9800M GTX Thread

hummm, have you ever been able to play that specific game well under 64 bit?

 

Yes I can run it fine on my M570A notebook (also WinVista x64), this notebook has a Geforce Go 7900GTX with 512MB RAM running (stock speeds). I have even tried it on my M570TU with Windows XP Pro (x86 and x64), Windows Vista Ultimate and Enterprise (both x86 and x64) and even Windows Server 2008.

Here is a second video I recorded yesterday where you can see FPS drops to below 20. In this video I am running ETQW at 640x480 with all possible graphical settings set to low and stuff like shadows disabled:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMEcfwH_8jU

On the ETQW forums nobody can help me although there have been numerous reports of people experiencing laggy and stuttery gameplay. In ETQW I have tried with locked FPS, unlocked FPS, I have tried with r_threadedrenderer 0, 1 and 2. Even played around with the com_unlock_timing_method cvar but nothing seems to help. I have also tried with all disabled optimizations in the Nividia control panel but no change. At 640x480 with everything set to low and with this graphics card I should get a lot of FPS.

I have monitor the clock rates and temperature of my graphics card during gameplay but there is nothing strange there.

 

what about cpu? does the game detect your cpu still running at full speed or power saver speed. sometimes this can effect a game's fps as well....
also if your thm0 sensor hits like high 90's it will down clock your cpu as well...but if this is not an issue then i guess we look else where...

 

The cpu runs at 3.5Ghz from the moment I start the game. In the beginning I thought that it had to do with the punkbuster services running in the background because when I play a local game I get less FPS drops but when I joined a punkbuster disabled server I had the same problem. Then I thought that it was my wireless connection. Then I tried a cabled connection, still same problem. Then instead of using a cable router I connected my UTP cable directly to the cable modem, still same problem. I contacted my cable provider and they tested my modem, no problem. I have tried on a different location same problem. But then again like I said it works on my M570A notebook fine so it can be isolated to my machine.

Maybe it is a combination of things, like running the punkbuster on the background in combination with my chipset ... If someone with the same config could try out this game I would know if it was really a problem for all similar notebooks or just mine.

 

try this. play your game in window mode at a res of 1280x1024
open hwmonitor / cpuz / gpuz / fraps /task manager set to performance so you can watch the cores.

and see if you can see anything out of the ordinary....

 

The only thing that I personally find strange is the fact the my CPU usage % fluctuates for both cores. It goes from 35% usage to 90% and then drops back to 40% and so on. I have even tried to set the processor affinity for ETQW.exe to the 1st and then the 2nd core but then it gets worse.

It is possible that this high CPU usage might be causing this behaviour because when I was running Windows Server 2008 with the Hyper-V services installed I had constantly a FPS below 30.

If something that is running in the background is causing this, then I would not know what. I get this after a fresh installation and no antivirus installed or anything else that might consume a lot of resources. The only thing I can think of is the punkbuster service. But I have updated these as well and I can't run the game withouth punkbuster.

 

I've got a theory about my FPS drops based on this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=328664

Assume that my ACPI temp gets too high (above 90° celsius) and that there is some cpu throttling going, then this might explain strange fluctuations I am seeing in the CPU usage % of both cores.

What might be causing my ACPI temp to be so high? Chipset driver issue?

 

that's why i brought up the thm0 (thermal sensor) it seems to be very flakey on the x9100 when it's over clocked. we went through having to lower voltage to keep it in check. this was in the gateway forums. my x9000 didn't do it, but e-wrecked's x9100 did.

 

Since me being new to this world of OC-ing I have learned a lot these last couple of days. Something next I have to figure out is how to lower the voltage as this is not an option in the BIOS.

I have also created a new thread asking whether Intel already discontinued the X9100 CPU:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=328737

So maybe there are serious issues with the X9100? Anything I can do about this?

 

before we go that far...have you put your cpu back to stock and then ran your game? if it did it there, then chances are it may be something else....

 

The temperature as reported by THM0 still gets over 90° celsius. I was hoping that undervolting would be the next thing for me to try?

 

then im going to go with a 98 percent sure that this is the problem....

download rmclock
http://cpu.rightmark.org/download/rmclock_235_bin.exe
run it.
use desktop setting to get your true voltage. mobile wont read it correctly
then just set you top multiplier to a lower voltage.

you'll have to play with this stuff for about 20 minutes till you fully understand it. and don't forget to read it's help section. it does wonders

 

How do you verify that the voltage has been changed?

 

it will show in the program.
cpuz will also show it.

 

if you click the view more link...it will show my settings for that run.

