e1705 giving me trouble!

Well I got my 1705 about a week ago...I reformatted to get everything working smoothly. It's got the T2500 2.0ghz, 1gig of ram, and 7900GS. First time I installed and ran BF2 I ran 80fps on all high settings, hardly ever getting any lag at all! It's been a few days later, and I really cannot understand why things are changing. With the game on medium now I get maybe 40-60fps walking around, and it often lags down to 20 or less in a fight. Similarly, DOD Source bogs down as well and sometimes puts me in the 20s. I know these games are pretty intense, but I also know that my laptop should be able to handle them a lot better than it is. Could it be that my notebook is overheating or something, and if so how could I check for this?

Also, I do have updated drivers for the card and all of that. I've turned off my anti virus and made sure there aren't any demanding processes running, but nothing seems to work! Oh yeah, and lastly, BF2 likes to randomely crash to desktop...

 

Are you getting crashes only to the desktop or are you getting BSOD?

Particularly (Multiple IRP Complete Requests)?

 

It most frequently occurs after it has loaded the map and then I press join game and it will just exit out of BF2 completely and take me back to the desktop. I'm less concerned with the crashing however, and more so concered about the poor performance of my laptop.

 

May sound dumb, but is your laptop plugged in when playing? Because everything will be downclocked normally when your running off a battery.

 

Yup, it's always plugged in.

 

Your power settings may have changed - see if the sliders are set to "Optimal Performance".

 

Where do I find these sliders to adjust?

 

I've also just been monitoring my GPU temperature. I'm not doing anything but browsing and listening to music on winamp, and haven't gamed for over an hour. Yet the temperature reads 77 degrees Celcius, which seems a bit high.

 

Now I'm really confused. I started up BF2 just to see how it would be again, and this time it starts working...When I finish playing the card temperature is only at 60! I'm still looking for that slider for optimal performance, but it seems the card choosing to run hot and cold may have something to do with it.

 

I read something similar that stated the temperature was lower when the card was in use, possibly because of fans.

 

SeaSlorg is right - when you are gaming, the fans spool up to a higher speed to compensate for the increased heat, and the higher velocity of the airflow over the GPU and other parts causes them to run cooler.

The slider/settings for the video card power should be in the video card options in the desktop properties - go to the settings tab and click advanced.

Chaz

 

Found it, everything was already at max settings. I understand how the temps may be cooler, but 77 seems absolutely ridiculous for not doing anything but browsing and such. I've seen most people reporting 40-50.

 

Here's a tip:

Install the latest MobileForce drivers ( http://www.tweaksrus.com), and in the nVidia settings dialog, go to "Clock speed settings", select "Manual overclocking", and tick "Fan always on" and "Apply these settings at startup." As long as you don't change any clock speeds (which you may not want to do if you're experiencing heat issues) this will just cause the GPU fan to blow all the time, greatly reducing heat if you can stand the noise. The MobileForce drivers also yield much better performance than the stock Dell ones.

Also, you're never going to be completely free from hitching in BF2 with only 1GB of RAM, ideally you want 2GB for modern games but at least 1.5GB is a must for perfectly smooth BF2 on highest settings...just ask anyone with an XPS that only got 1GB of RAM.

 

Well I just applied those fan settings and the temperatures are still constantly hovering around 70 degrees. I'm not sure that it did anything, because I never heard any extra noise to note an increase in fan speed. Oh yeah, I already have the MobileForce 84.56 drivers so I don't believe that to be the problem. I'm thinking of calling up Dell and seeing if I can get this looked at/replaced, since it's only about a week old and already experiencing these problems.

Also, I realize that BF2 will lag here and there even on the best system. However, it at times is virtually unplayable with the amount of chop that it gets, again, on just medium settings. And I know this shouldn't happen because:
a) my system is better than for that to happen
b) I have actually experienced playing it on the high settings with no lag before, just for some reason I am unable to do so anymore!

 

Somethings not right about your GPU temps WITH fans on low, mine hangs around 45C+7=52C

Are you sure you don't have a virus scan or other piece of software causing your lag? During your worst slowdown look to see if your drive light is active. GPU protection slowdown should not kick in unless you reach 102C.

 

It's not the anti-virus, I make sure EVERYTHING is turned off before playing.

 

Well, let us know what dell wants you to do trouble shooting wise

My temp sensors were bad right out of the box then dell killed the system board trying to test it.

This is why i'm holding off dumping the OS and GPU drivers, for another two months. I'm going to bet Dell wants you to re-image your drive to rule out any software glitches

You can do the full internal hardware test by holding down the FN key and POWER on button during boot up.

Good luck on your machine!

 

Well I had some free time today so I decided to give the Dell chat support a try, since I read others had a pretty good experience with it. After getting through the preliminary questions, he told me to run the diagnostic and see what happens, then told me I could come back if I still had a problem...Figured I wouldn't get much out of it; So I did run the diagnostic and everything came up okay, so I'm not sure what to do next really. I'm thinking of reformatting again, even though that seems ridiculous considering I've had the system for only about a week now, and it's pretty unlikely that the problem is software related.

 

maybe the beta of http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/ can help cool it down ? seems to help keeping my GPU cool when I have system fans on high .

 

well, you might not want to over load it with all the "best" stuff that you need. You will want to get a computer that needs the least upgrading that way it wont over load the way it sounds like it did. I like apples for the use that it sounds like you are using it for. Its not the best computer to be doing that on. Just a tip.

 

Wrong thread?

 

Yeah, this isn't an issue with the computer, it is a software problem. First, start my getting 2 gigs of RAM. I get around 9500 in 3dmark05, and I STILL lagged horribly in Bf2 until I got my second gig. It doesn't matter how good your GPU is if you don't have the RAM.

As for the heat, I think you're fine. Dell has the fans kick on REALLY late on their newer line. I sit at about the same temp, but when the fans kick on in games it goes down.

I would definitely check for spyware and everything, but I think your biggest problem is the lack of RAM

 

how is the the e1705 fan noise with the 7900gs vs. the m1710 w/ 7900gtx? i really hate noisy laptops and since i'll use it in a recording studio it's imperative that it remain quiet.

 

I co-reviewed the XPS M1710; it was the quietest notebook I have used to date. Even at full tilt, the noise level was exceptionally low. Have a look at the review:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2887&review=Dell+XPS+M1710

 

This program seems to work nicely, and putting the fan speed to slow cooled it down to about 50 degrees. Just one question: Should I turn this off when I'm about to play a game and let the fan do its own work, or will it still kick in by itself if it needs to turn onto a higher speed with the program still on? I'm thinking though that the reason I run cooler after BF2 is because it turns the fan on "slow," which is what it's on when I run this program. But I just want to make sure that this program doesn't prevent it from turning on higher if need be.

 

Before I install this app, my e1705 was running pretty pretty warm... way hotter than my hp dv8000t. I know dv8000t has a lower GPU card but still it ran nice and cool without Fan applications. with this e1705, I remember the area by backspace key was very warm with underside very hot the first time I boot up and installed Heros of Might and magic V.

when I play games I like to set both fan at high just so 1705 is nice and cool overall. A Cool temperature system also ensures smooth system performance (framerates) When not gaming, I set it at slow on both fans. I dont like how the system waits till certain *hot* temperature is reached then kick on the fans. I perfer to keep it cool at all times if possible.

I check in the *maintain minimum fan speed* option. sometimes I override it with slow or high depends on situation as mention above. Been working really good for the past 48 hours.( 2 days old 1705 owner )