T60p overheating when playing civ4

Just wondering if I got the bad end of the stick here. Have any of you who play Civ 4 on a T60p find it overheating (as in the computer stops responding, screen goes wonky for a second or less)? I've noticed it happens (thankfully only twice..) when my power settings are set to allow the "System Temperature" 3 bars and I play for about an hour. Should I try dropping the over-all graphics quality? Should I drop the graphics quality and turn on the fan more? I've noticed that it says I won't get as much performance if I turn the fan up to the highest setting. Should I even trust Lenovo's utility to give me accurate measurements? I should mention that it is very sexy smooth while it does run...

 

is this with the firegl version of the x1600?

 

Only thing I can think of regarding the game itself is to make sure vsync is enabled. That way, at least it'll only render the frames that actually end up on the screen, which tends to lower CPU and GPU load. And yes, keep the fan running.
Don't see why that would lower performance, although it might affect battery life.
Other than that, is it still covered by the warranty? No computer is supposed to overheat, no matter what you do with it. If it overheats, it means the manufacturer screwed up somewhere, putting too powerful hardware in a box with too little cooling.

 

The fireGL version. Does anyone else think I should be contacting Lenovo about this?

The fan is running. I'm just not entirely sure what their power manager is about; it seems to be implying that if you turn the fan to the most pro-active setting, you will lower the performance of the system..

My bad, the "System Temperature" setting up to 4 bars.

 

I'm a big Civ4 fan and I've played the game both on my previous T60 (T2400, X1300) and current T60 (T2500, X1400). I can feel the vent constantly blowing out hot air but its not like the T60 felt as hot as say, a Macbookpro.

Perhaps your videocard runs much hotter than the X1300 and X1400? I would assume that T60p may run hotter since its a very high spec machine!

 

That may be very true, this is a workstation card after all... I was just wondering if other people with similar spec'd systems have been having this problem. Could I potentially mitigate some of the problems with cooling pad? or does the cooling system of the T60's make it inconducive to using a pad? I mean, where are the fans on this thing?

BTW, what settings are you playing it on?

 

Locking up or becoming choppy should never be a result of heat...I'd check updating video drivers first off. If that doesn't resolve it, I'd call Lenovo. The heat dissipation system should always be able to keep the entire system within tolerances.

The rear left corner vents should not be impeded.

 

lenovo drivers or ATI's? I'm thinking I'll have to call lenovo about this one..

 

I'd look for updated drivers on Lenovo's support site for the ATI card or general system drivers. Perhaps if that doesn't work, update the BIOS. Once you hit that point and it still doesn't work, you'll be able to answer yes to all the "Have you done...?" questions that support staff will ask you.

 

Hmm, I'm thinking of installing the omega drivers. I've called lenovo but I can't seem to find someone to talk to about this who is knowledgable.

Jagged, what settings do you play the game on?

I'm wondering if it's because I'm pushing the laptop beyond what it's supposed to do... but then again, why does lenovo allow us to push it then?

 

If I remember reading correctly from reading Chaz's guide to GPU, the fireGL isn't meant for gaming. Nonetheless, maybe you should tweak down the settings on Civ4 (i'm looking forward to play that game as well but I'm hooked on WOW at the moment) and see if it runs any cooler.

 

I was able to get it to run somewhat smoothly at 1600x1200 without the system overheating. Basically I had to change the mipmap settings in the "ATI control center" to more towards "performance" and turn everything down to medium quality graphics in the game itself and try and turn everything to the point where the game was rendering as few 3-d images as possible. the system ran hot, but not too hot. oh, and my IBM power settings (the fn+f3 key) were at adaptive cpu and balancing fans. I also propped up the back of the laptop... not sure if it makes much of a difference.

I still don't like that I can't play it as smoothly as I want (if you'd like to know what I'm talking about, jack everything up and then turn the fan setting up to "maximum performance") but I can play it. meh, Civ games aren't my thing I've realized. I am enjoying Nexus though...

