8600M GT Judder Update (Good News so far!)

I've been plagued by the famous Judder on my ASUS GS1 from day one. Tried about ten drivers with no luck, including 173.xx. Tried every other trick mentioned.

I'd almost accepted that it was a heat issue, and nothing could be done about it. It seems (hopefully) that I was wrong.

I'm now running 163.67.

Just played UT3 with everything on Max, 1440 x 900 (my machines max. res), for 40 mins. Fan whirring away at max. - NO JUDDER.

Switched immediately to COD4, 1280 x 800, high settings, for half an hour - NO JUDDER.

First time ever over 5 mins of UT3 on 1440 x 900 without judder.

One happy camper.

(Fingers crossed !!!)

 

Hi.

So what caused the judder, and how do we fix it, do we just install driver 163.67?

regards

John.

 

Yes. If you have the problem, I wouldn't hesitate to reccomend installing 163.67.

Once my machine got hot, almost immediately after the fan started spinning at its' highest speed, (different timescale depending on game/resolution/settings etc), there would be a rhythmic juddering motion whereby the FPS jumped up and down at a constant frequency, almost like slow-motion video. Once this started happening, the games became unplayable. It happened on every game I installed; UT3, Gears of War, Crysis & COD4.

There are many threads in various forums about this well-known issue.

If (fingers crossed) the Judder never occurs again, then something in all the drivers except 163.67 is causing the problem.

In hindsight though, we're all quick to download the latest driver, and the modded .inf to try and squeeze every last FPS from our machine, but lets not forget, there are reasons why we need a modded .inf, and I now don't believe that they are all purely commercial.

We're all downloading drivers for our machines which are not reccomended by the manfacturer, "Hacking" them in order to install them, and then blaming the machine manufacturer when our machines become problematic.

 

Hi.

so where do we download the new driver from?

also you say "We're all downloading drivers for our machines which are not reccomended by the manfacturer, "Hacking" them in order to install them, and then blaming the machine manufacturer when our machines become problematic."

but does the judder not happen with the manufactures drives as well?

I have a laptop with an 8600mGT on order.

thanks

John.

 

Yes, some of them are BETA drivers, reason why sometimes they don't work well with some machines.

Also, it is fair to mention that not everybody experience that problem even with some beta drivers, reason why you cannot discard the problems source being from the manufacturer.

 

Hi.

any reason not to use the newest 167.45 ?

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16311

thanks

John.

 

I have 171.16 on my G1S (under XP), and this thread is the first I've heard of any problem - it works just fine.

 

ive had good results with 169.61

 

I'm happy with 173.65, seem to perform very nicely.

 

I'm also quite happy with the 173.65, my card runs about 5C cooler than before with them and the performance is, for me anyways, great.

 

Here are just a couple:


http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=172717&highlight=8600m+gt+driver

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=202620

I've tried 167.xx, 169.xx, 173.xx, and they all gave the judder when the machine was hot.

 

May be a stupid question, but for the sake of completeness: you are not overclocking your card, right?

 

No, I never have.

 

The 163.67 and 163.71 drivers have been known to limit to the issue so much that games become playable, atleast in winXP and for some in Vista. For me in vista x64 the only driver that does the same for me in general is 160.04.

Not the fastest driver, but the ones that screw up the least.

 

Does the driver efficiency depend on GS or GT? Got the laptop on the way and am trying to figure out where I stand. It seems there's a lot of debate about what driver works best ... does it perhaps depend on the individuality of each system?

HP Pavilion dv9700t Entertainment CTO NB
- Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
- Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo Processor T9300 (2.50 GHz, 6 MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
- 17.0" WSXGA+ High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1680 x 1050)
- 2GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
- 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS
320GB 5400RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive

 

Heya, I posted a similar thing before.
In this thread to be exact.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=172717&page=12

At first I was really happy when I found out about the 163.67 drivers since they actually removed most of my stuttering problems.
But now that I look back at it, I might have been a bit too optimistic, as I feel that my laptop should be able to perform much better.
Games like Crysis are almost unplayable even with low setttings, and i've seen benchmarks of laptops mine should outperform by far and with less 3Dmark scores get a whole lot better results.

