D900K Graphical Artifacting

Evesham, Clevo D900K
nVidia 7900 go GTX
AMD Athlon 64 x2 dual core 4800+
1 gb RAM

I'm new to the forums, but I've been lurking around for answers, and after finding none, i think ill put forward my problem, in search of a solution.

Basically, after about 20 minutes running 'graphically intensive' games ( BF2, BF2142, Oblivion), the screen goes extremely garbled, lots of artefacting, the sound cuts and eventually the screen goes black and the laptop stops responding. This happens in about 5 seconds.

Then, after turning it off, and then on, the post screen message (the first screen, don't think that is its official name..) undergoes the same cycle.

On the 2nd turn off, and turn on, the system runs normally with no problems.


This has happened before, and I sent it back to Evesham, who took 2 months to simply "Format the Hard Disc Drive and reinstalled Windows.", so I don't feel good going back to them.
The first time it happened, was while playing oblivion, and after receiving the laptop back from Evesham, all games ran perfectly... until i decided to install oblivion, and run it.

So i've established oblivion has done something, because all other games worked fine.

CSS and HL2, appear to work fine as well.

I've already formatted the Hard Disc Drive, and reinstalled windows, but this has provided no results.

Any help is wanted ^^

 

Welcome to the NBR forums.

thats a strange problem that you just described.

Evesham... so are you locating in the UK or Europe?

From what you described and tried..
It really sounds that your videocard might have overheated.

Note: CSS and HL2 are not very GPU taxing games so I am not surprised that they dont cause problems, when my notebook experienced overheating, all I can play perfectly was UT2004 and HL2.

Do you monitor the temps of the videocard while gaming?
Do you use the "Clevo fan feature" (Fn + F2) during gameplay to toggle fans to go to max speed or auto?
Do you use the notebook with a notebook stand/cooler?

I would recommend to use RivaTuner to monitor your temps, and see at what temperature that the artifacting/crash starts to happen at. Most that have experience similar overheats have shown that the videocard starts to downclock when it reaches a certain temp... or crashes.

If that is the case, then you must swap the videocard. Most OEMs do not know how to test videocard overheats, but I have had my issues and singled it out... with the temp monitoring, hardware swaps, and software reinstalls.

Do you still have a warranty on that notebook?

 

Cheers

I'll try using RivaTuner with bf2142, and note the temps till it crashes.
I didn't use the fn+f2 feature to max the fans, so the extra few degrees that it'll shave off may be enough to keep it going.

Sadly, the warranty expired a month ago, so I don't know if i should send it to them, only to discover i get a nice solid bill instead of the laptop .

 

a new videocard for your Clevo is about $400-500... its pretty expensive, but might be worth it if you dont want to throw away a great notebook.

 

Oh and where are you located?? I can tell you the best Clevo resellers to deal with for support or repair.

You can look for a location yourself in the Clevo Guide.

 

There's no need for that I think..

Managed to play for 1 hour with no crashing, whilst using the full fans for the first time

Temperatures hovered around 54 degrees out of game, and 65 degrees whilst in-game, but taking out the battery pack lowered it to 60.

The full fans really do make a difference!

If I hadn't found that out, I might've dished out the cash for the new graphics card.
I guess I'll buy a cooling pad to secure the new temperatures ^^

Physical Memory did go into the 1gb range, and this laptop only has a gig of ram... Too high? or normal?

It does feel bad to have spend 72 hours surplus, when the solution was easy!

I understand this may be a one off ocassion, so I may be back...

 

I have max out my RAM to 2 gigs of RAM when I bought it, its helps for heavy textured games like Oblivion and Ghost Recon.

Remember to also clean out your fans to prevent dust clogs.

Read this:
Guide to Cooling Down your Notebook