New 7811FX but with some issues and questions

All - first, great forum and I've learned alot in the past few days reading through numerous threads. I just picked up a P-7811FX laptop from a BestBuy 1 week ago and now with some time under my belt using it I have a few concerns/questions that I hope I can get some specific guidance on. Moderator - since I have a combination of discussion points I created a separate thread, but if it is not appropriate my appologies and please move as required.

This is a 2888 model that came with the 9c.08.00 BIOS. In my area there were 4 BestBuys and none of them had any new ones left, only floor models on "clearance" (not much of a clearance price in my opinion). I purchased the one that was in the best condition at a new BB with only about a month of use on it. Full warranty.

1- Screen issue: white clouding when viewed from off axis. Based on the threads there are others with this it appears. Sort of a bizarre issue, but very distracting and I'm concerned with the longevity and long term performance. I can not see any color or light areas when looking at the screen straight on! Day before yesterday I grabbed my screen cleaning cloth and "tapped" on one of the clouds while looking from the side just for fun. To my surprise 3/4 of the cloud disappeared! More tapping and gentle rubbing got rid of both clouds!! However, when I closed the lid and reopened it, the clouds reappeared (slightly different shape and locations) but I was able to again remove those with judicious wiping. Is this normal for all these 7811 screens or do I have a potential problem/defect? As a sub-issue I also have a good 3/4 to 1" of light-bleed at the bottom of the screen - again a bit disappointed with that.

2- 802.11n wifi performance. Took me hours to finally get 802.11n working properly (note to others who haven't used "n" technology: according the the standard you can not use WEP encryption nor TKIP cypher - if you do it defaults to 54Meg "g" operation. As well, with my Trendnet 831BRP n router I also found that it required WPA2 (versus just WPA) encryption with AES cypher to finally work at full speed......). HOWEVER, running on 64bit Vista Home Premium I can only get ~ 60% strength level measured by the Admin console for the wireless router!? With my work XP laptop with "g" access it gets 98+% as I'm only 5 feet from the router. I manually forced all channels one by one to get it to high 50's - some were only in the mid 40's! I saw a few Google hits that others have suggested that Vista and Wifi don't play nice together. Is this my case/your experience also, or might I have a semi-defective wifi card (note - I have tried the latest Intel drivers with no improvement)?

3- Overclocking - GPU. I build my own desktop rigs so am very familiar with OC'g desktops, but new to laptops. Looks like HWMonitor is a good tool for temps monitoring with this laptop and I installed NVIDIA System Tools latest for GPU overclocking. Installed ATITool for stress testing and artifact testing. Only played with it an hour or so last night and the GPU seems to like to overclock but I ran into an odd situation just before I had to shut down for the night. with a modest clocking of 700/900/1800 and no ATITool errors I ran 3DMark06. Half way thru Battle of Proxycon the framerates suddenly dropped to below 10 fps! Could this be GPU throttling going on (GPU temps maxed out at 80*C under Fur rendering stress test)?? Or could I be having an issue with Dox 180.70 drivers?? I restarted 3DM06 and it was running great until the exact same spot and then it dropped down to <10 fps again. I reset everything and then reran 3DM06 which then ran with no problems...???

4- CPU Overclocking. I see a number of you use RightMark CPU Clock Utility to undervolt, but I haven't found a consensus on what to use to overclock the CPU. The new/beta BIOS' do not enable multiplier or clock speed adjustment options. What's the best tool(s) with this 7811 hardware package?

5- Anybody get Lightscribe encoded discs working with this LabelFlash CD burner? It doesn't recognize my Verbatim discs - and the help page link to install a Lightscribe engine yields an invalid url error condition.

6- What's the best chipset drivers for this laptop - stock, latest on Gateway's site, or latest direct from Intel?

7- Fluctuating video card fan speed/noise. Others appear to have similar issues. My fan hunts every couple of minutes raising (max rpm the first time) the fan speed up then down then up and down and then settles down even when I'm not doing anything with graphics and its running slowest clocks mode. Temps seem to be fairly stable and not too high (idling in the low to mid 40's). I haven't done the raise back up 1" yet. Is there a problem with mine or other fix or normal operation?


Anyways, love this laptop all things said and done. Greate performance/$$ ratio! Thanks again for this great forum and advice in advance!

 

Guess my questions are all old hat?

OK, an update: unfortunately it looks like I have the TZS0 temp reporting bug. When I overclock the GPU it will begin throttling the CPU HWMonitor shows the 98*C reading on TZS0. That said, I believe my cooling system is working fairly well. At stock clocks running 3DMark06 it get:
- TZS0: Idle - 31*, Load - 54*C
- TZS1: Idle - 31*, Load - 54*C
- Core0: Idle - 19*, Load - 42*C
- Core1: Idle - 20*, Load - 41*C
- GPU: Idle - 37*, Load - 61*C
- HDD: Idle - 34*, Load - 40*C

With a modest OC of 700Mhz TZS0 and S1 are around 55*C and then TZS0 suddenly jumps to 98*C. The GPU temps only goto about 68*C. Please excuse my Croatian but this sucks..... BTW with stock settings and DOX 180.70's I get 8777 points with 3DM06.

