S96J Troubles....Defect?

I purchased my S96J back in June 2006 and everything was working fine.

Nearly a year later it is now becoming very tempermental with me.

I just did a full re-install of Windows XP a week ago, which took me two days to get up and running fully with all my applications.

I installed all the latest drivers and everything was running nicely including all my games.

A week later today, all my games are running like crap.

I went from about 50fps average to 20fps average. Mind you all I have are the Mobility 7.4 drivers. No control panel of any sort, no overclocking of any sort, just the drivers.

It is not ATI's PowerPlay either.

All I did was decide to play some games today and my FPS was way down, several reboots and option checks later, no difference.

I'm running out of options here, this is really just terrible.

What can I do? Do I have some sort of computer defect or something?

 

have you tried running 3dmark and comparing your current scores to ones you had in the past?

maybe there is a defect in your gpu.

 

When I first ran 3dmark05 on my laptop I got a score of 3900 with stock drivers, ever since then I get no more than 3600.

This guy also appears to have a similar problem:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...&board_id=3&model=Z96J&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

 

even so....300 3dmark05 should half your fps...hrmm...have you talked to your reseller about possible problems?

 

I just sent them an email, its so weird though because for a week after the reinstall everything worked fine and now today 3d performance is down the tubes which NO system or application changes.

The reason for the reinstall was bad 3d performance but I thought that was because of all the drivers I had changed and updated before.

But now with a completely clean install a week later I am encountering the same problems.

 

Did you open the CPU compartment and verify if the CPU/GPU fan isn't saturated with dust? These "smart" components will throttle themselves if the temperature goes too high. What is the temperature the CPU is running at?

 

On the contrary i would stake my laptop on it that if you do a clean install again your frame rate will be back to normal. so its not your laptop, its something you installed.

 

then what could it be?

 

I bought my laptop around the same time as you, and ive been playing many of the latest games (COH, Command and Conquer) and have not seen any drops. Maybe cleaning the fan out, and reinstalling XP could do something. (I am also not on the Ati driver' s but the older Omegas(too lazy))

 

He said he already cleaned the fans, well the radiator is what needs cleaning not the fan but iam sure that is what he meant....

 

What's your CPU and GPU temperature?
Or check your temperature right after exit out of the game to see if there is anything over heated.

I wouldn't think it's over heated because you can get 3900 on 3DMark.

I have had many problems with ATI catalyst drivers so I put back the Asus driver.

Try uninstall the ATI catalyst and install this driver to see if it makes any difference:

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/df-support/10894/eng/V8.233-CCC-060308a-031601C_logo.zip

That'll tell us if it's the driver issue and we'll go from there.

If you have 2 RAM stick, try remove one and test the laptop with just one RAM, if the problem still persist then the the RAM back and remove the other RAM.
Don't panic, there nothing we can't fix.

 

Now the audio jack issue has become nearly consistent with the audio jack not working as expected.

I tried the stock driver once before again but I never did achieve 3900 3DMarks05 again. And every time I use it some games have graphical glitches and bugs because the older driver doesn't contain newer fixes.

CPU temps out of a game are around 75-80c but the GPU does not have a temp sensor on my S96J.

HDD idles around 35-43c.

 

well the audio jack is acting up again, Ken I asked for an RMA number from Brian, he sent me a email describing the RMA procedure, he said he will have you set up an RMA number for me.

sorry for putting you through the trouble

thank you

-Kris

p.s. i only got 3900 in 3dmark05 when I first ran it when I first received my s96j

 

the audio board is non-removable on S96J, so the MB has to be replace. I'll arrange RMA for you.

 

I am having the similar problem. I used to get over 3900 in 3Dmark but now less than 1700. Some games work fine though. I bought the laptop from you Ken last July it has played any game great up until now. I have cleaned out the fan so I dont know if its overheating

 

^ Did you try reformatting and reinstalling Windows XP on it with clean drivers?

 

Not yet, I have too much on my PC to just reformat now. Then I have to reinstall everything. Is there any other way? The strange thing is, it will run Silent Hunter 4 great and when I run 3d mark I get a terrible score and when I run S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is is extremely slow then freezes. But I am trying the drivers Ken reccomended now

 

1. Did you try lowering the in-game settings? STALKER is a very demanding game. Turn off any AA and AF.

Also would you mind posting your complete system specifications.

2. What version of 3DMark are you using and what score are you getting?

It is normal for 3Dmark05 and 3DMark06 to choke the X1600/7600.

 

I have the exact system as you, same processor and everything. The funny thing is STALKER ran great on Med-High settings until a few days ago. And now it wont run for more than 45 seconds on the lowest settings. I just have the demo of 3dMark06 and I just got a score of 1900. It was about 3900 when I first got the laptop

 

3dmark05 scores are very different from 3dmark06 scores....1900 is a decent 3dmark06 score for the x1600.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=99051

 

Hmm didnt know that. But when it is running the test grpahics at times FPS are 0 and its terribly laggy. Maybe it is ok. I didnt know scores were different