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    Sager P150HM with 460M strange display driver behavior

    Discussion in 'Sager and Clevo' started by kensuguro, Jun 4, 2011.

  1. kensuguro

    kensuguro Notebook Enthusiast

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    I have a Sager P150HM with 460M and have been having strange display driver behavior. I can't reproduce this, but I start seeing random pixels on the screen (like color noise), and then Win7 sort of "reboots" the driver, telling me that something went wrong with the display driver.

    The rebooting of the driver doesn't work (does this a bunch of times), and so eventually I reboot. But on reboot, the situation is the same. I get random pixels all over the screen, window contents are missing, just extreme erratic behavior over all. Eventually I figured out that powering down, and powering back up fixes the problem.

    I get this most consistently when a windows update gets installed, but I've had several instances where an update was not involved. Once I do the power cycle, everything is back to normal.

    Is this normal? I hope I don't have bad graphics RAM or something.
     
    kensuguro, Jun 4, 2011
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  2. Bryanu

    Bryanu Notebook Deity

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    Not normal but I would uninstall the drivers, reboot and install fresh downloaded ones again.

    It is either drivers or the GPU is defective. One can only hope is driver so you don't have to RMA it, but on the up-side if you do maybe you can get them to swap you a 560M by paying like $10 bucks or something silly.

    Keep us all posted.
     
    Bryanu, Jun 4, 2011
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  3. Richteralan

    Richteralan Notebook Evangelist

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    Looks like some heat related issue. Monitor the temperature and see if there's a relationship.
     
    Richteralan, Jun 4, 2011
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  4. Atmosk

    Atmosk Notebook Evangelist

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    As Richteralan said, monitor the temps, I suggest either Nvidia Inspector, Real Temp, HWiNFO32 or MSI Afterburner
    What you said about the driver "rebooting" is pretty much whats going on, Win 7 can kill/restart the video driver when it fails for whatever reason or when the GPU stalls or shuts down due to heat or power constraints.

    I'd definitely recommend updating the driver to the latest Verde 275.33 as well.
     
    Atmosk, Jun 4, 2011
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  5. Aikimox

    Aikimox Weihenstephaner!

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    Totally agree, - temps and drivers. HWMonitor is also a good temp monitoring tool.
     
    Aikimox, Jun 4, 2011
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  6. Atmosk

    Atmosk Notebook Evangelist

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    D'oh! I meant to list that one too, it's what I actually use, good mention.
     
    Atmosk, Jun 4, 2011
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  7. Electric Shock

    Electric Shock Notebook Evangelist

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    Windows 7 sidebar gallery actually has some great apps for monitoring Nvidia GPU temperature. That's what I use.
     
    Electric Shock, Jun 5, 2011
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  8. kensuguro

    kensuguro Notebook Enthusiast

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    Awesome, will check out. Thank god im not the most crucial commit point in the dev team for my company.
     
    kensuguro, Jun 9, 2011
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