SERIOUS PERFORMANCE PROBLEM Mx43x - Lagging Issue

[luke024]

Hello leute.
I have FSC 3438g almost one year. It works for me like a server - round the clock and I haven't had any problems with it. I saw lags which you are talking about - I had it when I was turning on Notebook Hardware Control. During this program was working system (WINXP) was hanging few times per minute for a while. But I found somewhere "solution" - update via or raid driver - i don't remember exactly which one because it was few months ago and now I am using Linux. Under Linux I don't see any lags so I think its problem with drivers.
My advice is:
Upadate:
Bios if its not 1.10c
Video bios - there were some problems with performance
Update via, raid and all possible drivers

IMO its very good computer for competitive price...

Good luck.

[Playerdude]

2bad borkar hasn't given any information about his fight :/

[Raven_]

I wonder if he even continued his lawsuit...

It's sad FSC did nothing, but absolutely nothing about the problem. And it's sad this thread is fading away now.. but welp, there is really nothing to do about it. I am also surprised consumer right organisations or magazines didn't jump on this. The laptop is virtually unusable in it's original state.

Two months ago i got an offer from FSC to extend my warranty with 2 years for 150 euros. You can guess what i told them. *beep* whats the point of extending if you can't even fix a current problem

Either way, i'm using the 3438g laptop with hitachi 7200rpm hds since may 2006 and it works flawless. It's either this or external hds....

[Playerdude]

Now this sucks!
Thats all I can say anymore...
This was the first and last comp from FSC i ever bought...
Man! They brought a faulty laptop to the sales on purpose and even managed to get away with it... And its 2007 now... WOAH! Nice lol

[robert.kuipers]

Hello All!

I have had my M3438G since the end of 2005. I read about the Brrr. bug but my system was not affected (I noticed none of the symptons while using my computer, gaming (F.E.A.R, warcraft3), playing mp3's etc. etc.).

I always used the Windows XP Home installation that came with it, and didn't bother to upgrade it to XP PRO. Last week however, I decided to format my harddrive (samsung) and install Windows XP Pro.

When I installed it (I integrated the VIA raid drivers) and updated all drivers to their latest versions I noticed my mouse cursor would occasionally 'lag'. When I tried to play mp3 files in Windows Media Player I noticed stuttering/lag -> the brrr. bug.

I tried different versions of all drivers found on the FSC webpage, but the lag just wouldn't go away.

Then I decided to reformat my harddrive and reinstall Windows XP home using the recovery CD. After that, I installed the drivers (from the drivercd that came with the laptop) for the network cards (LAN and WLAN, not modem), the Audio card and the video card (but NOT the via raid driver).

Now I again have a laptop with absolutely no lag whatsoever.

I Hope this helps someone!

PS: I use the latest versions of the Videocard BIOS and the mainboard bios!

[Phuncz]

I bought an Amilo M1439G two days ago, I bought it for 400 euro because the battery was missing and it had some very minor damage to the exterior. But the hardware was good so it didn't really matter. After turning it on, I immediately installed 3DMark 2001 SE to check the performance. It was about 2800 3DMarks, which wasn't really good but heck, it's a laptop. I then proceeded to reinstall Windows, using the latest drivers available (nVidia 84-series) from laptopvideo2go.com. I ran the 3DMark 2001 SE test again, I got 10.000 3DMarks ! That's a lot better ! When I later redid the test with sound (the Demo), the lag bug creeped up. Yes, my machine too, has one of the most irritating bugs. Funny thing is, I've seen this bug before on a computer of mine and it took me quite some time to fix it. So I went on a quest to kill the bug or at least minimize it.

What I do on all of my systems is turn off Indexing (the service and the checkbox on every harddrive), turn off the Windows Recovery, etc. etc. After that, the bug didn't disappear, what I expected.

I first read up on the many forum topics surrounding this (very real) bug. I then tried methods nobody else seemed to have done. I first tried removing some software that made my system very unresponsive. I don't know exactly what it was, I think it was something that NHC (NoteBook Hardware Control) installed to monitor the harddrive. I also disabled checking the harddrive because it gave errors trying to read the SMART info.

So, that cleared the overal crappy responsiveness. But it still got the lag bug. I than tried PCI Latency Tool. It's a small program that lets you alter the PCI Latencies in your system. In many cases, this helps sluggishness on systems. So I gave it a try. I noticed everything except the VIA RAID controller and 3 other devices, used a PCI Latency of 64, while the rest had 0. So I changed them all to 0. It seemed the lag bug was reduced, it seemed to lag a lot less after about five 3DMark 2001 SE Demo runs. But it was still there !

