The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Thinkpad T42 game freezing problem
Jealous Deva
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So here's a wierd problem I've been having, and I was wondering if anyone else had run into here.
I have a Thinkpad T42 with a 64mb ati 9600 gpu in it.
Whenever I play certain games I get random freezes. Almost invariably these are 3d games.
On some games, such as Civilization 4 and Galactic Civilizations 2, the cursor will still be movable, but the game will not respond. Eventually after a minute or two the game will freeze entirely. In civ4 this almost exclusively happens at the diplomacy screen.
On some games, such as titan quest or city of heroes, the game will just freeze up entirely.
Some games, such as world of warcraft, company of heroes, and dawn of war work fine for hours at a time with no problems.
Occasionally a game will give a bsod reporting an error in the ati display driver.
Some games, noticably Civ4 and City of heroes, also occasionally display odd textures.
This doesn't seem to be a driver problem, though, as I've tried multiple versions of both official and unoffical drivers (omega drivers etc.) Notably, the GPU recover in later drivers will allow me to recover from the problem some of the time.
I've updated directx of course.
I've also checked the internal temperature, the gpu seems to be running at around 72 C max when running games, which IIRC is within spec, so overheating doesn't seem to be the problem. Manually downclocking the GPU also doesn't seem to have much effect, even when setting it to absurdly low levels.
It seems like I've tried everything sort of sending it in for repairs, which isn't really an option as the system is out of warranty and is otherwise perfect, and a new system board is along the lines of 300 dollars. So short of catastrophic failure repair isn't really an option.
I have heard some reports of the gpu coming loose from the motherboard and people using post-its or rubber erasers as "shims" to force it back down into place, I haven't tried this at the moment but might give it a go. There seems to be a problem somewhat related to the XBOX 360 problem of the solder coming apart when the machine is flexed, but I'm not sure if my problems really fit the symptoms that others have had with this.
Anyone with experience working on or repairing thinkpads have any thoughts as to what my problem could be?
I have a Thinkpad T42 with a 64mb ati 9600 gpu in it.
Whenever I play certain games I get random freezes. Almost invariably these are 3d games.
On some games, such as Civilization 4 and Galactic Civilizations 2, the cursor will still be movable, but the game will not respond. Eventually after a minute or two the game will freeze entirely. In civ4 this almost exclusively happens at the diplomacy screen.
On some games, such as titan quest or city of heroes, the game will just freeze up entirely.
Some games, such as world of warcraft, company of heroes, and dawn of war work fine for hours at a time with no problems.
Occasionally a game will give a bsod reporting an error in the ati display driver.
Some games, noticably Civ4 and City of heroes, also occasionally display odd textures.
This doesn't seem to be a driver problem, though, as I've tried multiple versions of both official and unoffical drivers (omega drivers etc.) Notably, the GPU recover in later drivers will allow me to recover from the problem some of the time.
I've updated directx of course.
I've also checked the internal temperature, the gpu seems to be running at around 72 C max when running games, which IIRC is within spec, so overheating doesn't seem to be the problem. Manually downclocking the GPU also doesn't seem to have much effect, even when setting it to absurdly low levels.
It seems like I've tried everything sort of sending it in for repairs, which isn't really an option as the system is out of warranty and is otherwise perfect, and a new system board is along the lines of 300 dollars. So short of catastrophic failure repair isn't really an option.
I have heard some reports of the gpu coming loose from the motherboard and people using post-its or rubber erasers as "shims" to force it back down into place, I haven't tried this at the moment but might give it a go. There seems to be a problem somewhat related to the XBOX 360 problem of the solder coming apart when the machine is flexed, but I'm not sure if my problems really fit the symptoms that others have had with this.
Anyone with experience working on or repairing thinkpads have any thoughts as to what my problem could be?
Jealous Deva on
0
Posts