Random Lag?

Hello, I game on my HP Pavillion dv6000t, the specs are:

Intel 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo
2GB Ram
nVidia GeForce Go 7400 - 128MB Shared Memory, 256MB Total
80GB Hard Drive
Windows XP Media Center Edition

I can be doing anything that may cause a small stress on my video card such as watching a movie, playing a flash game, and playing a few other games that should be supported by my video card such as World of Warcraft. One moment I will be running at 60FPS, and the next I am down at 8FPS just standing there.

Lag will occur doing anything as I said, it will come on for a bit, and then go off, and over and over.

I know this could be various problems, but has anyone occured this before?

 

What video card drivers are you using atm?

Mike.

 

I looked for drivers on the nVidia site, and there were none for the 7400. I reformatted with the HP recovery partition not long ago, and the only update I have done for the video card was one from Windows Update.

 

Does it do that continously? Like every couple of seconds or so?

 

Yes it does it over and over, but sometimes the lag lasts maybe 20 seconds, and then stops, and starts again.

 

Sounds like the same problem I'm having. Games wont stops stuttering reguardless on which game I play, except it happens in Vista.

 

sounds like overheating (where the GPU will downclock itself to cool down)... but that videocard should not be that hot since its not a high-end one.

Make sure you did this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=60416

Make sure you have optimized drivers:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=64910

And do this to watch the temps and the GPU clock speed while ingame:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81852

Make sure that you are not blocking the airvents on the bottom, clean out the vents if dust is clogging, you have to physically check inside the vents if possible:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=60914

Hope this helps,
-Gophn

 

Thanks, I read all of the topics, except I tried the drivers that I believed fit my video card and they all failed at install.

 

uninstal your current drivers, restart
go into Safe Mode (press F8 as your system is booting up)
install the new drivers (ignore the Un-Signed Drivers thing)

Restart, go back into Normal Mode.

Tell us how it goes.

 

I recieve the error:
The NVIDIA Setup program could not locate any drivers that are compatible with your current hardware. Setup will now exit.

I used the program on the third thread you suggested, the max it was up to was 66 which was only a few times. My FPS in Battlefield 2 would be at 100-99 the whole time, and then it would go down to 8-14.

 

so when the temp hits a certain temp, the clock speed goes down?

 

No actually, it will go down when the temp is at 60, it will go when it is at 63, it depends.

 

hmm... probably software then.

Can you uninstall the current drivers?

If so, then do it and install this ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34044.exe

thats the default drivers for your notebook.

 

I un-installed, restarted, installed, restarted, loaded up my game and it went great for the first few minutes, then back down to 10-15 FPS.

 

hmm...

is you're Windows is already updated for Multi Core support?

if so, then I would be suspicious of the airflow in the notebook.

how long have you have the notebook?

have you ever cleaned out the vents and fans with Q-tips and/or compressed air? because its pretty important to do occasionally (check once a month)

 

I have had the notebook around 7 months, I took off the keyboard once to clean it, and used canned air, as well as the ram/processor and the section on the side where the video card lays. I use a cooling pad as well, and monitor the CPU temp.

 

hmm... (again)
sounds like you have been doing the right stuff.

have you tried playing another game to see if this still occurs?

 

Yes, I just played World of Warcraft and the same thing happened. I would make no motion in game and the FPS would go down to nearly 6.

 

Try installing another driver version, but use the modded inf from laptopvideo2go. IT could very well be the drivers that HP ships.

60C is not hot for a GPU - I believe nVidia puts in a throttle temperature of somewhere around 80-100C.

 

The threshold temps for Nvidia have been around 85-90C on average... to cause a downclock of the GPU.

So its not that likely to be a heat issue.

 

This most certainly sounds like a heat issue but if your temperatures are in the 60*C range then it's not . . . is this notebook still under warranty?

 

Yes it is under warrenty.
Can someone please let me know what driver to install? The ##.### driver numbers I can 't seem to understand.

 

Ok try following this guide again (I assume you already tried):
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=64910
Go to the laptopvideo2go website and download the 97.95 drivers for Windows XP. Make sure you follow the guide so they install correctly.

