**M980NU (X1/Commanche SLI/NP9850) Owners Thread**

Thanks

10 Char

 

So I've had my 9850 for about two weeks now. Q9000 version.

I love it. My first capable computer in years.

Trouble is once in a while I get annoying stuttering when playing anything. Every 2 minutes or so the game will lock for a second and the sound will stutter then it frees up and goes fine for another couple of minutes.

I've been able to get around it buy restarting the system a few times until I get stutter free play. Sometimes it only takes one restart and other times it takes 3 or 4. When the problem hits it hits everything from UT and Quake 2 to Crysis to World in Conflict to Portal to Risen. Everything. When the problem isnt going on everything runs problem free.

I have the most up to date drivers as of last night for every component listed in Device Manager. No unusual sounds or behaviors from my hard drive or my video cards. No temp issues. No other hardware or software glitches/conflicts that I've found. I run everything I can in native resolution.

It's not a machine-breaking problem and it isnt urgent but I'd like to get it taken care of now in case it growd into a bigger problem.

 

I've had the same lately (and I'm also getting some odd clicking from the secondary SATA drive I added. Kind of disconcerting.

 

hmm i run a Qx9300 and havent had any problems are you guys running SSD's?

 

Nope. No SSD.

 

what's your vendors? Have you cantacted them about those problems?

 

30 GHz

10 Char

 

wow your 3dmark06 score must be like 100K lol.

 

the dreaded click of death.

does the same thing to mine, with the odd freeze, and even a system beep accompying it from time to time. I've had both original seagate 500gb 7200rpm hdd's replaced, and i still get it. I had 3xdrives, but took 1 out to try in a xp machine and it works fine. So either it's raid 0 setup that makes the seagate drives click, and/or the design of the seagate drives is s**t. After some investigation these problems are rife with seagate drives, and it has something to do with the apm feature of the drives. Unfortunately every program to disable this feature on the drives will not work due to the locked bios i presume.

The only plus is that once you fill around 2/5th's of the total combined disk space it seems to stop

when windows 7 is released i'll try raid 0, and if i still get the click i'll try the basic ahci instead.

 

ah that would make sense i have WD drives in mine

 

How does the m17 screen compare to the m980nu to your eyes?

 

I don't have them in RAID. My primary is a SSD, and the secondary is just a stand alone Seagate 320gb. Even when I run programs only from the SSD I get occasional freezes and a fair bit of clicking

 

I've seen random freezes / slowdown / stuttering with my SSD where the HDD light is solid for a length of time (5 - 60 secs) then the whole system is back to being smokin fast. Not sure what's causing it either. I've tried so many tweaks too including having all the normal SSD tweaks active. Yes it also could be Win7 not sure.
One thing I read somewhere (??) was the nForce controller/driver could be causing it and to go back to using the Intel. Also turning off write caching / NCQ but having a difficult time doing that as it doesn't allow you to under the Intel driver.

 

Kagey, I have also had that happen.

 

if you remove the seagate drive i bet it stops the clicking is the head parking.

perhaps it is something to do with the nforce driver as kagey says.

However there are people all over the net with seagate drives reporting the same problem. Some with intel raid some without.

if you try the intel driver let me know if it stops

seagate released an updated bios for some of the drives to stop this click (which i got from the dell support site) , but again i couldn't get it to flash for some reason

 

simple

M980 wins hands down, sharper brighter, more vibrant

just a better screen overall

 

did your m17 have the LG ?

 

he had the 1440*900 lcd.

 

the OCZ/M17 1900x1200 has the LG WU3 which is a pretty decent screen. Between that LCD and the one on the M98nu which is better?

 

That's funny.

how about 3.0 Ghz

 

i don't get it.

 

i had the 1920x1200 screen for my m17

I rate the m980nu one much better

 

oh you did. sorry. i thought you had the 1440*900 for some reason.

do you still have your m17?

 

nah i ebayed mine got $1800 for it

got shot of it as i saw the rubbish with Aw Eu coming

 

I'll be getting a Sager NP9850 soon and this clicking/freezing issue is very concerning. Will Sager allow me to order the notebook with Western Digital drives instead of Seagate?

