Far Cry suddenly low framerate

Hello!

Today I got a hold of Far Cry (with 1.4 patch), and I ran it pretty smoothly on my M1330 (T8300 2,4GHz, 3GB Memory, NVidia 8400 GS 128MB, Vista Home Premium) with medium settings in native 1280x800 resolution.

But at a certain point in the game, after having played for maybe 4 hours, the framerate went downhill and I could practically not play the game anymore.

But after having rebootet the computer all was fine again! What's the explanation for this behaviour? It feels like 10 years ago when you had to regularly reboot Windows 98 because of speed...

Thanks for help!

Matthias

 

Overheating, be careful mate.

 

overheated? (but it wont explain why it became fine after 2 minutes of rebooting time)...

 

Indeed, its weird... , But an overheat is factible cuz other users report lower frame rates while overheating, but as you say I doubt 2 minutes are enough to cool down the m1330, more like 5 minutes...

 

Make sure you're using latest drivers from www.laptopvide2go.com.

 

Hello!

Thanks for your help so far. After having been brought in contact with the concept of possible overheating I did some research here and downloaded HWMonitor, which shows a max GPU temp of 105°C, and an idle temp of ~68°C. That seems normal, doesn't it?

Just to be on the safe side - a sudden drop in frame rate might indicate overheat - right? But at that state nothing is critical or about to get damaged - right? Is it okay to just turn of the game when this occurs?

And in general: isn't this a warranty case? I mean it overheats! Not good.

Cheers

Matthias

 

105C is really high. That is damaging high type of temperatures I believe.

 

Reaching maximum temperatures (max for most Nvidia GPUs is 100C before the unit automatically shuts down) is not only dangerous for the part overheating, it is also damaging to other surrounding components, given the compact design of laptops. If you see temperatures going above 90C, do not run the laptop for long; if you can update the drivers while staying within "safe" temperatures, do so as quickly as possible.

If the temps remain high after updating the drivers, do not run the laptop as you will risk causing long-term heat damage. If the temps ever go above 100C, don't even turn on the computer. Send it in for repair.

 

Hi Bog,

thanks for that advice! I played Far Cry again, and again it maxed at 104C (idle was even as low as 58C).

So I guess I'll be calling Dell support... But what are they gonna do? Aren't all of those 8400GS faulty heat wise?

Cheers

Matthias

 

as long as your gpu or motherboard hasn't yet fried up, they'll probably just change the heatsink-solution on your laptop, giving you the new A02 revision of the heatsink and installing that one. My gpu idles at 42 degrees C and has a max, so far of about ~80 degrees C. This is nvidia 8400M GS, 128MB, XPS M330 laptop.

 

105c is definitely not acceptable and they'll be replacing your cooling system and motherboard.

 

Hello Temagic and Lucanesti,

that does sound good. I thought they're just gonna replace one challenged GPU with the next one...

Dell technican will come on monday and replace the mainboard - at least that's what the guy from the hotline told me. I'll see.

Cheers

Matthias

 

may i know when did u buy your laptop ?

 

Hello SBS_Transit,

I bought the computer in late march at Dell Germany. It arrived in early april.

Yesterday was pretty much the first time I played a 3D game on this machine, that's why I didn't know about this problem earlier.

Cheers

Matthias

 

104° and 105° are abnormally high, in my opinion. What Nvidia Driver (version number) are you currently using?

 

it seems, matze, that almost all or ALL of the nvidia 8400 and 8600 have been reported defective, they cant manage heat, so they go kamikazi on the motherboard, and since the gpu is acually soldered to your mainboard, there is no way of only changing the gpu. i hope dell fixes this problem right away, because that heat can also damage nearby parts, souch as the CPU

 

another important thing tho, is to get a long warranty, ( i think the max is 4 years, witch is more than enough)

if you have it then you should not worry about a thing. we just have to be patient and see what dell comes up with to set things right

IF! you only have 1 year, and you are worried about your computer, you can simply buy longer coverage anytime WITHIN THE WARRANTY PERIOD.

