R1 Lockups - only when Plugged into AC.

In certain games (BF2, Oblivion and Two Worlds 2 and Mass Effect being the worst) the game would freeze the entire system (Video stuck, looping audio, no way of reseting other than holding down the power button.) after about 15-30 minutes of gameplay. This would be with just about any graphical settings.

I have seen this issue crop op a few times on the web in relation to the M11x - sometimes when doing large file transfers and sometimes, as in my case, when gaming.

I reinstalled all drivers to more recent or just different versions, updated DX and virus scanned/defragged - everything software-wise I looked at. I also ran hardrive and RAM tests and everything came up just fine. Temperatures were all nominal and peaked at around 65 whilst gaming (GPU).

But then this is where it gets odd:
Today I decided to simply unplug my AC adaptor and try and play BF2 on my bed - and since I did that my freezes have stopped completely. I just had a 2 hour session on BF2 without any trouble. Could it have been that the AC adaptor wasn't allowing the system to get enough juice but it gets enough when fed directly from the battery? There are not enough confused smilies in world.

I was tempted to think that it was simply because the system was less intensive when on battery and therefore less severe on the components - but I made sure it was in High performance mode, speed step is off and there are no battery specific options in power management switched on. Same deal.

Does anyone have an explanation or similar experience? I may just buy another dell adaptor and see if anything changes.

 

Interesting!

My R1 is generally very stable - and I did not ever experience issues such as you describe while gaming - apart from a single exception - Mass Effect.

I did not pay any attention to this, since all the other games I tried on the m11x played without a single issue, yet now I am very curious to try Mass Effect again, this time unplugged.

Thanks for the info.