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I'm troubleshooting a family member's notebook that freezes in games, which is one of two problems. The second problem is profiling the conditions for failure so that I can get it fixed. From the peculiar conditions of failure, it doesn't point to simply overheating. Crashes correlate with the ATI 4670's core GPU frequencies (not exceeding the default, 675Mhz with memory at 800 MHz) with some applications notably more sensitive than others. Maybe you can offer some insight to what is happening here.
Setting the ATI Graphics setting to "Maximize Battery Life", or using MSI Afterburner to downclock the GPU to 335/800 MHz (lowest clocks allowed by Afterburner) avoids the issue, but this is a non-solution given the limiting performance of an otherwise capable video card. Memtest86 shows no errors despite multiple passes, hours of runtime. OS has been reinstalled multiple times.
The system crashes at varying time intervals depending on the game. Crysis/Benchmark Tool, GTA IV, and Skyrim crash around 5 minutes. Mass Effect crashes within 15 minutes while other games can run from 45 minutes to several hours before crashing. These games include Left 4 Dead 2, Civilization V, Borderlands, Rainbow Six Vegas, Fallout New Vegas. Given that the crashes seem correlated to the GPU core clock speed, I've been adjusting this setting and checking stability. GTA IV is proportionally unstable with increasing frequencies starting at 618MHz, with the memory clock constant at the default 800Mhz. However, Crysis seems more tolerant at or around 618MHz.
If requested, I can post temperatures showing that this doesn't look like overheating, but I'll omit that for now to avoid spamming numbers. In short, Furmark can run the CPU/GPU up to the low 90s (°C), while GTA IV and Crysis Benchmark Tool crash within minutes in mid-high 80s in the right configuration. Essentially any game that this system has run for any extended period of time (multiple hours) crashes at some point, although there exists some games that I have not extensively run (more than an hour) and have not exhibited crashing within the limited time frame. Synthetic benchmarks (3DMark Vantage, Furmark) don't seem to trigger problems.
In a game, moving the camera/scenery seems to correlate with crashes interestingly enough. For example, in GTA IV or Mass Effect, having fixed scenery doesn't seem to trigger crashes within 30 minutes, but moving the camera perspective is highly susceptible to causing failure (but not guaranteed). Even more likely to cause failure is switching the scenery entirely, such as in GTA IV upon player death or opening the game menu. In the case of the former, the scene would fade into view as the camera pans across a hospital building exterior and after a fraction of a second the crash will occur. In the latter, the crash will happen when the menu is invoked, or a fraction of a second after the game is resumed.
This notebook has undergone a few RMAs, OS reinstalls, and essentially a full part replacement. I asked at an MSI user forum, and the advice was simply to keep sending it back until it's solved. For a new RMA, tech support is requesting a failure on 3DMark, Furmark benchmarks, and I don't know of another industry benchmark that exposes the problem.
So, what am I seeing here? What is it about certain games that are more sensitive to clock speeds than others? I would have initially thought of memory-related issues given conditions for failure (scenery change), but it doesn't seem to be the case. If you have any suggestions or ideas, I would appreciate the post. Thanks, for at the very least your time in reading this.
Notebook is MSI EX625 with Mobility Radeon 4670. Catalyst 12.6 is installed with drivers 8.97.100.3000 direct from AMD. Drivers supplied by the manufacturer also fail in a similar manner. Latest MSI-supplied VBIOS has been applied [011.021.000.006.033017 (BR33017.001)]. Product Page: http://www.msi.com/product/nb/EX625.html
Setting the ATI Graphics setting to "Maximize Battery Life", or using MSI Afterburner to downclock the GPU to 335/800 MHz (lowest clocks allowed by Afterburner) avoids the issue, but this is a non-solution given the limiting performance of an otherwise capable video card. Memtest86 shows no errors despite multiple passes, hours of runtime. OS has been reinstalled multiple times.
The system crashes at varying time intervals depending on the game. Crysis/Benchmark Tool, GTA IV, and Skyrim crash around 5 minutes. Mass Effect crashes within 15 minutes while other games can run from 45 minutes to several hours before crashing. These games include Left 4 Dead 2, Civilization V, Borderlands, Rainbow Six Vegas, Fallout New Vegas. Given that the crashes seem correlated to the GPU core clock speed, I've been adjusting this setting and checking stability. GTA IV is proportionally unstable with increasing frequencies starting at 618MHz, with the memory clock constant at the default 800Mhz. However, Crysis seems more tolerant at or around 618MHz.
If requested, I can post temperatures showing that this doesn't look like overheating, but I'll omit that for now to avoid spamming numbers. In short, Furmark can run the CPU/GPU up to the low 90s (°C), while GTA IV and Crysis Benchmark Tool crash within minutes in mid-high 80s in the right configuration. Essentially any game that this system has run for any extended period of time (multiple hours) crashes at some point, although there exists some games that I have not extensively run (more than an hour) and have not exhibited crashing within the limited time frame. Synthetic benchmarks (3DMark Vantage, Furmark) don't seem to trigger problems.
In a game, moving the camera/scenery seems to correlate with crashes interestingly enough. For example, in GTA IV or Mass Effect, having fixed scenery doesn't seem to trigger crashes within 30 minutes, but moving the camera perspective is highly susceptible to causing failure (but not guaranteed). Even more likely to cause failure is switching the scenery entirely, such as in GTA IV upon player death or opening the game menu. In the case of the former, the scene would fade into view as the camera pans across a hospital building exterior and after a fraction of a second the crash will occur. In the latter, the crash will happen when the menu is invoked, or a fraction of a second after the game is resumed.
This notebook has undergone a few RMAs, OS reinstalls, and essentially a full part replacement. I asked at an MSI user forum, and the advice was simply to keep sending it back until it's solved. For a new RMA, tech support is requesting a failure on 3DMark, Furmark benchmarks, and I don't know of another industry benchmark that exposes the problem.
So, what am I seeing here? What is it about certain games that are more sensitive to clock speeds than others? I would have initially thought of memory-related issues given conditions for failure (scenery change), but it doesn't seem to be the case. If you have any suggestions or ideas, I would appreciate the post. Thanks, for at the very least your time in reading this.
Notebook is MSI EX625 with Mobility Radeon 4670. Catalyst 12.6 is installed with drivers 8.97.100.3000 direct from AMD. Drivers supplied by the manufacturer also fail in a similar manner. Latest MSI-supplied VBIOS has been applied [011.021.000.006.033017 (BR33017.001)]. Product Page: http://www.msi.com/product/nb/EX625.html