Power Options: Balanced Vs. High Performance

I have been experiences lock-ups in a wide variety of games since I purchased my 7811fx unfortunately due to school I haven't been able to due much in the way of having it repaired.

I have recently noticed something interesting, as I use my laptop for school I often set the power option to Balanced to conserve battery life while in class. The other day I forgot to switch it back to Performance when I plugged it in. The odd thing was I didn't have a single lockup during the whole night when I was gaming, but i noticed a significant frame rate drop.

I remembered the next day and switched it back over to Performance and had a lockup with a half an hour of playing my first game. So over the last two days I have left it on Balanced for a total of 8 hours of gaming/3D marks with no lockups and then switched it over to Performance and Tried the same test with 3 lockups in 5 hours.

I am assuming that the lower power options reduce the clock speed of the graphics card and processor, am I correct? And if so why would this effect the lockups?

Running Hardware monitor on Balanced my processor runs at around 54c and the graphics card at about 62c and under performance settings the processor runs about 59c and the video card at about 68c. This is with the computer propped up in the back and slightly in the front with some books I have laying around.

This is on a fresh install of Vista 64. Video card drivers are 178.15, I have tried the latest with the same effect, tried going back to an older version thinking it might be more stable. There are no errors in the log when the computer locks up other than the forced restart error that shows up when I have to force a restart.

If anyone has any ideas it would be helpful, otherwise I am waiting until the semester is over and will be sending it in to Gateway to have them take a look at it, just can't afford to be without my computer for weeks during school.

 

I am assuming due to balanced mode is keeping the components cooler, there are no lockups. However, performance is suffering and therefore FPS are dropping. In high performance mode, everything is in high gear and things may get hot. May i suggest HWMonitor and Nvidia System Tools for monitoring temps as well as overclocking/ downclocking in your case.

 

I agree with you however, like I said in my original post my temps don't seem to vary that much between the two modes, about 5 degrees Celsius according to Hardware monitor and from what I have read from other members are still within normal operating ranges. I will try playing with Nvidia tools to downclock bit by bit to see if I can find the best performance settings I can get.

Another question: if/when i do send my computer in to gateway does anyone have any advice on making sure they pinpoint and fix the problem the first time? As I said in my original post I am sending it in over Christmas break which is about a 4 week window and if its not fixed I will have to wait a whole semester to send it in again. I was thinking of attaching a note to the computer being as specific as I can be about the problem. Any other suggestions?

 

You said you were using the 178.15 driver. Is that the latest from the gateway support site? If so, I'd suggest following the instructions in the Definitive NVidia driver upgrade guide and get something a little more recent from laptopvideo2go.com. The stock Gateway video drivers were not exactly the best. The ones on Gateway support site are better but not the best. You will find many fans of both the XFastest and Dox drivers in these forums. I am still on Dox 178.24.

As for making sure they pinpoint the problem, include instructions on what exactly you did to cause the crash. Is it just one game or several that cause you to crash. My experience is that Half-Life2 has had occasional temporary lockups (HL2 crashes, but I can get the desktop back without rebooting). Crysis, Biochock, FEAR and DOOM3 have been fine.

 

This one from shotgunner62, PCI Express Link State Power Management may be turned on. It should not be.

Right click the battery icon in the righthand part of the toolbar.
Under High Performance, click chand plan settings
Click on Change advanced power settings
Scroll to PCI Express and click the +
Click the + next to Link State power management and set both batter and plugged in settings to Off

+rep shotgunner62 if it works for you.

 

Thanks for the reply and advice, but as I said in my original post I have tried the latest drivers from laptopvideo2go.com with the same results, I was just trying these drivers in the hopes that an older build would be more stable.

The options under the PCI express tab in the power options were already off, apparently by default? As I haven't touched them before and they were off.

I have had this happen in Basically every game I have played, WoW, Bioshock, Mass Effect,3d Marks and the new Left 4 Dead demo.

Another quick question, the vent on the left side of the computer is constantly blowing out hot air (a good thing) the vent in the back right however only blows out a slight amount of air, never really seems to kick on to a high speed, is this normal?

Again I appreciate any help of thoughts anyone has or something I can try, it seems that many people don't have this issue and maybe I am just missing something.

 

It's simple. Lockups are from maxing it out. Because you're balanced, yopu're not maxing it. You sacrifice performance for stability. hope that answers ur question.

 

But maxing it out in a stock setting shouldn't cause lockups, the computer as built should be able to handle being under a load. So my original question was fist to confirm that reducing the power options actually affected the video card and cpu, question answered it does. My second question I suppose more implied than actually asked was if anyone could offer a suggestion to fix the issue, as being in the performance mode should offer "Performance" not hard locks.

 

only cpu as far as i know, gpu downclocking is left for the nvidia drivers.
btw under the vista power options you can change the spectrum for the balanced profile as to allow it 100% cpu util. (not sure what is default, changed it too many times)

did you try rmclock as to uv your cpu?
there was one guy who said reinstall OS+not reinstalling intel chipset driver package allowed him to get rid of the lockups (confirmed by other users ??)