nvidia 9200M GS troubles

I have a HP dv5t laptop with a nvidia 9200M GS 256Mb graphics card in combination with a 1680x1050 resolution display, running Vista (and Ubuntu)64bit. The graphics performance of my 9200M GS GPU is lower and GPU temperature is higher than expected. These problems were apparent on arrival.

In Vista, scrolling in Internet Explorer (or firefox) results in max. 5 frames per seconds, when all aero options are enabled, and the native resolution of my
screen is used (1680x1050). When playing a 3D game, the temperature
reaches more than 100 degrees Celcius and the gameplay stutters. The
idle temperature of the GPU is 50 degrees Celcius, even when the
Powermizer function is enabled (which throtles the GPU and video memory
speeds). For reading out the temperature in windows I used GPU-Z.

I tried a lot of different NVidia drivers, incl. the driver available on the HP site (175.88). I did a fresh install of windows vista. When running linux everything seems to be working fine; even with 3D compositing enabled (which is similar to aero in vista) scrolling in firefox is fine, and reported temperatures range from 35 to 60 degrees Celsius, when using the nvclock tool. When I use the nvidia-settings tool, temperature readings are similar to the windows readings. Another fascinating thing is that GPU-Z reports that my memory bus width is 64 bit. And the nvidia-settings tool in linux reports a memory size of 512Mb.

HP says that it's possibly a hardware problem. But that doesn't explain the correct working in linux. Also, I don´t experience a distorted image. My suspicion is that the problem in windows is due to a problem in the drivers or the bios. Are other users of this laptop experiencing similar problems? If you think that it's a hardware problem, what exactly do you expect to be wrong? Is it something I could resolve myself? I'm not afraid of opening the notebook, since I'm an electrical engineer.

Returning the unit is currently not really an option for me. The problem is that I'm leaving the US by the end of next week (I will move to The Netherlands), so I will not be able to wait until the notebook returns. Besides that, I need the notebook for work.

 

Does anybody wants to share some of his thoughts / knowledge / experience concerning this issue? I would appreciate it!

 

The GPU is actually 64 bit and the video memory is 512MB although it won't use any more than 128MB. Why don't you try running 177.92 from laptopvideo2go.com. Quite an amazing driver I must admit. Try it and report back.

 

This is crazy. Now, suddenly, the issue seems to be gone. I was just going to install the 177.92 driver, when I noticed that scrolling in IE doesn't show the lagging anymore. And I did not do anything... I'll keep an eye on it, and let you know if it stays like this.
Pranalien, you say that the GPU is 64 bit and 512 MB. But GPU-Z and nvlock say it is 128 bit and 256 MB. When I ordered the laptop, I payed for a NVidia 9200M GS GPU with 256 MB DDR2 memory. The output of lspci -v in linux shows that 256 MB is reserved. Nevertheless, Nvidia-settings (in linux) detects my card as a NB9M-GE GPU with 512MB 64 bit memory. I think that nvidia-settings displays the wrong specs. I still find this very strange.

 

Now the issue is back, and today my laptop switched off, possibly because it was overheating...

 

Does the linux driver enable hypermemory? If so, it may be detecting that total (dedicated + hypermemory).

 

I don't think so. Because of that the drivers doesn't "change" the ram setting by getting off from system ram. It has to be done before the Os loads up. So it can be changed in the BIOS Settings.

 

I guess you mean TurboCache? That's the NVIDIA equivalent of ATI's Hypermemory. You could be right, although I would have appreciated it if the nvidia-settings tool would have told me about that. And as far as I understand it, the amount of reserved turbocache memory is determined based on the amount of RAM in your system. In my case I have 4GB. Vista says 1790MB is reserved for TurboCache. So I have the feeling that the 512MB reported by nvidia-settings (and windows XP too, by the way) is incorrect.

The BIOS doesn't allow me to change any settings regarding TurboCache. I think the linux driver does support TurboCache.

 

I too have a DV5T, P8400, 9200GS, 4GB ram, Vista 32.
My Vista aero score is 3.4. It went up by .1 when I put in the 4GB of ram.
It does "feel" like the video performance is lacking.
I have 2 other DV5T's to compare it to. They both have P7350, onboard 4500 video, 4gb ram, vista 32.
Both of those machines show a 3.8 aero score. Overall video performance is just as good, and in some areas it seems better. When running Skype, the webcam video coming from the onboard machines is smoother than my DV5T with faster CPU and GPU.

