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New 5680 - overheating video card?

post #1 of 12
2/3/04 at 10:16pm
Thread Starter 
I just got my new 5680 on Friday, and I love it except...

Today the machine started rebooting or locking up while I had any 3d program running. This leads me to suspect the video card is overheating. The laptop is sitting on a flat desk with no obstructions to airflow. Does this sound like I just got a bad card? Oh yeah, I got it from PCTorque, so if anyone from there is reading this, should I call up for an RMA?) Thanks!
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post #2 of 12
2/4/04 at 2:36pm
I believe that when your video card is overheating, any lockups will generally be preceded by video artifacts - lines or bright shapes appearing on the screen. If you're not getting any of those, it's probably not the video card.

Of course, I'm not that knowledgeable about this, so I could certainly be wrong.
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post #3 of 12
2/4/04 at 4:00pm
Thread Starter 
I wasn't watching it too closely most of the times it did it, but once I did see it throw up some nasty artifacts right before rebooting. (The first time I wasn't in the room; then I ran 3dmark a few times to see if I could reproduce it, and one of those times I was watching it when it rebooted and I saw the artifacts just prior).
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post #4 of 12
2/4/04 at 9:22pm
That happened to me too. I believe that sager sends you a faulty driver CD for ATI. What I did was go to the Sager Notebooks webpage, get the Laptop model #4070 video card driver. Try that and reply back.
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post #5 of 12
2/5/04 at 2:05pm
Thread Starter 
Sager test support has me testing out the memory cards right now. Since the problem only seemed to occurr when the machine was warm and running a 3d intensive program, it is taking a while to test both memory cards. (The machine was turned off for a day). I did the memtest checks that I found on another post here (the machine wasn't as hot as when running a 3d title) without finding any errors. I was able to reproduce one lock up with one memory module in after letting it run 3dmark for a while, and I have it at home running a 3d game right now to see if the other module does the same thing. If I get a lockup on this module, too, I will try a Windows repair install (I got a message about a corrupted system file after taking the first module out, but I didn't repair it right then since I felt that could also be indicative of a memory problem). If it still fails, I will probably give the driver XPO101 mentioned.
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post #6 of 12
2/6/04 at 1:28am
Thread Starter 
After doing some intensive testing of the memory modules, it appears that at least one is bad, and it might have been compounded by old drivers. Still working with Sager to do a clean install of new drivers, hopefully tomorrow, and RMA my definitely bad memory module.
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post #7 of 12
2/6/04 at 1:33am
They like to replace the memory modules in pairs as they are DDR. Have them cross-ship you a pair.
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post #8 of 12
2/6/04 at 2:12am
Also, guys I thought about that too. I inserted a 512 mb of ram stick before I got the error message. Took that out and replaced everything stock. But it wasn't that. It was the ATI driver, all it needed was to be updated driver that I mentioned from the utility disk that came with the laptop.
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post #9 of 12
2/6/04 at 9:30am
Thread Starter 
The at least one bad memory module I labeled that way because after a nasty series of lockups in 3dmark, I actually got memtester to find about 80k errors on that chip. It had tested ok before, though. Now though, I am doubting that. I just got similar results using the same type of test method on the other chip in the same memory slot. I'm going to try this again with the other slot, but it's looking more like something on the mobo
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post #10 of 12
2/6/04 at 12:02pm
I highly doubt it's just a simple GPU overheating issue as you first stated. Hell, I have my GPU fan disabled cuz the fan is crappy and makes some funky noise and it never overheats...
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post #11 of 12
2/6/04 at 1:37pm
Thread Starter 
I'm inclined to agree with you, binjured, but not for the reason you state. I have had one desktop card overheat on me before, and one of the big indicators are the funky artifacts in 3d applications (which I have now seen twice). I think it is something else simply because the lockups and errors also occur during memtest now (after the machine is warm), which is certainly not graphics intensive.
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post #12 of 12
2/12/04 at 11:02pm
Thread Starter 
An update for those of you still interested:

I replaced the memory chips with no better results. Tech support had me try to reinstall Windows, but that failed twice. Latest thought is a bad hard drive. Wish me luck!

PS, makes me a little that I am expected to pay return shipping for RMAs when the equipment sold to me was defective.
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