6625 stuttering and overheating - solution!(?)

hi, first time poster here but from reading here i understand many ppl have problems with stuttering in certain games...& so do I...i think. However with a new driver i can play oblivion without to much stuttering, but call of duty 4 stutters really bad. I thought the problem was overheating, because my lappie gets really overheated, dont know if its the same for you guys. If i play Unreal T. 3 with max setting it runs fine, but after 10 or 15 min it starts to stutter, at that point my gpu have reached a temp of 95 degrees!!! and thats when i dont overclock. so I thought this to be the single reason for the stuttering.
There have been other discussions about overheating on these machins...well i have made my own sullotion. There is this cold bag you put on a wound which you get from the pharmacy. its a weird gel inside which after cooling in the fridge keeps really cold and completely dry for 5-10 hours...i placed this under my lappie and put the laptop on stands. now the max temp is 89 which makes a lot of difference. the thing is thou that the air intake for the gpu cooler seems to be through the keyboard where the wasd keys are located, so that air isnt beeing cooled. But im also slightly worried as to how the gpu so quickly reaches such hight temp? anyone else out there with a 6625wd who can compare? However im not sure as to how healthy it is for the laptop when something so cold is placed under something so hot. im not a rocket scientist but something tells me it might not be the best of solutions, any rocket scientists around? (but if the other choice is to have a gaming laptop you cant play games on id take the chance)
anyway, for the stuttering i also followed some tips found here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=172717&highlight=8600m+gt+driver

It made the stuttering less.

thanks for all the info around here and ppl like thomaskc.dk who keep at it.

// Cal

 

95 degrees at gpu is very normal... the gpu wont complain before around 125 degrees. It shouldnt be a heat issue if you ask Nvidia and the manufactures, but ill look into it.

 

95 degrees is not bad. But my 6625WD only gets to 83...while it's overclocked. So that is a bit weird.

 

What BOIS versions are you using? The 008 keeps the system coolest

 

Who are you refering to Sprint?

 

i havent uprgraded the bios since i bought this laptop last september...which leads to i have a old one probably. I saw posts here about a new one was released - z15I011.
But im not sure how to install it? anyone can help?? not beeing to high tech user of my laptop the idea of updating BIOS never occored to me...

 

its quite simply. you download an ISO file from the zepto ftp, then you use an iso burner like NERO to burn it on a cd.

all you need to do now is boot up on the cd and let the bios update do its work.

 

oh, sorry just found it when i was browsning the ftp. But how can i find out what my current bios is? As i have just learned updating BIOS is a very critical thing and should be done only if needed. And i dont want to update to the one i already have. Cause as i understand if heating is my main problem then the older 008 version might be better for me?

 

You can in Windows go into:
Start -> Run -> msinfo32

When that utility is loaded look after BIOS version/date in the right pane of the program.

 

If you bought it last september, you probably have BIOS 008?

 

yep thats the one i got...so its supposed to be version keeping the laptop coolest. but i have to try the new one and see, just need to get a empty cd.

its weird thou, when i use my home made cooling system ;-) the temp is almost the same, tops at 93 instead of 96 and gives similar 3dmark score but the difference in gaming is huge! just ordered unreal 3 cause before it was really stuttering after 15 min of gameplay but with the cooling i can play an hour without problem!! so weird!

 

The heating happens within seconds, when you go on full power, the hot air generation is quite fast.

You can test this by starting up the game (and going into a world/map to be on full power) then alt+tab back to windows and letting it cool down, then alt+tabbing back and play for a minute or so, and then to see the temp

 

Haha!! Nice.. I've seen that at a pharmacy. Maybe I should try that for my 6324w since it's getting so extremely hot!! But if that thing is so cold, arent you getting alot of condensation on it. Which would result in some water under the computer. Sounds dangerous :S

 

Put some cloth between them to suck the moist up

 

as i said, the cold thing you buy is completely dry so actually not much condensation...if any. But ill be putting a fine cloth between just in case, and to see if it sucks up any moisture.

as to my temp readings, i leave riva tuner to monitor the temps as i play so i can see when the temp is the hottest without tabbing out. I have come to realize that yes, the comp cools down and gets warm really fast, whithin seconds.

 

As many of you proberly have seen the question weither is issue is heat related or not has come up again in the gaming area (link below), and will be tested further now.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=218092&page=4

But I was wondering if Zepto could share some of the findings they do? If they test at all as they claim, what do they find out? Can Zepto confirm the possibily that 6224/6324 might have heat problems (just like the 6214w)?

 

We are still investigating at the moment, that's basically all I can say. We are pretty open about stuff, but as any other manufacturer we can't just tell you everyhting that is going on inside the company.
The problem about posting every finding we do is that if it doesn't fix anything for every user out there people are not satisfied. We've seen that before and we know it'll happen again. So we would rather investigate before saying anything specific and then maybe have a solution that fixes it all.

 

Alright, I guess that makes sense at some point.

I can only speak for myself when I say that I would be more than satisfied, because I know its a complex issue and yet one fix might not solve it for everyone, but those whoem it might fix it for would be happy customers instead of everyone suffering without knowing what to do or what to try.

Atleast just more info about wether it is more or less sertain that heat could be factor, BIOS is the problem, Drivers are the problem?! Right now the best we got is a 2 year old mail from Nvidia saying "we know there is a problem, we have people looking at it...."