I've tried several other drivers since and noticed that they do give me an increase in performance, but not shortly after starting a game of CoD4 for example, I get the bothersome stuttering and have to revert back to 163.67.
Not really sure why these drivers in particular seems to fix the stuttering for so many (could have something to do with them limiting the cards performance somehow, not really tapping into it's power, since they do give worse results compared to newer drivers), but I hope that with a little time and testing at least someone will find out why, or at least find a driver that fixes both the problem and at the same time DOESEN'T cripple performance too much.

 

Just for the sake of interest, I tried 163.67 last night. After about 1/2 an hour of playing Black & White 2, it slowed to a crawl. So I went back to 171.16 and it seems fine again.

I'd be amazed if it takes 1/2 an hour to actually get a laptop GPU up to temperature - it's physically small enough that if it were going to overheat it would do so in a minute or two. IMHO it's just a driver bug, pure and simple - maybe a memory leak?

 

Thomas - I'm glad you managed to find a driver that lets you play that thing !

Believe me, I know how what it's like !

Every time I tried a new driver, I started to cringe when I heard the fan spin up to maximum, because I knew what was coming.

Last night, I found something even more strange.

When I first installed 173.xx (cant remember the last two digits!),
I was amazed at the difference in framerates, UT3 full res (1440 x 900) - everything max, huge difference on Crysis, but the dreaded Judder.
So, I installed 163.67, and my framerates actually seemed to remain the same as 173.xx, but no Judder.

After reading many posts with people commenting that 163.67 gives poor performance, I decided to compare, and chose "Roll Back Driver" from within Device Manager. This of course put me back to 173.xx, but guess what, not only judder, but instantly noticeable significantly lower framerates.

So, I decided to reinstall 163.67, and then of course the Judder went again, but what was stranger was that I still had the lower framerates.

In the end, I did a system Restore to just before the point when I installed 163.67 for the first time, and then found myself on 173.xx with good framerates, but Judder, and then installed 163.67, AND THAT'S WHERE I'LL STAY !

P.S. It doesn't make much sense, but it works

 

Lord Phol, Andy C - This may sound crazy, but have you tried installing 173.xx and then installing 163.67, because it really does seem to give the performance of 173.xx, but with the stutter fix of 163.67. Yes, I know this sounds absolutely crazy, and I'm not insane, but this is the result I get !

P.S. My 6 week old Notebook has seen more drivers come and go than a ten year old Taxi Cab !

 

Just to make it clear, this issue is NOT heat related. People tend to think so because it would be the easiest explanation but it aint that easy.

My older zepto 6214w had heat issues and thats a whole different story. It would get hot.. then hotter.. and BOOM! crash with a fancy screen or just turn off. Now thats heat!

Its not heat when you can tab out to windows for 2 secs back ingame and everything is smooth. The gpu temp will be around 95 degrees in a 14,1" laptop within few minutes because the airflow is very limited but thats normal!

also about the 163.xx drivers most of the "less stuttering" is due to lower max performance and higher min performance, meaning you get less framerate jumping which leads to less stuttering.

that is also why it somestimes helps to limit your maxfps in games to the min. fps you get. Like in Wow i limit my fps to 35fps because allaround at 1440x900 thats around the lowest fps i get.
Now what the does is making my fps stick at 34-35fps all the time = close to no stutter.

However different drivers does this different aswell :/ and at the end of the day it shouldnt be nessesary anyway, hmpf.

I would however love to test the 173.65 drivers but no x64.

 

Hi.

so what is the word from NVIDIA, or are they just sticking there heads in the sand!

regards

John.

 

Yeah that's what I understand to be the main culprit behind the stuttering problems, pretty much what I found out as well when trying out the maxfps command in cod4. The weird thing though is that doesn't matter how high or low the fps is. Everything above 60fps shouldn't make a difference in smoothness, but even when it rises and lowers from let's say 60-70fps or even 100-120fps, the game will stutter.

