P-6860fx shuts down while on battery

now that your up and running maxprime1...what is that giving you for 3dmark06 score on cpu? over clocked at 3.4

 

I only ran it a couple times and it hit over 14k. With that said. It wasn't stable because of the heat. The fans can't cool it down enough. I think with that one I'm going to make custom heatsinks and adapt different fans. I do believe it can go over 15k when I get the cooling straightend out.

I was however overclocking the gpu at 706/999 and it failed 2 of 5 tests.

 

well I tried my "instant shut down combination (running 3dmark loop with orthos in the background)" with my wifi switch off and it still shut down

 

define shut down? all the lights on and the screen went black or the whole computer shut off?

 

whole computer goes off, like if it was running without battery and I would just unplug the AC adapter...

 

yep, that would be the one.

 

uhh that would be the one what? lol

 

the shut down problem im having.

i think i had it backward as well....the voltage on the battery needs to b about 11 volts and not below...when it starts dropping below the lappy shuts off. when fully charged, the lappy takes in 12.40 volts

 

I think we are seeing protection circuits kick in. I'ts Ohm law, the lower the voltage, the more current has to be supplied for same power. There are a lot of DC to DC circuits that have a voltage threshold or they shut down.

If we had little Intel or low end GPU's, no problem. None of my older laptops had this problem with the wimpy GPUs.

The only way around this "problem" is to use even bigger 14.4VDC batteries as on my old HP.

 

yep, i think im inclined to agree....

 

yeah yeah I understand what you guys are saying....maybe its not a failure but i mean.....why us 3 out of the thousands of people that are buying this laptop since its gotten quite popular lol...

I mean im a college student, if i spend over 1000 bucks i wanna make sure it works like its supposed to...

 

You work for Nvidia?!! Awesome. Maybe you can find the answer as to why Nividia released the 8800GTS and GTX. Lots of rumors around that it's the same chip but one "laser" cut. Anyone you have that may be able to shed some light on this? (no pun)

Thx

 

yeah! what hydra said!
good damn call there hydra! forgot all about that one.

 

Well, lots of opinions on public forums and I've been way off base a few times.

You might write Gateway. They just might have someone who really knows something? You may get a free battery out of it, or there might BE something not right with it

 

ah screw it....im just gonna go to BB and do it infront of them and demand an exchange...

I can do it within 2-3 mins lol.....3dmark loop...orthos running.....unplug it while running.......boom

 

Alright, cool, hope it works out. Please let us know.

 

Well, that's a complex question. They are and aren't the same chip. In the beginning with the GTS's release. The demand was so great for them to keep up they underclocked GTX's to make them GTS's."the so called laser cut" When production increased for the GTS chips they stopped doing that.

Now for the wierd part . The wafer process for the GTX was found to have problems which made it limited for overclocking with normal cooling. While the GTS's wafer design was not effected and allowed it to be heavily overclocked compaired to the GTX.

Now,is the 8800 GTX better than a 8800GTS? yes and no.

While the 8800 GTX does out perform the 8800 GTS at stock frequencies it has limited overclocking capabilities. The 8800GTS's chip has over twice the head room of overclocking compaired to the 8800 GTX "this is directly from EVGA's r/d"

And for the record my heatsinks are not "shaved" only polished.

 

yeah, what he said!

i should have clarified that...lol
edit: about the polishing.

 

I'm trying to get mine to shut down playing crysis on battery
so far it doesn't

 

the voltage has to drop to 10.6 for it to cut off...if it doesn't...then your too the good...at least this is what we have thus far..we are still testing

 

i had similar experience yesterday, just finished installing KOTOR and run it for the first time, than pulled out the plug from the wall to use some electric appliance. when i got back to the computer it was all dark, tried to turn it on - nothing. removed battery (wasn't hot), tried again, no go.
plugged in the power. turn on - battery gouge 99%

i think my gpu was overclocked at that time and the cpu undervolted.

will try to reproduce.

Do forgive my English, seems you American are becoming quite touchy about non natives usage.

good day

 

lol
get you a catchy catch phrase like me...to help cover me when those times arise...lol

catch phrase (speculation of course)

lol

but for us to get a good account of what is going on...we need to know what the voltage is when it cuts off....

 

well run grid pulled out the plug, 20 sec later click and long silence.
if there is anyway i can help tell me how.

 

do you have rmclock?

 

i did say the cpu was undervolted, that is yes.

 

if youve got a second monitor, run a game in the primary and rmclock on the second one or viceversa, then check out the volts of the battery just before it cuts out...

If our theory's are correct, it should cut out at 10.8-10.6 volts...

 

cool. because you didn't say you seen the part in there with the voltage for the battery. so i wasn't sure what you we're using...

 

no second monitor right now.
but how about running a game in a window ?
let me have a look.

 

and if yours is cutting off right away...then maybe your battery is not good.....

 

yes, that's how i did it.
ran a game in window mode and watched it
make sure you set the seconds to 1 so that the voltage is updated instantly.

