GT540m issue?

I've been having some mishaps with my L502x recently, and I'm now suspecting they're related to the GT540m chip. A couple of weeks ago, my laptop "shut down" while I was away. I came back to find the power light still on, but there was no response from the keyboard, and the screen was black. Later that week, I came back to find it had completely shut down on its own. It booted back up giving an error that Windows had shut down unexpectedly. Nothing seemed to hint what exactly caused this in the event viewer, just a kernel power error. In both cases, the laptop was connected to an external monitor via HDMI, so it was using the GT540m chip, which is one reason I'm suspecting this is gpu-related.

Yesterday, when I was gaming (in a windowed game), the game abruptly froze, and I had the well-known, constantly looping sound from the game. I could not even terminate the process of the game, and the Nvidia control panel was unresponsive when I clicked on it. When I went to shut down, the OS shut off completely, but the laptop remained on, and unresponsive. Had this game been set to fullscreen, I believe I would have had to have done a hard reset. Also, while the game was running, the window of the game would periodically "disappear," showing the opened window below for a split second, before reappearing.

I've been reading around on other forums, and people with this chip and similar issues have been underclocking the card...I really hope this is unnecessary. I am running the latest Nvidia drivers, 306.97, by the way, along with a clean installation of Windows 7 x64 Professional. I'll run diagnostics on the machine tonight, and give an update on results. Does anyone have any suggestions to steer me towards a solution? Thanks in advance.

 

This is quite drastic, but have you re-formatted Windows and tested to see if you have the same problem pop up? Admittedly this is sort of the last resort prior to calling in Dell support.

The freezing of games certainly does sound like it's a GPU issue, but more like a driver rather than a hardware problem. You said that you were able to switch out of the game when it froze (though Task Manager and the nVidia COntrol Panel weren't working well) - this sounds like a software problem. Had it been the GPU you would probably have just had green and purple lines across your screen and likely a hard reset.

Another thing is to check your GPU temps while gaming - It might be that your GPU is hitting really high temps when it freezes. What do your CPU and GPU max at? Try running HWMonitor ( CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting) and see what your Max temps are. Doesn't hurt to log your temps while you game too, to see the trend of temps during that period.

To give you an idea, I idle at around 55C for both CPU and GPU, and I often max at 80C/70C for both CPU/GPU (depending on ambient temps). This with my cooling fan set at lowest speed (pushes about 33CFM).

 

I had this problem and it was infuriating, but I never figured out a solution.

My GT 540M would simply fail using stock rates for certain games with core / memory usage below 50% and temperatures under 60 C. It wasn't switching power states and core / memory usage was predictable and stable. I updated my drivers (multiple times) and my BIOS (using the Dell provided version) then switched from HDMI to DisplayPort without any changes to the problem.

In the end, I had no consistent predictor so I couldn't discern the actual problem. In some games, I could push a moderately overclocked GT 540M to its limit. In other games, it would crash with no warning at stock rates and the drivers would only reset for certain games. In a few games, an overclock caused problems even if the card stayed within tolerance ranges.

I think the card itself is just inherently unstable which is extremely dumb. I got around the problem by configuring clock shortcuts with NVIDIA Inspector, which is fine since I had to use it for custom program settings. Reportedly, the undervolted custom BIOS help stability at stock rates. I haven't done it since undervolt could hurt my ability to use an overclocked profile for certain games, but if you're only using stock rates then it might be worth a shot.

 

Just let the system run through the complete diagnostics (including extended memory tests) from BIOS and ran through completely error free. So, that eliminates one factor I suppose. Haven't considered another complete reformat since I don't have much time to sit down and do so. I think the reason I was able to switch out of the game was because I was running the game windowed, not full screen. Since I'm outputting via mini displayport, I think the iGPU carried the final output, and thus I didn't get a complete graphical failure. It's strange how the laptop wouldn't completely shut off after shutting down the OS, though.

I was reading around 86C on the GPU while running the game, which I know is quite high. However, if I'm not mistaken, the rating for this chip is up to 105C. What puzzles me is how I seem to be stable in another game while peaking at 91C. I don't think overheating is the issue. I think I'll give disabling Turbo Boost a shot.