As a side note, My system would still get quite warm if I was using photoshop, illustrator, and say... surfing the web at the same time. I'm sure I could reproduce the same problem if I was doing that with the settings as how they were.

 

I used low settings with the X1300 before and everything is ok except that during later part of the game on huge maps, turns take longer.

On my T60 with 2.0ghz, 2GB RAM, and X1400, I use medium setting and it runs much faster. However, I notice that when I change Civ setting, sometimes, all the unit icons turn black suddenly. I have to restart the game so that everything goes back to normal. Anyone experiencing the same problem? I've updated to the latest ATI drivers via Thinkvantage system update by the way.

 

I have the t60p 2623 (14'1) with 2gigs of ram and the firegl 512mb video card. (I ordered the one with the 256mb card but they upgraded me free because they didn't have enough of the 256 cards or something).

anyway, I've got serious overheating issues with this thing. I have it on default settings and when I am plugged in and doing any gaming, it doesn't take more than about 30 minutes to an hour before the machine locks up solid or blue screens.

also. I was just browsing the net (not gaming) for a while and had a browser window open with a flash ad or something that was pinning out the CPU. I noticed it was blowing out VERY hot air and a few seconds later it blue screened.

I think these t60p's have serious overheating issues as one of my friends who has the same machine has had a similar experience. I am going to contact lenovo and see what they can do about this.

 

Stop playing video games on your T60. Just because they can play games does not mean they're intended for games.

 

no offense Karl, but I didn't spend $3k on a laptop to browse the ******* internet. If this machine can't perform under any load at all then Lenovo needs to either come out with another model that can, or refund peoples money. If they don't get a fix for this soon then I'm going to send mine back.

 

I have a overheating problems too:

my problems

High calculations, and etc.

 

Is it overheating under normal settings, or with the fan settings tuned to minimize usage and the like?

 

I suspect Karl was joking.

 

The Lenovo software indication that performance may drop if the fan goes higher is probably meant to take into account battery life. Set the fan to high!

It's understandable why setting the graphics quality towards performance rather than quality may help; workstation-class graphics cards like the FireGL are geared towards accuracy, not framerates. It will probably be working even harder than the equivalent ATI X-series consumer graphics card.

But in terms of the actual graphics chip, there should be absolutely no difference between your workstation card and a gamer's one (except yours supports some CAD features like hardware lines). You should definitely take advantage of it to play games.

 

followup to this problem. I did a full bios update with everything new and mysteriously the overheating problem has been greatly reduced.

also, no i wasn't running it at minimum fan. Becuase of the overheating problems I was having I turned EVERYTHING to minimum speed, max fan, etc. to try and mitigate the overheating and nothing really worked.

anyway, i would strongly recommend the latest bios updates from ibm for this machine to anyone having this problem.

 

My T60p arrived Friday, August 11th, and after bringing everything up to date (including the bios to 1.09), the first thing I did was install Civilization IV and WoW. Both have run smoothly, for extended periods (including a 4 hour stretch of Civ 4.. god hitting enter for just one more turn can become.. so easy). No lockups or slowdowns, the exhaust did get quite warm, but not alarmingly so. I'm not sure if something did change with 1.09, but things look good now, at least for my system.

 

There are several things you can do:

 

There are several things you can do:
1. Use Lenovo Update to get your BIOS and your Power Manager to the latest version. Your Power Manager settings determine the CPU speed and the related temperatures.

2. Use TAT (to find out what your temperatures are and you want to be below 90Celsius) on http://shintai.ambition.cz/files/tat.exe

3. There is a tool called TP Fancontrol on http://sourceforge.net/projects/tp4xfancontrol/ which allows you to manually crank up your fan. The Power Manager dies not do that. Set it up to 127 and the fan will run full speed ( you can hear that ). I don't take any responsibilty since the manufacturer guarantees only values up to 63. You might damage something ( it works for me though).