I haven't even tried the 170.xx drivers yet and just noticing that they've released a new set of 173.xx driver-series as well, that is just crazy.
Don't quite get what the difference between all the different series are really to be honest (if anyone could enlighten me I would be grateful), but I did notice that the new 173.65 drivers are optimized for Clevo laptops. Heard they should work fine with any laptop brand though with modded inf, so what the hell, I'll give it a shot when I get home from work, hehe.

Just to get it right it, what I should do is:
Un-install 163.75 -> install 173.65 -> notice an increase in performance -> un-install 173.65 -> re-install 163.75 and that should lead to no stuttering + the performance increase from the 173.65?.

Does indeed sound crazy, but I might as well try it out, if not for only to see how the 173.65 handles.
Will hopefully report back later with some test results.

 

I personally think the problem is related to heat. Is anyone actually having stuttering problems on a 8600M GT that is operating at less than around ~95 C LOAD.

Most of the people I see posting about this problem (myself included) have either an Asus G1S or a Zepto 6625 which have notoriously high GPU temps.

I've come to this conclusion because lately we have been having greatly varying ambient temps here in Australia. The last few days have been around 40 C while the weekend that just passed was raining and no too hot. During the weekend I had no stutter but my GPU was operating a couple of degrees under 95 C while the last few days I have been operating above 95 with stutter. So 95ish seems to be about the temp that the stutter kicks in.

The 173.65 drivers drop my GPU temp by about 5 C and I can play a lot longer till the stuttering kicks in (If at all).

It's just a theory but I'm leaning more and more towards this, as it also explains why a lot of people have it and a lot of people also don't, especially if it's supposed to be a driver memory mismanagement issue like nvidia say.

 

Well I will test it out maybe tonight or within the week. I have a laptop cooler which my older zepto uses not to die in games, Just to compare.

@Lord Phol
Exactly! The fps value doesnt matter at all.

-
Another wierd thing though about the heat at "only" 95 degrees is that if i limit my max fps and use the somewhat best driver, gaming never gets slower! I played for like 4-5 hours yesterday with 160.04 and fps maxed at 35 in WoW.

 

It wasn`t until I read this thread that I realised that my 7950GTX stutters at max details. That is in HEROES V , when I rotate the camera, or in long battles between heroes. Lowering details and resolution doesn`t really fix it, so I must say it`s a driver issues, since temps are as follow : 58-63C for CPU, 55 GPU, 51C Hdd....
Check your temps first,but if they`re reasonable, I`m asuming the OP who tried the 167.43 has a point to it and we should give that a go.

 

By limiting the max fps, your GPU is not working as hard as if it were rendering without the limit and hence your GPU may not actually be reaching that sort of temp and therefore no stutter.

Also the stutter effect seems to be caused by large fps fluctuations which may be for example between 40 - 70 but limiting under that range will make the stutter effect unnoticeable.

The more testing I do the more it leads towards the temp conclusion. Either the GPU is struggling after this temp (which is under the bios set thermal throttling limit of 110 C) or the heat is effecting other components near the GPU.

Has anyone else's testing reached this conclusion? I have effectively eliminated all stutter (which was exactly the same as posted in the youtube video in the other thread) by limiting the temp of the GPU and the area around the GPU.

 

My G1S only began to stutter when the fan was spinning @ Max.

As soon as I heard the increase in speed, Within 10 seconds, the problem would occur.

Lord Phol - When you try the 173.xx - 163.xx thing, don't uninstall anything. Whenever I switch the drivers, I never uninstall, I just install over the top.

It's got me thinking though, because I'm not uninstalling, could whatever gives the good FPS in 173.xx still be remaining, as the file is newer, and so "Downgrading" to 163.xx either doesn't overwrite the file, because it isn't present in 163.xx, or, detects that it's newer and so leaves the newer version , and then because 163.xx is being installed, then we get the judder fix file (whatever it may be) and so the driver that we are left with is actually a hybrid of sorts - I know it sounds strange, but I can't think of any other explaination as to why this works so well for me.

