A197VP crashes when playing games

[Lundmark]

I am playing Far Cry on my VAIO and I have experienced occasional crashes. I have installed the Radeon OMEGA drivers and it comes with a utility called VPU Recover that detects crashes from the graphics card.

Apparently, what happens is that my graphic card crashes when I play Far Cry, according to VPU Recover. The game freezes for about half a minute and then an error dialog box is displayed, saying that VPU Recover has reset my graphics card since it crashed.

This is odd since I haven't overclocked it or anything. I am thinking that I might have a defect piece of hardware here. What do you think?


I am however sorry to report that my particular problem does *not* seem to be caused by the OMEGA drivers, nor by Far Cry, but simply by heat. I've come to experienced problems with the original ATi drivers that comes preinstalled when playing games like Command & Conquer: Generals.

After about an hour, the graphics card intends to crash. At this point, the computer is quite hot and restarting the computer and directly relaunching the game makes the computer crash again. It seems it has to cool down before I can play again.

This to me is not OK. It shouldn't crash no matter how I use it - at least not due to hardware or heat. Buggy software is alright, but I hate hardware failures.

So my question is, is my computer defective or is heat a known issue? It has to be fixed somehow cause I really need this machine for playing games and editing video and I haven't paid this much for a luxury computer that bails out on such things as this.

[kee-lo_]

Maybe you should consider getting a laptop cooler if you're going to play high GPU usage games like FarCry.

[TygerTyger]

Hm......I'm kinda with Lundmark on this, computers shouldn't just crap out because they have something tough to do. Why don't you try taking it up with Sony support? According to Trading Standards rules (in the UK at least) the computer has to be fit for the purpose for which it was sold. Since yours doesn't do that.......

[kee-lo_]

I guess so, but I have't really seen many laptops running FarCry without issue.

[TygerTyger]

You'll never change the world if you just accept it.

Besides, if it doesn't work it doesn't work. Maybe we should just accept it won't work, but manufacturers should certainly say that intense games won't work or people will get unpleasant surprises like this. Especially since they usually say 'Plays the latest games'.

[jammold]

So true TT!:smileygrin:

[kee-lo_]

Well, we'll see what Sony Support will tell him...

[Lundmark]

I've talked to them and I'm awating a reply. I don't know if there are any Vaio engineers active on this board, but hopefully there is. Such an opinion would be really appreciated.

OK, so I've considered a laptop cooler, but I just don't think it's justificed paying additional money on a thing that the computer shouldn't need. If it gets too hot while busy, engineers should have incorporated better cooling or colder components.

Also, seeing that "old" games like Command & Conquer Generals also crap out doesn't bode well for my precious machine. I didn't buy a monster laptop merely for surfing the web...

[jammold]

Games can stress a PC out though - so a cooler would be handy.

[kee-lo_]

I've talked to them and I'm awating a reply. I don't know if there are any Vaio engineers active on this board, but hopefully there is. Such an opinion would be really appreciated.

Know what you mean, but there are none active around here, which is a shame

Also, seeing that "old" games like Command & Conquer Generals also crap out doesn't bode well for my precious machine. I didn't buy  a monster laptop merely for surfing the web...

Then it definately needs to go back to VAIO Link to be repaired.