NP8660 Stuttering Graphics! Please Help!!!

Hello, I just picked up a brand new NP8660 today and now very concerned since when i'm playing a game, the visuals seems to stutter momentarily every 10 - 15 seconds. The framerate is very high and the visuals themselves look impressive but having these sudden dips whilst playing completely destroys the fun! It's the consistency of these split second pauses that really worries me as to whether its just the graphics card awaiting better drivers to be released or if there is just something wrong with my computer! I am running XP because i found vista very resource consuming and it froze a few times awswell! could this be anything to do with my problem???

Thanks

2gb RAM GDDR3
2.53ghz - P9500 Core 2 duo
9800m GT
200GB 7200rpm SATA2

 

Try some different drivers from www.laptopvideo2go.com

If need be there is an installation guide in the gaming section.

 

I'm having the same exact problem. Every 10-15 seconds or so, it freezes for about half a second. Frame rates are usually around 30-60+fps in various games and it still happens.

I've tried drivers 177.89-177.98 and they all do the same. I do not know if the stock Clevo drivers stutter. Are you running stock drivers 00chapmano?

 

What game are you playing? I just played Call of Duty 4 last night. Either I don't have problem for this game or I was just too tired to remark that freezing

 

the only time i noticed stuttering with the m860tu was when i had it hooked up to a 2nd monitor and was putting the game out on both displays.

However i believe this is a hardware limitation. When i played on either the laptop display OR the monitor display, i never experienced any stuttering.

ps. this was with the stock clevo drivers...

 

What games, what settings, what drivers?

 

Before we get into it, make sure of the following:
- be plugged into AC power to get full performance
- disable PowerMizer if you havent
- set all Power Options to Full Performance
- make sure you are not in Silent Mode (hotkey on that notebook)

Now, after check all of the above, consider getting the latest and stable drivers first:
http://64.208.175.44/pages/notebooks/download.cfm?ProductType=8660

 

Youv'e only got 2 gigs of memory, get 1-2 more.

 

2GB is good enough.

 

to run vista, yes, to run vista and play games, especially graphic intense games? not hardly, get 1-2 more gigs, no more stuttering.

 

I would also recommend to make sure your HDD is defragged (get Diskeeper) and make sure there are no HDD errors (go to command prompt.. Run as Admin... and do a CHKDSK C: /F)

 

Diskeeper FTW!

 

Is there any specific order in which you should install those drivers?

 

make sure you fully uninstall previous NVidia drivers, restart.

then install the new drivers.

 

i have 2gb of ram and vista, and i play COD4 maxed out with no stuttering and Crysis on a mix of high and very high with no stuttering. it is not a RAM issue.

 

Assuming you've ruled out disk access as the stuttering cause.....

Trying another video driver is probably worth a shot. Since you're in "debug mode", though, you might be better off using a vendor approved driver... no sense adding another unknown.

If a new driver doesn't work, the next logical step is probably to look for background processes which might be causing the problem. A heavy-handed, but quick way to do this is to run "msconfig" and uncheck all the processes under the startup tab (don't worry... necessary processes will run no matter what you do). If this solves the problem, you'll simply have to narrow things down to find the culprit. (It will probably be a non-Microsoft program, and, if your stutter only occurs when moving under keyboard control, it will probably be a hotkey program that screws up the character repeat function.)

Beyond this, you might try updating all your drivers including your mouse driver.

 

In Vista, the jump from 2 gigs to 4 gigs is REALLY noticeable...

 

Thanks for all the replies. I am mainly trying to play Crysis and Mercenaries 2. Crysis looks fantastic and has a very smooth frame-rate but this stuttering persists at around ever 7-8 seconds. the delay lasts around half a second each time it occurs so its incredibly distracting. Its definitely a consistent stutter, not random!

Other games seem to run fine, i.e. Hitman Blood Money, Gary's Mod/Half Life 2, but they are a little older and i did buy this machine to handle the new games a bit better!

Latest Video card drivers from laptopvideo2go have been installed so i'm struggling to think what else could be causing the problem.

 

Vista uses up 2 gigs like it was nothing.

 

I have Vista installed... but I stripped it to its bare OS by using vLite.

So my Vista is running as optimal as my XP SP3.

 

Maybe its too early to say that but last resort would be to reinstall and see if this persists.

