Quadro NVS 140M driver issues

I've been trying to get decent performance out of my T61, as well as having all the hardware work, since I bought it, which seems to be just about impossible. The factory Vista Business x64 installation was unbearably slow and had constant hard drive access for about 20 minutes after boot. I tried installing Windows XP Professional SP2, which had it's own set of issues - the graphics drivers were even slower than Vista's, for one, and while the OSD worked the brightness controls didn't actually adjust anything. Also, losing my TurboMemory and access to a full GB of RAM doesn't sit well with me. SO I went back to Vista x64. The new installation was generally stable and much faster than before, but boot times were still torturous and there were several outstanding issues: No OSD, volume control buttons worked but provided no visual feedback (even on the Vista sound icon), and the whole system would freeze if left idle for more than about 10-15 minutes. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling all manner of drivers to no avail. The 20 minutes of constant HD thrashing after boot came back, as well, although it's performance impact seemed more negligible this time (and seems to be a common feature of Vista, as it occurs on my desktop as well). I tried XP again - same issues as before despite a slew of updated drivers.

And the most persistent and damning issue of them all is this: ANY set of video drivers other than the official Lenovo ones will not work. Without fail, every new set from LV2G or TRU causes a hard system freeze (massive graphical corruption followed by a blue screen) in any 3D game. THis is very disappointing, as the latest Lenovo official drivers are 101.something, and nVidia's up to to the 160s! The performance of the stock Lenovo drivers is tragically poor, especially with any antialiasing, and this card should be capable of much more (and is with modded drivers, for the brief time before the screen turns into wavy lines and then into a lovely shade of blue.)

So now I'm stumped - is there any way to make this should-be-really-powerful system live up to its full potential? It feels sluggish no matter what. I've run Memtest for a full pass with no errors. I'd suspect a damaged GPU except there are no 3D-related crashing issues with the official Lenovo drivers. Can anyone shed some light on my situation?

 

Is the Thinkpad version of the nVidia 140 capable of all the stuff the normal nVidia drivers expect? I thought that the Thinkpad version is missing some of the hardware acceleration that fast video cards usually have.

If that is the case then the driver difference would be explained.

 

I'm using NVIDIA's 163.44 driver for Vista x32. It's working quite well and allows me to play Bioshock. Find the x64 version here

Also, all that hardrive thrashing might be due to Vista's indexing... have you tried shutting that off? You can do so by going Control Panel > Indexing Options.

Good luck.

 

SOme updates:

I reinstalled Vista x64. Sadly, most of the crippling problems are still there, though mercifully the idle system freeze is gone. I still get constant graphics explosions and blue screens using any drivers but the official Lenovo ones, and yes obviously I've tried the ones from LV2G, as well as the Xtreme-G MobileForce. The hard drive thrashing is still in full force (though it only seems to last about 5 minutes now as opposed to 20), and I have indexing disabled. The machine also emanates a loud grinding/whining noise sometimes on battery - I think this is an issue with the Core 2 Duo's SpeedStep, but disabling SpeedStepping hasn't seemed to correct the problem.

The biggest issue to me is obviously the driver one. For example, the stock Lenovo drivers, which are perfectly stable, score a 37 in the CS:S stress test at full settings + 8xAF + 2xAA. The latest ones from LV2G score a 46. Pretty damn big difference (though both do score similarly without AA, between 65-70). Unfortunately it is rare I can even finish launching CS:S on the LV2G drivers without crazy vertical lines followed by a pretty blue screen. Any insight is appreciated, because I'm pretty much stumped. SHould I send the machine back to Lenovo and have them replace everything that could possibly be at fault? Or does it seem like a software issue? The problem with getting warranty repairs is that I use this machine for taking notes at school - without it I'm in deep trouble. So I want to know if that's the only option.

 

I score a 56 with CS:S stress test with full settings + 8xAF + 2xAA + Vsync off + 1280x800 resolution. At 1680x1050, I get 29. I left the nVidia control panel at default. I plug the T61 into AC power with Energy Star power setting. I have the 15.4" T61 and running XP 32-bit. I have all the ThinkVantage applications in the background with Mcafee Enterprise, Adobe Acrobat, and VMWare as processes. Yes, bloated.

 

What you failed to mention was the drivers. If you could tell me what drivers you're using that would help me more. But it is beginning to look like mine has serious issues.

 

I am using the latest Lenovo drivers. I got it from ThinkVantage System Update.

What software are you running in the background? Any intensive applications running? Are you using Norton Internet Security? Have you done an spyware scan with MS Antispyware or Spybot S&D (or other spyware scanner)?

Have you checked if your temperatures are too high? Use Everest to monitor your temperatures. The processor might throttle its speed if it is too hot.

The only real difference between our machines is the 14" vs 15" form factor. It is strange there are differences between our notebooks.

 

I'm not running anything in the background but AVG. Everything is this way even off of a fresh format. I've been using nTune and CoreTemp, and my temps seem fine - no throttling detected. I tried running the CS:S stress test at the exact settings you mentioned and received a score of 47 - far below 59. I'm running Vista 64, yes, but the results are very, very similar under XP Pro 32. This is disturbing - the numbers you report are certainly more in line with the expected performance of the machine...can you post what nTune sees as your Core, memory, and Shader clocks? Also, can you run RivaTuner and see what your memory bus is? if yours is 128-bit that would explain away comfortably all the difference. Also, if you wouldn't mind, could you try uninstalling your current drivers and using the latest from LV2G, and seeing if you get the same crashes I experience?