Especially when you consider, that during tests, I "Rolled Back" using device manager from my working solution (173.65 and then 163.67) to the previously installed 173.65, I kept the good framerates, but had the judder. Then, when I installed 163.67 again, I Kept the good framerates and had No Judder) I have also proven even further by "Uninstalling" my working solution, and just installing 163.67 alone, and have no judder, but significantly lower framerates, because I didn't install 173.65 first. Installed 173.65 again, got good framerates, but judder, and finally installed 163.67 again for the good framerate, no judder solution.

I know you can see the driver files and their version from within device manager, but it seems there are a lot more files than this to each driver set when you extract them.


ASUS G1S
VISTA 32
T7300
2G RAM
8600m GT 256 DDR3

 

Thanks for the post and info Icaru506, could you post the links to the exact driver that you are recommeding. Is it the laptopvideo2go version?

Thanks

 

only notice stuttering in WoW.... i get a constant 60 FPS, but when i rotate in place I get stuttering... don't notice it in any other game.

 

I tried to install 2 167.xx drivers for XP 32bit but neither worked, I kept getting an error.

Do I need to use the Have Disk Method? I couldn't because there was no VGA Controller detected.

 

Anybody know why they won't work for me?

 

I got my HP comin in about 2 wks, DV9700t Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 Ghz 6 Mb L2Cache 800 mhz fsb, 2 gb ddr2, 8600GS 512 MB, ... anybody have an HP and can tell me how they fair as far as temperature goes while gaming? I'm scared as hell ... It seems the 8600 can go either way with the newer games such as COD4. Between the drivers, the heat, the dedicated ram and such .. I dunno what to expect.

 

Interesting theory i gotta say, I will do some testing on the heat thing, to see if i can lower my temp some below 95-96 degrees. About the driver "tweak" sounds a bit wierd, but then again, who knows what really happens when you install new drivers so might aswell be very true. Atleast it should be looked more into.

However! With some people claiming (nearly with their life) that this should be heat causing this.. I cant stop wondering why either Nvidia, Zepto or any other manufactorer has mentioned this? Nvidia says its a known problem and that it is a software glitch, and the manufactorers are partly lost but some has fixed it by Bios.... Explain to me how Heat fits in here please?

 

Well nvidia has acknowledged a memory management problem with the 8800 series and the video posted seems to just show a fps drop but afaik there isn't actually stuttering.

Klan posted this video earlier http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMfSrLNXtQo
It shows very evident stuttering.

Zepto have acknowledged the problem but according to the rep post on their section have yet to pin down the problem.

As for Toshiba and Compal who knows if it was the same stuttering issue or a different one? Perhaps they just lowered the thermal threshold? Without knowing what exactly they changed we can only guess.

 

Well I somewhat agree with you in what you are saying, we cant be sure. And yes that video shows EXACTLY what im suffering from. I guess i have to test it out by extra cooling and see if that helps.. if so, Zepto REALLY gotta rethink their cooling system, since heat has been a problem for them with the last 2-3 series.

 

It would be quite helpful if people suffering from the stuttering problem would test this theory and post feedback. That way we can prove/disprove it and if it turns out to be wrong move onto the next one

If it turns out to be right then we may be in trouble because it would be unlikely there is a proper driver/bios level fix.

 

Actually I take it back - I am seeing behaviour much like the video, I guess maybe it just doesn't annoy me that much.

That doesn't change the fact that 163.67 doesn't seem any different, other than that after 1/2 hour or so I saw a really dramatic slowdown that meant I had to reboot - but (IMHO) that really is just a driver bug that's probably been fixed by now anyway.

 

Ohh.. well that explains your strange performance gain a bit more.
I'm far from an expert on the techinical side of drivers, but I do know that installing new drivers before uninstalling the old ones can lead to a lot of conflict problems, and isn't really something I would recommend.

