|
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.
|
The 555 should be able to run medium settings @60fps. I would contact your dealer for warranty or a refund as this isn't normal. Sounds like the on-die intel gpu is acting up.
Edit: i run the game at 1080p with low settings and effects on ultra at a steady 80-120fps with a 330M card so..
|
Why do you make a blog blaming a whole company because you got a defective laptop that had a part that they didn't even manufacture?
The problem is with Optimus technology, which is basically hybrid graphics between Intel HD and GeForce. But even further, the problems with that are limited to windows and work great under ironhide in linux.
Just cool down man, no need to hate nvidia just for that.
|
i used to have a t61p with a nvidia quadro fx 540. it lived for exactly three years and one month. the odd month was after i bought it from the school from which i had lent it. long story short, the graphics card blasted itself to crap but it ran most of the games smooth and i could render high-polygon models with it.
so they are not all bad 
|
I have GTX 560 TI's and I consider it a personal insult when I can't play the highest graphics. This will happen with every game that will come out. Drivers for SLI comparability can be laughably bad with sometimes it would be better if I just had the one running.
Its really not a nividia thing but just a general problem with the communication between graphics card companies and video game companies. I hear that some games are just as bad if not unplayable with Radion cards. Its really weird because companies try to make games good for cards and then card companies try to make things good with games. The companies should give the games to the graphic card companies a lot earlier but no one wants to leak their game.
Thats really werid that the tech support guy has teusday and Wednesday off. This is the reason btw that I have a desktop and not a labtop.
|
As a computer technician, just don't buy a laptop with ATi/Nvidia graphics. Don't buy a laptop to play games, buy a desktop PC instead.
CPUs and graphic cards are meant to have their own separate cooling systems, trying to combine both units to be cooled by a tiny 4cm fan with negligible heatsinks is just suicide.
In the end, these big companies try to put the best parts in and raise the prices higher. They all know that each laptop is not at all capable of handling any form of gaming and know every customer is gonna fry their CPU/GPU a year later.
Note: I just received a HP laptop with the customer complaining overheating, turns out he plays SC2 so I give it a run and not to my surprise, it turns off in about 5 minutes. I dismantle the laptop, remove old thermal paste and apply new paste, give it a dust clean, assemble it back. Give SC2 another run, this time, it lasts 15 minutes 
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
