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Serious 8890 overheating problems

post #1 of 23
11/28/03 at 6:17pm
Thread Starter 
Having gone through the forums, I'm starting to believe that maybe I'm alone in this, and that I might need to send off my machine to Sager. Before I do though, I want to make sure it's something they actually have a chance at fixing.

Basically my problem is this: My machine's VIDEO CARD overheats.

It's not the CPU. It's the video card.

Here is my machine:

Sager 8890
16.1" SXGA screen
P4 3.2 ghz proc 800FSB w/HT
Radeon 9600 M10
1 Gig ram
2 x 60 gig, 5400 rpm HDDs in RAID 0 config

Running Windows XP
DX 9.0b
Sager Vid card drivers

Now, basically what's happening is this: 3D games (C&C Generals, Dark Age of Camelot, HALO, Call of Duty, Planetside) will start to... well. Go crazy is the best way I can explain it. Basically at first polygon surfaces will begin to lose textures at random... then lines will flicker between verticies that shouldn't be connected. Things begin to flicker. When it gets real bad lines are shooting essentially from every vertex on screen. I know this is caused by overheating of the video card because the system isn't locking up, and because I've seen this kind of behavior before on a desktop where the vid card fan had failed.

On games that use 3d enhancement rather than all 3d graphics (Rise of Nations, Motocross Madness) It will be ok for awhile, then textures will start to get dark spots flickering in and out, then all at once the entire screen will fill with a pattern of vertical lines with the game between them. If I let it continue the vertical lines begin to fill up more of the screen. These lines are of different colors typically, and are usually primary colors (ie yellow, red, or blue).

Whatever the case... I'd like to ask others that have an 8890: Are you having overheating problems playing games? Typically I try to run games in the native 1280X1024, but I've attempted Rise of Nations at 1024x768 with the same result after awhile.

Even with a laptop cooling pad and nothing blocking airflow, this process typically takes usually only a half-hour to an hour of playing.

What do you all suggest. RMA time maybe?
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post #2 of 23
11/29/03 at 1:26am
A couple of questions first
1) did the machine exhibit this behavior right from the start or is this something that has developed over time?
2) where do you live, though this shouldn't be much of an issue at this time of year. Anyway, what's the ambient temperature and humidity?

If this is something that's been happening right from the start, the only thing I could suggest is despite using a cooling pad (which one?) there may be something in there blocking the air flow. Is there good air flow coming out of the machine and is the air coming out hot? Can you measure the temp?

Look down into the heat sink, you can remove the cover fairly easily to access this. Is there anything in there blocking air flow?

Lastly, you might want to look at the thread by Hanko-Panko about Arctic Silvering his machine. Though you are saying its the graphics card rather than the processor. Might want to look at the air flow around the graphics processor.

If all that yields nothing, time to talk to SAGER and see what they say.
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post #3 of 23
11/29/03 at 10:01am
I've seen the same thing twice, both on rise of nations at 1600x1200, random glitches like you experienced, colours changing, blotches appearing. Both times I raised the laptop a bit and opened a window and the problem disappeared pretty quickly. Weird that RON would cause that kind of heat, I've played UT2003 for 3 hours straight at 1600x1200 with no problems at all.

I had thought it was a problem unique to me, I've had all the video issues going (flickering screen, terrible fuzziness on some colours, and now this). I've sent my 8890 in for an unrelated motherboard replacement and I'll let you know if it solves the problem.

Edit: To answer some of marquis' questions. I live in England, its winter and my ambient room temp is a cool 15°C, dont know about humidity but I'd say it's pretty dry, the heat sink is clean, I've had the problems since I got it. The air flow was certainly there and was hot but no moreso than playing UT or doing 3ds rendering. I'd like to try ASing my GPU (I'm doing my cpu as soon as I get it back) but I dont think its accessible without serious disassembling,
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post #4 of 23
11/29/03 at 2:43pm
Thread Starter 
To answer the questions:

Nothing is blocking the airflow, and during gaming I can always feel a good amount of hot air comming out the side. I used to joke that I could use my laptop as a heater with the amount of hot air it expelled.

I've already AS'd my CPU. It has not helped.

I live in Denver, so the air is always very dry. As far as the ambient temperature, I am typically comfortable around 20 Celsius (or about 70 Fahrenheit) and that's with the heater on.

Also, these kinds of problems have been happening since I got the machine. The first game I tried on it was Rise Of Nations, and have noticed the same problems with others.

I'm not sure.. but I think Rise of Nations really tasks a machine in both the CPU and VPU fields. Lots of units on screen simultaneously + 3d enhancements. C&C Generals almost never has the problem, though I've noticed the occassional glitch. HALO and Call of Duty running at native resolution of 1280 x 1024 will start to artifact pretty badly after about a half hour. Never tried Unreal Tournament 2003.

The laptop cooler I use is a little thin plastic one with 4 fans intaking air through the sides and blowing up onto the bottom of the machine. I always position the laptop a little bit further down on it so the fans are blowing directly on the air intakes.

One thing I HAVE noticed, however, is if I get a larger commercial fan (like a vornado) and have it constantly blowing air on the back of the machine, 3d games will stop artifacting. RON still had problems, however. (Tried this at the last LAN party I went to.)

Whatever the case.. I'm hoping that the conditions I've shown are irregular and this is something sager might have a shot at fixing, as opposed to me having to live with a $3200 purchase of a "desktop replacement" machine that, quite frankly, cannot live up to this title.
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post #5 of 23
12/1/03 at 7:22am
Guys check you have the most recent BIOS version (1.00.03-T7).
You can check this during boot up if you hit the pause button shortly after the first screen appears.