I think something is wrong with the 9200GS cards, or there is a compatibility problem with that card and the DV5T.

 

Do you guys have the 6 cell or 12 cell battery? I have the 12 cell and it lifts the laptop a bit, leaving a decent amount of space for air. My 9200 idles at 40 and the max i've seen it is in the 60's.

Also, if you would like to use the newest nvidia drivers, while still able to watch blu-rays, use this mod: http://www.driverheaven.net/nvmodtool.php

I play RTS and this card is great for that. I'm NOT using hp's default drivers.

 

I downloaded and installed that driver.

I notice, maybe psychological, that the screen is a bit brighter.
However, my Vista aero score of 3.4 has not changed.
My gaming graphics score dropped from 4.7 to 4.6.

Did you have a similar thing happen?

 

For me installing that 177.92 driver didn't help either. I have flashed my bios with the oldest available firmware from the HP site, and I'm using the 178.24 driver from laptopvideo2go.com. Now scrolling in IE seems to be a little better, when powermizer is disabled. But still not what I would expect. And my vista aero score is 2.5!

 

I found a relevant thread on laptopvideo2go. Search for "GF 8400M slow Aero performance" (I'm sorry, I can't post urls yet). The issue seems to be driver related, and it exists for a lot of different laptops. Let's hope NVIDIA and the notebook manufacturers are working on it...

 

It should not get that how at all, is it on a flat desk when your are using it?
I may be jumping to conclusions but I don't think the heatsink is seated properly.
:S

 

Ventilation is not the problem in my case; I'm using the laptop on a flat surface, and the vent is running. The vent also increases in speed when the GPU gets hotter, so that seems to work.
It might be possible that the heat sink is not seated properly, but that would only explain the high temperatures, not the slow scrolling. Scrolling in internet explorer is slow, even at low resolutions, not the aero effects (for example minimizing and maximizing is very smooth). Besides that, scrolling in 2D mode in Vista and in 3D mode in linux is normal.

 

I'm using driver version 176.47 (apparently originally from the Toshiba site), from laptopvideo2go, and now the slow scrolling problem is gone! Apparently it was a driver problem. Temperatures are still high, but I read somewhere that the GPU should work fine until 105 degrees Celsius. If I do some intensive graphics stuff, the ventilator makes a lot of noise, but I guess that's something I'll have to live with. When it's idle, the laptop is quiet.

 

Well the fact that it is cooling down when you run Linux says to me that it's clearly a Software problem. People don't realize that Vista still has a lot of kinks to work out and even new hardware components including graphics cards are not always fully supported by Vista upon release. Vista is only 2 years old and when it launched it did not support much hardware or software.

Now the fact that you bought the Notebook and technically one of it's components is not supported by the software I would imagine that you would have some kind of comeback.

I have too have a HP Notebook (Vista) with a 9200m and I've not had the problems you have although it does not perform as you would expect a 256MB GPU to.

I find that when scrolling through my music in Windows Media Player the album art thumbnails are choppy and break apart when I scroll. I do have 15Gb of music but my other notbook (Dell, 128MB Nvidia 8400m) scrolls through the music a treat.

Although the 9200 is great for viewing movies in HD (I have a Blu Ray Drive) and the PureVideo HD technology really does look great I don't think it's too fancy when it comes to displaying 3D graphics. Having said that I only have the Notebook a week so I have a lot of playing around with the graphics to do to optimize performance for, Photoshop, Games, Movies, etc...

All I can say is that my 9200m is not perfect but yours is clearly having problems and I reckon it's a software related problem. It's clearly not normal. The heat problem you're having sounds pretty scary too. My older laptop would get so hot I actually couldn't pick it up nor it's power cable. It's only after I got my new one that I realized how not normal that actually is

Good Luck anyway

 

ive never had lag in windows before using this card, even when i first bought it with e drivers loaded. check your processes and ram usage, and update ALL your drivers. it might not even be a graphics card problem.
did you use driver sweeper in safe mode between driver updates?
also try the 181.20 drivers, they gave me higher performace in benchmarks and in games, maybe for your problem too?