 

it seems to work quite well on surfing downloading etc.
running time seems to be very good, especially using rmclock.
i think its the undervolting of the cpu, the x7800 might be more sensetive as it is a 45w cpu.

anyway it is all quite academic afaic as i don't game on battery.

 

academic works for us.

 

Well, as a whole turn key system, it should work. I'm guessing some batteries are marginal and some not?

Mine did not shut down after 20 minutes of Mass Effect. I forgot to plug in laptop from previous move LOL, this is not as bad as maxing CPU and GPU.. hit start then run for the hills

andrewe1, did BB give you and trouble about swapping out?

 

i have been playing mass effect as well and it shouldn't shut the computer down...although i have everything set to high and the max frames i get out of it are 62 frames. and that's using a 8800m gts and an 8800 gtx. (im probaly not set up correctly or something, but i do like the game)

and hydra, when i took mine back to best buy, it was hassle free really...they plugged it up and asked me what happened. i explained. then this tech guy told me about the voltage stuff. i bushed him off. *LOL* (i did go back later and apologize though, because he knew what he was talking about.*LOL*)

 

I hear ya Johnksss. missed where you had done this at BB. Yea, I know that ME is not the same as running Ortho and other stress apps. If ME had shut me down..oh well.

My 7900GS {sometimes} shut me down depending on OC, while on battery.

Oh well, back to ME before break time is over..

 

Don't know yet, gonna go tomorrow... I also made a little video of it happening if the rare case of it not happening in the store happens....happening. hap.

Ill upload the video later to youtube or something.


Also, I was running Autodesk Inventor (3d design app) and it shut down on me, I cant have this...defeats the purpose of the battery, I cant imagine If im working on something then the lights go out, and im like...phew...im on a laptop.....then poof...battery wasn't good enough.

I wish gateway had sent me a transcript of my support session with them, they recommended to take it back to the store and get a new one, I wonder if that would save me time in BB.

Ill report tomorrow asap and with tests with the new laptop.

cheers

 

since your going tomorrow. have them take another battery from one of the floor models and see if that battery does it as well...i forgot to do it when i was there last time..i was too happy getting a brand new laptop..lol

 

u got a new laptop over this ?

 

I dont wanna try that... Im better off with a new laptop lol, I dont want them saying, oh...since its just the battery we will order one and send it to you or something...

Besides, so much shutdowns on this laptop makes me wonder if something got damaged in the process.

 

no problem. when i get back around to passing by one, ill find out. i was just trying to get an isolation on the problem. had i known that it was the battery voltage.. i would have had them start there. but it's all good, thanks anyway.

and as long as your under your 14-15 days. they will take it back regardless. those are the store rules pretty much across the usa

 

Yeah I know, I mean ill test it with the new one....same thing as trying the display one.

They should have no problem taking it back, hell I didn't even remove the plastic covers on the hinges lol

 

same here, but when it did it on day one before i even switched out the cpu...i kind of figured it was something else..but the first one i got was the display model. i was testing that out till the new ones came in....lol

i ran a bunch of test last night and it runs fine doing everything else.it even plays crysis for almost an hour on battery, so im good.

 

Ok so I got my replacement 6860fx today...as expected, I went to the store and I couldn't get the damn thing to shut down in front of them...Luckily I made the video of it happening and that was enough for them.

There was only another 6860fx in stock, and the display one...they charged me 30 bucks for the new one cause they "installed system optimization software". I already inspected the computer and this so called system optimization is basically that they disabled windows aero, and shut down startup services leaving only critical ones turned on....so 30 bucks for something that was done in one minute and with no 3rd party software, lame.

I'm still gonna format the crap out of it, so Ill run the tests later and report back.

 

what do you mean you hit over 14k???

 

So far so good... after full charge I ran 3dmark06 loop with orthos and it hibernated when it reached 5%

So I guess there really was a problem with the battery or something... Dunno, glad it won't shut down on me anymore

 

nice! very nice!

now what was the voltage when it got 5 percent.....

and you still have to play a game for 30 minutes...lol

 

no! I don't wanna push it lol, though even if it happens again Im not gonna exchange it.

Ill do this again and check the voltage but first I need to wait for the battery to recharge...

 

no problem! lol

i was just being greedy for information...lol

 

I got a P-6860FX June 1st. I did a fresh install of the OS, re-installed the drivers that came with it, enabled hibernation, installed office/firefox/instantmessangers/etc. Then installed a backup disk image app and made an image that is my "base image" that I can revert to without having to reinstall all that stuff yet again.

After I did all that, and had cycled the battery 4-5 times, I installed Company of Heroes and was able to play COH for about 1:30 with the LCD on a dim level (3rd brightness level from the bottom out of the 8 available). Then the laptop went into a hibernation state.

I think 1.5 hours on 1 battery gaming was pretty impressive. So far I'm happy with this purchase. It's a lot bigger laptop than I wanted, but i couldn't find anything in the price/performance range in a 15" laptop.

 

Alright so I ran 3dmark06 this time monitoring the voltage...when there was about 10% left in the battery the voltage was steady at 10.8-11... didnt go down to 10.6...

I'm thinking it was definitely the battery that caused the other laptop to shut down.