 

i think it was something like 650/950/1600

 

before you start... when in nibitor you need to click the get timings button. this well tell yu what your true timingset is. i use either 4 or 7. 7 is the factory default for my cards.

you dont even have to go get fancy with timingsets. that's after you master the art of over clocking at will.
just flash this
600/900/1500 timingset set to 4
then run a bunch of test. then report back with what you get.

 

How do I back up bios before i use the program?

 

this is for the np9262/clevo

nvflash -b 9800bu.rom
but needs to be ran in dos mode.

not sure about yours dude55

 

nvflash -b oldbios.rom at the c: prompt in dos

 

so his card isn't software overclock able kevin?

 

I just bricked my notebook, a M570 with 9800M GTX.

I "succesfully" flashed it with the 0617 (I used the Bios I found linked on this thread, but I downclocked the frequencies for example memories to 850 from 950 etc,), having a 0608 as stock which I succesfully overclocked on my own.

However after the flash there were 3 bips and the laptop just remained blank, altough the hard drive keeps spining. I suspect this is the first sign of a bad flash. I think after I edited the 0617 by changing the ID to 0608 I forgot to change it back.

I've been trying to blind flash back to stock bios but I just can't get on that bloody USB stick.

Any suggestions?

 

Create a bootable disk with DOS or something and then create an autoexec.bat that will run the correct commands. That's how I had to do it.

 

Yeah, I have a bootable USB stick and I edited the autoexec.bat to reflash to stock drivers, I tested it on a different machine and it works fine. But it seems to me that my system just doesn't want to get on the USB stick.

I power the notebook up, wait 3-4 sec. , then press F1 several times, then wait again, and then I know the USB is the third option down the list. So I hit down 3 times and enter. But it doesn't get on the USB. I know it doesn't cause if I press "Y" for the flash, the usual bip doesn't come up and if I press CTR+ALT+DEL it doesn't restart.

If someone has done this before or can post a CELVO M570TU booting up on youtube... it will be great.

 

Use a boot CD because who says that booting from USB is enabled in the BIOS?

 

rule of thumb...set usb floppy/usb hdd/usb flash/cdrom/hard drive. just incase something goes wrong....

 

I prefer USB because I will flash the vBIOS 4 or 5 times till I'm happy. Different freqs and all. But it IS a good idea to create a backup boot CD that autoflashes teh vBIOS.

 

you dont even need to flash that many times anymore...just set it to you highest clocks. then use system tools to clock down a bit. run test. then disable and re enable card and the clocks will return back to your over clock settings without rebooting. drop the clocks to a different setting. and run some test. use the profiles to boot your stable clocks.

but now that i got you here mike...drop your clocks back to stock, but just over clock your shaders to 1600. im curious as to what score you'll get.

i did mine and got like 15.3 with out eve moving the core or memory clock. which is really weird... so now im curious as to see if it works the same way on a mobile platform.

 

Well I mean it takes me that many time to find a good clock.

Before I learned how to flash my vBIOS, I just did shader clocks. I never saw much of a difference, and found using SetFSB increased my fps more than just increasing the shaders. I'm doing some testing tonight. Taking advantage of the -4C temp outside. I'm hoping it won't hurt my lcd or anything...

 

i hear ya mike... i didn't mean anything in a negative way & your right. it does take a bit of time to find the right clocks for each system.

now this shader clock would only apply to 3dmark06 right now. and if i do just a shader over clock.. it pretty much beats just about every other dual gtx over clocked.(core/memory/shader) which is a bit weird to me. and when it's not over cocked..the only thing that really seems to change is the Canyon Flight test. which can gain about 600 points on a good. so this would add to the cpu being better to over clock or setfsb. wish we had cpu over clocking on these...i bet i could clear 18k easy.

 

Alright, I will try to make a boot CD and than see what happens.

 

Ok, no success untill now. I made a bootable CD with Nero but I can't get any autorun options and besides it creates a driver A and on my Clevo I don't know which driver will be the DVd-rom so to just type in the commands. I am probably to much of a noob to figure this out.

I bad flashed once a GPU on a DELL but it took me 10 minutes to fix it. But now... :-( .

 

it can be floppy emulated as well
make the autoexec.bat first.
put inside it:
nvflash nameofyourrom.rom

you'll hear a little beep. hit the y key and wait. to be safe..wait like 2 minutes or so. then reboot your computer.

you will need on your disk:
nvflash
autoexec.bat
whateverthename.rom

commands:
nvflash whateverthename.rom

 

Yes, I did that, the problem for me is that is not running that autoexec.bat and I don't know how to make it run it. I will try again, now.