Than I read something on a forum topic about a new VIA RAID driver named VIA SATA RAID VT6421. It contains drivers, namely this one: VIA ComboRAID Software Package V4.40a
What I didn't expect was that that driver would solve the lag bug for me. As it seems, I haven't had any lag for hours, my system is very responsive. What I DO notice is that, when you expect the lag bug to occur, it doesn't freeze the system anymore, but it does slow down a bit. It seems to stutter a little, but sound doesn't repeat/stutter anymore ! A fair trade in my opinion.

Currently, I'm installing games, with the utmost hope of not encountering the lagbug again. As soon as I'm done, I'm going to ghost the drive to make sure I'm not able to fix it after a reinstall.

[Phuncz]

Sadly, the bug still exists. HOWEVER, it only occured once or so in about 4 hours of using Traktor DJ Studio. Suffice to say, it's almost completely gone.

[jjwoo]

This piece of cr@p, my 2.13GHz is rendered worse than a 1.8GHz because of their stupid bug. I will never buy a single item from FSC again, not one component, and damn well I'm gonna give them a huge complaint for their lame BS reason not to solve it. I bet they can't, they're a bunch of mediocre tw!ts who've already made their money with this below-par junk, they'll never compete against real names out there. I will trash this laptop soon and buy a new one. Paying £1600 for it makes me puke every time I look at this garbage.

[trebor]

they'll never compete against real names out there.

That's hardly true, they are one of the biggest suppliers of computers to the Corporates out there. I work for a very large UK company and we use their desktop PC's almost exclusively and, to be fair, they are good machines, I should know because I look after them at our location, about 100 of them.

I have had the 3438g for 16 months and had no lag issues, but then I'm not a gamer.

Trebor

[jjwoo]

Their desktops from what I hear are quite standard. Nowadays most manufacturers have outsourced their components, the Amilo series is the same thing, where the parts are now made by separate companies and FSC simply hump them together into a laptop. The lag discussed here is the sort of problem that can happen, despite the lower costs. They had a very good and cheap laptop that came out and was a hit a couple of years ago. Think it was a 1.8GHz centrino from the old line. I thought they were pushing the M series to do the same thing, now I realise some of their products lack the kind of vigorous methodical testing that other companies do. And if there end up problems they won't give a rat's arse. When I bought this machine it was close to being the top spec on the highstreet market. I should have just gone for those custom gamer laptops instead. Some of us have very high demand and performance capability from our machines. Sad to say and with a much lighter wallet, FSC doesn't cut it.

Phunz, you said after turning off indexing, windows recovery/restart, and PCI latencies all zero, you hardly get any lag except every 4hrs? I've tried it and I don't seem to notice too much difference. Did you test on 3Dmark or something?

[Phuncz]

Yes it was much less in 3Dmark. But I do have to say I copied all music to an external USB2 drive to make sure skipping wasn't going to screw me over too much while DJ'ing.

I remember PQI had introduced S-ATA DiskOnModule drives. Which are in fact just fast flash memory hooked up to a S-ATA chip. It has about a few nanoseconds of latency compared to about 8-9 miliseconds of a harddrive. Maybe that can solve the problem too ? Only drawback is the high cost per gigabyte and it only goes up to 4GB for the "affordable" ones. I believe a 2GB version costs about 180-200 dollars.

[jjwoo]

Yeah that's costly. I think I might try to sell the hard-disks, and buy new ones that don't conflict with the motherboard, gonna have to wait a bit. Really hurts having paid so much money for this laptop, goddamit.

[Phuncz]

Do 7200rpm drives really eliminate the problem ? Because I was aiming for a 7200rpm 80GB drive anyways.

[jjwoo]

Possibly I think but that doesn't truly eliminate it if it's still the RAID controller, you simply boost the hard disk performance, so that whatever bug was kicking up gets resolved sooner. There is still inherently some problem between how the hard disks interacts with the PU, except the processes run so quickly you don't feel it. Except what happens when higher-end softwares come out? You might mind find the lag kicks in again, as we all know that new programs require greater and greater processing power. My view is that if you go for 72rpm plus a different model (check which ones are more compatible) then you've truly solved it, I feel it's the hardware compatibility that's the central issue. FSC were simply too lazy and found it relatively much more expensive to recall laptops and provide new components instead of simply updating drivers or that sort,

[Phuncz]

I was thinking about these two:

Hitachi/IBM Travelstar 7K100

Capacities: 100 GB, 80 GB, 60 GB
Speed: 7,200 RPM
Interfaces: SATA 1.5 GB/s
Seek Time: 10 ms read, 11 ms write
Latency: 4.20 ms
Buffer: 8 MB

Price: ~ 130 €


Seagate Momentus 7200.1

Capacities: 100 GB, 80 GB, 60 GB
Speed: 7,200 RPM
Interfaces: SATA 1.5Gb/s
Seek Time: 10.5 ms read, 12.5 ms write
Latency: 4.20 ms
Buffer: 8 MB

Price: ~ 95 €


The price doesn't matter if the problem gets solved by any of these...

The Hitachi is faster but also more expensive.