I'm running MemTest again right now - through a pass and a half already with no errors.

 

If you have CSS (Client Security Solution), you should consider removing that. It is a major resource hog and slows down boot up as well. You WILL notice a difference with it gone.

As for on-screen display, you might want to have a look at the guide in my sig. It shows all the drivers you should install. It sounds to me like you are missing the "hotkey" driver and the "system interface" driver.

I've got the nVidia 140M. I'm doing OK with the Lenovo driver for 64-bit. I haven't done any gaming though.

 

The GPU core clock is 400 MHz and GPU memory clock is 600 MHz. NVMonitor currently shows slower clock speeds since I am at the desktop (and not 3D). Where do I look for the shader clock?

In RivaTuner, I have a 64-bit G86 (A2, 16sp) with 128MB DDR3. RivaTuner v2.03 is really buggy with these Lenovo nVidia drivers (6.14.11.0133). That's all the real information I can get before RivaTuner crashes when I click on those two configuration buttons.

For CS, my console settings are "fps_max 300". If I set my console settings to "fps_max 60", my CS:S scores drop down to 47-48 like your notebook.

I get 5598 3DMarks in 3DMark03 and 3189 3DMarks in 3DMark05. (It is sad how I get twice as many 3DMarks on my 3 year old Pentium 4 desktop with ATI X850XT.)

With the LV2G 163.44 drivers, I get basically the same performance as the Lenovo drivers in CS:S. The LV2G drivers made the brightness setting break. The OSD brightness setting would show up, but there would be no change in screen brightness. I do not get any blue screens or vertical lines that you speak of, however.

 

I just finished running 3DMark05, and I got 3156 - a 1% difference in scores (a perfectly acceptable difference given the differences in OS and background apps). Yet still there is a full 30% difference in CS:S performance. I have fps_max at 300, vsync off, color correction disabled, and HDR off. Do you have any other games you can try? FEAR, maybe? It has a decent built-in benchmark.

 

could it be a possible issue with Turbo Memory?

 

Alright, installing the System Interface Driver fixed the OSD, thanks! I don't have Client Security Solutions installed, and uninstalling the TurboMemory driver doesn't fix the blue screens with non-Lenovo drivers. I ran through 6 full passes of MemTest with no errors at all, so I've all but ruled out the RAM. I ran the nTune Stability test for the GPU for 2 hours as well - no issues at all. My 3DMark05 score seems correct for my system. Yet still the same abysmal CS:S performance, and I think Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. lag behind where they should be as well, although I don't have anything to compare them too (hint, hint, fellow T61 owners!)

 

After the clean vista install, I installed the new quadro drivers and loaded up Bioshock, plays surprisingly well at medium settings and looks beautiful. Im really impressed with the 140M GPU. On 3DMark 05 I got 3451 score.

 

I am using the Vista 64 driver 165.01 and it is noticably faster than the current Lenovo driver; the Windows Experience for graphics increased from 4.6 to 4.7 although the Aero is still 4.0.

The built in Matlab benchmark "bench()" has shot up a lot - about 20%. That thing was always too graphics heavy for my taste, and this is just another case of that. I even went so far as to write a graphics free benchmark for Matlab because of it. But in this case, it does show that the new driver is way faster.

 

This is strange - nobody else is experiencing stability problems with other drivers? Firestarter, you mentioned installing the new Quadro drivers, where did you get them? What version? Or are you referring to the LV2G regular drivers?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=164597

See firestarters post towards the bottom of that thread.

 

I seem to have fixed my problems (knock on wood). All of them - no irritating whine from the CPU on battery, full brightness adjustment with OSD, the latest drivers from LV2G (163.44) are working flawlessly, and my CS:S Stress Test score at the settings pacman mentioned getting a 59 for? 56, which is close enough for me. I'd try the MS hotfix to see if I could eek out a few more FPS, but I'm not going to mess with it - I finally have this machine up to my expectations, I'm not taking any chances. Thanks for all of your help guys - who knew something called "System Interface Driver" could be so important? lol

 

Now that you mention it I don't notice cpu whine anymore either!

 

At the time I said 56, but now I get 57. Our notebooks are indeed close enough, considering I am running XP atm.

You guys are making me want to dual-boot XP with Vista.

 

OK I have a suspicious behavior with the 165.01 driver for Vista 64. The display stays black when coming out of sleep, and I have to cold boot. The only difference from before this behavior was that I installed the 165.01 driver. I'll look around the net to see if this is known, but I thought I might as well mention it here in case someone already knows this one. I couldn't find any power management options in the driver software.

It will be a bit of a drag to roll back because this driver is a lot faster.

EDIT: Yeah this is a behavior others reported with the 32 bit version of this (165.01) driver.

Guess I'll look for another V64 driver.

 

I'd recommend the 163.44 driver, as it's actually much newer than the 165.01 driver anyways (yes, it sounds strange, but look at the driver release dates on LV2G) and seems to have a very good performance.

 

Actually I already found the 163.44 driver - for Vista 64 it wasn't there when I went looking for it, but it was there today when I fingered the 165.01 as the culprit.

The 163.44 driver solves the wakeup black screen problem. On the other hand it is back to the slower speed of the original Lenovo driver.

Well I'd rather have slow than the black screen.