Hope this info helps!

 

Oh yeah, my 8600M GT is defective*. I ran The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for 3 hours on max video settings with driver 174.31 and my GPU capped 75°C...

*sarcasm (no offense meant, just getting a point across: don't believe any hype without having evidence of it being true.)

 

Hello,

I am using the 175.97 V32 A08 driver from the Dell support page right now, and I installed A12 BIOS recently.

Koer, I heard the same - that ALL 8*** GPU's from NVIDIA are affected by that heat problem. That's why I was worried the Dell technician can't really do much about that unless Dell produces a new mainboard for the M1330 with a different GPU alltogether. Which I figure they won't. But a new heatsink might really keep temperatur under control.

Cron-Z, what I've heard EVERY 8*** is affected. Even on normal desktop computer graphics adpaters. The problem might not be evident in your machine right now, and that's great. But the lifespan is shortened. I read this, and it does sound bad:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/09/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

Matthias

 

Oh, and Koer - I do intend to get the extension for the Premium support. That definitely is a good idea. Seeing the hardware problems these days, it's imperative to extent warranty.

Cheers

Matthias

 

That's exactly what I meant. You do know that Charlie Demerjian has been Nvidia's biggest critic since the second year anniversary of the foundation of Nvidia. Charlie Demerjian is also a very severe Intel critic and even accused of publishing libel about Microsoft and Walmart... and that's not counting his constant attacks on any Blogger that will disagree with him or his views of "the industry of technology".

The truth is that there has been a few chips (7000 and 8000 series) that have defected, but there has not been any evidence of a widespread problem.

 

Well, NVIDIA announced this to be a 200 million US dollar damage, which to me does not sound very narrow. And NVIDIA itself said "significant quantities" are affected, which translated from corporate language to English might as well mean "nearly all".

But I agree about the Inquire article having an agenda.

Cheers

Matthias

 

The $150-$200 million was an estimated cost by an industry analyst IF the problem was, hypothetically, widespread; and later used as a rumor on numerous forums and blogs. It never came out of Nvidia's "mouth".

Anyways, I'd say we get back on-topic !

 

True, I am just repeating what I read in online news sources, etc.

Good that this problem might not be as widespread as I thought. But there are indeed a lot of people having heat issues especially with the 8400GS in the M1330.

On Monday I will see what the new mainboard changes. Hope this problem gets solved!

Cheers

Matthias

 

I hope so too, so you can enjoy your awesome laptop !

 

Ok, I got a problem.

The tech guy came over and replaced both mainboard and heatpipe.

Played Far Cry again, reached 104°C again (with HWMonitor).

Combination of two new parts reaches the exact same temp again? Maybe HWMonitor shows wrong numbers?

I should probably play Far Cry again till the GPU clocks down to really know that it's overheating...

You guys know a program which definitely gets correct values for temperature? How could it be that these new parts reach the same max temp again?

Thanks!

Matthias

 

i am currently playing Far Cry on my M1530 with 8600GT GPU.
After 2 hours play HW Monitor reports GPU Temp: 79 degrees max/ 58 idle.
That is on a warm day in England. On an overcast day it only reached 74 degrees.

I would suggest you make sure you have the latest BIOS and the latest DELL recommended drivers and then test again.

See below:
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&cs=RC956962&l=en&s=gen&ServiceTag=&SystemID=XPS_M1330&os=WLH&osl=en&catid=&impid=

 

Thanks for your suggestions!

I did install latest drivers and BIOS A12.

What I am most amazed about right now is that even though most of the hardware got replaced (new main board means new CPU and GPU and chipsets, and new heatpipe and fan) I get the exact same temperature. That puzzles me.

What else could I do? Call them again and get another new main board?

Cheers

Matthias

 

Call and demand a new machine!

 

Hmm, would someone else confirm this - should I ask for a new unit? I mean it seems obvious that this notebook's GPU won't get below 105°C/221°F.

Thanks!