Can't really comment on the whole hybrid theory, even though it sounds a bit far fetched, but since my experience on the subject is only minor I think it's better to get a more expert opnion on this.
But as long as it works out for you without any problems I guess you shuld be fine.
Meanwhile I'll just stick to the 163.65 ^^, might try the 173 in the weekend though.. with proper installing :>.

 

Hello again everyone, I have now recieved my laptop cooler and its great!

However... some interesting data.. My gpu temp is unchanged! And yes it seems the stuttering starts around 97-98 degrees at gpu-temp, which could support the "heat-theory" however since that is very far from what the gpu can take, I think its more a BIOS - temp - reading Error really than a gpu hardware error.

The reason is if anyone has seen a gpu really overheat, you would know its not possible to continue playing for a few hours.. it either freezes and makes wierd colors on the screen or simply crashes you comp if it gets really hot.

Anyway! back to my data.. funny thing is that my CPU is being cooler very good! when playing WoW the cpu-temp is 60 degrees at max load.

So... what im trying to say is my cpu is cool as never before, the gpu temp havnt changed much and the stuttering... IS STILL THERE!

p.s. tested with 169.61 x64 (back to 160.04 just to be able to play something).

 

Was just playin Crysis on my Asus G1s, was very juddery untill i installed driver v173.80. It seems to be running a lot better now and temp was 90 > 92 degC the whole time. Still had a couple of moments where it lagged a bit but a vast improvement on the last driver.

I have Rivatuner 2.06 does anyone know how to enable the fan control option?

 

I remain unconvinced by the overheating argument. The lock-up you get or odd colours you see with a non-working GPU are consistent with the way a digital circuit fails if timing specifications aren't met. The characteristics of a silicon transistor are quite strongly temperature dependent, and as soon as a part of the circuit goes out of spec, data gets corrupted. Game over, time to reboot.

Normally, where there's a risk of this happening, a 'supervisory' circuit takes over and reduces clock speed to reduce power dissipation, allowing the chip to cool. This kicks in at some predefined temperature threshold. To cause stuttering like in the video, the temperature of the GPU would have to be going up and down ina regular pattern, just above and below the threshold, several times a second. The chip, combined with its heatsink, just isn't physically small enough to do that.

This is actually good news, it means it's more than likely a driver bug, and that can be fixed in software - so no need to return or dismantle a shiny new laptop. We just have to wait, and hope, that nVidia can fix it...

 

Glad to hear its getting better for some, and you are like the 5th to mention that your gpu temp is fallen like 5 degrees at max load with that driver!

Which is quite interesting I think...now the rest of us can just sit tight and hope a vista x64 version will be released (and working)

 

Just tried 173.80. Judder.

Also tried a few other drivers - 167.xx, 169.xx, all juddered after a couple of mins. of UT3.

Just to confirm once again, the only driver I have installed that doesn't cause the judder problem after a couple of minutes of gaming at 1440 x 900 (or crysis @ 1280 x 800) is 163.67, although I haven't tried any earlier ones.

As I said in a previous post, Someone from either Nvidia, or Asus must know what is causing this problem.

Thomas - I do think it's heat related, although by that I don't mean that the heat alone is causing the anomaly, but the way in which the drivers respond to the heat exceeding above a certain threshold - like a throttling effect. I've never monitored my GPU temps, and I do believe that either 163.67 doesn't cause the GPU to get as hot, or when it does reach the threshold that causes other drivers to make my machine judder, it acts differently.

 

@Icaru506

I will agree with you on that, I think were back to the very first theory made when this issue was mentioned few months ago, temperature reading and BIOS.
So basicly its up to the manufactors to fix this issue.

btw, I installed 165.01 for vista x64 yesterday and they do quite okay here.

 

Guys - something occurred to me yesterday which might be worth trying for those of you running XP...

Have you tried setting the power saving mode in Control Panel to "Always On"?

I was looking at this site - and apparently, as well as the advertised settings for hard disc and display power saving, this feature in XP also controls the way CPU performance is throttled with SpeedStep. "Always On" pegs it at full speed all the time, whereas other modes can allow the CPU to slow down.

