Severe Sager Woes

I received my brand new Sager NP9262 a week ago and am afraid I have hit an extremely severe road bump. My specs are:

Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00 Ghz
2 GeForce 8800 GTX in SLi
2 gigs of RAM, DDR2 800
System BIOS: 1.00.17aS
Video BIOS: 62.92.34.00.08

I'll give a bit of a narrative to describe what happened in order:

1) First order of business was to install a new SSD drive as the primary HD and move the shipping HD to the secondary slot. No problems here.

2) In my impatience, I decided to do a fresh install of Windows Vista using the Sager Recovery Disk that came with the machine, and not a retail copy of Vista Ultimate (because I do not have one). Perhaps this was my undoing?

3) Everything installed and booted up fine. I proceeded with driver installation. I used all Sager drivers from website including 174.90 nvidia drivers. In order to enable SLi, I have to restart my machine.

4) First run of 3dMark06 produced results around 8500. I checked with GPU-Z and discovered I was running at clocks of 275/301. I checked the forums and became aware of the famous 8800 GTX underclocking issues. Searching the forums, I read that the "Have Disk" method can sometimes fix this when installing Laptopvideo2Go drivers.

5) I uninstalled the 174.90 drivers and ran DriverCleaner in safe mode to sweep Nvidia files. This is when I became aware of two registry keys that the Nvidia filter tries to delete but cannot. I investigated these keys in the registry and found that there is NO way to delete them, not even by booting into command line mode and using the "reg delete" command, not even if you runas SYSTEM. I booted back into Vista and installed 175.75 drivers from LV2G using the "have disk" method. I notice that when enabling SLi in the control panel, I do not have to restart my machine, unlike with the 174.90 drivers (which I installed by running setup.exe).

6) New drivers work! My video cards seem to be clocked at 500/800 and I can benchmark 13470 in 3dMark06. However, my clock settings occasionally drop back down to 275/301. I notice that when this happens, all of the options in the Power Options control panel are reset, even my own custom power plans. This is extremely bizarre.

7) Opening the Nvidia control panel and disabling SLi, then enabling it again (again, not prompted to restart), resets the clocks back to 500/800. Life seems to be good, but DirectX10 in Company of Heroes results in psychedelic colors. This means I need to try new drivers.

8) I decide to pop 4 gigs of RAM into the system. Upon power up, I notice I get extreme graphical anomalies with the screen flashing weird colors in Vista and generally looking like someone just poured water on the motherboard. I experiment by turning Superfetch service off because upon booting up with 4 GIGs, Windows says "Superfetch stopped responding". No luck. I go back to 2 gigs of RAM.

9) After putting 2 gigs of RAM into the system, I decide to boot into safe mode and uninstall display drivers, then reinstall. I opt to try the 175.63 XG drivers from Tweakforce using the "have disk" method. Once again I do NOT need to restart to enable SLi in control panel, and this serves to always reset clocks to full. However, these drivers give a stop error while resuming from hibernate, so I decide to try another version.

10) Following standard drivercleaner uninstall, I install the Sager 174.90 drivers using the "have disk" method, thinking that this "have disk" method is what is magically allowing me to enable SLi without restarting and thus always reseting my clocks to full. WRONG! Once up and running, enabling SLi in 174.90 results in a prompt to restart and the clocks are ALWAYS set at 275/301.

11) I panic, and try to go back to the 175.75 drivers using "have disk". To my horror, even these drivers now demand a restart to enable SLi and also have clocks frozen at 275/301. I try "have disk" with 175.80 drivers and also same problem. My system is now useless.

12) I decide to start VBIOS exploration to see if I can fix this. I read all of the guides available on this forum. I create the USB boot disk, put on latest version of NVFLASH, and scan my original BIOS for backup. I then edit in NiBiTor. There are 4 states: lowest (called something else, but can't remember), throttle, low3d, and extra. The extra field lists the full clocks: 500/1250/799. The throttle settings are the ones I keep seeing: 275/600/301. I decide to change the throttle settings to the same clocks as the extra. I also increase the voltage to the same value as extra, which is 1 Volt. I update both cards VBIOS to my changes. I boot Vista normally and although I can hear the Vista sounds, my display is just black.

13) I immediately revert back to the original VBIOS that I saved in case of catastrophe. I boot up Vista normally. Same problem, can hear sounds, just black screen. I decide to boot up into Safe Mode, and it works. I then install 174.90 Sager driver in safe mode and reboot into Vista normal mode. I can see the screen! Phew. However, clocks still always at 275/301.