Matthias

 

My guess is that the laptop doesn't breathe easily. I have an M1530 and a 9-cell battery, which lifts the laptop and helps airflow, and I hit 77°C in four hours of Oblivion on (almost*) max video settings.

*Disabled some settings that I didn't like, such as Water Reflection.

105°C is abnormally high, IMO (my opinion may be wrong, but from what I read in this thread, it may not be that far off). Maybe try a laptop cooler.

 

From what ive read you have 2 options,

- either you call dell and say your computer is Dangerously high in temperature, and they allready changed the heat sinc, motherboard, blah blah, and tell them to give you a new one.

- Or you experiment a bit, get a raised surface to put your computer on, so that the airflow is not blocked or even close to anything.( or accelerate the fan speed with a program i cant remember right now, but im not sure that will be convinient since your battery will get consumed much faster),
you could also get a laptop stand ( or dock, whatever they call it) with fans on it, but that would mean spending a buck on something that dell should fix.

either way, chances are you will have to wait a bit until dell has a real solution for that problem.

Best of luck man!!!

 

Read the other threads about this. The m1330 is known to have heat issues and when running drivers that report the correct temperatures (a large number of LTV2G drivers report false temps so beware!) the GPU reaches temps around 100C. It's a heatsink design flaw and is well known.

 

Well, either I return the notebook. Or I just get used to its flaws, get a 3 or 4 year premium support and live with the possibility that it dies on me any time. What's the lesser evil?

Cheers

Matthias

 

return+rebuy, or return and wait for a better option that's probably more expensive

 

I agree about the hype, but your results miss the point. The cards function correctly in the near term. The issue is *supposedly* they can't handle thermal stress over time. I haven't heard that en mass they run abnormally hot (running hot seems to be the fault of the OEM, in this case Dell). The problem with the GPU is long term heat stress damage leading to premature failure.

 

To the OP. The "defect" isn't that the M1330 runs hot per se....I mean that is a problem, but running hot is not a sign that you have a bad card. Dell's thermal solution in the M1330 causes many if not most of M1330's to run exceedingly hot if the GPU is stressed 100% and this is exacerbated by stressing the CPU 100% (ie each will register hotter faster if both are being max stressed; stressing the GPU only won't give you full information).

In other words, running hot, which is symptomatic of Dell's thermal design is one issue, but the issue on Nvidia's end, the problem with these GPU's, is apparently they tend to fail prematurely when subjected to repeated thermal stress. So poor thermal design + cards which can't handle heat long term = dead GPU's in 3-6 months after purchase. So just because your card reaches 100+ doesn't mean your card is defective. It just means that you, like many other M1330 owners, are dealing with Dell's poor thermal design. You won't know if your card is defective until it dies from the repeated stress a month to 8 months from now.

Now some people claim that their M1330 8400 never breaks 75...unmodded, stock, etc. Maybe they got lucky and their thermal pad words better than other people's, or maybe they aren't fully stressing their card, or maybe the latests Nvidia Dell drivers combined with A12 is really doing the trick. I dunno. I will say that you shouldn't be breaking 101-102 for long since the card SHOULD down-clock itself at that temp and the temps should likewise drop accordingly. You do want to make sure you have the latest dell drivers and bios. Although I will say that my computer came with A10 and drivers from last year and it correctly down clocked at 100 degrees and the temps went back to the high-80's low 90's. I am using the copper mod so I can't say how well A12/new drivers work on a stock computer.

Anyway, this is probably why you get ****ty framerates. Farcry is going to max stress the GPU and CPU which will lead to temps over 100 degrees at which point the GPU will downclock itself and your framerates will drop. This happened to me on my M1330 playing CoD within 10 minutes of gameplay if not sooner. A new motherboard isn't going to fix this because new MB's use dells crappy thermal solution. The only two solutions I can think of are using a cooler pad when you game or do the copper mod. Post copper mod I can overclock 585/785 and my temps never break 81 degrees. As it is on stock speeds I idle 10 degrees cooler and run about 25 degrees cooler under stress. The mod is easy and fully reversible for warrantly issues.

