M17x Fps Suddenly Drop On Games, Please Help

so every time im playing any game, like left for dead, need for speed, crysis, grid, street fighter 4, the frames per second drop to very unplayable settings for a few seconds and then come back normally, this its very annoying, i just got this laptop like a month ago, i dont know whay this started happening, any advice

 

Its stutter problem.. many ppl having this problem as well.. at least you're better than mine... i can play game without lagging but after awhile my screen is hang =.=

 

It sounds like stuttering issue which many users here are or were facing with. You should go reading this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=410440 and follow BatBoy's instruction at his blog: http://m17x.blogspot.com/ in which you may find other helpful stuff.
Hope this help!

 

so, basically a large number of the m17x are defective??, dell recently replaced my x2 280m for new ones, what should dell replace on my lap to fix this issue?

 

As far as I know M17x stutter issue is kinda most mystery thing in this world and I believe even NASA is looking into it Its real hard to tell it's because of hardware conflict, background processes, temperature or what (correct me if Im wrong)
Well basically you should go and check for solutions in links which I provided especially BatBoy's solution. It helped so many people here included me (audio, not gaming). Try it, it doesn't hurt. If after a while if you believe you can't fix it then give Dell a call for whatever you may want from them

 

Not everyone is having the stuttering issues. I have never had a problem with the stuttering. A lot of people having the issue blame it on some of the quad core processors, but no one really knows.

 

Me either do not have any stutter in gaming with or without BatBoy's solution. And my processor is Q9000.

 

I was having problems like this with windows 7.

I installed a program called autoruns, and disabled every program in the startup tab. Be careful with this program not to disable any windows services.

I am also using nvidia driver 187.66 that I downloaded from www.laptopvideo2go.com. I have uploaded a copy of the driver in the win 7 forum if you want to search for it.

I hated this laptop until I did the two things above now I really like it, I'm getting great performance in all games with the processor overclocked from 2.6Ghz to 3.2Ghz

 

They are not defective it's merely a conflict in your system.

It's all software issues

 

If it's simply software issue then why so many people couldnt get rid of it even after a clean install?

 

If it's a hardware issue then why doesn't everyone have it

 

Im having these problems as well... Clean installs .. No command center installs ... followed batboy installs etc ..

I have tried many things and not having much luck..

Id like to say its an SLI issue but again not everyone has it or maybe were not all playing the same games to experience the problems..

This thing is far more problematic then my M17 is thats for sure lol....

Oh well ill keep crackin away at it.. Not much choice anyhow if i want to play games smoothly lol...

 

Check you sli cable ... A defect in it can cause latency issues

 

Oh i have but what im experiencing is exactly what others are having ... Scook was complaing about this along time ago and i have read though that whole thread and all the complaints in it so i think this is pretty common.. I never really spent enough time gaming on my old M17x to realize just how bad this is...

The M17 is a dream machine with a Quad in it compared to whats happening here lol...

 

Leads me to believe the sli cable is at fault.

Well it's either that or the chipset and if that is the case we'll ... But the bandwidth is more then enough so ....


And mandrake said the ati's were much better so that leads me to believe nvidia is at fault if anything

 

Read thru this thread as a refresher of what i am experiencing .. People like Chaz also had issues with the review machine... Im gonna try other drivers and as much as i can till i can come to my own conclusion..

I bought this machine because i really wanna game on it and not just benchmark, so stuttering will make me insane playing games.. If i were just benching then i probably would not be as bothered...

If i need ATI cards to get rid of the stutter then ill buy a set when i can but for now thats not much of a solution ...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=410440

 

I understand your problem and have read through the thread .... (way to much time on here)

try only one card .... That will tell you exactly what it is ... CPU or sli ...

 

Well Batboy for instance was experiencing the same exact thing i am now but he seems to have cured it with his findings .. I tried those things but the problem persists so its the idea that he had what i have and found a solution .. Now if it were a hardware issue IE bad cable then his fixes would not have fixed anything .. Him and i are running similar hardware so im confused lol...

I am going to do some testing without SLI as some of the games i was testing were not using SLI at first because of the drivers and i was not seeing the stutter but i didnt spend enough time with any of them to come to a conclusion ...

I am bummed because all i wanted to is game and now i get to spend god knows how many days and nights trying to find a solution for this issue ....

 

Quad, what display driver are you running?

Are you OCing the CPU or GPUs for everyday use in addition to benchmarking?

Do you have NST installed?