Is there a way to use CPU Core Clocks app to just disable CPU throttling and NOT invoke voltage settings with the down clocking of the multiplier to only 8.0x? Any other method to stop CPU throttling? Other options?

Anyone have any other comments/suggestions on the other questions above?

Thx!

 

dagger..drop back to the 9c.10.00 BIOS and see if it's any better. TZS0 is a pain. And, welcome to the Gway fam! Oh, and yea..some of these issues have been mulled a time or two. But, that's ok. Your scores and temps are in check..give those Xfastest drivers a try and see what ya think. You can always switch back

 

3- Your GPU could be downclocking as it happened to me a few times before I found the solution. Disable your Powermizer and it shouldn't downclock anymore and thus you'll be able to run the 3DMark fine without the drop in FPS. Here's the link: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=261929

4- If I'm not mistaken, it is impossible to OC the stock CPU. UV it is easy, but OCing it is impossible.

7- Normal operation. My fans do that too even if the computer isn't doing anything. If the fans aren't broken, then I wouldn't want to go through the trouble of finding why the fans' rpm fluctuates like that.

*Note: If the Dox's 180.70 drivers are not working out too well, try out the Dox's 178.24 (this is what I'm running on atm) or try out the XFastest driver as it worked for many people here.

 

E-wrecked and JBN - thanks for the replies. I was up again till midnight last night trying more drivers and testing OC'g. Not good news I'm afraid. All versions had TZS0 going to 98*C, some sooner than others. I did try Dox's 178.24 and they were very good (though I had a funny interaction with NV System Tool in that after each test sequence in 3DMark06 it popped up a window asking if I wanted to save my settings!) but I couldn't even do 675MHz on the GPU clock (all others stock). Tried various other flavors (full uninstall then boot to safe mode and use Driver Cleaner, etc, each time) and the last one was 180.70's with modified .inf from laptopvideo2go which gave me some good scores (better than 180.44's).

I found a great little 3D stress and benching tool that will cause the TZS0 bug to occur AND it runs in a small window so you can have HWMonitor and other tools running and you can see exactly what happens when. It is called Video Card Stability Test version 1.0.0.3 build 80416 and you can download it here (don't install the 3D screensaver): http: slashslash : freestone-group.com slash video-card-stability-test.htm It will toast your graphics card pretty hard but leaves the CPU with minimal loading. There are two tools to run - you need to run the 3 minute Benchmark tool as that one causes the TZS0 bug to happen. The other Stress Test tool is very good and cooks the chips but for some reason doesn't trigger the TZS0 issue!?

I'd like to get feedback from those who try this - I could never get thru 3 back-to-back runs of the Benchmark Tool test before TZS0 was pegged at 98*. And it jumps very suddenly - the TZS0/1 will start to rise gradually and then TZS0 just jumps right to 98* and stays there until you stop the test. If it were real temps it would have a graduated climb to 98* and it would also not stay at that one temp reading.

The BAD news is that with all overclocking disabled and back to stock settings and elevating the rear this tool still causes my TZS0 to jump to 98*C!?! What is frustrating is that I can run Prime95-multicore and ATITool with a 725/1005/1800 overclock and (she gets toasty, but) NO TZS0 pegs nor any artifacting!?!? In fact doing that gets the TZS0/1 temps higher than the 3D Benchmark Tool does before it jumps to 98*. Something not right here at all.

Given my screen issue + this TZS0 peg/CPU throttling I'm going to try to see if BestBuy will swap me for a new BB.com 7811. Otherwise, not sure.....

 

As I said, welcome to the fam. Seems to be you met the ugly stepchild of the 7811FX family, TZS0. Like yourself, I racked my brain for resolutions. If only.. Anyhow, I bumped the BIOS thread last night in hopes you would find it. If you're not in RAID then download the .05 BIOS and flash. See if it resolves, I found the best luck with it, they changed the KBC in 9c.07 I believe, and again in 9c.09 - I think that had a impact in the tzs0 sensitivity. It can't hurt, and could help. May be worth the 5 minutes of effort.

 

I'll try the .05 BIOS - thanks E-wrecked and post back my findings. Let me know if you decided to try that little 3D benchmark/stress tool and see if your unit survives (can you do 5 3-minute Benchmark tests back to back w/o TZS0 flipping out??)

 

E-wrecked sold his 7811FX already and bought the Whitebook. If no one else can test it for you, I'll run the test after my finals (sometime next week).

 

Alright I did five of those 3 min benchmark tests back-to-back with like 5 seconds of rest in between. The max temp was 70C.
Max temp. Scores
Test 1: 68 415
Test 2: 69 429
Test 3: 70 422
Test 4: 69 428
Test 5: 70 429

****NOTE**** I was running on Power Saver mode cause I took my laptop to class today. The scores should be higher IMO...I'll test it out next week to make sure.

 

thx JBN - so TZS0 never hit 98*? I can run the 3D test 5 times in a row (CPU doesn't get used that much) but not without TZS0 jumping to 98*C.

 

The TZS0 never went above 47C. I'm using the 9c.09.00 bios.

 

No luck with different BIOS's. From a cold start last night I was able to run the 3D Benchmark tool 4 times before TZS0 went schitzo, and it was hovering nicely between 47* and 48* and then in a split second jumps to 98*. I'm returning the laptop today