Gateway 7811 Strange and unusual problem...

Hi,

I am the owner of a P2888 Refurbished Gateway 7811 Laptop bought from TD less than 3 weeks ago and am I having a strange issues which starts to make me wonder If I will return this laptop. when I bought this laptop I talked to the TD rep who told me that there was indeed a 30day return policy even for this item so I am covered on this one.

The problem is: When I play SOME games, after 3-4 minutes of gameplay, the game starts to stutters each 1 or 2 second and at the exact same time, the right LED on the bottom of the laptop with the battery sign over it flashes. This is getting really frustrating since the stutter is more annoying than running a game with 15fps. It does not seem to do it with everygames and temperatures are no more than 80c for the GPU while doing it. I have ran left4dead with my GPU over 85C without any hassles or stutter. After a long while (more than 30 minutes) the game stops stuttering and becomes stable but with a much lower FPS and the battery LED falls into purple color (which means the laptop is on battery power)

The 2 games currently doing it are Titan Quest and Sacred 2.

The Windows Event viewer does not seems to capture any event in this case. Also, I tried 2 different video driver versions and both are doing the same thing. Since it's the Battery (or Power, whatever the name is) LED, I believe it has to do with the ACPI Management. When I put my laptop in POWER SAVER mode in Vista, my games does not stutter at all but is just plain slow since It fell into speedstep and lower GPU speed.

I just hope this is a software/driver issues because if it's hardware related, this lappy goes back to TD.

I need to know ASAP if this is hardware related or there is a way to fix this software-side.

Thanks

 

If you are running Hardware Monitor or something similar, shut it down and try your games again without any software monitoring temps.

 

Already tried since the problem occured way before I started monitoring temps.

Thanks for the input though.

 

Im assuming TZS0 is hitting 98c.. per HWMonitor, yes? There are some units that need new thermal paste applied to the CPU heatsink.. if you're willing to do it, then you can stop this problem unless you are overclocking the GPU. NEvertheless, new AS5 on CPU will resolve it @ stock CPU/GPU settings. Otherwise, you're not going to overcome it. Sorry.

 

Not at all.

I already looked over this matter (another thread, same advice from you) and my CPU temps never reaches more than 55c-58c in HWMonitor. The TZ0 temps stays really low.

The stuttering problem occurs even before the GPU warms up. In the titan quest menu, where we see our main character and some 3d effect, the stutters occurs and the battery led is flashing like crazy at each lock-up.

I will try to fidle with the Powermizer feature of the GPU but I doubt it is the problem. I am really lost on this as I don't know how would this be an hardware mather.

 

It's like If I was unplugging the AC power then plug it back for a splitsecond...and repeat.

The sound doesn't looks like to stutter at all. I just updated my GPU Drivers to the latests from laptopvideo2go and nothing new. GPU-Z does not even see any throttling from my GPU.

I also fiddled with the Vista Power plans and all of them except the Power Saver has this issue.

The TZS0 and TZS1 temps never goes more far than 65c IIRC.

I don't have any viruses or such. I have the Standard 90W AC that came with the laptop. I am running Vista x64 that came with it.

 

Hmm.. Doesn't sound like powermizer. What driver you using for the GPU? Check out iaTa's thread stickied at the top of the forum. Possibly driver related, but I never, ever had any issues with lights flashing. That's definately a power issue, if I were to make assumptions. There's been numerous people making complaints about these refurb 7811's. Hrm. If you find out the issue, please let us know

EDIT: Just read the post while I was posting.. I hate to bring the BIOS up..but what version is yours?

 

The Bios that comes with the P2888.

The 9c.08.00 one.

 

If not in RAID, drop back to the 9c.05.00 BIOS. See if it helps. Click the link in my sig. If that doesn't help, go 9c.10.00

 

Just tried the 9c.05.00 with no luck.

Will try the IMV-28.

 

Currently running on the 9c.10.00 BIOS and nothing has changed.

 

Update:

It does it with 2 RTHDIBL instances with Prime95 at the same time, when the system is fully stressed. It does it less often but still does it. Strange since the 3 first days I had it, I made the same tests almost all day long and I don't recall seeing this issue.

I guess it really is a power issue with the laptop.

Calling TD monday morning...

 

While waiting for monday morning to come, I fiddled with the Vista power management. I tweaked the settings like PCI-Express link state...Adaptative display and so on with no luck at all.

I guess the ultimate test to troubleshoot the problem if it's software or hardware related would be a fresh different OS install, like windows XP.

If I have the time, i'll have a try.

 

the 7811 needs the 120 watt adapter not the 90 watt

 

i am also having the TZS0 issue when it hits 98c i cant seem to get it to drop below that for the life of me it does it with the stock cpu as well as my x9100 i have followed all the things people have been posting here. I have applied AS5 to the CPU with no change. I use RightMark to undervolt it and it still goes to 98c im starting to think that this thermal monitor is not related to CPU but rather the northbridge with its crappy thermal pad. I will apply AS5 to it and see if it helps at all.

 

my cpu and gpu have been going for 96 hours at 100% and the current temps "CPU is x9100 undervolted to 1.0500V @ 2.93GHZ" are

Core 1 51c
Core 2 53c
GPU 61c
TZS0 98c
TZS1 65c

max temps are

Core 1 56c
Core 2 57c
GPU 63c
TZS0 98c
TZS1 69c

this is with AS5 on the CPU and GPU and the stock thermal pad on the Northbridge.

i will post results for AS5 on the Northbridge soon.

 

Ok i have found something very odd and wanted to post it. I accidently unplugged my ac adapter from the wall and once it went on battery power the TZS0 temp dropped to 67c everything is still running at 100% mind you. This could only be explained by the gpu using power miser but i have this disabled. So what could this be cause by? ACPI?

 

Had the same problem with Titan Quest on my 7811, found that removing (physics ?) driver cleared it up. A lot of older games do not like it and actually causes performance issues.

You could also try running on only 1 core, again older games don't always run smoothly using 2 (IL2 Sturmovik is my fave that runs best on 1 core).

 

Yes, your laptop should run with the 120W power adapter. If you want to check just yank the battery out and test... Stress the PC and see what happens. Sounds like you don't have enough juice with that 90W.

I know that when I run on battery only, my FPS drops way low, L4D isn't playable; game stutters/choppy. I probably can adjust the nvidia settings for performance but all I do is just plug the thing in while gaming and all is well. I have the 120W adapter tho.

Ooops, I just realized that the original post was back in January...