New P150EM and 680m..All Games Crashing

Hello Good People :hi2:

First of all great forum with lots of good info.:thumbsup:

Overall the new laptop runs great. But I am having hanging/lockups with almost all games that I am trying.
Here are some of my strange test results:

3Dmark 03, 06 and 11 all run stable and produce good scores.

I have tried between 10-20 different games i.e Far Cry 3, Crysis2, Company of Hero’s, World of Tanks, Battlefield3, Saints Row the Third, Civ5
They all seem to lockup, hang or crash to desktop with 3-5 minutes in different ways. For instance: Crysis2 just flashes a black screen, Saints Row crashes to desktop and Civ5 crashes with a display driver error.
Strangely I have yet to to a true windows blue screen yet the games or video drivers have crashed maybe a 100 times so far.

The cpu and gpu temps are within range of what others are posting. The gpu never goes above 70 on most games on max settings.
All cpu and memory tests have passed. (Memtest and prime95)
If I reduce the clock speeds to 584mhz (stock of 719 minus 135) thru MSI afterburner the hanging does not happen as quickly but still happens.
I have tried various driver versions from Clevo, Nvidia and Laptop2go. With no better results.
Any games that I tried on the internal intel 4000 run stable but at expected poor frame rates.

I realize that some games are picky and crash prone but with this many different games something seems very broken. And with the above results it seems more hardware related than software or user error.
I am hoping to get a new 680m from Sager/LPC to swap out. Rather than send the laptop back and forth. I think a new card will to the trick.
From what I have seen, for small bursts of time, the speed of the system and video cards seems great. But if games always crash the fun is diminishing quickly.
I have built a lot of gaming desktops thru the years but this laptops video issues really confuse me.

What do you guys think is happening?
I hope it is just a bad video card. But after reading the forums for the last week I haven’t read about alot of defective 680 cards. So I am loss at what to try besides swapping 680 cards.


Thanks for any help.

Current Config:
Sager NP9150/Clevo P150EM from LPC digital. Bought a week ago.
I7 3840QM, 16Gb mem, Nvidia 680M, 120 intel ssd boot ssd and 750 seagate data drive.
Freshly restored Win8 I also tried a fresh install of Win7. Stock Cd or Clevo web drives

 

this should be hardware problem. change another card

 

Thanks for the quick reply.
I also hope it is a hardware problem. I have researched it so much I am just asking for second opionions in case I missed something.

 

Sounds realy like a hardware defect - maybe board or card.

 

Out of curiosity which drivers are you running? I currently have a 275 GTX (I know it's not a 680M) but I had constant driver reset's with the latest release from nvidia. It would cause the game to freeze up, would have to ctrl+alt+del and end the program. I eventually went a few WHQL driver's back from the latest and found a stable one. I'm not saying this is a guarantee but I personally have not had great luck with Nvidia drivers over the years on multiple different systems. I would find a stable version and stick with it, otherwise I would have weird hang up's like you describe. Might save ya from doing an RMA.

 

Definitely try different drivers. Download latest WHQL from nVidia (310.90?). I had some stability issues with earlier drivers too.

 

I have tried every nvidia driver I could find.
Currently running 306.97 I think this came from the sager win8 driver DVD still crashes games
I also tried 310.90 which is latest whql from nvidia still consistently crashing.
Latest beta 313.96 same story
Laptop2go 306.92 same issue
Must be hardware?

 

It seems like hardware yeah. That crash like that typically is a driver issue though, but since you have tried so many drivers that seems unlikely.

There area couple of things you can try though to get them out of the way if you want. Try manually uninstalling Physx from the Remove programs menu and reinstalling it through the latest drivers. I had a small issue with it, though it was not every game. Run Mem test as well. Something is odd that you can do the 3dmark fine but cannot do games. I'm not an expert, but Ram being bad is a good starting point for it. Lastly, reinstall windows. 8 is still new, we don't know exactly what kind of quirks it has yet.

None of them work? Send it back. Almost every reseller will be happy to set you up with a new one, or fix that one for you.

Good luck man. But try the mem test.

 

I am trying another run of memtest 4.20 now. This was also sager techs suggestion. Running for about an hour now, memory seems fine. Also win8 is freshly restored. Very strange stuff. I am hoping to hear about rma of video card soon.

 

Have you tried a clean install? I had some issues with NVidia drivers recently on two different systems with two different cards, both running the WHQL 310.90 (current), and I had to install them on one of the machines within Safe Mode, and the other machine required a clean install (had to get rid of the old drivers on it first). I always recommend uninstalling a video driver first - just in my experience, 'updating' them tends to produce problems.

 

Thanks for all the responses. Have tried both clean installs of 7 and 8. I am going the swap video card route for now. I have run out of other options and my brain is drained. I will keep everyone posted once I swap the cards. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

 

Best choice if you can't find a simple fix, it is new just get it replaced. Most of the 680s worked great, there really were not that many with problems out of the box you unlucky fellow you.

Glad you can keep a level head through this, a lot of people would have just raged at how horrible _______ company is and how they will never buy _______________ product again.

 

amd? completely agree. it's just rubbish. until now i still hv to search if 7970m can play without any problem before i purchase any game.