 

you tested it on another computer?
then try making an autorun.inf
inside it put: open=autoexec.bat

i think that should work.

 

Yes, I am testing the CDs I make on a different computer, to see if they are doing what they are supposed to. And none do.

When I make a bootable CD with Nero, Nero makes it from its own image file which is Calder DOS. After such a CD boots the active drive is A, a virtual drive while any files that I add to the CD will be on the CD drive which ... I don't know what will be on my Clevo, on the machine I am testing it its F. So this is where the problem starts. I need a proper bootable CD and all will be fine...

I also tried merging my bootable USB stick with the CD Nero is making. It was succesful and it ran autoexec.bat. However, it set the active drive to C and when the autoexec.bat tries to run from C ... for example "nvflash etc" it just says "failed to run on the disk... etc.".

If someone has an bootable image that automatically flash your GPU bios... that would be my salvation.

 

sounds like it's not making it right.
when you do create it. you have to do some 4 bit thing that allows it to boot different or something like that. i forget right now.

or you can make a iso copy of your windows cd to your hard drive.
add the files and tell it to boot the autoexec.bat file using the autorun.inf.

 

I will try the last solution, but the only thing I see working right now is if someone can make an automatic recovery ISO to reflash the bios, someone that knows more than I do.

If I manage to make one, well, I will put it up here. I am sure I am not or will not be the only dumbass to screw his notebook.

 

there are some threads on it. i just use either a usb floppy or usb flash or usb hard drive. haven't had to do the cd rom method yet.

 

YES! I have managed to do it!

I used an old 3MB Boot Image for Windows 98.

The OS on it was pretty bad I couldn't even access the CD but it did see the USB stick and made it drive C. So I just put the CD in, typed C: and then autoexec.bat and all went well.

Thank you all for the help. Unfortunely I didn't really managed to create an automatic recovery CD but if anyone gets into the same problem I will happly help.

 

Ok, now that I can use again my nice notebook, there is another problem that I want to discuss about. Maybe someone knows what I am talking about.

Out of the box my system scored 9600 3dmark06 points.

Since then I tried various levels of mild overcloaking but the results have been dissapointing.

I have a P8600 CPU @ 2.4 GHz and using 180.84 drivers.

With an overcloack of 600/850/1550 I got 1010 3dmarks. I increased the frequencies to 610/875/1600 and I got 9995. Temps have been at max 69C.

I don't understand what am I doing wrong. My aim is to hit 11000 and settle there. After I have read this thread I thought that the above frequencies should be enough to hit that but ... no.

Does anyone have any idea what I am doing wrong.

PS I apologise for spamming the thread .

Edit:
Also I am using Vista64, 0617 bios @1.05V.

 

I think its the driver. The new drivers seem to perform bad on becnhmarks, but give you a great boost in real game performance.

 

you would be correct eivind....the older drivers are better for benchmarking than the newer ones. the newer ones are better for gaming.

well done blacky...because it was going on 5 am here and i couldn't even think strait anymore..lol

 

3dmark06 is highly CPU dependant. For big scores you need faster CPU speeds, not GPU...

 

as mr eleron as said...

and for you to gain those faster cpu scores...you will need the older drivers. the new ones seem to cut off about 400 points on your cpu score. in other cases it's just a few hundred. but in 3dmark06...that few hundred is murder on your over all score.

 

11k with just a P8600 = impossible.

 

With my experience on 3dmark06 the CPU does play a role in the end score but it's not a huge one. Just to give you an example, I benchmarked a 7900 GTX with a T2400 and T2700 CPU, the overall difference in the final score was less than 100 points, but the difference in frequencies is 500 Mhz. Also remember that the person that started this thread got 9550 out of the box with a X9100, I got 9560 with P8600 which is more or less around there.

I think you could hit 11.5k on P8600 but hardly more than that, but I am not interested in finding the highest clock possible just a stable overclock for gaming and I think I will settle to what I have now 600/870/1600 @ 72C. It goes at around 10k with the current drivers so I think I will be fine for now.
But I thought it will be easy to hit at least 10500 marks with a mild overclock, but it just doesn't seem so. Maybe future drivers will improve that. However it did score about 6500 in Vantage.

 

then what would you say is possible with a p8600?

 

Actually, if you read just above the bencharks, you'll see I was benching with a P9500, and not the X9100. I bench around 10500 with the X9100 stock.

 

Oh, sorry then emike, my mistake.

IMO I think you could hit around 11k with a P8600 but now I have my doubts.