Everytime I boot, it uses like 1GB and after 10 hours of uptime, it raises for about 100mb (on my desktop). My NP8660 with 4GB RAM uses 1GB also at startup so I don't know how many startup apps you have to say that

 

I've been working with emike who has the same issue, removing the battery from the system solved his problem, can you try doing the same? Also when you unit is plugged in, are you plugging into a surge protector? Also when I say solved the problem, I mean it allows him to play games like crysis without the stuttering, not that it actually fixes the problem.

 

For everyone talking about his 2GB of RAM, he is running XP, not Vista, as it is clearly stated in the OP. Besides, I have used 2GB of RAM + Vista and Crysis had no problems playing (it alone uses like 800MB of RAM)

-J.B.

 

That sounds suspiciously like some wireless/bluetooth device polling - and when they poll, they can monopolize the FSB, blocking communications between, e.g., the CPU and the GPU.

First try running with both wireless and bluetooth disabled to see if that ameliorates the problem. If so, try uninstalling the drivers, and then reinstalling them to see if by chance it's just a corrupt driver that's tripping up the system.

If that doesn't do it, also try running a little utility called DPC Latency Checker to see if you can identify which process(es) are suffering from high DPC (aka deferred procedure call) latency - that may be the process that, when it finally gets ahold of the bus and the CPU, is causing the whole system to have to stop and wait - stutter - while it gets its DPC business done.

 

I don't seem to be having the issues anymore, like bwhxeon said, but I don't think I want to remove the battery everytime I'm going to try Shyster's suggestion and see what I get there.

 

Just making sure: you've turned off all applications running in the background? Especially virus or spyware scanners? And especially wireless/bluetooth as mentioned above?

 

Its more the why it fixes the problem that I want to know. If removing the battery and disabling devices fixes the problem, then maybe its actually a problem with the power supply?

 

I agree with you completely. It makes no sense to me why it would make any difference at all. The times I wish I was a hardware engineer...

I don't run any anti-virus, anti-spyware applications, ever! Don't install pirated software, don't click the "Will Obama Win?" ads, and don't put anything crazy on your system, and there is no need to use anything more than Vista's Windows Defender and the Firewall. Anti-Virus is just resource intensive, and is a virus/spyware in and of itself. Avast being the exception of course.

 

That's a very good point. How much do you know about the battery monitor and how frequently it polls the battery to check for status?

 

*raises hand* That's me. That's why I got my 24/7 360 degree security. Sorry, can't pay all the bills until I get paid and then the software gets paid for after that. Typical startup entrepreneur policies

 

I do not understand why one would pay subscriptions for Antivirus/firewall/spyware programs.... when the free ones do the exact same job.. and at time even better since they do not have bloat.

I recommend the following freeware (that I tested and use):
- Firewall: Comodo Firewall Pro
- Anti-Virus: avast 4! Home Free Edition .... or .... AVG Free Antivirus
- Spyware/Malware remover: Spybot, HiJackThis, etc..

 

The best AV/Anti-Spy/whatever in the world is... your brain...

This one ->

It´s free, it´s light on resources, it´s secure... and it have an advanced heuristic malware detection... if you see "You have won 100 000 000 000 zillion $ just open this: X" it will warn you "Don´t open it, it may have malware in it".

Never fails...

Now seriously, I don´t use any... Why? Because most of them are like a virus, they get deep inside your OS, control everything you do, and sometimes they act like viruses, deleting system/important files and registry keys... If you try to uninstall most of them, they will ruin completely your OS, in some ways that the only thing to do is format and make a clean install.

Some people act like if their brains were off, beind the false security feeling of an AV.

The prevention is the best way to archieve a clean system...

 

Welcome back Audigy. I agree completely. I usually just tell people not to click on the Will Obama Win stuff. Nothing beats the brain. I've never run any anti-malware apps on any of my personal systems. Besides, I believe much of the malware out there comes from anti-malware companies. Got to keep themselves in business somehow!

Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall do a wonderful job. Combine them with the Windows Malicious Spyware Removal Kit from Microsoft, and your set.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself... I agree with you

Even the software firewalls, they are completely rubbish... complete placebos...

If anyone want a true firewall, they need a hardware one, like a router with NAT and SPI(Stateful packet inspection) or if they are security maniacs D) one with DPI(Deep packet inspection).



EDIT: Sry for going OffTopic...

