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Puzzling and Repeating Slow-down When Playing Games (9860)

post #1 of 23
9/27/05 at 4:10am
Thread Starter 
Hey all, I've had a very interesting and very recurring problem when playing any games on my 9860. Typically, the game will run fine for a while then all of a sudden (usually when turning the camera very fast in a 3D game) the sound will blurp (makes a machine-gun like repeat of the last sound) and then video response will become extremely slow. I also noticed that this usually happened when the system fan would idle. I took the following steps to try to fix the problem:

1) Video Driver update
I used the newest video driver available from Sager's site, also tried the NVIDIA driver. Neither solved the problem.

2) Audio Driver update
I used the newest one available from Sager's site. Didn't solve the problem.

3) BIOS and Fan update
Followed the link to the manual fan control update + BIOS update and got both installed just fine. Hit Fn+F2 right before playing a game to ensure that the fan would be running at full power while playing. Problem persists.

4) Remove AV and Desktop Firewall Software
I have both running on the system; they've never caused problems before but I figured why not give it a shot. Still didn't solve the problem.

I'm not really sure what else I can do to fix the issue; I've tested several games and this occurs in WoW, HL2, Far Cry, and pretty much any 3D game I run (I don't have any 2D games to test).

CPU and GPU were not running any hotter than they have been in the past.

Anyone have any ideas? I'm getting close to calling PCTorque support since they have been helpful in the past but if there's something obvious I'm missing, or if anyone has had a similar experience I'd love to be able to fix the problem without getting support involved.

Thanks in advance to all who reply; your input is greatly appreciated!
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post #2 of 23
10/1/05 at 1:34am
Had the same problem a long time ago. Nobody could explain it to me either. I did figure out that the wireless card caused problems. I do the fn-f11 thing to turn it off and that cured the "flatulance" problem. Hope this helps, though I dunno what a real fix would be. I'm looking for a fix to all the XP settings, when I change stuff, it doesn't stay changed following a reboot!
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post #3 of 23
10/2/05 at 4:34am
Wow, I come to the forums with a problem and there it is, a thread not even a week old!

I too, am having the exact same problem counterveil is having. I've taken all the steps he has except the manual fan bit. Speaking of fans, is there any way to tell if one of the many fans beneath the system is not performing at optimal capacity? One of the fans has gotten awful noisy of late, and this problem wasn't there a month or so ago.

Counterveil, does your video return to normal after a second sound blurp (machine gun)? The blurp behaves like a toggle on my system. First blurp, video goes to crap. Second blurp it returns to normal. Third blurp, bad again, fourth blurp, normal, etc. etc. etc.

I'm not familiar with the Function F11 option mentioned above, but I can't turn that off anyway since I rely on my wireless to play games online.

Does anyone have an answer?

Boot
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post #4 of 23
10/2/05 at 8:49am
Got the same Problem. Like every 5 Minutes the game and sound stucks in games that did run perfectly when I first got my 9860. But what in my opinion is really weird, that whenever the game are stucking the fans slow down. So the processor or the gpu are kinda making a rest.....
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post #5 of 23
10/2/05 at 11:02am
what games were you guys playing when this happen???
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post #6 of 23
10/2/05 at 1:28pm
Morrowind, Need for Speed Underground2 and Halflife 2 ... haven't tried others since the problem occurred,,,,
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post #7 of 23
10/2/05 at 3:10pm
Battlefield 2 and Battle for Middle Earth. I haven't tried any of my other games since the problem started.
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post #8 of 23
10/3/05 at 7:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bootylactin
Battlefield 2 and Battle for Middle Earth. I haven't tried any of my other games since the problem started.
R you guys overclocking the GPU? That might be the problem. Also, try downloading the latest drivers. Sometimes it might be as simple as that.
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post #9 of 23
10/3/05 at 7:15pm
I can't speak for the others, but in my case I'm running at stock settings (no overclocking) with the latest Catalyst drivers modded with DHmodtool. While I realize these drivers aren't "official", my system was performing fine for a good month with these. Only within the last three weeks has this problem started to rear it's ugly head.

