P-7811FX and Nvidia card defects

So Best Buy has this laptop for $200 off this week. I'm about to go get one, but I've read that the 9800 inside the system is affected by Nvidia's GPU problems. Is this true? How likely is this to affect me? Keep in mind that while gaming I always use Pacific Breeze (might switch to the quieter Antec competitor) and the system would get daily use. I tend to use the battery a lot too, but not when gaming.

Thanks for any input!

 

Can you please show us a link or a source of this information? From what I understand, the G94 cores are not affected by this.

 

$200! WHHHHHAAAT

you meant $1200. These laptops have great cooling systems, My GPU never goes over 65C, 75C when OCed. you also have a notebook cooler, you got nothing to worry about.

 

xtyfyb, I saw a list of cards in the gaming forum in which showed all 8xxx series cards and all 9xxx series cards. However, it may have been just for desktops. I'm trying to track it down.


narsnail, my mistake. I meant $200 off, not $200. Oops!

 

Even if, the only cards I ever see showing of this *problem* is the the 8600GT's those cards are constantly overheating. I dont think this *problem* really is such a big deal everyone is making it to be.

 

That seems more like skepticism than fact. ALL 8x and 9x series? Oh come on, that's a bunch of "internet" garbage.

 

I just would like to know if the 9800 in this laptop is one of the affected ones. Nvidia hasn't exactly been very forthcoming on the details so it's rather difficult to distinguish the garbage from the reality, especially in places where no distinction is made between desktop and mobile.

If this particular system is not directly effected, then I have no reservations about buying one. However, I had thought it was affected...sorry, just very confused on this problem.

 

No, the misunderstanding it's perfectly fine. After all it is nVidia's fault.

I THINK the 9x series should be fine, especially the 9800GTS because it was released well after the whole nvidia defect chips news story went public. Although, who knows, these chips could be very well under the radar.

On the other hand, it only looks like the lower-end 8x series cards are affected most by the bad packaging.

I own the P-7811FX, and I must say it's great, especially for the price. I purchased mine for $1550, and I don't care at all that it dropped $200, because for $1550, you're still getting a great deal.

 

Alright, thanks for the answer! I had expected that a high-end card would have a different level of quality and heat management, but with the Nvidia problem being so confusing I wasn't sure. Even my GPU had problems when I first got it, but everything was fine after a replacement.

 

Its just a refresh, it could very well be affected. They just upped the clock speeds on the 8800m GTS and called a 9800 card. We dont know, pure speculation of course. I woudl go for it anyways, most overheating on my end is CPU related.

 

Yeah, but I'm giving the 9800GTS and 9800GTX a break because they were released well after the whole story broke out. Who knows, maybe nVidia did something about it, maybe they didn't. So far my GPU maxes at 78*C when gaming, it averages about 75*C.

Go for it and enjoy!

 

I picked up one earlier today and now it's sitting side-by-side with my XPS Gen 2. Right now it's creating restore disks.

For some reason, every couple of minutes I get a quick spin-up of the CPU fan. I'm not entirely sure why that happens since the air coming out is rather cool (I'm also using my pacific breeze).

Wow, there's not much bloatware, but the stuff that's on this machine is the worst there is! Norton and BigFix? Bad! I really expected less bloatware, but it was about the same this Dell had when it came.

I plan to install Crysis, run it at the highest possible settings for a while to make sure the system can handle it and doesn't have anything bad lurking internally, and then a complete reformat/clean-install. I'll probably stick with Vista instead of going to XP.

EDIT: I also noticed there's no place for a DVD indicator light. That's unusual.

 

The issue on overheating gpu's was specifically the 8400 and 8600 series only as I understand it, if someone has other data that the overheating issue includes later gpu families like the 8800 or 9800 series, I'd be very interested in a link Thank you

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3761114

It only says,

But, there is no link to this report, so I'm still assuming its the 8600GT and lower cards.

 

Do not be alarmed but keep close tabs on that machine and stress test it to the fullest. My last p-7811 had a very active fan that ramped up more than my liking. This one im typing from right now does it too...but not nearly as much, it is also much more quiet. The reason why I am telling you is that my last one had an issue with lockups and over heating.

I am not saying these two things are linked...but odd fan behavior is something to look out for. The P-7811 seems to have a noisy fan by nature so without actually comparing different units its hard to explain it. Just giving you a heads up.

 

Thanks for the heads up about the fans! I'm guessing I'll find out if there's any problems when I run Crysis. I'll probably let it go for an hour or two and if it doesn't do anything unusual, then I'll give the normal reformatting and customizing treatment I give every new machine.

EDIT: I'm bet I'll probably have the fans under control once I get done doing power management settings.

 

Please follow the link from
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4554
to
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/12/nvidia-g92s-g94-reportedly
and then help me interpret this. Is the 7811FX affected?

"A little digging revealed what this, and more, is all about, and it's far uglier than just the 'notebook' version. It seems that four board partners are seeing G92 and G94 chips going bad in the field at high rates. If you know what failures look like statistically, they follow a Poisson distribution, aka a bell curve. The failures start out small, and ramp up quickly - very quickly. If you know what you are looking for, you can catch the signs early on. From the sound of the backchannel grumblings, the failures have been flagged already, and NV isn't playing nice with their partners.

Why wouldn't they? Well, the G92 chip is used in the 8800GT, 8800GTS, 8800GS, several mobile flavours of 8800, most of the 9800 suffixes, and a few 9600 variants just to confuse buyers. The G94 is basically only the 9600GT. Basically we are told all G92 and G94 variants are susceptible to the same problem - basically they are all defective. Any guesses as to how much this is going to cost?"