Some graphics glitches were caused by a problem in the older BIOS versions.
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post #6 of 23
12/2/03 at 4:32am
I new with all this technical computer stuff, but I may or may not have a simialr problem. When ever I play a game (Call of Duty, Maxy Payne etc.) some small green vertical lines appear about 1/3 up my screen, they flash and sometimes turn red. They games run great and you can really only notice the lines when the screen gets darker! Could this be a similar problem?? I run games in 1600x1200, but when I switch to 1280x1200 they lines move to the bottom of the screen, and going to 1280x768, 800x600 etc. the lines disappear!!!!!

Sager 8890. 3GHz. 1 GiG RAm. ATI 9600 PRO 128MB. 16" UXGA
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post #7 of 23
12/2/03 at 4:37am
I used to have the same problem with GPU overheating. I bought a $9.00 fan from walmart with oscillation and pointed it at the arse end of my laptop - all the artefacts went away.

I found that the stock drivers (OLD ones) ,that were not geared towards squeezing every ounce of performance out of the Radeon 9000, worked best and I dont have the artefacting anymore...everything is GOLDEN!!
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post #8 of 23
12/2/03 at 6:30pm
Thread Starter 
Well there's theoretically no problem with just buying a secondary fan and pointing it at the laptop, except for the fact that doing so removes any and all portability and function of the laptop in the first place.

Does anyone know where the Vid Card is located in these laptops? If it can't stay cool enough on it's own, I'm thinkin it's time for a case/casing mod
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post #9 of 23
12/2/03 at 7:02pm

Contact Sager Support

See if they can help you and get ready to RMA.
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post #10 of 23
12/2/03 at 7:53pm
It could be your overall temperature, including the cpu, that is too hot, and you just see the effects on the graphics. I would recommend you to clean the heatsink and vents and possibly use temperature monitor to check your temp. If you choose to do that, post your results and ambient temp here. If you dont feel like mess with these things, maybe a RMA is the way to go for you.
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post #11 of 23
12/3/03 at 1:23am
I was also having problem with games. After playing for a while games such as Battlefield 1942, Savage, Soldier of Fortune II, my computer would just crash and come to blue screen. I've also noticed that the laptop gets extremely hot. It has not crashed since i've updated the drivers, but I also have not had a chance to play as much either. Not really sure what to do about the overheating.
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post #12 of 23
12/3/03 at 3:22am
i also get the lines shooting out of vertices and such...however for some reason it only happends in some games. the most recent is uru: ages beyond myst. this is a pic i managed to capture.



this happends all over the tree...however if i were to turn to the left the glitches r gone. this only happends in certain areas of the game. i also get the glitch effect in americas army. i was thinking it was because these games were graphic intensive. but when i play games like call of duty or max payne 2...the glitches are not there. so i'm not really sure what is causing it. i have the bios that aussie mentions and that didn't help. it could be an overheating issue...but then why doesn't it happen in all games?
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post #13 of 23
12/8/03 at 9:53pm
Dude, I think your laptop needs to be sent back. I've got just about the same setup and Ive never had this problem. I've played hours of NFS Underground without a hitch. only difference, I have a 2.6 CPU.
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post #14 of 23
12/8/03 at 9:56pm
This will happen on my Radeon 9500 (desktop) if I have it softmodded to the 9700 and clock it too far.

It is a wild guess, but a rendering pipeline on the 9600 might be bad, hence the corrupted video. If it isn't O/Ced you shoudl RMA it ASAP.
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post #15 of 23
12/8/03 at 10:13pm
Hm... I don't know, I had a similar thing with BF1942 a while ago, but it seemed to solve itself if I rebooted. I'm on the new Cat3.9 drivers and I haven't had the issue again, could that possibly contribute?
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post #16 of 23
12/11/03 at 7:20pm
Thread Starter 
Guess it's time for an RMA then.

Damn... didn't want to have to spend the cash to do so and be without my laptop. Was hoping I was one of the lucky ones that got a fully functioning, non-problematic Laptop.

Starting to think there are problems more often than not with these things. Might have been a mistake to get a laptop to begin with.

Anyway gonna give the fins a good solid cleaning again, make sure everything is top notch before I try the RMA. Hoping it's just something I've overlooked, as unlikely as that is at this point.
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post #17 of 23
12/11/03 at 7:39pm
Dont regret your purchase. It is a fantastic laptop. When you get it back, you'll be mighty pleased. If the one you get back is also a problem, then you might want to start regretting it. But I think you'll be pleased when you get it.

-Lox
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post #18 of 23
12/11/03 at 7:57pm
Tell me about it... I still love my 8890 even though it's been through 2 RMA's... It's power overshadows all things bad about the laptop. For example, no one cares that it only runs for 2 hours on battery; they're all amazed that I can run HL2 on it at native res/highest AA settings.
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post #19 of 23
12/12/03 at 1:06pm
You can? Is this the leaked HL2? I didnt think that had any maps / textures for it.

Edit: Looks like that was my 200th post. Yay for me
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post #20 of 23
12/12/03 at 6:16pm
Yeah, beta HL2 runs great, around 40 fps with all the highest settings, and very smooth too. Some of the maps are missing a lot of textures, but there are a few that are completely playable, and they are incredible. I can't wait for the entire game to come out!
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