the driver to the latest version Unreal Tournament 3 and Left4Dead now have the "artifact" issue while Far Cry is no better.

I don't understand how updating from a driver over a year old to the latest driver is making some games worse than before?

I'm sure I must be doing something glaringly wrong, as I see people with much poorer graphics cards than mine play these games without any "artifacts".

Any advice or help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in Advance.

CJ

As you can see from the benches, sometimes it happens. Try Dox 181.20, maybe they will help you

[cutthroat_jake]

As you can see from the benches, sometimes it happens. Try Dox 181.20, maybe they will help you

Thanks for the advice sssniper, I tried Dox 181.20, which resolved the UT3 issue, but made Left4Dead and Far Cry 2 even worse. What were small artifacts are now thicker and coming vertically off the characters.

Is there anything else I can try?

CJ

Edited January 24, 2009 by cutthroat_jake

[Bades]

Have you tried the official 179.28 drivers from nvidias website, they are pretty fast and stable.

[cutthroat_jake]

Have you tried the official 179.28 drivers from nvidias website, they are pretty fast and stable.

Yes, I've tried the official drivers. I still get artifacts. It's very frustrating because my friend has exactly the same laptop with exactly the same spec and he doesn't have the artifacts problem. Does that mean my graphics card could be faulty?

CJ

Edited January 26, 2009 by cutthroat_jake

[cutthroat_jake]

I've actually tried several drivers, including the modded desktop drivers and several of the notebook drivers.

I also tried the latest Dox drivers and the last one I tried was the XFastest Forceware drivers. All of them are worse than the original driver that came with the laptop which is over a year old!

I even took a screenshot from Left4Dead, which works fine with the old driver. Here it is with the latest driver........

Is there anything I can do to fix this? I keep reading about flashing the BIOS on the GPU and overclocking. Could either of these help my problem?

CJ

[zipper]

Underclocking might help - looks like memory errors.

[cutthroat_jake]

Underclocking might help - looks like memory errors.

Thanks zipper, I'll give that a try. Still doesn't explain why the old driver runs at full clock speed with no errors or artifacts, but any of then newer drivers mess up several games?

I had a go at overclocking last night and it didn't help at all. In fact the GPU temp went crazy and I was using ann extra external fan for extra cooling! I'll try underclocking with the latest driver and see if that helps.

My biggest problem now is temperature, otherwise I'd just stick with the old driver. The old driver lets the GPU temp get way too high. I have seen over 90 degrees in half an hour, but the newer drivers keep the temperature much lower. I used the machine in a warm enviroment recently and the GPU actualluy shut itself down on critical temp after only 20 mins! That's why I'm so keen to update the driver. The newer ones seem to run a lot cooler.

Any more help or advice would be appreciated.

CJ

EDIT: I tried installing 179.28 then underclocking (quite severely) but it made no difference.

Edited January 27, 2009 by cutthroat_jake

[cutthroat_jake]

I'm thinking about returning the machine to HP. I just updated to the latest nVidia driver, from the nVidia site (Clean install using Driver Sweeper then the Have Disk method), then ran ATITool for less than 10 minutes. As you can see from the screenshot, the GPU temperature reached a dangerous 92 degrees! That was with an extra fan at the back to help with cooling! Here's the screenshot.........

Any thoughts?

CJ

Edited January 27, 2009 by cutthroat_jake

[zipper]

Returning may be a good idea - the hardware doesn't run as intended IMO.