What is this....

[Brosef]

I was playing EvE-Online on my NP9261 when the game locked up for a few seconds. When it 'came to' the screen looked like this.... http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/4821/20080922024259kw4.jpg


After a bit of playing around, I've figured out the problem is ONLY when I run a game in SLI. When I use only 1 card the games are fine.


What do I do? Also I've been having random crashes with MEMORY_MANAGEMENT (blue screen of death) with some games. Please help!


Also I've been having these problems --> http://www.xoticpcforums.com/showthread.php?t=768

[Woody]

I'm not too familiar with how to use SLI but here's an idea....

When you run in one card configuration, is it possible to select which card you run? I'm thinking you have one bad video card and if you can isolate that it would help.

For example. Try running on each card individually to see if the same problem occurs. I'm not sure if this type of troubleshooting is possible in a notebook without physically swapping the cards and you don't want to do that because it may void your warranty.

Here's another idea....it may not be your video card although judging from that picture it looks like it is. Does the game lock up when these video artifact appear or are you able to recover to the desktop with a normal screen? Or do you recover to the desktop with a funky screen still but an other wise working computer? It doesn't appear to be a cable issue but have you checked your cable to the monitor (only if using an external screen of course)?

You can also verify that the rest of your computer is running normally by stress testing it without running a 3D game. Download and run Orthos, a dual core version of Prime95 that is designed to search for prime numbers and will stress all cores of your CPU and most of your memory to the max for a sustained period of time. If that runs indefinately (try at least several hours) without errors or crashing you have a pretty stable computer.

Does the problem occur in specific games at a specific time or randomly after a period of time in all 3D games?

Here's an important one: Have you turned the fan up to maximum to see if the problem goes away? (Fn, 1) Press and hold the function key and press the "1" key on the top of the keyboard (not the numpad). This will force your GPU fans to run at 100% until you press it again. Also try elevating the notebook a little more and run a room fan directed at the side of the notebook to allow better cooling (or try a commercial notebook cooler). This will determine if it's a cooling issue.

[robamb2002]

it could also be a driver issue, I would try getting the most recent drivers for your setup and finding out if that helps