Hey, I own one of those ol' dusty 8790's from back in the day. Recently, when I play anything thats even semi-intensive for the graphics card (meaning UT2K4 or even EQ), it will tend to artifact after a while. I'm running on all default graphics settings (410/270), and I have not OC'ed my graphics card past 500/300, so I'm pretty sure I havent done any damage to the card itself. Anyone else have these problems? Please dont tell me I'm screwed and have to ship it back to Sager to have it fixed (although you probably should if that's the case)

thanks in advance

Yep, same here. Used to work fine, but now it barely even works. Oh, right mines dead. Yep, but just before it did it showed the same signs as above. Could hardly even play BF 1942 without crashing.

Have you cleaned the unit? Especially under the keyboard. The metal plate under the keyboard on the 8790 serves to help with the cooling of the GPU, as well as other components.

look under peer to peer support for the 8790 for threads about this problem. they would probably help out. i just rma-ed my 8790 for artifacting which was probably similar to yours.

yeah, I recently cleaned my computer, and it didnt help one bit. I didnt clean under the keyboard, however. it plays my games at around 62C with a standard deviation of about 3C. highest its ever gotten during gaming was 66C. ...you rma-ed? what does that mean? glad (if you can say that) to see im not alone...has anyone solved this problem?

i sent mine back to sager. mine was artifacting without ever going over 52.the normal temp for yours is 62? that seems pretty high to me. you check to make sure the heat sink was clean and the fans werent obstructed? i guess its possible for some computers to run hotter than others but that seems kinda surprising. someone else will be able to advise you better, but to me it seems possible that yours is artifacting because of the heat. does it artifact immediately or after the game runs for a bit?

Might want to get a can of compressed air and blow out the bottom fans (and per G-Omaha's' excellent suggestion- make sure to stick a toothpick in the fan while you're blowing so you don't ruin them).

My personal experience so far, with one of the 8790's from back in the day, is that it took a motherboard replacement from Clevo to get me back running. I'm still artifacting, though, but not as badly. I need to reformat/reinstall and see if I can square away some of the issues- haven't had time to do that lately. Hopefully that will clear things up.

Several other owners of the initial wave of WXGA 8790s seem to be experiencing this issue, so I wouldn't be surprised if you're headed that direction, too. Make sure to clean out the machine first, though. Might be as simple as that.

no, normal temperature for mine is about 45-50, gaming it gets to 60-65. could it just be that mobmeter isnt showing the temperature for my GPU and its overheating? its getting to be a real problem...I cant run ut2k4 for more than 10 minutes without it starting to artifact, and it makes gaming nearly impossible...very disappointing.

sorry but... what is artifacting?

Artifacting is when the computer screen flips out, mostly because the GPU gets too hot... I think.

Search FriedToast's review of his 8790 and around the 15-16th page, , and it'll show screenshot's of artifacting.

yeah...so has anyone else experienced this problem, or more importantly, found a solution for it? I sent PCTorque an email telling them I may have to ship it in, but I would like to avoid that because I'm a college student and getting by for even a month without a computer puts me out of contact with a lot of friends and just really makes writing papers a hassel. Thanks in advance, all!

Mine is not artifacting but the screen brightness keeps flickering between max and the next one down. I read all the treads on this problem but they were some time ago and no-one seemed to have a solution other than turn down the brightness which is un-acceptable. Did anyone ever resolve theirs? Does loosing the screws under the key board help with the flickering?

ummm...heh...I believe you have your own thread for your own problem...mine concerns problems with my gpu and unprecedented artifacting

Other than cleaning out the fans and loosening the screws underneath the keyboard, I don't think you've got any options other than sending it in for service, unfortunately. You've contacted PCT, but you might want to fill out Sager's online service form, too. They are the ones that you'll actually work with, so I'd go that route. PCT will most likely advise you to do the same.

I've started to get SERIOUS artifacting problems with my lappy recently. A month ago a graphical lag problem occurred to me and to some other people, but it stopped at some point and I thought the problem was solved. Now, it doesn't lag anymore but instead artifacts have become really bad. I remember that a couple of months ago artifacts were simply small dots that appeared randomly on the screen and on the textures in games. Now, the dots have become huge triangles that often cover the WHOLE screen and you can't even see the game behind them. In Rome total war, not only the triangles and dots appear, but often big big spots/stains on the screen and the whole system slows down for approximately a second. Then after quitting the game the desktop is covered with "dead pixels" that disappear after a restart.

This situation is unacceptable and I tried to see if the omegadrivers were the problem but the results are the same with every version. The fans are clean, I even unscrewed everything and manually cleaned the fans instead of just blowing compressed air inside. The fan exits are not covered by anything, since I've raised the laptop from the table by 4-5 cm and artifacts appear no matter how hot the lappy is. Crap, I remember playing farcry on max settings and bringing the laptop to horrible temperatures without ANY problems.
I want to know what's going on with the lappy. It's sad that I bought such an expensive product and nobody told me its life expectancy was only 4-5 months.
Right now it works perfectly with everything but 3d games... unfortunately games were the main purpose of the 8790.

Any idea about what I can do? I can't really RMA it because I won't survive without a powerful computer for that long. There must be a way to solve this.

Thx, and sorry for the rant.