Quite what it is that determines it's OK for the CPU to slow down isn't well documented, but I'd swear it seems smoother now I've taken the PC out of the default "portable / laptop" mode.

Maybe there's a similar feature in Vista too?

 

There is, when you go into power options, under each power plan there is change power plan settings, then in that menu there is advance power settings. Here you can adjust the minimum and maximum processor rates and many other values.

 

Has to be worth a go, then - it could explain a lot. Imagine:

- CPU instructs GPU to render a frame
- GPU takes longer to render the frame than the CPU took to describe it.
- Therefore, CPU idle.
- SpeedStep controller senses CPU idle and reduces clock speed
- Next frame, the CPU is now too slow, display momentarily freezes
- SpeedStep controller senses high CPU load and increases clock speed again
- Repeat ad nauseum

It would explain why newer drivers can even seem worse than older ones - if they're more CPU efficient, the CPU speed gets dropped more readily. It also explains why the problem is only apparent on laptops - and it's nothing to do with cooling, just a misguided desire to save a little battery power.

 

I usually game on "High Performance" power setting which has CPU states set as 100% for min and max and still get the stutter.

 

Well, time for some updates on my driver chase.

I did try the 173.65 drivers in the weekend, unfortunetly something went wrong. Instead of improving performance like I expected it just messed up stuff. My 3DMark score went down horribly, got lousy fps in CoD4 and some really weird graphical glitches (everything went like white and flickery whenever I died or used iron sight/zoomed). They didn't remove any juttering (hard to notice in all the glitching though), and not sure if it decreased my heat either.
I have had this happend before with other drivers (just don't remember which one ). If anyone know what the cause of this could be and care to explain it, I would be most thankful.

Anyways, horrifed as a i was I tried to revert back to my old 163.67, but didn't have any system restore points before the un-installing of them. So instead try to get them at laptopvideo2go (like I usallly do), of course the servers were overloaded (still are) so they had shut down the downloading of old drivers. Did som googeling but couldn't find the drivers anywhere that worked. In a last desperation i tried the offical WHQL 163.75 drivers from nvidia with the modded INF from latopvideo2go.

And this is where I'm stuck at the moment. Luckily they are pretty much jutter/stutter free like the 163.67, but they don't perform that well.

Another thing worth mentioning, that could have something to do with the 173.65 drivers being messed up for me.
I have been getting some random errors from time to time (not sure for how long).
These are as follows:

- The game I'm playing at the moment crashes to the desktop, and windows tells me my video driver stopped working, but it got corrected shortly after. (most common)
- Game just crashes to dekstop and I get a little window that says something about a directX error. (not as common)

Both of errors these have happend on 163.67, 163.75 and perhaps on other drivers (but it's fairly recent, since I didn't get the errors the first month of using my laptop).
Frankly I'm a bit scared, could it be my 8600 failing? or other hardware faults?
I really hope it's just some software error that is fixeable with at worst a re-format or maybe just some directx re-installing/tweaking the drivers. But if this continues I might have to send it to Asus (which I really don't feel like doing, only had it for 2 months), unless someone who've run into similar problems can shed some more light on the matter, or point me in the right direction.

 

Hmm... I have never been able to play UT3. After a couple of minutes the FPS start jumping like mad. But I CAN confirm something. FPS-dropping for me has something to do with the laptops temperature. One of my best friends bought a 6324W at the same time as me, and both of us has the same issues as everyone else, with stutter and FPS drops. But we started having our laptops standing in the air. I placed two dvd covers at each "rubber foot" at the back, and the front foots up on the edge of my external keyboard. My friend did the same. And for WoW atleast, we never get FPS droppes anymore. But my lappie cant manage UT3 at all still, I just thought "okey its a too demanding game for my little znote". But now when I saw you can run it at max resolution and everything I got really intrested. I get better performance with newer driver than 163.67 in WoW atleast. I'm using Zeptos newest (167.59) atm.