Aero Sluggish

Hi guys,
I am quite new to the forum, I hope you can help me to sort out a problem I got with my HP DV6552ea Turion TL-58 nVidia 7150m gfx 2GB memory Vista Home Premium.

Right, the issue I am having is that after a couple of minutes I have logged into VISTA the desktop becomes very sluggish, dragging windows around shows a noticeable delay, FLIP 3D is very laggy and hovering on the start menu list of item slows some delay between the cursor movement and the actual selection on the menu, a bit like this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvAYbLVtGc4

Now, I have reduced the services running on my machine to the bare minimum I haven't even got an antivirus running, no UAC either. I got the:

- latest nvidia drivers from www.laptopvideo2go.com
- latest touchpad drivers (the problems also happens using an external mouse)
- updated the BIOS to the latest F22 relase
- reinstalled nForce chipset drivers
-I have even tried with lowering the resolution down to 1024x768 (from the native 1280x800)
- disabled transparency and maximize/minimize effects

still the same problem, which puzzles me since:

- when I first log into vista it doesn't shows the problem, everything runs smooth as silk
- I can run Unreal 2 at 800x600 at 25-30 frames per second, which on an integrated graphic chip is quite remarkable.
- the problem doesn't show if I set Vista Basic as a theme.

also playing in a shop with a laptop that had an Intel 945 chipset I have noticed that whatever the number of windows you put on the vista desktop it doesn't slow down at all. Everything runs very smooth.
Have I got a lemon or theres something I have missed to tweak?
Is there any of you with the same sort of configuration that has the same problem as me?

 

has this always happened?

 

yes, I have noticed it as soon as I bought the laptop 3 months ago, I thought it was normal for vista on that chipset, so I ended up installing XP, but now, since I saw the similar Intel laptop with a smooth vista desktop I have re-installed Vista and started questioning how come is happening since the nvidia 7150 in theory should fly faster than the Intel 945gm chipset.

 

i think thats just how it is
i don't think theres anything you can do about this
(this is gonna kill me but what is your WEI score for aero graphics?)

 

is 3.3 for Desktop and 3.0 for gaming graphics. But the Intel one had the same score even thought it was way smoother....

Thing is that I didn't go for an intel laptop just because I didn't want to be stuck with a sluggy Vista desktop, notoriusly Intel graphics are rubbish, I went for an nVidia one thinking that was going to be much better.

 

I have just thought about the Powermizer functionality of the nVidia chipset, could be that for some reason the Powermizer slows down the GPU after a while and that's why the desktop is fine to start with and becomes sluggish later, is there anyway to disable the powermizer? or to monitor it?

 

There shouldnt be any sluggishness with Aero and the 7150m considering it runs fine on the Go 6150 which is the predecessor of that GPU. But from looking at the youtube video, I dont see any sort of sluggish-ness. If yours is similar then that looks quite normal to me.

Coupls of things you could try would beto use the stock drivers to rule out driver issues. Also make sure you are not running with the Power saver profile.

 

yeah I know, the video doesn't really give the idea, I'll post my own video tonight so that you can have some understanding of the problem.
Yeah I am running High Performance. and I have tried the HP stock drivers too, but still no luck.

 

I see a similar issue on my dv9500t, and I'm pretty sure it's the power saving features. You can test this out by grabbing a window and dragging it around vigorously. It will be slow at first, then after a few seconds it will "pop" and start going faster. I think at that point the card is out of low power mode.

 

YES! that's right I have installed nTune and started the nVidia monitor and, in fact, the GPU speed goes down to 100mhz after few minutes on Vista Desktop.
Problem is that even moving windows around doesn't re-set the full speed clock. I have to manually re-set the standard 425mhz speed thru Powerstrip in order to re-gain responsivness on the desktop.

 

so did that fix it permanently

 

well, as I understnd Powermizer has 3 GPU clock states on the 7150m, 100mhz - 250mhz and 425mhz, now, when you boot into vista, or resume from StandBy-Hyberante the clock is set to his maximum, 425mhz, after a while it goes down to 250 and then 100mhz, obviously that makes windows dragging, menu selections very sluggish, the powermizer should be able to pick up some screen movement and re-set the clock to 425mhz everythime you invoke Flip3D or drag a round some windows, but for some reason, on my laptop, it just doesn't happen. The fix is to manually set those 3-states at max speed, or a reasonable speed say eg: 390 mhz, the only way to achieve this has been by using ATI-tool 0.27 beta4, which is an overclocking/downclocking tool for ATI/nVidia cards. when you run the program it will show you the clock sets fot the 3-states, all you need to do is to set akll 3 clock states to 390-400 and save the setting as a profile. ATI tool will be running in your tray and you can set this "performance" setting or revert back to the normal settings with a click of a mouse. So, to answer your question, yes it has temporanely fixed it.

Since I have read, on the web, many reports about the same problem from owners of nVidias 6150 - 7150 I can only assume that :

or there is some sort of bug with powermizer or nVIdia drivers
or that the behaviour is like that by design.

I also know that in XP you were able to change the various settings for the Powermizer from the nVidia control panel, such facility seems not to be there on the Vista version of the panel.

My knowledge on the issue is very limited, maybe there is somebody on this forum with more knowledge on the matter which could be able to sort this thing out.

 

Hi! I seem to have the same problem (Hp pavillion Dv9000 turion X2 1.9, 2gb ram, and Geforce Go 7150M).

Its been 7 days since I bought it and Im starting to wonder if its gonna be like that forever.

Flip 3d is ugly as hell, my old Dv5000 can handle like 20+ windows in Flip3d with no problems.

I dont use Flip 3d, but whenever I maximize/minimize/close windows the problem is fully noticeable.

Ive tried :

1. Ati tools
3 differnet versions, including the same youve tested before.
Can see temp/clock speed, I create a new profile and modify values, but whenever I press" set changes " everyting switchs back to defaults.

*Ati tools works perfect on My Dv5000, so its not like I dont know how to use it, lol

2. Then I tried RivaTuner 2.06
I got excited when I found out this options :

DisableInternalClockTest, similar to DisableClockTest.

DisableMemResetClkProtection prevents the memory from throttling down in 2D/3D switching.

EnableLowPower3DControl prevents core clock from throttling down in 2D/3D switching.

EnablePerfLevelForcing allows constant Perf3D mode so the card does not throttle down to 2D clocks in 2D mode.

But nothing happened

3. Tried Coolbits
Nope, nothing has changed at all.

3D games run great, but whenever I turn back to vista the Fu*** Powermizer thing decides I only need 100 mhz.

Who is responsible for it? Nvidia or HP?

If anyone has other ideas please let me know (Im stuck with this notebook coz I bought it in my vacations and I dont plan on returning to the states anytime soon, budget issue)

Thanks!, Wish you all a happy new year!

 

My V3417LA with a Go 615o and running at 100 MHz doesn't make all the troubles you said, so it must be something with the video drivers, I'm sticking to laptop2go windows certified 15x.xx series drivers (156.73 current) and avoid non native or modified drivers and vista runs great with aero and transparency enabled, and my gpu is running at 100 MHz, it doesn't need to go upper just for using aero. Double check your drivers, it must be that. Maybe you need to do a fresh reinstall?