 

The 9800GTS uses the G94 core. . . That statement makes no sense. . .

 

you should go in and ask for a price match, regardless of when you bought it. I was over the 14 day mark and I didn't even have a receipt, and they still matched the price for me. It's worth a shot, if the customer service lady won't do it, ask someone else there like geek squad, or go to another best buy.

Anyway, I have a 9800GTS, stays very cool through gaming (although very hot air shoots out the vent pretty swiftly, which is a good thing), and have had no problems with it. Make sure the area on your desk around your GPU vent is clear of other objects.

 

take the inquirer's reports with a grain of salt.
Thats all i'll say

 

I've completely finished the reformat, reinstallation, and updating of the P-7811FX I bought yesterday. It's passed every test so I'm happy. Yes, it gets hot where the GPU sits, but so does my current system. I'm really not all that concerned since I have a notebook cooler anyway. If there was a problem, I was expecting something along the lines of what I saw with this XPS system's original 6800 card, which was defective and quickly replaced.

I'm about to place an order for a WD laptop drive here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136280 which appears to be compatible (someone please stop me if it's not). I currently use an external 500 GB WD drive, but it would be great to get everything working internally so I don't have to lug around an external enclosure.

As for the Inquirer...I think the problem is worse than Nvidia wants to admit. However, I do think the Inquirer makes a couple too many assumptions. Besides, if this 9800 is defective, I WILL find out within 30 days.

 

HD should be fine, i believe max capacity for this notebook is 320gb per drive.
I just bring around my toshiba 250gb portable drive, fast enough transfers and it'll last me till 7200RPM 2.5" drop in price.

 

Thanks The price is what has me considering a 5400 RPM drive like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136197 . I have no interest in setting up RAID. I just want a second drive where I normally install games, mods, and all that stuff that doesn't get accessed regularly to.

320 GB's sure is a world of difference from this 60 GB 7200 RPM drive I use right now in this XPS system.

 

The max capacity is currently 500GB x 2.

 

Hey guys. I don't want to burst your bubble, but I was one to purchase the P-7811FX while it was on Labor Day sale. I did receive a defective unit. The first game I installed was Nexuiz (online deathmatch game). This computer ran so great...for like ten minutes and it froze on me. I tried CTRL+ALT+DELETE. No, that didn't work. I tried ALT+F4...no. I had to do a hard reboot (holding down the power button for a couple of secs for shutdown).

I decided to try a different game...Oblivion IV. Great game, ran fast with crystal clear graphics...then froze. I tried to see if I could install any updated drivers so I went to the obvious Nvidia website and it'll say for you to go to the manufacturer of the laptop, Gateway. So I looked up Gateway only to find out there only updates for Vista 32bit. So, it was time for the 3rd Parties. I installed the latest Forceware compatible with the GPU. Tried gaming again in Nexuiz and still had the same issue.

P-7811FX comes preinstalled with Vista Home Premium 64-bit incase you didn't know. (That's another battle in itself with application compatibilities). I ended up taking the Gateway unit back and switched for an HP DV7-1025nr. Yeah, both HP's GPU (9600M) and processor (P8400) is a little slower, but the two things the sold me was the expandibilty of my HP. My system comes with 4 gigs of ram (and it's EXPANDABLE to 8 gigs). AND it comes with a 512MB VRAM (and I can upgrade that to 2 gigs). That's something you can't do with the P-7811FX. What do you guys think of those apples?

Otherwise, do keep alert for problems on that Gateway unit. It's a great, powerful unit for the price but just lookout for that GPU. Even though I exhchanged my unit, I still find myself curious about that P-7811FX. Even though it had that problem, could a simple BIOS update been the cure? Who knows... if that problem does get resolved, I would reconsider purchasing the P-7811FX again.

 

I have an FZ180E/B and my 8400 GT just died. I personally wouldn't touch anything that has "NVIDIA" on it right now, but maybe I'm just frustrated with them. Still, Nvidia has not been very honest about the real problems and its effects (another reason why I think people should put them in a bad light), so no one really knows the extent of the issues. Could be a whole lot of GPU types. Its unlikely to only be a few models, otherwise Nvidia would have been quick to single out those cards so they can just put this to rest.

majleonj

 

where can i buy 500GB drives for notebooks? i can only find 320gb ones

 

The current batch of 500gb notebook drives have performance issues. I'd hold off for a while.

 

why everybody points fingers at nvidia instead those idiotic notebook makers,
look at sony, apple, hp, dell xps, the chassis on their laptops is only 0.8" thick w/o openings for air flow,
thats tighter than a "tight panty on a fat girl".
sumthing is gonna explode somehow.

 

Nvidia chipsets are rated up to certain temperature, if they fail below this temprature then they are faulty!!

 

Good heads up Mr. Dook ... I'm holding off.

 

Roger that! Anytime.

 

I would advise each user of the 7811fx series to download GPU-Z and set it to log temps and update real time (for if and when your unit freezes or crashes).

Then, go grab the DX9 Real Time imaging:

http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

WoW or EQ2 really didn't push my temps consistently to pinpoint any heating issues, but this program, full screen will ramp your temps up rather quickly.

I found my unit locks at around 74-76 degrees everytime consistently and this program will get them there (or beyond) within a few minutes if not sooner.

If your system can handle this monster for 30 minutes, it can most likely handle anything.

 

Yes sir, my favorite little GPU stresser. Interesting on the lock temps.