ASUS G Series G1S-B1 Stuttering Issue?

Tried it with all my games like NFS U2, GoW, NFS MW, UT2004, etc.wayy before you stated this. Hasn't fixed it. I don't think it should matter what you run it in, its either a: Heat or Texture Mem. problem.

 

I don't know about it not mattering, the option can definitely be helpful for running some older software written for XP. It's not optimal that it has to be done that way, especially since Gears is supposed to be a DX10/Vista compatible game. But it definitely worked in this situation. It was a combination of that and modifying the .ini that got it running smoothly.

I can't explain why it worked for Gears and I still get slight sound distortion. I'm not really having any stutter with other games though, other than when it comes to the engines waiting on HD accesses (I really need more than 2gb in Vista). I heard the Unreal Engine + GeForce 8xxx series with anything less than 512 ram don't get along well (something about the engine keeping unnecessary things cached). Anywho, you might want to edit your .ini's for UT2004, it might help.

Go here: http://www.tweakguides.com/
Click on which game you want info on, and check out their advanced tweaks pages...

They have other games you've listed there too.

UPDATE: If you want, I can give you the .ini files I've edited for GoW. I noticed UT3 ran nicely after the 1.2 update(I WAS getting the same stutter, now=none) so I copied some of the .ini settings over to GoW(specifically how it handled textures). Worked out nice (I run everything max @ 1600x1050~30fps).Kinda annoying that I had to do it to get it to run, but I kinda like tweaking, just not having it keep me up till 3am - 3 nights in a row (I get determined, some may say obsessed). It's bad when you're tweaking more than gaming, right when I buy the damned thing). It's starting to take its toll on my GF tho... Specially since I have GoW for 360 as well... GF is like WTF???

(edit Crysis is NOT working on 174.93, but 175.63 = yes)

 

I suggest you get rid of that Vista and install a pure XP SP2. You'll really get a performance boost

 

I might wait it out, I dunno... I think MS/hardware vendors will tighten the performance gap with Vista at some point (same thing happened w/ 98 to XP). Plus, I don't think my GF can handle me spending all this time with my other significant other... I plan on getting that sweet Hitachi 7k320, maybe then I'll set up a duel boot. (I just don't want to make the switch completely and have a game I really want to play be DX10 only).

 

You will have to wait a lifetime probably then...LOL

I don't really see any real difference in DX9 and DX10, yeah, there are few more visuals but nothing that noticeable, I hope Vista kicks in more, I really like the way it's loading and "learning" programs, caching all in RAM etc, but I'm now running good old XP SP3 and I don't have the problems that I had with Vista:

1. Many (ALOT!) of software products (Even Microsoft Visual Studio) is not compatible with it, although it works sometime, it's doing things it's not supposed to.
2. Even Delphi's help could not start - they changed the help system, removing the old executables needed to run .hlp files. Good improvement - wrong implementation.
3. It's BIG. OMG it's BIG, a huuuge amount of the HDD is gone just after installing it.
4. It has features that are not well implemented - UAC for example. Yeah it's a good thing, but as more the clicks become, the more users start to annoy.
5. You get lower FPS on Crysis than me...LOL

 

Yeah it's big and UAC is maddening!!! Windows 7 will be out by the time it catches up to XP(if). And yeah.. I get lower FPS in Crysis... :cry: BUT! I can now see the wakes I leave behind while wading through the water in like only 1 game I have! ROCK! :rolleyes2:

And what would I do without AERO!?

 

Dunno, I'm XP and using a skin that looks the same way as Vista (everyone sitting on the PC confuses it with Vista), except the Aero (it's not present). Well, the looks...or the power...you choose

 

Trust me, ive tried everything with the UT2004 .ini and disabling Dynamic Lighting and using Hardware fixes the issue, but like other Unreal Games, if you do that, the game looks like utter crap and the performance hit is bad. You can disable the lighting on some Unreal Engine games but if you do it to some, it crashes or Artifacts are everywhere.

 

Guys i have to ask about this driver/heat thing. Apparently the heat changes from driver to driver. Now there is only 1 way that the the GPU can produce more heat and that is by running on a high frequency/longer time on a freq.

Which means that if a driver is more effective when it comes to using the GPU it might produce less heat because it gets the job done faster while a bad driver would need the GPU to stay on the high frequency for a longer amount of time to get the same job done.