Which games are you seeing the FPS drop? Have you confirmed the games with fps issues have valid SLI profiles?

 

I have tried 3 drivers so far.. Your recommended driver , 179.85 from dells site and 190.38s all do the same thing..

No OC on the GPU and on the CPU it happens whether its OC or not ..

Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising and Stranglehold.. I played Stranglehold on my last M17x and never had the slowdown i didnt have OFP 2 though when i had the last one.. I think there is a Demo of OFP2 if your bored and want to give it a whirl sometime... I have not played any other games beyond those because i want to get this issue nailed down before i bother trying anything else.. Also for OFP2 i had to rename the exe to GRID to get it work in SLI because the 186 drivers say they support the game but when running SLI visual Indicator it was not using SLI till i renamed the .exe .. The game is built upon the GRID engine ..

No NST installed ..

Also i followed your guide to the T and of course disable all unneeded services IE Windows Search..

Also on Win7 i have not even installed the Command Center so i know its not that interfering..

Im having this issue on both Vista 64 and Win7..

 

You mentioned that GRID had to be tweaked with the 186 series. Did you try 186.82?

I too do not OC for daily use - benching OC is one thing, but gaming and everyday tasks = negative.

If you want to give it a go, try 186.82 again, use my SLI Profiles Update MOD (#4 - Unofficial) or use nHancer. See if that corrects your FPS drop.

My SLI Profiles MOD includes the following:

I'll look into the OFP2 Demo and see how it behaves on my system.

I have the 9400M G disabled except when going on battery for an extended period of time.

 

I solved my problems in both games ive been testing ...

I had to set affinity to 2 cores... I have 0 stutter in either games running both for an hour...

Now not all games will need this when running a quadcore and by no means should this be a permanent fix but it is a solution for now...

So if your running a Quadcore and having stuttering issues Alt-tab out of the game then hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete to bring up the task manager...

Find the Exe running of the game your playing thats causing you problems under the process tab and right click on it .. Pick affinity from the drop down and uncheck cores 2 and 3....

This should fix your stuttering...


We have not seen many people that have this issue with dualcores and there are some with Quads without the issue and for that i have no answer ..

I spent the last 2 days trying everything thing i could possibly think of to fix this and in the end this was the best solution and fairly simple although still a bit of a hassle...


I will probably request a new motherboard at this point though because games like GTA4 are unplayable due to the fps dropping and really needing a quadcore... They can be played on Dualcores but they are meant for Quads...

 

One thing Iv'e learned in the past...some games don't need alot of power to perform... don't believe what the box says...just look at the minimum..specs...and try to down tune your rig at that level...Iv'e tried some games on my M17x and gets stuttering sound/video too and then tried it on my other laptops and nothing... do this on your own but...i went to my msconfig...and lower my ram to 2 gig...and sometimes..use only 1 core it tends to fix some issues...when ur done go back and change it to normal... Note: I'm not an expert...and pls do not use my method...it's not a fix to the problem... it's what I use to get by...sometimes..

 

why 2 and 3 and leave 4? so ur in theory makingit a dual core which will stop sutter in some games? will this stutter be fixed with new drivers? or is this a hardware issue?

edit also, i ONLY ever get stutter with sli on. is this stutter issue in this threat not related to sli stutter?

 

There is no 3 and 4 .. It go's 0 1 2 3 .... Originally i actually posted 3 and 4 then went back into the task manager and saw it was 2 3 ... Atleast for Vista64 this is how mine was listed... I dont have Win7 installed right now because i was having the same issues with Win7 .. So im focusing on one OS at a time ...


As for them fixing it or not i have 0 clue if this issue is fixable with a bios update or not... I rolled back to A0 bios to see if it would help but nope...


Also im curios anyone who is having stuttering can you check who makes your Power supply ... Flextronics or Delta ?.. My original M17x had a Delta and this one is Flextronics... I had 0 issues with my old M17x and a Quadcore....

Im trying to trouble shoot every possibility of what could be causing this ...

 

Theoretically You want to enable on the 2 cores on the same die not across

0 n 1
2 n 3


Not 1 n 2 ...etc


Who wants to test it

 

mm bn testing out lost planet on max ingame settings and nvida panel set to application decides, getting average of 30-38 fps? with performance test, this any good? =/

 

Yes thats why i put 2 and 3...

 

Mandrake has a flextronics so knock that off

 

Well so far i have done 6 installs and every OS combo you can think of and i still end up with the same results so its NOT and i repeat NOT software related....

