VPCZ1 (Vaio Z) Graphic Issues!

Hi everyone:

So for the last few months, I have been using the Vaio Z and it has run flawlessly. I even have been playing games such as Splinter Cell Conviction, Mass Effect 2, Dirt 2, and others. Recently however, I have been having lag issues with my graphics card. It happened first when I was playing Splinter Cell where every 4 seconds it would become choppy. I thought perhaps I was running it too high, but ever at the lowest everything (640 res, lowest everything) I had this stuttering issue. I started having this issue with all the games I use to be able to play perfectly. I have once uninstalled my nvidia drivers, but I reinstalled the nvidia drivers from sonys site and the latest physx drivers from nvidia. What could be the problem?

Thanks

 

Could be some other application/driver/service interfering. Also, make sure you never use "Hardware Sound" with built-in (Intel/Realtek) sound card.

 

see if it overheats by using hw monitor.

it seems that you r having throttling down issue due to overheating.

 

using gpu-z i received temperatures of around 76degres which isn't at the stage of overheating...so it must be something else. I tried a system restore to the earliest time possible. Is it possible that it is a problem with the actual card itself. I just find it strange because for the longest time it has been running fine, and now all of a sudden i'm having issues...i'll try to re-install the drivers from Sony's site for nvidia but I doubt that'll make a difference.

UPDATE: Alright so apart from system restores not making a difference, I uninstalled from device manager the nvidia 330m drivers > and reinstalled from the Sony site, but no luck. I think I am going to have to take this to a Sony Style Repair Center... any other ideas?

Update 2: Okay, 2:34 a.m right now, and the problem is finally solved.......sort of. Usually, when I open a program such as EVGA precision, my default
clock speeds are, Core:475 Shader: 1045 Memory: 700 I was about to format my computer, when I decided to, for the hell of it, see what would happen if I brought the speeds down. I pulled them down to > Core clock: 430 Shader Clock 946 Memory Clock 650 and to my amazement, the random spikes of lag went away! Could someone explain how this is possible? Also, what should I do now...am I supposed to always underclock everytime I play a game?...

Final Update: So I formatted the Z back to factory defaults...all seems to be resolved now (ofcourse). I still wonder what the problem was... but at least I wont have to worry about it anymore. Thanks for your comments!

 

Thats strange, are you sure vaio personalization manager or some other metadata app isn't stealing your cpu?

I run BC2 and ME2 with no chop whatsoever and in fact I overclock with no issues.

 

what are your overclock speeds? I'm getting artifacts in single player of BFBC2, but multiplayer works pretty fine.

 

you can fix the bfbc2 issue by adding directx9 as the default in the bfbc2 settings. All artifacts go away.

runee100 - perhaps having some of these overclocking tools installed is what is causing your problems in the first place? Have you tried uninstalling the evga precision tool, etc?

 

alright, well I checked and played splinter cell again, and for the first few seconds it was okay, and then the issue came back. I checked to make sure practically nothing was running...and I also uninstalled the EVGA tools>restarted, and tried again...with no luck. Do you think I should do a "complete system" return to factory settings(wipes out C drive reinstalls all drivers etc) on the Vaio recovery partition?

 

620/1364/820
Your artifacts aren't due to your overclock, this game does not like our drivers and DX10.
Set your game in DX9 mode.
Open up the settings.ini found in your user directory's BF2 directory.
Go down to where it says DX=Auto and change auto to 9
It will run fine now.