Boot
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post #10 of 23
10/27/05 at 10:52am
has any one seemed to find a answer yet?
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post #11 of 23
12/29/05 at 3:13am
anybody find a fix for this?
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post #12 of 23
12/29/05 at 11:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by rick216
anybody find a fix for this?
Yeah, send it to Sager and have them install a new motherboard. That was the only thing that fixed mine.

Boot
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post #13 of 23
12/29/05 at 8:46pm
either a motherboard problem or you have some type of software that is pegging your cpu every once in a while causing maybe your hard drive to work harder and that is why you may be seeing these stuttering issues.

altough, i am betting that the motherboard is the culprit because the motherboards on these systems are crap. they are faulty and it is a known fact.

ah hell this is my second d900 rig and the first one had it's motherboard die out in under a month. this one came with a motherboard that likes to boot the entire system up if i simply plug in the ac adapter to it...happens 30% of the time....explain that!
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post #14 of 23
1/3/06 at 12:39am
I have had my 9880 since july and I have just recently started having this same problem. Can anyone help us please? I would really like to think that theres a better fix than swapping the mobo, as that would be an incredible inconvenience.
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post #15 of 23
1/3/06 at 2:28am
When I had my HP ZD7000 and it had the Pentium 4 desktop CPU I had similar problems. I used compressed air and blew out all the dust from the vent and fan areas. If there is a lot of dust that is blocking the airflow this can cause the over-heating and rebooting.
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post #16 of 23
1/16/06 at 2:17pm
Amazingly, i blew out the fans a little bit and a big clump of dust blew out. I haven't experienced the problem since. Thanks alot everyone and I hope you all fix yours too.
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post #17 of 23
2/9/06 at 9:00pm
I am now having the same problems... it's REALLY irritating.

I didn't start having the problem until I installed the new drivers from www.sagernotebooks.com for my NVIDIA card.

When playing DDO and BF2 I will hear that strange glitchy noise and then my fps will take a HUGE dive.

I went through installing/uninstalling 8 different drivers hoping that that was the problem. The installation of the new driver seemed to start the problem but reverting back to my old ones didn't fix it.

I've got a sager 9880 btw

Do I really have to send it to sager? I'm at college and the box to ship it in isn't with me so it would be a bit harder...
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post #18 of 23
2/10/06 at 5:30am
have you tried cleaning it out?.. after about a month these things get all clogged with dust... and alot of times you cannot see the dust when you remove the panel... you have to try blowing it out before the dust is apparent...
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post #19 of 23
2/10/06 at 2:56pm
Yeah I just cleaned it out and put it back together, but now when I start it up it seems to take longer than usual... also it's not recognizing my usb in one of my ports even though the USB is said to be functioning correctly.
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post #20 of 23
3/1/06 at 3:25pm
Thread Starter 
Just a quick update from my end; have been having this problem on and off now for a few months and finally got sick of it after my computer wouldn't boot. I called PC Torque support and they gave me a number of suggestions, which I stepped through in this order:

1) Remove the battery to alleviate / mitigate possibly power distribution issues
Only helped the no booting issue. The machine-gun audio/video issues remained. I put the battery back in after playing for a few hours and it looks like the [lack of] booting problem is gone.

2) Check the power cable for a loose connection
The power cable is about as tight as it can get; not bent nodes and when I have the machine-gun audio/video issue I Alt-Tab to see if it has shifted to battery power. It has not. Logical conclusion: This is not the issue

3) Apply a new layer of Arctic Silver to the CPU/heat-spreader contact point
After much research into how to do this correctly, I decided to get around the necessity and time-cost of RMA and do it myself. Removing the heat sink was a bear, I'll tell you that now. Removing the old Arctic Silver and applying the new stuff fixed my problem 100%. My machine is running like new again, so it can logically be concluded that my issue was caused by inadequate CPU heat dissipation. Problem solved.

I'm not going to tell anyone how to take apart the heat sink, remove old Arctic Silver layers, or apply new ones. If people try to do this and screw it up it will only come back on my head since - to my knowledge - it voids your warranty. The Sager user's manual specifically avoids any discussion of removing the heat sink for this reason.

The information on how to do this is out there on the internet and is plentiful, so have a go at searching.

Happy gaming everyone.
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