 

Thank you so much for this awesome summary!

You pretty much laid out every detail of this issue. Seeing that it's a design flaw of this notebook that the GPU gets that hot under stress, the only thing I was wondering about was the fact that some people do report way better temperatures. Your explanation makes sense.

I propably won't find a better notebook for the price of the M1330, so I guess I'm kinda stuck with it. Also wanna avoid spending time on the whole process of returning this one and getting a new one.

I'm still not convinced I could handle the copper mod. Yesterday the technican was here... he seemed so cool he would have propably done it for me if I had the necessary parts with me.

I'll start with RMClock to get the temps down a bit. Beyond that I just hope the notebook doesn't die on me during exam preparations or something like that

Again thanks for your efforts!

Cheers

Matthias

 

Dear Cadillac,
Whilst I agree about the poor thermal design of the M1330, there is no way that a game from 2004 that recommends a Geforce 2 64MB and a 1 gig CPU to run, should induce such ridiculous temperatures in what is after all an "Extreme performance System".

Mat, I really do feel for you mate, but in your shoes I would definitely sling that machine back to DELL.
It's just not fit for the purpose it was intended for, IE not burning your leg off whilst playing an old game.
You gave them a chance to fix it, which they couldn't

Good luck
MM.

 

I just ordered a M1530 and hope I don't have the heat issues, but if anything goes wrong i'll just get it fixed on the warranty. Not going to bother with an extra cooler or anything because why should I when i'm buying the companies "Premium" laptop...

I'd demand that they fix it or replace the unit. It may be other things than overheating as I don't think such an old game should stress your GPU that much to be honest.

 

I agree the computer should be designed in such a way not to reach these temps. I would think, though, (and I'm no expert), that 100% GPU stress is 100% GPU stress regardless of the game requirements. In other words, whether its Crysis or Farcry, 100% GPU/CPU stress is the same. Maybe not.

Now I also assume from all that I've read that the problem with the Nvidia cards is that they can't handle the stress, NOT that some of them run hotter than others. In this senario, the same Dell thermal design would yield say 75 degree temps with a normal card, but 100 degree temps with a defective card. However, I don't believe this is the case.

Bottom line is I just don't see how repeatedly swapping mobo's that all have identical thermal designs is going to somehow lead to lower temps, unless, some thermal pads work drastically better than others or some 8400's run cooler than others. Either way, you shouldn't have to live with 100+ temps and a ticking time bomb GPU.

 

Hello!

The M1530 does not seem to have heat issues like the M1330, because the notebook is bigger and because of that air stream might be better. You should be fine!

I spoke to the Dell tech guy today (the one who fixed the broken plastic left behind by the guy from yesterday...) and he pretty much agreed that the M1330 does have big heat issues by design, and already some died on him, even though they are not older than a year.

It's a good point that Far Cry is 4 years old and shouldn't stress a new notebook like this. But I guess the framerate just goes up as high as possible, and then the GPU is on 100%.

Matthias

 

That's exactly what this is about. It feels like it could die on me anytime. Apart from that, I can totally live with the notebook, and even enjoy it. I could get a 4 year premium support, which I might have done anyway, and just wait for the GPU to fail.

Or I try to give it back (it's already 4 months old), and get a new laptop with a better heatpipe and of course some other GPU than an 8*00 from Nvidia... But then again - that notebook could fail too because of some other reason. And my M1330 COULD still live happily ever after.

I don't like having been put in this situation!

Matthias

 

Keep it and get the extended warranty maybe?

 

I have the exact same issue man. I didn't think anyone else could've had such a similar issue.

After a bit of playing, it drops down from 60 to about 25. The thing is, my GPU is only 74 Degrees hot according to SIW. : /

 

Hi! Well, in my case the problem really was (and is) the GPU going up to 104°C, which causes it to downclock automatically to avoid damage.

So it's weird that you see the same problems without the GPU overheating. Did you read the temp during play or only afterwards?

Matthias