Silician Sketchbook

Since getting my Inspiron last year, Dell has released a grand total of two driver updates for the NVIDIA 8600M GT. I was actually running a higher non-OEM version of ForceWare that had a fix for the lock-ups I experienced with Source engine games like Portal and TF2, and subsequently downgraded in the misguided belief that the first update would be somehow better.

Surprise, surprise, it was not. I then installed ForceWare 173.80 and have been with it ever since. I don’t know about the performance relative to other versions, but stability is what matters most at the moment, and I get the frame rates I need with an FPS config.

I installed Dell’s second update a couple days ago. It’s been a while, and it’s an OEM release, so I figured, why not.

I’m not really into benchmarks, but at least these new drivers aren’t any less stable. NVIDIA has fixed the TDR problem since late 2007, so it boggles the mind that Dell has been so slow on the uptake.

What I did notice was some potential problems with v-sync in that the frame rate gets cut in half the moment I enter into an open space, and my keyboard and mouse become really “heavy” due to the command lag. If the performance hit was that dramatic in the past, I didn’t notice it. I guess v-sync is getting disabled again.

I’ve been running ForceWare 169.06 for about a week now, and TF2 no longer crashes.  At all.  Looks like NVIDIA has made significant progress in stabilizing the 8600GT for Vista, although a whole host of users on the download thread have experienced negative results for their own systems.

Frame rate locking did not help in the long run. I just got lucky that time.

The root of the problem seems to be with Windows Vista not playing nice with NVIDIA cards. It’s a problem that has been known about since at least January 2007. Why Vista? I can only speculate that it’s because Vista sucks, but that’s not a new sentiment by any stretch.

NVIDIA has a page listing some Vista hotfixes (note: they’re not for XP…). The first time I tried to play TF2 following hotfix installation, I locked up less than 10 paces outside the spawn doors.

All of this makes me loathe to play TF2, especially for the CEVO tourney. I’ve been lucky thus far, or maybe it’s because 6v6 matches don’t place too much stress on the laptop Vista, but I’m pretty sure that were I to lock up for at least 30 seconds, any momentum the team might have built would be erased in an instant.

Update! ForceWare 169.06 works fine.

Executive Summary

Create an autoexec.cfg in your .../team fortress 2/tf/cfg/ directory, if you haven’t done so already. Force your frame rate to something reasonable. I used fps_max “70″ which is in line with my external monitor’s refresh rate.

Why does this work? I’m not sure (yet), but I suspect that the video card is locking up due to overheating. Reducing the frame rate, as well as graphics quality, may keep it at a sustainable temperature.

Argh

I think the third thing I installed on my pretty midnight blue laptop, after Firefox and video card drivers, was Steam and the Orange Box.

I first noticed odd behaviour while playing Portal. For no apparent reason, my system would simply hang with sound effects playing in a stuttering loop. I could sometimes regain control of the game if I opened Task Manager and then tabbed back in.

Portal lock ups, while irritating, were tolerable because it’s just single-player and I wasn’t completing timed challenges at that point. TF2 is a different story. When you’re a medic about to give invincibility and you lock up, you may eventually get back into the game only to discover that your team lost the round. Playing matches, as opposed to random public servers, makes it worse. People may want to hit you (more) and you feel like hitting something yourself.

I updated the drivers for my GeForce 8600M GT (Dell released a new official driver set yesterday), and generally tried to do things that may fix the stuttering problem.

Downgrading to DirectX 8.1 lessened the severity of the lock up when it occurred, but it didn’t eliminate it. Reducing quality settings gave me a higher frame rate but that was it.

What I found to work, at least for the duration of a match and a couple hours of public server play afterwards, was to force my frame rate to 70 frames per second. The card is capable of delivering in excess of 150 fps with the quality settings turned down, but letting it run unconstrained might be causing it to overheat.

Why do I think it’s overheating? I find that I when I tab out, I need to wait around a bit before being able to maximize the game again. Otherwise, it’ll go to a black screen and may or may not have stuttering sound. Not all is lost, as I can force the Task Manager window to get me out. What might the system be doing during that time? Cooling down, for one.

The game also tends to lock up when there’s a lot of activity in my immediate vicinity. That’s also an inopportune time to take a forced break. I’m usually engaged in a fight and will be greeted by the familiar respawn room upon my return.

This Inspiron 1520 is a fine laptop otherwise, and I would be happy if NVIDIA released a driver that reduced the clock frequency or somehow reduced the load in order to regulate the core GPU temperature. Until then, anything above 60 fps is Good Enough and 70 fps happens to be line with my external monitor’s refresh rate.