|
I've seen nVidia sponsor a LOT of starcraft tournaments of late, so I decided to make it a point to buy a laptop with an nVidia graphics card in it to support them even though technically the ATI was much cheaper. So, I bought a Lenovo Y570 with a 555m in it.
Got Starcraft on it, decided to run it. Recommended settings were all extremely low, which was odd at the time, but I thought nothing of it (I played low regardless). My first game I had to exit midway because any time something with more than a few units happened it started lagging terribly. Ok, thought it might be something else. I googled the problem and eventually led me to this:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2592645056
along with a whole slew of problems in their forums. This has been happening for almost two years now apparently, with a fix promised a year ago in one forum post. No such luck. Now, I can't do anything on this laptop. The problem seems squarely focused on this optimus technology not being able to turn on for, well, anything really. It'll always use the integrated graphics card no matter what. I tried different games such as Fallout 3, Oblivion, and none of it seem to work. Worst part is, they have NO customer support. Try finding a number in their customer service page. Their bug ticket system? Canned response, nothing at all addressing the situation. The moderators on their forums seem to be on permanent vacation.
Never again, nVidia.
 
|
You didn't google issues they had before buying the laptop?
|
The laptop itself was fine, the graphics card itself was the problem. I didn't google the graphics card unfortunately... but I mentioned my laptop model in this blog post so that hopefully, hopefully, someone doesn't make the same mistake I did.
|
This seems an intel issue, not nvidia since the intel chips doesn't give control of the api .. or am i reading this wrong? Should't you have the same problem with ATI?
|
googled "intel integrated graphics problems nvidia" gives results on problems, while "intel integrated graphics problems ati" does not... so I doubt it.
|
Googlefighting is useless most of the time. You do know that the 555m would not be able to render sc2 in high anway, right? It should run fine on medium with 30-45fps, but that's it. And please tell me you did upgrade to the recent chipset and nvidia drivers ...
Also, if it still doesn't work, you should return it? It's false advertising after all if it can't play the games it's supposed to.
|
Yeah I understand it can't run on high... but it's absurdly slow even on the lowest of the low settings? Ugh, yeah I'm going to return it. Reason why I posted this is if this prevents one poor soul from buying this load of crap then it was worth it.
|
I've had issues recently to, but with a system restore and a few drivers I was ok.
|
integrated graphics in laptops (or laptop graphics period) are just really bad in general, unless its the highest end model (or close to it), don't look to be able to do anything really with integrated.
nVidia isn't responsible for the card in your laptop, that's something you should contact levono about, just as you can't really buy card direct from nvidia, because they don't make the cards. They make the chips and the specs and the blueprint, etc, but they don't physically make any cards beyond an engineering sample (or some media samples).
Perhaps its an issue with the physical card itself, and its something that levono should take a look at. When your experience for a company is limited to 1 product that's not any where near the flagship, AND they aren't responsible for it/its warranty, it seems kind of extreme to put down the entire company.
its kind of like buying a car, and blaming the tire manufacturer that a tire keeps deflating/has a leak.
I would also recommend updating all your drivers and windows version (chipset drivers + video drivers are the most important), and make sure to use a driver cleaner/sweeper for your video drivers. This is a tool that any graphics card uses to clean out old drivers, and if you don't use it, you run the risk of causing issues related to older drivers still hanging around.
|
I spent a good 2 weeks researching about my G73JH before I actually bought it. Even though there were at least 1-3 pages filled with reports of grey screens, and what not I just did the plunge only to fix it myself. Thanks ATI for some fixes, it definitely helped.
I've always been an Nvidia fan, they have great cards, its just... I know they fry more than they tend to be fixed.
|
I have the exact same laptop/graphics card as you and it works 100% fine. Runs medium settings easily at 80 fps beginning of the game and probably around 40-50 mid game. They have a setting where you have to set it to run on the Nvidia graphics card rather than the Integrated one. I'm guessing the problem is 100% your fault.
|
The setting you're talking about is the nVidia configurations settings, I know, and it doesn't even give me an option to change. There's a switch outside my laptop that is to switch GPU's but that does nothing either. I've updated all my drivers to the most recent ones for both the intel integrated gpu and the nvidia. Neither did anything.
|
You should open up the configuration settings and manually set it so starcraft 2 runs on the nvidia graphics card. If you alt tab out it should show somewhere at the bottom right of your screen that the graphics card is running sc2 and make sure it's not set to powersaving mode or anything.
|
my optimus geforce 540m on my laptop works without a hitch. regardless, if you go to the nvidia control panel you can set up which graphics card you want to use (dedicated or integrated) for each program you have.
|
I did... I went to the control settings... and even though the nVidia card is selected it automatically still goes to the intel integrated grahpics.
|
I actually have the same laptop as you (y570 with the 555m). SC2 works perfectly fine on low. IIRC with my little testing that I tried when I first bought it, 200/200 battles in 1v1 give playable frame rates on high.
Funnily enough I actually have played both oblivion and fallout 3 on it and they both work fine. Never had any problems with the optimus technology.
Did you happen tot urn the switch in the front off? There should be a little white light lit
|
There is a low end gt 555 in the lenovo, i'll refer you to my post in the tech thread. TL;DR there are 4 types of the 555 card ranging from 550 quality (lower than 540 for sc2) to a lot higher.
edit: just to avoid confusion: i'm not saying the lenovo is a bad laptop at all, i just want to inform people about the 555 card.
|
I stream tournaments on my ASUS G73SW which has a Nvidia Geforce 460m in it. It's fine.
|
I have an older model Lenovo Y560 with an ATI 5730 and I don't have these problems; SC runs completely fine on high settings (it runs extremely well on all medium with textures on ultra).
It certainly could be the graphics card.
On November 06 2011 18:43 TotalBiscuit wrote:
I stream tournaments on my ASUS G73SW which has a Nvidia Geforce 460m in it. It's fine.
He has a weaker model, a 555m.
|
On November 06 2011 18:45 wherebugsgo wrote:I have an older model Lenovo Y560 with an ATI 5730 and I don't have these problems; SC runs completely fine on high settings (it runs extremely well on all medium with textures on ultra). It certainly could be the graphics card. Show nested quote +On November 06 2011 18:43 TotalBiscuit wrote:
I stream tournaments on my ASUS G73SW which has a Nvidia Geforce 460m in it. It's fine. He has a weaker model, a 555m.
And his thread title is "do not buy nvidia cards in laptops", which is a stupid generalisation. My point is you should not listen to such broadstroke advice.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
