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jbard

1377 posts

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#104842 21-Jun-2012 20:51
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Hi

I am having some problems when playing games on my Laptop.
Sometimes while playing my whole computer will freeze up and just play a high pitched skipping sound.
Sometimes it is 2 mins into a game sometimes it is 2 hours into a game. 

One time it did freeze up but then 30 seconds later unfroze and was fine, but usually I have to hard shutdown and restart.

It isn't all games though, I play a lot of indie games and it never seems to happen with them.
Happens very often while playing COD 5, happens sometimes but not often when playing Tropico 4.

Has never happened when not playing games even when I have pushed RAM to the limit which would point to a graphic card problem to me.

I have updated drivers and got the latest drivers only realesed yesterday and installed them and it is still happening.

My Video card is a GeForce GT 540M inside a dell XPS 15.

Any ideas what I should do to fine my problem (also I have 7 days left on my warranty if this is a hardware issue).


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ubernoob
576 posts

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  #644462 21-Jun-2012 21:19
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What screen have you got.
Read this "The considerably more expensive B+RG LED display frequently overburdens the graphics card in modern games" here http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-XPS-15-Notebook-i5-2410M-GT-540M.51186.0.html 



jbard

1377 posts

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  #644465 21-Jun-2012 21:23
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ubernoob: What screen have you got.
Read this "The considerably more expensive B+RG LED display frequently overburdens the graphics card in modern games" here http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-XPS-15-Notebook-i5-2410M-GT-540M.51186.0.html 



I only have the WLED screen so that isn't the problem, good point though.



Beavis
159 posts

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  #644502 21-Jun-2012 22:51
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Over heating? Surprised Could it be as simple as dirt blocking the CPU fan heat sink? Put your mouth over the air exit grill and give a good blow of air. You might be amazed at how much dust and muck blows out the fan air intake.



jbard

1377 posts

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  #647922 28-Jun-2012 23:23
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OK I have ruled out over heating. It has crashed twice tonight while playing civ5 and both times the laptop didn't feel to hot and CoreTemp had the CPU at 60 degrees.

Video card problem is my best bet?

zaptor
745 posts

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  #648213 29-Jun-2012 14:22
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jbard: OK I have ruled out over heating. It has crashed twice tonight while playing civ5 and both times the laptop didn't feel to hot and CoreTemp had the CPU at 60 degrees.

Video card problem is my best bet?


Could just be the GPU fan (?). My laptop was overheating and crashing (I wasn't even gaming). The GPU fan wasn't operating properly, so sent in for repair and it was just cleaned (basically). However, they also updated the driver which (apparently) had a lower temp tolerance for fan operation.

KennyM
221 posts

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  #649559 2-Jul-2012 13:38
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+1 for updating video drivers.

I would also look at the sound drivers, as have had issues in the past with games and turns out it was an outdated sound driver making it freeze up.

ubergeeknz
3344 posts

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  #649577 2-Jul-2012 14:02
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If updating your video drivers doesn't work, try make a new user on the PC and log in as them.  See what happens.  Have had problems before with GeForce drivers crashing due to something in the user profile.  Bizarre, but that's how it goes sometimes.  If that works you need to reset your user profile, or at least blow away all the nvidia stuff out of it..  



GL

 
 
 

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jbard

1377 posts

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  #649579 2-Jul-2012 14:04
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Thanks for the suggestions. I am updating video/audio drivers now.

I did update to the latest nvidia drivers last week and it made no difference so now I am downgrading to the ones dell recommends as stable.

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