All owners of Mx438G take a look at here!! - Page 17

My brr's disappeared since I've installed the latest Via driver, as Borkar just described on the post above.

This lag thing is totally freaky...

so far i did not hear any brr sounds.installed via driver from fsc support.been listening for 4 days now,about the lag im still not convinced that its solved,but its better than before

Is that normal for all LCDs and LCD technology, or just on the M3438G laptop? I get the strobing too, but only when something's scrolling and very detailed/complex or contrasting. It can flicker quite bad in certain cases, but my eyes are hyper sensitive.

Also, what's that image you added to your post (above)?

Thanks

This is weird, just after I purchased my laptop, I saw that picture and it was flickering like hell, even without movement. Now it doesn't flickers anymore, just when I scroll the page.

Weird...

...because you have already ruined your eyes

I can upload a taller picture later that day and you will see that the problem still exists. (If not, tell me which nVidia driver version and BIOS version you have).

It is not normal for TFTs. The internal configuration is bad.

LOL. That would not surprise me, unfortunately
But it really doesn't flicker when the page is not moving now, before it was flickering so hard, it almost made me foam from the mouth.

Current bios is 39.60 and nVidia driver is 91.31 (the best for me, as 91.33 either makes my fan impossible to stop, or makes overclocking settings impossible to save).

download this, save it on your local hard drive, open it fullscreen (because the image is exactly 144x900).

Does it flicker?

Nope, it doesn't flickers, it's still. Does it flicker on yours? What is your nVidia driver?

Is there anybody else where the image doesn't flicker on their 3438?

Doesn't flicker on mine until you move/scroll it

BTW, I opened it out fully using a graphics editor to fill out the whole screen 1:1 without any resize.

Flickering is normal under certain conditions and is related to the difference between fall and rise times of a single pixel integrated over the entire image. This is ussually linked to moving images with a lot of pixel-on-pixel white/black transitions but can also be seen with pixel-pixel checkerboard patterns on panels with an inversion pattern.

Hi
I boght one M3438G for 600€ and i have 12 days left to try it! For now Doom3 and warcraft3 were smooth but Neverwinter Nights and Company of Heroes no..I think the bug showed itself there (it had showed itself already in the price but ok..). Do you know if i replace the hard drive with an hitachi or other besides samsung or seagate would solve the problem? i wont do it now because i want to leave open the oportunity to have my money back :\
Does an external drive solve lagging problem in games? i wouldn't mind buying a small one that could be fed by the usb but i can only find these ones with 5400rpm and 2MB cache. if it solved the problem was this speed and cach size enough to run games and maybe windows?
is there any other solution for this bug issue? (concerning that i want to play games)
i would love to keep this notebook with me because for 600€ i can't find anything like this.But as it seems sometimes the bug gets worse and so i'll only keep it if there is any solution :\
The replacing hard drive solution would be my favourite..
hope you can help me!
Btw i read the entire 22 pages before i bought the notebook so i knew that this would probably happen. I only bought it because i knew that i can have my money back and i'd like to have a try...
thanks for your attention!
hope to hear from you!

Borkar i really hope the sueing thing ends up ok for you! And when you said fujitsu would have their notebook sales down all over europe you were right.would be good if they learned something from it...

I am sueing FSC because of this peace of shit they built and because of the lies they have told. Right now(!) I am going to my lawyer to discuss all my evidences. I will win this thing! And I will let FSC pay for the lies they have told me for one year now!!
This notebook is a curse! I can barely understand how you could buy it! I wouldnt even buy it for 1€!! And if it was a present, I would disassemble the display and the DVD burner and sell these things seperately - the rest I'd throw away!!

FSC already has problems! They complain that they cannot sell so many notebooks in Germany and Europe any more. aaawwww sad.... I know why!
... and I am not done with FSC yet! You may say, I have just started!!!

I wasted so much time! I tested like hell! I wrote articles and FAQ's like crazy! I used to have good contacts to Uniwill! I used to have hope! - FSC corrupted everything! And this is something I want to have equalization for! Call it revenge, I don't care.

Borkar

Good luck with your case Borkar! I hope you do win it (because your demands are legit), and that more people join you, as I know many of them have the same problem. All support is important, as attournies aren't cheap... I can't do it myself, as I don't have resons to complain about FSC, but I'm aware I'm an exception.

So, I guess there aren't any news on this issue right? I must say I haven't had a "brr" in 3 months, so I do guess I'm one of the lucky bastards
In fact, I just recently decided to make some upgrades on my system. I opened the laptop and made some modifications: replaced the factory CPU (Pentium M 740 @ 1,73 GHz) to another one (Pentium M 725 @ 2,13 GHz), and sucessfully made a pin-mod to achieve the 2,13 GHz (had to make a voltmod too, it seems the Amilo M3438 didn't supplied enough energy for the new CPU to work @ 2,13 GHz. It now runs at 1.4 V, wich slightly raised CPU's temperatures, but nothing special). Since I had to remove the heatsinks to replace the CPU, I took the time to replace the GPU's thermal pad with Artic Silver 5 thermal paste. That was a big mistake, as I realized (with the help of member Ice-Tea), that the GPU's core and the heatsink surface have a significant gap, and the thermal paste does not make contact between both of them. To make a long story short: I ended up having to purchase and install a thermal pad (wich are thicker than thermal paste) and I can now say it was worth all the troubles: my GPU's temperature had significant drops: idle, it lowered 5ºC, and at full charge (playing Battlefield 2 with maximum settings, 8x Anti-Alising, 16x Anisotropic Filthering and Super Sampling on) the temperature droped 10º (!). This allowed me to raise my previous overclocks to 370 MHz/ 670 MHz, and it still runs at very nice temperatures (keep in mind that the M3438 is famous for running at insane temperatures).