 

The problem is not brand specific. Any failing hard drive will do that.

 

just seems the seagate have a high "clicking" rate

 

I'm playing crysis warhead. Everything maxed plus 4x AA and I'm getting probably around 40 fps. It's at least 30 anyway.

Also, something is really weird. Whenever I close the lid and go to bed, it goes into sleep mode or something, but it sounds like the hard drive makes noises and clicks some times. It only happens in sleep mode, not active unless loading something. It just started happening for the past few nights only but it's kinda weird going to sleep to. Btw, its the stock 320gb 7200, w7 x64 ultimate, and have like 290-299gb free out of 320 or whatever the stock was.

To Pman's post below because I don't want a separate reply: yeah'll that's probably more accurate. I'm probably happily slightly over exaggerating to make myself feel better.

 

i would suggest that you run fraps or something as with 4xaa with everything maxed my average is only just over 30 clocked up

 

The first gen drives more so than the current version.

 

does the clicking cause stuttering in games? If so, I am definitely going to request they replace the Seagate drives with WD ones.

 

No it does not

 

if the clicking is from a failing disk it will stutter.

 

Some working drives do produce clicking noise - you can reduce the noise by changing the option in drive acoustic setting. But doing so may reduce the performance.

 

mandrake, my hdd are the latest ones - both were replaced, and they still made clicking noises.

however as i posted above, once my disk space reached around 30-40% full the clicking has now stopped.

it's definately a seagate/raid issue.

 

hi guys
want to change from D901C to M980NU because can not upgrade the damn cards from 8700m to 9800m or 280m , before i bouhgt they tell me that i can it any time ,now there is a MB and volt problem and the MXM ,im so down
DO YOU NOW İF İT THE SAME DAMN SH..T ON M980NU BY LATER UPGRADES
THX ALOT

 

No one will be able to predict the future. You should be able to upgrade to any MXM 3.0b GPU but no guarantees.

 

Well, sent a tentative email to Kobalt today, as Im looking to get one of these in the near future.
If I do, I'll likely be joining the fold with:

X9100
4GB RAM
3x320GB Western Digital Scorpio Black (7200RPM) in RAID0 [if the random access isnt through the roof]
GTX280M SLI (with an eye to upgrade should an update chip come out)
DVDRW or BluRay.

If I do, here's hoping I have less issues than with Alienware, and also no DPC latency issues!

 

Oh btw,what sets of drivers have people found to be the best. Im not especially aquainted with recent NV graphics drivers but have heard the 190/191 sets have been a bit shoddy, so best to stick with 186.91 or similar?

Any particular drivers better than the others for the other components either?

 

the latest official nvidia drivers are 186.81 and they have been great for me and my nexus. anything higher are not official and as most OEM resellers will tell you you use at your own risk.

 

190 series is ok, the 182 series are great for benchies, esp the custome ones but tbh for general gaming just use the latest ones from nvidia, the lastest ones from laptopvideotogo are pretty good actually

 

Congrats, I hope you have better luck with this system.

 

C'mon guys post those game benchmarks and screenshots! I want something to get excited over

 

i have posted alot of benchmarks in different threads go go look

 

Yeah, there's probably even some still in my 4850 M17 thread where we were comparing haha
RIP - it was a good machine.

 

Hahah so do I...please dont start Sod's law off!

 

yes

and now i have converted you to the darkside

 

More like Alienware's utterly alien idea of customer service did...you just helped point me in the direction of the next step in the journey (Chapter 5 - Freedom) haha

I wonder if Nvidias next line of mobile chips will consider stuff like HDMI output a little more carefully, rather than just running a dodgy passthrough, that would be nice...

 

guys any news on the unclocked bios ?

i have ben thinking if perhaps clevo are withholding it for release with their updated m980nu? with the new cooling method seen in the w870u.

 

that release is a long way away

still on the horizon but no confirmed release

there is no point in making the bios, which we do know exists as there are reviews of it around the place for the refresh is pointless as it will have a new mobo cpu etc etc so they would only have to remake it all over again anyway

no the bios thats floatin around is only for the m980nu

edit: the cooling on mine is np so i cant see how they can improve it tbh