NVidia GeForce Go 7900 GS - what driver ???

first, the long-long story about Dell XPS M1710 with GeForce Go 7900 GS
it shipped with 84.29 I think, worked fine (GW and several modern games)

after pre-Nightfall preview event engine upgrade
GW started to behave real bad - occational freezes,
pop-ups with that overheat/bad memory chip error
pointing to the http://www.guildwars.com/support/hardware-failure.html

temp. is ok (I have dock. station with coolers, GPU temp is 57-59 C),
extensive memtest - no problems... wtf ?

I reinstalled and redownloaded GW, I keep backup of Gw.dat
and gw.exe on external HDD in case of another failure.

ALL OTHER GAMES works fine. I can leave any 3D demo or game
running for several hours with video settings maxxed - it'll be ok.

only GW fails sometimes. it makes me feel I won't buy
Nightfall because of that.

now about last reason - drivers. here we go
I upgraded to 84.63 (have not tried 84.69 yet) because of
better H.264 and Oblivion support - still the same
(GW freezes occasionally with sound looping in background)

upgraded to 91.52 because of significant Oblivion perf. gain (!!!),
GW runs smoothly too, but rendering of distant objects is jerked
(sails on that huge ship in login screen for example)
but GW occasional freezes are still there

so, the question is(sorry for such a looooong story):
does anyone has mobile GeForce Go 7900 series ?
anyone has the same hardlock issues after engine update ?

and, finally(if it's drivers problem, not GW engine bug) -

what driver works best for GW ?
maybe some special weird tweaks needed ?
(I'm ok with regedit and NVidia "coolbits"... )

Don't download 84.69. That driver is for desktop cards. GeForce Go's are lumbered with 84.63 for now.

You need a modified INF file for a destop driver to work on a laptop. Try one from here: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

I also have an Dell XPS M1710, but the video card was upgraded to a GF7900-GTX512. It has a standard Core-Duo (haven't upgraded to Core2Duo yet). I use no additional cooling fans with my system. I haven't encountered any problems since the Nightfall preview.

If I remember correctly, NVidia uses a unified driver set-up, so the same video driver works for their entire GF-line. I'm running v84.29 drivers (haven't upgraded since everything works fine).

Could issue be something else besides drivers? GW tends to use whatever system resources are available, kicking on my video cooling fans every time I run it.

of cause I use them nzone and laptopvideo2go FTW !

funniest thing is that modern games runs smoothly
Oblivion run on ultra high, several FPS games, etc...

what's wrong with GW engine ?
I cannot find the cause of hard-locks yet

Cooling might be it, like it turned out to be in this thread http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10053752

Dell released 84.69 for their XPS laptops

I think I'm gonna try them... just to be sure...

just one question - are you wired ? (or using Wi-Fi ?)

because I'm using WiFi (with WPA encryption)

I've found one thing - stress-testing my notebook with Burn-It, 3DMark06, Oblivion, etc... or "real" stress-testers show no failures even after 8 hours of "torture-tests"...

but when I play GW, the "hardware failure" pop-ups occur and sometimes, hard-locks.

I've installed EQ2 (it has "heavy" graphics engine too) and - voila! the same sh*t on quality maxxed !!!

so, looks like it's Wi-Fi and GPU co-working issue

or both games engines needs some more work on them

PS: there's a small chance it's sound-card-related,
but I doubt it - I updated the drivers, etc.


I think I'll try that:
1. Wi-Fi, -nosound switch
2. Wired, with sound
3. (in case #2 fails) - Wired & -nosound

If I'll find more info on that issue, I'll report...

lol so, it was Wi-Fi module
it offloaded encryption from main CPU to it's own
and voila ! overheat after a while..

downgraded it to plain old simple intel 2200bg - now it works, at least for now

Dude im haveing the same problem as u! but im not that bright can u put it in easy form to how u solved the problem? =S please

I usually play with my cat5 cable connected, but I have used WiFi + GW before for a few hours with no issues.

The problem does sound like it could be heat related. The WiFi hardware also turns up the temperature.