Im not quite sure how much better these drivers programming really gets from each release to the next, i find it much more plausible that they change what temps is acceptable before throttling down, what clock to throttle down to and maybe even difference in the voltage on the cards.

Because it seems like people talk about 150 drivers to be good, some 160 drivers suxs, while the 167 is good and the 174 is decent while the 175 is ok and temps go up and down over the whole range. Now if it was just the programming that should get better each time then they should be damned good by now. So i don't really believe in a stuttering fix on the next release.

We all want a fix to the stuttering issue right? - and everyone believe its the drivers causing it. What i've come to understand is that in 99% of the cases i read about the stuttering occurs around 90-95celcius, depending on which driver you have. Again, what can a driver do? - better programming or different clock settings on the GPU. This means that if you want your stuttering G1S to stop, you have to cool it down better, not update its drivers. The drivers will only change what temperature it should throttle down at and what clocks to run in different situations. I believe from the first time i used my G1S to today almost 1 year later, the 3dmark06 score has increased by about 350 points on default clocks. This is a driver performance increase, but compared to what increase it would need to finish its job before the temperature gets to high..its close to nothing..

I have a small hope that the next driver will be the "promised driver" as some states, but only 1% of me thinks it will be. The 99% other thinks firmly that this is a problem we have to live with on the 8600gt cards with bad cooling systems. I also seen some say its the 8600 cards with less then 512MB, thats because the 256 runs DDR3 which has a significantly higher frequency thus producing much more heat compared to the 512MB DDR2. If im not completely wrong the 512mb runs at 475/400 and 256mb runs at 475/700. Again if the stuttering issue only appears on the 256DDR3, its the heat!

A new driver that fixes stuttering would have to be so effective that in 3dmark06 it would score around 6 000 points, 2K more then we have today on default clocks. That might keep the temperature down simply because it doesn't have to run at max and get warm. The other way they can fix the stuttering is by letting the GPU overheat to 90c+ and NOT throttle down. This would however severely reduce the life time of your GPU. One way they could reduce the heat would be to lower what CPU temp the cooling fan is supposed to kick in on. I tested the GPU temp to 104c without the cooling fan to start because my CPU was below 60c. The CPU got to 70 and the cooling fan started..By that time the GPU had been 105c for 5 minutes...

 

This really doesn't make any sense, the heat comes from a transistor, each time it has to do something, it will produce some heat with the job it does (since every component has some efficiency coefficient which is always smaller than 1 and the energy that's rest from it's work is left out as heat). So, the faster you do the job, the faster the heat gets higher. If you need to get lower heat, you need to do it slower. It's a simple law.

 

Slower Or more effective. If the coding of the work it does, the numbers it runs, can be crunched faster without having to increase the clock settings the GPU it will get a better score and still not get warmer.

example:

10101 can be coded to 1001. Thats 1 number less and thus more effective. Same amount of job can be done in less time without affecting how long it must run at max.

What you quoted states that if you could code it that more effective that with the same clock settings you use today you could score 2 000 points more, then it might be strong enough to run the games we like without having to overheat every 10 minutes.

If we agree on that stuttering comes from high temperatures then:

It means that if you want a Driver to fix the stuttering issue without lowering the performance of your GPU you would have to get a significant coding performance boost that could do the same job with less effort.

 

Anyway, I think that Irathi is right about the next driver not fixing the problem at all. Also I wanted to point out that most Zepto Notebooks with a 8600M GT inside only have the ddr2 version with 400MHz and according to this thread there seems to be quite a bunch of people on Zeptos who experience stuttering: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=207592

Then again I opened a poll ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=249503) that seems to be indicationg so far (it hasn't been open for long) that the cooling solution in Asus notebooks is a tad better than Zepto's thus producing less problems. Won't help the chosen few who still have the stuttering (me included), though.
BTW please take that poll if you are on a G1s/G2s and haven't already.

 

Yupp a driver that is not more effective when it comes to the information processing will not solve the temperature problems without lowering the clock / voltage of your GPU.

repp powa to gr33nf4c3 for the thread!

 

Why, thank you. /off topic

 

163.67 has a fix. Memory Manager Fix. It was a beta fix and it fixed the stuttering but not many used it because the driver was old and some bugs but it fixed the stuttering. Now i've used those drivers before and the temps were the same, High 80's to low 90's. Again, if we agree it's a heat issue, then idk how the Sleep fix works, but its not Lowering the temp or decreasing performance, then what is it doing exactly?