Something is wrong and its probably the motherboard along with the Quadcore... Im at my wits end because i have spent way to much time trying to resolve this ...

 

Well the final test would be send the qx9300 to some one with a m17x that doesn't stutter ... It's the only way to confirm which one it is

 

Yeah i may send it Don.. It has to be an SLI machine because i have no issues with single card or running it in Dual core mode..

 

Good idea good thing you sold yours to him as well

 

Well the thing is though i had no issues with my Qx9300 in his machine so i think its more then likely the motherboard myself..

Witcher had a Qx9300 in it before i got it and he said he had none of the issues im having ...

So i am truly at a loss at this point honestly....

I didnt feel like wasting all week trouble shooting this machine and all i wanted to do was play some games on it and its just been a total waste of time...

 

Try different chipset drivers ...

Windows ones
Dell ones
straight from nvidia ....

 

I downloaded the demo (OFP demo) and will test in a bit Quad. I'll post the results after testing. Can you describe any specific areas of FPS drop so I can watch for it?

 

Which game/demo are you guys talking about?

Edit: GTA4?

 

Per quad



peration Flashpoint Dragon Rising and Stranglehold.. I played Stranglehold on my last M17x and never had the slowdown i didnt have OFP 2 though when i had the last one.. I think there is a Demo of OFP2 if your bored and want to give it a whirl sometime... I have not played any other games beyond those because i want to get this issue nailed down before i bother trying anything else.. Also for OFP2 i had to rename the exe to GRID to get it work in SLI because the 186 drivers say they support the game but when running SLI visual Indicator it was not using SLI till i renamed the .exe .. The game is built upon the GRID engine ..

 

Nope batboy it just happens in general but this is happening across 3 games now with GTA4 added to the mix and im sure i can find others as well... Its gotta be just hardware related since i have disabled everything and tried every driver under the sun including of course every chipset driver there is available...

I am about ready to toss this thing out the window im so frustrated..

I have dismantled and reseated everything as well in hopes of it could be something stupid on that end to no avail...

I know there are others who have this exact problem and may just not be that vocal about it waiting on Dell to release some sort of fix...

My question would be why is it some have it and some dont ? ..

How many people with Stuttering that cant be fixed have 500gig seagate HDs ??...

 

Interesting find... I was just looking at the SLI Profile for Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and it is set by NVIDIA as defaulting to Single GPU only. This is their current 195 beta release profile for the game. Not sure what is going on with that other than they may be having issues with SLI for it or perhaps the game itself has issues with SLI. IDK.

Do you have stuttering with just having it set to single GPU for this game?

I dont have GTA4 so I cant test it or look at it.

 

I have no problems with Single card or i can run SLI but disable 2 cores and the issue go's away.. Crazy stuff man...

If it were a Quad problem then it would possibly show up even with running a single card but it doesnt ..

If it were an SLI problem then disabling 2 cores certainly wouldnt fix it ....

Bleh.....

I can run Crysis GPU benchmark 20 runs in a row with all 4 core running and not see any problems ..

I ran DMC 4 benchmark and have 0 issues..

When it showed up in GTA4 though i knew something was up because i never had a problem with it on my old M17x ..

 

I'll run it without a profile and also with the profile enabled. I will not touch the CPU cores and see what happens. More to follow....

 

Enable SLI visual indicator to make sure SLI is running ..

You can force SLI i think with AFR2 or just rename the exe to GRID...

I had Don run it and he had SLI running but he ran into 0 problems but again he has a Dual core so i was not surprised at his results after my testing...

 

Does this problem also occur with ATI cards?

 

I dont believe so but this also does not happen with everyone running the same hardware i am ... Thats why all of this is so confusing...

 

Try different HD"s ? I can send u one ???? Doubt it's it but hey ...

 

I wish I had the same GPUs to help some. When I had my older system I played plenty of FO3 on it. Performance of the game was always heavily dependent on the driver I was using.

 

I have not tried another HD but that will be next .. I appreciate the offer to send one but im thinking like you are that its probably not it .. Could be but doubtful.. I dont have any extra Mobile HDs kickin around since my friend has my M17 now as he is kicking around buying it..

 

The biggest problem i see is that its so game dependent .. Some games are fine but then others are just horrible and totally unplayable...

Games go from 100 or more fps then drop to 15-20 then back up and so on and so forth so it makes them totally unplayable...

Witcher never had problems but he played like 5 games total lol...

 

Still can send one ... I have 1 i am not using ....

Have you tried raid and nonraid?