Diagnostics test for 3D capabilities?

Question

I'm having an ongoing frustrating problem with my Inspiron 9300 (3D games show pausing or stuttering, even old ones which between pauses have lightning-fast frames-per-second) which I posted about before.   Dell advised me to run the full diagnostics test. This passed fine. However, none of the graphics tests appeared to test any 3D capabilities of the card; they were merely basic tests designed to test correct colors, text display, etc. I'd asked support about this many times, but they just say that the graphics card has been fully tested by this diagnostic.   Does anyone know of any other tests that could be run particular to the laptop's 3D capabilities?   Thanks,   P.

NemesisDB · Answer

anything that stresses the card -- something like atitool if it's an ATI card could work. suppose 3dmark could work as well.

try cleaning out the heatsink and fans. dust usually causes these stuttering problems. either that or you need more ram and or need to defrag and or the game is just turned up to high for your system.

oceanclub · Answer

Hi there,

I clean out the vents and fans as I believe you recommended before? No luck at all. Saw a 1% increase in CPU benchmarks alright but

didn't cure the pausing problem.

With 1GB of it, RAM is definitely not a problem here. Some of the games I've tried are 4-5 years old, such as Neverwinter Nights,

and played fine on an ancient Toshiba with 256MB that I have. There's no possible way Neverwinter Nights needs more than a 1GB of

RAM.

I just tried a complete reinstall of XP SP 2 - wiping the C partition, reformatting, etc. Then didn't install any other software,

just a few games. Again, same problem. It's so bad, even the loading screen of Half-Life 2 (which is in 3D) pauses.

P.

NemesisDB · Answer

could be a bad video card then ... it sounds like something is making it get to hot.  either that or it's just broken

oceanclub · Answer

Well, I mailed Dell support again and, you may have guessed, they are saying yet again it's a "software issue". In fact, when in the course of the message I asked, as a tangent, if the quoted power adaptor I had for the machine was correct, the support person replied that the fact I _had_ the correct one proved that my video card problem was a software problem (no, I didn't understand that leap of logic either).

Am pretty fed up with this situation; I'm going to ask the operations manager in work (we do a lot of business with Dell, and the laptop I have was a company purchase) to take the matter further.

P.

oceanclub · Answer

It's the same person I've been corresponding with by email from the beginning and to be honest, I think they're just blindly following a script. I'm not a hardware expert, but I _have_ been building my own PCs for the past 5 years, so think I know a little something.

How does one go about getting a "second opinion", or escalating it to someone else?

Thanks,

P.

NemesisDB · Answer

i hate the fact that they now charge for software support because they use it as an excuse. they know most people will not pay for software support so even if it isn't software related, they thus make the problem go away.

they played this game with me a while back over a bad sound board. i just kept calling and chatting until I got a tech to agree with me. you only need one who says it's a hardware problem.

ultimately, all their software team ever really does anyway (from what i've heard) is walk you through a clean install. it's not like they can magically solve problems -- especially hardware ones.

NemesisDB · Answer

Chris often posts a link for escalation of outstanding issues. I *think* this is probably it: https://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dellcare/en/outstanding_issues_dhs?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

As for a second opinion, just call or use chat and don't mention the old case. It will mean starting over but if you mention everything you've done (like a clean install) perhaps you will meet with success.

oceanclub · Answer

Thanks; I'll write up a detailed list of all I've done, and send it once I try one more thing (updating the BIOS). Regards, P.

NemesisDB · Answer

generally look at the revision number and not the date. what version do you have and what is on the site?

Occassionally bios revisions are pulled if there are problems with them. If you machine happened to be made during the short window when a pulled revision was active I suppose it's possible you ended up with it.

oceanclub · Answer

Well, I tried updating the BIOS, but oddly, the version available on the Dell support site is _older_ than the one already on my machine - that version is from October 2005, I got my machine in December.   I talked to Dell chat, but they couldn't explain why my version (or a newer one, if available) is not available for download. It seems strange they don't offer the latest version for download, and I'm wondering if my particular version might be giving a problem.   P.

oceanclub · Answer

Occassionally bios revisions are pulled if there are problems with them Hmm, that is what I suspected to be the obvious answer, but the support person wouldn't answer me. Should I try installing it, and rolling back my BIOS version?   P.

NemesisDB · Answer

your call. I don't know of a way to save the image before hand with dells, so there will likely be no going back unless you can find your current revision somewhere out there.

might help, might hurt, might make no difference at all. given that you've tried everything else to solve this problem, why not?

on a side note, you have tried installing the latest drivers direct from ati/nvidia right? you probably mentioned this above.

oceanclub · Answer

Yup, tried installing the new ones.   Have been playing with the laptop a bit more, and notice that on every freeze, the disk access light lights up.   I've checked Device 0 on the Primary IDE channel (which I'm guessing is the disk drive) and it shows up as Ultra DMA Mode 5,so I'm guessing that's OK.   The disk itself - WDC WD600VE-75HDT1 - has write caching turned on.#   Even though it's a 5400rpm disk, I would have thought it was still fast enough.   P.

oceanclub · Answer

in that case the problem might go away with either more ram or lower quality video settings (less texture memory being used).   The laptop has 1GB of memory already - and can't take any more even if I wanted to add any.   I've tried the lowest quality settings, suitable for 64MB cards.   Plus, as I've mentioned, these games play fine on other laptops with 256MB of RAM.   P.

NemesisDB · Answer

any time it's having to read from disk it maybe slow.  that would typically indicate that the swap file is in use.  in that case the problem might go away with either more ram or lower quality video settings (less texture memory being used).

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