G50V-AK043K : performances issues

Hi !

I recently bought a G50V-AK043K, nice machine...
What I did with it :
- cleaned Vista 64
- removed unnecessary asus tools and crappy stuff (norton, etc...). I only kept power4gear, live update (disabled from start), smartlogon, virtual camera (i dont know what is it for), ATK Generic fonction service (same, i dont know what is it), ATK hotkey (last version), ATK media, ATKOSD2 (last version)
- flashed with 209 bios
- installed 180.84 nvidia drivers
Windows is now eating ~1.1Go in the RAM.

I'm able to play X3-TC and Perfect World at highest settings, but some games like Crysis Warhead suffer from low frame rates, Shaun White Snowboarding is even nearly unplayable, even on lowest settings (no shadows, no HDR).
Installing 180.84 drivers gave me a ~15000 points drop in Aquamark 3, sitting now around 92000 points. Comparing with my old computer (P4c 2.66, geforce 6800 and 1Go ram), it seems to be a really low score (I did ~55000 with my old rig)
Precision, I'm running extreme overclocking while testing...

What you guys think about it ? Is it normal or is something wrong somewhere ?

 

I've had some stability problems with 180.84 on my G50V, I reverted to 180.70 for now... maybe it will help your performance problems. It's worth a try maybe. Good luck!

 

Well I just noticed Dox optimized 180.84 drivers are out, and just tested it.
I gain +1000 points in aquamark, but still the same problems in games...
I'm on the way to install 180.70 right now...
By the way, is there a way to make a clean uninstall of nvidia drivers (I cannot use config panel because of the nvidia HD sound driver...) ?

 

Just tried 180.70, I get ~94000 in aquamark, and Shaun White Snowboarding is still nearly unplayable... But this time there's shadow corruptions...

Is there something I could do ? I was reading on laptopvideo2go forums that increasing screen resolution in games also increase frame rate... Is it true ? (i'm running games in 1280*768 most of the time)

 

You can try uninstalling from the control panel. The audio driver is separate from the graphics driver. Running the uninstaller and rebooting is really the best way to do a clean install.

 

Mmmmm I did it, and even with Driver Sweeper in vista safe mode...
Then I installed 179.14, and it's still the same... ~94000 in aquamark, and SWS is unplayable...
No matter what I do, nvidia performance or quality mode, I have the same results... Is there something somewhere that could "limit" the performance, except nvidia drivers ?

 

That is a low score. My AM3 score is 133,622.

You can try putting max prerendered frames to 1 under your nvidia control panel if your framerate is suffering. Also make sure you are on single display performance mode.

 

Thanks for your support ALLurGroceries...
But doing what you said just gave me the same results than before (max prerendered frames was to 3 and I was on multiple display perf mode).

I start thinking there's something else limiting my score/framerates...
Is your g50v configured the same way than mine ? (original vista64, bios209)

 

I'm on 209 XP 32 bit, also have a T9600 but that shouldn't affect the AM3 score that much. I don't have a stock baseline to compare it to but your score is low.

Is there something in the background eating your CPU or hard disk?

It *does* sound like a driver issue, but you've tried a number of versions so far, and a clean install or two; that usually fixes it. You mentioned you're overclocking, so your RAM should be at full speed, so that's not it.

You're not getting persistent artifacts are you? Without artifacts it's hard to believe it's faulty GPU/GRAM. It still sounds like a driver problem or in an extreme case, resource hogging from a background application.

 

- 60% Cpu max useage in AM3, so I don't think something is eating my CPU,
- no persistant artifact, so i don't think my GPU/GRAM is problematic,
- on an other hand, I notice my HDD led is on really often, even if the computer is idle. So it may be the problem, but I honestly don't think so (ATM, my G50 sits on AM3 result page while i'm typing this message, and i notice HDD is under high activity...)

Is it worth reinstalling windows, maybe switching to 32bits (some people say 64bits is a little more powerfull) ?
Or even installing a spare XP to test and compare ?

 

If you hard disk is constantly being accessed, that is a potential source of your problem. Make sure your scheduled defrag has been deleted (it is on by default in vista). Also disable drive indexing and make sure nero scout is disabled if you have nero installed. There is one other one I'm missing I'm sure. There are a lot of background processes that need to be tied down in order to get your G50V in proper order. I hope that helps, otherwise, press on with more driver releases until you get fed up or reinstall? As for going to 32 bit, that is not possible with the recovery media from asus, nor is it desirable. A fresh install might fix it, but that's an extreme solution to a specific problem that should be relatively easy to pin down once you've eliminated enough variables.

 

Don't know if this will help or not but bios 209 had the opposite affect on my G50V-A2. I don't have the keyboard lag or the high cpu usage with 207 or below but when I tried 209 I got high cpu usage. You might try going back to 207, just a thought.

 

Hi again...
Stealthl, I think bios 207 won't be better, just because I installed 209 just for this reason...
ALLurGroceries, I have tweaked what is HDD related, enabled cache performance mode, and now i obtain ~1000 gain in AM3. (I disabled ageia physix too)

After this, I installed 3dmark06, as AM3 is reported to give bad results in vista64.
3dmark gives me a 5707 score, which I believe is bad. But I noticed a strange thing in the report : my graphic card is detected being a Generic VGA card ! In device manager, it is detected as a 9700 M GT, and everything looks fine in nvidia control panel.
Dxdiag looks fine too, every acceleration is enabled and my card is detected fine...
I really don't know what to look for...

Edit :
3dmark vantage gives me 1990... (CPU 4422, GPU 1682)
and it detects my GC as a Generic VGA too... But driver is detected as Nvidia Geforce 9700M GT 7.15.11.8070, core 625mhz, mem 800mhz

 

Try a total uninstall of nvidia again. You should *not* have generic vga in devmgmt.... that is an obvious driver installation problem

Edit: there's a new lag thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=332060#2