8600m GT woes

Well I'm just about fed up with my 8600m GT. After about 20 minutes of gameplay my driver either crashes or it downclocks. I thought it was my temperature, but it stays under 60c. I thought it was my OC of 580/445, but it does it at stock clocks. I changed drivers, but it does the same thing with the 175.16, 174,31, 174.93 drivers alike. I tried XP but get the same problem.

Should I be worrying about a damaged video card? Does anyone else have the same issue I'm having? Any help would be appreciated; Gaming for 20 minutes then rebooting is unacceptable.

Games played that I have noticed it on: CSS, GRID, NFS Prostreet, Vegas 2.

 

The vents have no dust, right? It may be some overheating due to dust.

 

could be... I've neglected to check for dust since I bought it.

 

Dust cleanup should be done at every 1-2 months for gaming laptops.
Try HWMonitor, not all monitors show up the temp correctly.
Also, raise the back of the laptop,and make sure there is no fabric underneath.
Also, consider Undervolting the CPU for lower temps overall which will allow you a safer OC for the GPU.

 

How do you clean dust out of a laptop?

Do you have to take it all aprat and that?

 

Not necessarily: just spraying compressed air in the vents usually does the trick.

 

Well I think dust was the issue. There wasn't much inside, but it was enough to mess something up. Now I'm gaming happy.

 

it happened again.

 

Are you sure something else isn't causing the problem..?

 

This issue happens to me a lot as well. I switched drivers to 173.80 and there have been no problems so far (yesterday I played for 4 hours straight to beat Mass Effect). Does your screen flash and then either crash or downclocks (mine clocks down to 275/200)? I'll let you know if it happens again on these drivers.

I've tried most 174.xx and 175.xx drivers and they all gave me problems.

 

Use the 169.04 driver. I had that since last year and it hasn't crashed on me since.

 

i went from 175.93(i think it was) to 169.04 and my gaming performance went down. CS:S stutters like crazy now.

 

Worst comes to worst you can apply thermal paste. you can do that for GPUs right?

 

I've eliminated the driver issue, after about 2 hours it did it again with the 169.04 drivers. I don't think it is heat, because 2 separate temperature monitors report temps below 60c.

 

Try 173.65. That's the best driver for my 8600M GT so far, also considering performance / heat ratio. The only downside: the s-video out does not work properly.

 

arg those did it too. same wi the 175.70. I'm trying the new 177.26 drivers.

 

could it be something with vista maybe?

 

I thought that, but it seems to be solved so far with the 177.26 drivers. I've gamed for about 2 hours no problem.

 

thats good to hear since I ordered the exact same laptop as you a few days ago.

 

Yeah it's a solid laptop minus this problem I have been having with newer drivers.

 

173.80 crashed after a few days of gaming : (

I suppose that I can deal with it crashing once a week

 

Hey check this link out...it has some possible solutions

Apparently many people have this problem (one thread is 113 pages long)

link

 

you probably should take a break between "a few days" of gaming at a time...

 

A few days meant a 1-3 hours a day haha. I have to work