I am now at the end of my rope. I just don't know what to do. I've paid 3 grand and have nothing more than a big paper weight due to these constant low clocks. I have read the forums and heard that some people say the 167.43 drivers always give full clock speeds. I will try those when I get home tonight. I will also try turning the Superfetch service back on and see if that helps.

A linked problem is that my power options in Vista are totally messed up. I created my own custom plan, and configured it never turn anything off. However, Vista keeps resetting my custom plan settings almost every few minutes, and I noticed that back when 175.75 was working (no restart for SLi), these power option resets would coincide with the clocks going to 275/301 from full. Obviously, something in Vista power is interacting with the Nvidia drivers to put me into throttle mode all the time. XoticPC told me this is weird, and should not be happening, but I've read forums on Vista where other users claim this happens to them too, and that changing video drivers alleviates it somewhat (these were all ATI users though).

I am not sure if this problem is hardware, software, or BIOS related. My only tool left to fix this problem is to try a clean install of Vista Ultimate from a retail disk. My hypothesis is that because I used the Sager recovery disk, there might be some Sager hack, or embedded setting at the kernel or ACPI level which causes this constant throttling. My thinking is that installing from an unbranded disk, a Vista Ultimate retail disk MAY fix this for me.

If anyone can provide any tips or suggestions I would be most grateful.

Thank you.

 

Did you, perchance, have any event or error logs enabled during this process?

 

I may, and I will check when I get home. However, in the past, I've found Windows event/error logs to be pretty useless in helping to fix problems. I will check anyways. Is there anything I should look for in particular in those logs?

 

get a retail copy of vista and reformat

 

Granted, MS makes the easy things hard, and the hard things...well, harder, but still, there are frequently clues in the event logs that can at least narrow the field of inquiry. To start with, I would look for any sort of driver-related or display-related errors. I would also try and track down anything related to the superfetch error, because that seems rather mysterious - although it may have been caused by an error in the physical memory.

Another thing I would look for are any errors relating to the CPU - I'm going to speculate here, but the customized drivers you've been trying may not be able to deal with the E8400.

You might also try working with some of the SysInternals utilities, such as DebugView for Windows v4.74, which can be d/l'd directly from this link. DebugView may be able to catch more specific errors than are showing up in the event or error logs. There's also a kernel level debugger available, LiveKd v3.0 if you want to try your hand at seeing if you can pull anything useful out of trying to debug the system while it's running.

EDIT: You may also want to try pm'ing some of the members who clearly have expertise in digging into the guts of the BIOS, VBIOS and drivers, such as gangstaone; they may be able to give you much, much better diagnostic info than a nutcase like myself.

 

from where did u bought it?

 

From XoticPC.

 

then contact Justin,i m sue he will help you

 

I've contacted XoticPC tech support several times. Each time they said they couldn't help me, but they would contact Sager on my behalf. I have contacted Sager myself, but their reply is that the 8800 GTX should idle at 275/301 and then go up to 500/800 once in a game. I sent them a more explicit email this morning explaining that my clocks are always at 275/301. Still waiting on their reply.

 

Is it on power saver mode by any chance??

-click on the battery icon and it tells u which power mode ur notebook's on!

*cuz generally 8800m GTX underclocks in powersaver mode and stays underclocked even when 3D apps like 3DMark or games are running!!

 

I disabled the battery icon in my task bar, but I did set up a custom power mode in the Power Options control panel set to never turn off any laptop parts, even on battery. I assume this would override any powersaver mode?

 

nope,you have to set all to "high performance"

 

What do you mean by "all"? Do you mean right-clicking on the battery icon in the task bar in addition to the Power Options Control Panel?

 

Its worth mentioning that in general Vista sucks. A lot (but not all) ppl agree. If you have XP-64 lying around, you should install that and try it (use dual boot).

 

Why not use XP?I am sure it will be much better.

 

I know that for the 5793 you must install drivers in a specific order to prevent conflicts, maybe you should do another clean Windows install (The sager recovery disk is the exact same Vista as retail version) and use the drivers disk that came with your machine and follow instructions carefully, then update drivers with those from the website.

 

My original plan was to use XP, however, I figured now that I have DirectX10 cards, I should probably use Vista and at least cash in on some of those DX10 effects, however meager they may be.

Plus Chaz's review of the NP9262 said that nowadays, Vista and XP 3d performance is almost equal. This sold me on Vista originally. Vista seems ok, it just has a really **** ACPI kernel.

 

-Left click on the battery icon
-a small menu will pop up! see which of the options is selected!

-if its on "power saver", change it to "High Performance" and u r good to go!!

 

Sohail is probably right.
Set it to high performance.

 

I just got home so I can finally try checking for high performance mode.

I have left clicked on the battery icon and my computer is indeed in High Performance mode.

Looks like that is not the fix