m4400 Heat

Ok, so hear is a weird observation. I tried playing Bioshock without the power brick plugged in and I got smooth frame rates throughout. For some reason, I think the power management is throttling down my video card, though it's set to maximum performance when it's plugged in. Any ideas?

 

That's better than all these 8600GT's, right? I googled up "gaming laptops" for a friend yesterday and on a top 10 list, 90% had the 8600GT in it.

What the specs of your computer, if you dont mind me asking?

 

Yes, it is better, and I ran it on stock system as received. Note I ordered it with 1GB ram so that might be slowing it down, so it's still a good score overall. 8600M GT is about 4800-5000 marks if I remember testing last time with my Vostro 1500. System as below:

 

It doesn't list your processor anywhere.

2.53GHz w/ 4GB RAM won't really kick up the 3dMark06 much I'm assuming? 3dMark06 depends more on the GPU itself?

 

It does list... Item # 42 is a Intel P8600 which is 2.4GHz, and yes, more RAM wouldn't affect much, but it might a little since I am using 1GB... with 2GB vs 4GB you would see much less difference.

 

Ok, looks like I was getting instability because my power brick has a defective cord. The cord is very lose and is causing my machine to go in and out of states in my power management. Good thing is that it looks like the m4400 doesn't have the same issues as the rest of the nvidia cards. The bad news is that the temps are still pretty high when you run intensive graphics tasks and can go as high as 91'c. I haven't run into a single issue of graphics distortion or windows being unstable at those temps, but it is super hot. We'll see if my replacement notebook has the same temps, but it looks like I'm going to stick with the m4400. The raw power, sleek appearance and options to play games really makes this a great machine.

 

Replacement notebook?