 

I imagine that this stuttering issue is a power management bug. Putting the computer to sleep resets some power management flags that prevent that bug from showing its effects.

 

hmm not a bad idea. It would explain a lot of things also how they possibly could solve it with drivers.


and to trOn i believe we have more then just 1 case of stuttering. you got:

1. Heat Throttle Down at 95c
2. Bad Memory Management
3. The "Thermal Monitor bug" when recharging laptop from below 90% it cuts your CPU performance.

 

I don't think its the monitor bug. My CPU power is always on full and i've tried the fix and everything. Hasn't affected me what so ever. I'm thinking about E.B.E's saying. Maybe if we can find out what "Flags" its resetting, we can find some things out. Must try all possibilities.

 

I already thought of that as well but since the G1s-Bios won't let you do anything, I don't really see a way of fixing that on your own. There aren't even any hidden entries, I checked by extracting the rom and editing it by hand.

 

Btw, what I forgot to mention is, I have set globally the " maximum prerender frames" to 1 (it's default to 3). This gave me a slight performance and decreased shuttering to minimum.

You can find this option in NVIDIA Control Panel -> Manage 3D Settings

Another very useful thing is to turn the VSYNC option ON (every game has it). This will limit the fps to the monitor refresh rate (50Hz on G1S) which will result in less load into the GPU (since it's not pushed to the maximum and has some time to "breathe"). I have 84-88°C GPU temp when I turn this VSYNC on on most of the games

 

Does anyone know HOW the temperature is read from the GPU sensor on the 8600m? Is it something that is propagated through the drivers(like are they needed to get the temperature)? What I'm getting at is, can Nvidia alter the scale or calibration of the temperature sensor, thus changing what the sensor is outputting via driver, or is that a firmware/hardware thing? Some drivers I've tried reported +10C from the "norm". But was my temp REALLY +10, or could the drivers "add" that amount to the output? I don't think there'd be an accurate way to check the actual temps without taking the lappy apart(maybe you'd be able to approximate). If not, then a driver I tried definitely had an efficiency problem, as it wasn't a strong performer - by a longshot. This is compared to drivers that perform A LOT better - without the added temperature.

So far, I think the memory management is the biggest issue for me. I have a completely unmodded G1S (except for 4gb of CL4ram). Maybe I'm lucky, but under heavy load and overclocked 594/1404/820 - I hover around 91C. Sometimes it goes as high as 96, but that is rare and doesn't last long.

 

If you ask me, you're pretty lucky getting 91°C with your slight overclocking. If I do the sleepfix I get 106°C without the least bit of overclocking

As for the VSync thing: Yes, it helps- the problem is if a game's graphics settings are too demanding for your GPU to even reach 60fps it's really a pain since it will then either run on 45, 30, 20, 15 or even 12 and except 45fps none of these options are really good for playing a fast-paced fps. Even less if you consider the fact that every frame below one of these will make your framerate skip between the given values, thus probably producing a some kind of stuttering of its own

@The3dLink: Sorry, don't have a clue about that.

Anyway: the vsync thing is one step towards the right direction. If you can manage to stabilize your fps (most likely by using an engine-inbuilt frame limiter) you can avoid the stuttering. Works for me in UT3 and all of the source engine games as well as ETQW. The sad thing is that not every game (especially not RTSs) comes with an inbuilt limiter and you sometimes really need to turn your settings down in order to get a stable minimum framerate to which you can set the limiter. Also, after some time most games tend to run even more choppy. If you set the maxfps to let's say 35 it will slowly begin decreasing- thus producing fluctiations and stuttering and after half an hour you'll be in the mid 20s

 

Yes you are right about VSYNC, if your game runs below 50fps without it, you will not get anything useful setting VSYNC to on (except you will sync the drawing of the frame in the D3D device and your monitor). But the only game that runs below 50fps (which I've played) here is Crysis...

Try setting the maximum pre-render frames to 1 and see what happens, I noticed some FPS increase when I changed it.

 

/off topic

Has anyone else checked these guys #'s out?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=197545&page=7

Anyone else able to reproduce them? I sure as hell can't even come close.

Also here:

http://asusg1s.wikidot.com/benchmarking

 

i've had this problem for so long...what results have you guys had RMAing your G1S to ASUS?