 

Well no, I was not being specific at all, it was a general statement. I mean, I had a 7970m originally and I am not raging at AMD for it. I had to pay to swap it out to a 680m. Basically, they released something new, I preordered without waiting to see the issues that were there, problems arose and I got shafted. Oh well, it happens. When Nvidia had melting cards I had one and got rid of it before it melted and went to AMD. Each generation one gets it right and one gets it wrong. When they both get it right it is a wonderful and low priced time for us all and when they both get it wrong it is wonderful because they both work to fix it in order to recollect lost sales.

Amd forfeited this generation, hopefully they will come back with an awesome next gen like is typically done and we will all be better for it.

My statement was just at people in general who had a bad experience with one part and swore to never touch that brand again no matter what for some unfathomable reason. If you have had 10 bad AMD cards, then you have a reason, but one bad generation is run of the mill for this industry.

 

Well said Xtrophy
The industry goes back and forth, some years we win, some we lose. At least we still have 2 video card camps to choose from. It keeps the video card battle fresh and spicy
The 680m kit from Sager just got here, will post results when the team of scientists finish swapping the cards.
Cross your fingers

 

Quick update:
Looking good so far..tried 1st 5 games that were crashing before and no crash yet
Temps are a little hotter but that is to be expected..curing time etc
So far the new card is looking good
Well test further and reply back

 

The New 680m card is running great..
I have just tried the 30th game and they all work perfectly. No hangs hiccups or crashes.
This is what I expected out of the box.
This thread hopefully proved that new, expensive tested hardware can still be defective by the time we get it. It is not all user error
Thanks for the support guys.

 

well said. but this cannot change the fact i got a rubbish. and glad to see you have got rid of the rubbish

 

Well hopefully AMD will sort out enduro in the next few driver releases and that can be the end of the early days of it, like with optimus.

 

I just received my new Sager np9150 SE and am having the exact same problem. What steps did you have to take to get a new 680m?

 

First, try reinstalling video driver.

If that doesn't work, reformat and reinstall operating system.

If that doesn't work, work with your vendor to get your vid card replace. Either ship your laptop to Sager, or work with them to get a replacement 680m vid card and swap it out yourself.

 

I have tried a few different versions of the Nvidia driver, a clean Win8 install, and a clean Win7 install. All games crash eventually, using any combination of the OS and Nvidia driver. The same games run (slowly) on the integrated HD4000 without crashing. I have been in contact with LPC-Digital about getting a replacement 680m.

 

Define "eventually", because if the pattern here is the crash after x minutes of heavy load, then this could be traceable to heat (I apologize if you already ruled that out in a previous post that I missed though).

 

Sounds like the same issues I was having. Once you rule out temps etc. Call Larry at LPC he will setup a cross ship. I was able to get a card overnite from Sager. I swapped it out and the new one is working good. Should only take a couple of days.

 

It really depends on the game. FC3 will hang after 2-3 minutes. ME3 will hang after 15 minutes or so, but it is much less demanding on the GPU. I logged temps and the GPU gets to 70C pretty quickly and stays there then it hangs at some point after. In the case of ME3 it stays at 70C for a long while before the problem occurs.

I talked to Larry and they are cross-shipping me a new one. It's nice to have some reputable dealers to buy from.

 

70C is well within safe limits and these chips tend to have a LOT of voltage headroom so yes a hardware fault does seem quite likely.

 

Yeah, it was one of my better decisions to just make the change and enjoy it. I was lucky enough to be able to do such a thing. A lot of people aren't. And as Meaker said, Eventually they will work the kinks out of Enduro. They needed to design a counter to Optimus or else the would have lost even MORE of the market, something they cannot afford to do after the iCore series has pretty much crushed everything that AMD can throw at them.

I root for competition. Without it we have even bigger problems since prices will skyrocket.

 

Just an update, I installed the new card and everything runs great with no crashes. Larry was great to deal with and very responsive, which is one of the reasons I chose LPC.

 

Awesome. Congrats on fixing the problem. Enjoy your rig

 

Yep good to hear, sometimes you just get a duff card and the sooner you send it back the sooner you get a replacement

 

hmmm.. whats up with these 680Ms? looks like a bunch of lemons got released into the wild

 

I'm having the same issue with my Special Edition. I had the problem out of the box and sent it in for an RMA, I just received it back yesterday and I STILL have the issue. They said they fixed the faulty GPU, I don't understand why all my games would still be crashing?

 

as this is a thread from february could you start a new thread and tell everyone
your supplier
system spec
graphics drivers loaded
what problems did you have and are they the same now
are you plugged into mains
are you on high performance
what did your supplier say the problem was

the more info we have the more likely people will reply with advice

 

I HAD THIS SAME EXACT ISSUE.

Clevo P150EM / GTX 680M - Games randomly crash within 1 hour. Some games crash quicker than others.

SOLUTION: I called SAGER to have them replace the graphics card (I was still under the 1 year warranty). They first told me that they could not replicate the issue, but after convincing them over the phone, they said they would replace the card with a brand new one and now the issue is fixed!!

THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS. I had this problem for a year, I tried changing drivers, reinstalling windows, everything. Now I don't have anymore crashes and it works great!!

 

Glad you have it fixed, issues for a whole year would drive me a bit batty.