 

The driver install went fine, I went to my game again, the FPS went down, like usual. I noticed that whenever I lagged (FPS wise) the speaking tools in BF2 when they give you tips, they seemed to lag as well.

 

I now believe it is a problem becides the video card considering everything lags including sound whenever the FPS goes way down.

 

Perhaps. The same thing happens to me (Sound and Video lag when FPS drop every 5 seconds or so)

 

Have you been able to fix the problem?

 

Nope Unfortunately I have not. I have tried many things such as installing different video drivers, installing the latest DirectX redist, and even installing some MS patch for Vista that describes a similar problem. I even went as far as doing a system recovery (from OEM CD's) and I still have the problem. Nothing has worked.

 

Same here, even reformatted and re-installed windows as you said

 

I think it might be the GPU's peak temp is set incorrectly at 60C degrees, so when it hits that it forces your videocard to downgrade.

I had that happened to me with my first 7800GTX, I would play BF2 or Oblivion and in 5 mins the temps get to around 80C and the framerate dropped until my temps were down 5-10C degrees.

I swapped the videocard (still under warranty) and no problems now.

 

I never knew you were able to replace a video card in a notebook. I guess you just can't swap different cards

So what, contact HP support, pull the video card out, ship it and hope they will send me a new one?

 

Some of the newer (and probably better) drivers haven't been released for mobile chips yet. This is easy to bypass. Go to www.laptopvideo2go.com and check out their forum. They have drivers that will work with mobile graphics cards and are updated frequently.

 

I've tried looking around, guess it wouldn't hurt to look a bit more.

 

I just installed HWiNFO32, looked at my video card and the memory clock is at 351MHz, but it's supposed to be at 450MHz, would this have anything to do with it?

 

*Bump*

 

I've got the same problem, on a much lesser card however, but it shouldn't be having the problems it does. Even playing primitive flash games or 2d games it will get laggy, sometimes watching interenet videos (like on Yahoo news, or youtube) it would lag (or game intro videos), and the sound would always lag.

I have a go5200, and I highly doubt the temp is to high, because the fans don't even go super high when it happens sometimes.

 

Yeah, the same thing with me. I could be playing a flash game, anything flash related, a game, a movie, youtube, etc and it will still lag.

 

it might be software related then.... or harddrive has sector errors.

 

I had the problem and then I reformatted. I have been on the same driver the whole 7 months I have had the laptop and it started acting like this 4 months after I had it. So then I reformatted and re-installed, and still had the problem. Would that have fixed a harddrive problem? And I don't see what could be software related after reformatting

 

would it really be harddrive? If it was a short online vid then wouldn't most of that be in RAM not HDD?

 

Yeah.. exactly what I thought, what do you mean by sector errors?

 

a CHKDSK /R would usually find and fix these.

 

drivers cleaner??? clean out the old one before reinstalling it 500x chkdsk might work, have you have any virus or anything that might effect the driver, or the registry... maybe just format the hard drive... if that doesnt work, complaint to hp tell them to get you a new one

 

I ran CHKDSK and everything seems to run ok, but its 12AM here so I'm off to bed, I'll update tomorrow.

 

What speed RPM Hard Drive do you have?

 

My Harddrive is a TOSHIBA MK9034GSX @ 5400RPM.

 

CHKDSK didn't work as I thought, but now the lag dosen't appear as often.

 

can you do me a favor:
Get HiJackThis, and Run a Scan.

Post the list all of the startup processes and services that are found by Hijackthis

It can help me determine the issue as well.

 

That was the log file it generated.

 

Try turning off Yahoo Widgets. I haven't used that particular program, but I've always been distrusting of those types. They tend to access the internet or your hard drive regardless of whatever else you might be doing.

If your comfortable doing it, I would go into the task manager and "End Process" on everything thats not required for Windows to run. If doing this fixes the problem, then the cause is one of the programs running in the background.

If you kill the anti-virus services, disconnect your internet connection first. You don't want to compound the problem by getting hit by a virus.