Questions about T61p screen and gaming

hrm ok I thought WoW just stutters and slows down but if it shuts down the machine like that its different from what I had. No blue screen, just complete shutdown? Does this happen only with WoW or any game? 3DM06?

 

Once it stuttered and slowed down. When that happened I was able to close it and everything was ok. All the other times the machine just shutdown with no errors or warnings. I never got a BSOD, just shutdowns.

When I restart the machine it says it encountered an unexpected shutdown. Then I think the Lenovo software does some kind of check. Then it gives me the boot options to boot to safe mode.

WoW is the only game I have. I don't have 3DM06... yet.

Wow, 3DMark is 500MB. This will take a little while.

 

Yeah I would make sure that it happens on other games too before doing anything. There's demos, 3DM06 you can dl. Best case scenario its a WoW specific problem ( though unlikely) but its good practice to do a full diagnosis then figure out your options from there.
Have you tried hackez diagnostic guide?

 

webtdc, how many DIMMs of RAM do you have in your machine? Several threads here have reported random shutdowns with games when they have two DIMMs of RAM in their machine. The cause is known -- a flaw in some of the motherboards put in the T61s.

Here is one of the several threads on this problem in this forum: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=179172&highlight=hellbore. There are several others.

If you have two DIMMs and the same kinds of issues, you probably have the faulty motherboard. If so, Lenovo will replace it.

 

I have 2GB, 2Dimms. Yeah, I read about this. I was hoping that was an old issue that was fixed since most of the threads are from last year.

My issue sounds very similar although I didn't try removing one of the sticks. If I have to send my machine in I hope they fix it ok...

 

As I recall those threads, the test was to take out one of the DIMMs and see if the system worked. If it did, then you had the motherboard fault.

Not sure, however, how well your system will work with only one gig if you're running Vista.

 

How well does the T61p widescreen display old 4:3 ratio games?

Is the content stretched across the entire screen or is it scaled to keep 4:3 with black bars on the left and right sides? I've never owned a widescreen and would much prefer that it scaled rather than stretched.

I'm mainly interested in the WUXGA (1920x1200) over the WSXGA+ (1680×1050) but am open to hear anyone's thoughts and experiences about either. Thanks!

 

You can adjust that in the Nvidia control panel. So you can have it stretched or black bars on either side.

 

I did the 3DMark06 default test and that test went ok. It didn't crash or anything. The framerates were super slow, but I think that's normal for the test? I only tried it once but my machine didn't shutdown. I got a score of over 4000.

Then I downloaded and tried out the Bioshock demo. That game is really nice... and scary. Unfortunately while playing the demo my machine just shutdown just like when playing WoW.

I didn't try using just 1 Dimm or clean install yet...