Ive have recieved my 2nd laptop cooler today, so I will test the heat theory later tonight.

 

I can now with 90% sertaincy say that it has something to do with the gpu reaching 95-98 degrees, stuttering start 2 seconds after that happens.

Some games doesnt reach that temp and some are very close to, but basicly after X time of play you will get there and things will be sad.

I do still not think this really is a hardware fault, I still stick with my theory that it has something to do with bios reading temps or bios threshhold or whatever its called.

But for christ sake someone fix this soon ! I havnt been able to play 1 single day on my around 3½ month old "GAMING" laptop. That simply sucks balls if you ask me... and yes, im tired of having to complain all the time because noone apperently can fix this and yet I sit here with a several thousand dollar laptop worth jack ****.

 

If you do the stand-by fix (making a stand-by session before opening the game), and the temperature therefore can rise to around 110c before the GPU steppes down, is the stuttering then delayed until this state?

 

@Tyven

Hmmm no clue? I will need a bit more info on this "standby fix" to test it?

Are you suggesting to put the comp in standby, and wake it up before starting a game?

edit: By standby do you then mean hybernate? or sleep mode?

 

yes, just put the computer in standby, and wake it up again. That makes the max temp go from the 96c to 110c.

By standby I mean sleep. Don't know if hypernate works as well.

 

Hmm okay... if you say so...

Do you have a more scientific explanation for this theory or fix ?

And do you do it every time you want to start a new game? or just when you have booted up windows then once and everything is fine until reboot ?

 

I don't have any scientific explanation for this, other than it must relate to some flaw (or feature ) in the bios, as its work in both Xp and Vista.

I don't use it so often, as I don't have the stuttering issues. I use it in very demanding games, where a few extra fps is useful (and when I want to impress somebody with my score i 3DMark).

A single standby session does the trick, and works until the computer has been rebooted.

 

very interesting i gotta say! i will try it out !

hope it really does work... my hopes arent too high... thanks

 

It should be quite easy to test out.. the most likely result, is however that the the stuttering is just delayed until the temperature reaches 110c

 

Well my gpu temps has never reached 110... so might not.

 

Alright, ive now played wow for around 1 hour.. and it didnt run superb, but definitely better! I do not think it had anything to do with stuttering that it didnt run as good as it could, but plainly that the zepto 167.59 as slow as hell compared to the new 169xx drivers.

But! another problem is now that... sleep mode fails with desktop drivers in vista.

So here is the deal! Does anyone know a newer driver that does work with sleep mode in vista? or a way to fix it with the modded drivers?

thanks.

 

I can confirm that this works.

 

@ thomaskc: Im running 169.61 (from ltv2g) and I can sleep & hibernate.

 

I know for sure, that sleep works in Vista with 169.25
My current drivers, some newer 169.?? drivers you suggested i a former thread, but where it crashes when opening systeminformation from Nvidia's controlpanel, works fine i Vista (I use 32 bit)

It sounds like you have some driver conflict or similar.

 

169.25 , 169.28 , 169.61 and 160.09 all has working sleep mode.

All downloaded from laptopvideo2go.

 

Great. Does the standby trick then fix any of your stuttering together with the 169.xx driver?

 

It actually seems so... suprisingly enough.. though I have only tested in wow so cant be 100% yet, but there is defernetly changes.. I can play for hours now.. without the old stuttering issue.

Im going to try some other games like Cnc3 and such i think.. games i havnt been able to play before because of this stupid thing.

 

Hahahaha!!! I'm running Zeptos new driver atm. I did use 169.28 before.. gonna install that one and try the sleep mode thing.

 

I didn't try the sleep mode fix however I used my old laptop cooler fan and.... yeah, almost no stuttering...does it mean it is heating issue.

 

It is proberly triggered by heat yes.. but that doesnt mean your computer gets too hot. It is however proberly the BIOS not handling the different temperatures right and there by screws up.

 

Or the nVidia chip that measures the temps wrong

 

Gaming night, tonight! Should I just go "Start -> Sleep -> Wake up" and then play? If so, I'll try it out all night. Will post comments later.

 

just put it into sleep and wake it up again whenever you have rebooted.. it works pretty well.

 

it might be worth it to install vista just to get this fix

 

It works in XP aswell as far as I know.

 

so sleep = standby in xp?

 

yes it does

 

@thomaskc.dk, I as you play alot of WoW.

What driver do you run atm? As I said I'm considering installing 169.28 again and try this "sleep mode fix" out. What about the newer 17x.xx drivers?

 

Im about to install 174.12 since they just came for x64. So I will let you know how these are when I have tested. But basicly you can use any of the newer drivers that way, as they all seem to have working standby.

Edit: 174.12 seems to work just fine, performance is for sure not worse than the 169xx. - good luck

 

bah the standby fix doesnt work me with the 169.28 drivers, in xp atleast

 

hmm, are you sure? I used 169.25, where it worked for sure, and the only difference to 169.28 should be some language. I can confirm, the fix, also works in Xp. By the fix I mean, changing the max temperature to 110c before the card throttles down.

You can test it by showing the temperature while gaming or while running a test in some benchmarking program, like 3DMark 06.

I have tried the 174.12 driver for Vista 32bit, and it didn't perform well in either Crysis or 3Dmark06.

 

I guess your just unlucky because it seems the majority has gained quite good performance with these drivers, specially in crysis.

 

i will test the 169.25 drivers later today aswell as the 169.28 again