Regarding jopr's situation: first of all, welcome to the forum!
No. Replacing/ adding hard-drives won't eliminate the lagging issue. That would require a full motherboard replacement, wich, obviously, isn't an option. If you read all the thread pages (as I did too), you'll find the answer there.

Yes. If you install the operative system on an external hard-drive, and the games as well, you will have no problems with the brrr issue. Basicly, you won't use the internal hdd at all (except for storage, I guess). Keep in mind I won't stand 100% sure for this solution. The best you should do is to borrow a friends external hdd, or purchasing one and try it out. Hope this helps!

By the way, if it's not indiscretion: where did you purchased so cheap? I purchased mine 4 months ago for 1000€, it was a nice deal (specially because I don't have problems with it ).

Cheers!

Thanks Lost Heaven!
In fact i read almost,not to say all, the pages before and after i bought the notebook! and made some friends read it too, but not as much as i did..(i'm not that influent :P ) but i don't remember seeing any solution that everyone said "yes that's it". The external usb2.0 drive whith windows installed was the closest to 100% solution wasn't it? If there's a better solution please tell me. I have until sunday to decide if i keep the notebook or give it back and i was never good in making choices like this...I'd really like to keep it because i don't have much more money to spend in a notebook but i'm not shure if this usb hard drive really does the thing.i had one lended for one day and i ran accessbench and it gave stable and nice access times.Neverwinter nights didn't lag (it lagged in the internal drive).Does this prove anything? I only regret i couldn't install windows there...
Some objective questions:

Do you think that running windows from the external hard drive "forever" will bring me any problems? (i'm concerned in performance issues, not in mobility)

Is the usb2.0 transfer rate of 480Mb/s enough to handle with windows, games, movies, music, matlab..etc?

In other words, is it possible to live only with usb2.0 and the dvd drive?
(this of course assuming that an external drive solves the lagging in games and other applications)

I'm sorry for asking all this things, i'm feeling a little bit selfish now, but i really need your help to make a decision.

I almost forgot, i bought the notebook in a store here in Portugal www.bliss.pt
Borkar, whether it's revenge or not u are doing the right thing! Good luck

Hope hearing from u soon!
Thanks!

João

LOL, I'm from Portugal too

Bastard, I bought mine from Staples for 1000€ 4 months ago... I must say you made a great purchase. The thing is: mine doesn't show the lag issue (did 4 times on the first 3 weeks, then I updated the VIA driver, and since then I never got anymore brrs (again, this is not a solution). Could it be that the store is aware of this problem with the laptops and knew your system had the lag issue? I'm saying this because they have another M3438 for sale on their site, for 1529€, a little more pumped up.

Anyway, I understand your situation. I'm going to be honest with you: when I purchased mine, if I noticed it showed frequent signs of lagging, I think I would have returned it. Even if I purchased it cheaply, I think I have the right to get a fully working product. Even if I only paid 100€ for it. It's up to you to decide wether your lag is tolerable or not.

Regarding the external hdd questions:again, I can't assure it's a 100% solution, I would need to get more feedback from users that have tried it. In theory, yes, it's the solution.

-it's natural that Windows performance will not be the same than having it installed in an internal hdd. Again, I'm not sure how it would perform, even though II have an external hdd, I only have there my games, music and movies. Windows is installed on my internal hdd. But if you get a good hdd, with a nice buffer and rotation speed, I don't think you would notice much loss (when you get used to it you won't even notice).

-I think the USB 2.0 transfer rate is more than enough for about everything I can think of. I've read many comparisons between USB 2.0 and Firewire, (480 Mb/s vs 400 Mb/s), and it seems the only Firewire advantage is that it keeps a more stable and constant data transfer, unlike USB that seems to have some drops. But I don't think this should be a problem, even with drops, the available transfer rate is way superior than today's hdd maximum data transfer rate, so there's no problem here.

-Yes, it's perfectly possible to live with only an external hdd. Afterall, it's a hdd like the others, you're just giving a break to the internal one.

My final thoughts are: explain your situation to the store, and ask them to replace it with another one. Maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get one that doesn't show the symptom (even though the problem is on all systems, on some it doesn't show itself, it's like a virus :S) .Then, think very well wether your lag is tolerable or not. If not, you're paying for a product that isn't in good conditions, and that's not right, even if cheap. If you think it is tolerable, then go for the external hdd and get yourself a great system for a fantastic price.

By the way, this really is a great laptop if we forget about these lag nightmare right?

Cheers

Hehe! seems like that "the world's small" quoting is true!

I've decided to keep the notebook...For 600€ it's the best thing i can find right now...it only lags in games (only noticed it in games) and i'll try solving it with an external drive! movies and mp3 are smooth and the 1.73GHz centrino is enough for my matlab and mathematica works. This way i can save some money for a future desktop pc! At least with these ones i can get what i want.

I'm very grateful for your help. thanks for pointing out the good and bad aspects on this computer, it really helped me making my mind!