 

I've just tried this myself because I'm having the same stuttering problem. I'm wondering if this is my problem too. I guess a chart like the one in the screenshot (while playing COD4) is bad, right?

I tried it on my old Alienware desktop too. Spikes are rare and the chart is completely flat while idle, but quite variable while idle in my Clevo 901C, including serious spikes even when just using my browser.

Is this a hardware problem or a software problem? Has anybody else tried it? How does it look?

 

Eh, I find Kaspersky (virus alone) to be way better (that is, conflict wise) than Avast (and AVG has given me so many false positives), and any free ones I've tried and it's just as configurable (you can turn off any options, not have it be resident and the like). Any other antivirus has been crappy and bloated for sure. I like Online Armor firewall a bit better than Comodo, but both are good (and free, and better than paid ones that take up a ton of memory, blue screen me, etc).

Hijackthis is pretty awesome though

What? No way. The majority of use from my software firewall comes from blocking applications that try and dial out for no reason (or catching viruses before they do anything, since the antivirus rarely runs, but this is once in a blue moon and usually when I am checking something suspicious). Some of us are pretty paranoid about random feedback applications send to servers - applications that have no business connecting to the internet at all. Even if you're not paranoid, plenty of applications dial out and slow down my system or slow down startup and the like if I let them. Obviously running on top of a hardware firewall.

 

>.> I've never needed spyware scanners or virus protection...I keep everything backed up and to be honest if you don't click on random adds and stay off the p.o.r.n sites I don't see why you would need any protection. I suppose the later might be to hard for some, but then they probably deserve what they get...

 

that is in no way the problem.

 

This latency program is quite interesting (props to Shyster), but I don't know exactly what it should look like. Since I don't have any stuttering problem, perhaps your chart should look like mine.

The two attachments below show my system at idle, and while running the Crysis benchmark. (1920x1200, high quality)

 

It's almost certainly a software problem - typically, a driver that spends an inordinate amount of time during its time-slice at the CPU when it gets to monopolize the CPU doing things that it could be doing in the background, or when it doesn't have a lock.

It could also be a hardware problem, e.g., a component that is about to fail and is thus constantly exceeding it's required response time; however, any decent software should be written to take that into account and not tie up the system waiting for a dying component (it should flag an error or advisory log entry instead), so the best bet is to treat it as software-related until/unless you've excluded all of the possible software sources.

On your screenshot, you've something that's doing an ungodly amount of CPU-hogging at regular intervals (hence the huge red spike); follow the advice on the message box and try disabling various (nonvital) devices, like wireless, bluetooth, etc, to see if you can isolate the source of that latency spike.

 

Thanks for the info Shyster. I did already try all non-essential devices I could think of. I wouldn't know what else I could disable. Any ideas? (attaching my device manager list).

Bear in mind I've already tried disabling bluetooth, WLAN, ethernet, and sound.

Thanks.

 

Try this quick check if you haven't already:

Run "msconfig" and uncheck everything in the startup tab. Reboot and test. If this solves your problem, one of these processes is the source, and you'll just have to track it down. If it doesn't, at least you've eliminated some possible causes.

 

I'll give it a go Wobble.

I've just been comparing my graphs with yours. Without SLi it looks similar to yours during Crysis. With SLi, there are regular spikes way up in the red zone, and I get the strong impression that they coincide with each stutter during the game.

EDIT: before I try it, none of those Start-Up processes will prevent Windows from booting, will they?

 

No. Any essential processes will run no matter what you do, and you should have enough processes running to play an offline game.

 

Just a thought - is it possible to disable the battery monitor? Since some people have reported being able to ameliorate the problem by taking the battery out, it strikes me that the misbehaving app at the bottom of the pile might be the battery monitor if it's periodically checking the battery and taking a long time to do so each time.

 

Interesting. This makes me wonder if you might have a faulty SLI bridge connection between the two cards (disconnected cable/bad cable/reversed cable/bad connector...), a problem I had when I upgraded to SLI (I mistakenly reversed the cable!). When something like this occurrs, the two cards will communicate over the bus, but, as you can probably imagine, with much degraded performance.

The primary symptoms I saw were:

1) Only a 35-40% non-SLI to SLI increase in total graphics scores in 3DMark06 (default resolution) rather than the typical 50% increase.

2) Lower than expected FPS scores in Crysis (23-25 FPS in the benchmark at 1920x1200, high), and choppy, nasty in-game performance.