New Optimus V up and running

[Genome]

So I ordered myself a new Optimus V for my birthday which my wife very nicely let me have early (it arrived yesterday so I got to play about with it a bit already)

I went with the 15" model with i7, 8 gig ram and the GTX765m graphics cards.

I ordered it on the 1st of November. This was a Friday so it didn't surprise me that it didn't enter pre-production till the 5th.

It then sat in preproduction for a while (but they are busy and warn you this might happen so I wasn't worried). It was then moved to In Building on the 13th. Things then moved really fast and it was tested and Qc'd on the 15th and dispatched on the 16th. This was a Saturday and so it was actually sent out on the Monday to finally arrive yesterday at my house.

All in all I was perfectly happy with the build and deliver speed.

I ordered it without an OS as I have win 7 pro. The laptop had a testing version of win 7 so I could at least make sure it turned on. However I then reinstalled windows.

Then came the confusing part.

After win installed the laptop needed some drivers to get everything working. Now a disk was included but there were some issues. The auto run of the disk doesn't work on win 7 so I had to access it manually. In it are all the drivers. However they don't all work. These are what didn't work:
• the chipset driver (so only 2 of the 4 USB ports worked)
• The LAN driver
• The wireless driver (I had to download this on my old laptop and transfer it over, I got the killer 1202 wireless card so the default win drivers did nothing).

Luckly I found a great thread on this forum with the same issues and all the links needed to get everything I needed. So if you have the same issue please check out the link below

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?25982-Optimus-V-Win7-drivers


-------------------------------------------


So with this all done my laptop was up and running. Screen looks fantastic at 1080p. Viewing angles are reasonable (better than my old non gaming laptop, but not as good as my actually old gaming desktops monitor). Build quality is plain but nice and sturdy. I like the keyboard a lot better than the floating one on my old laptop.

I just want to mention the fans. I read a lot about people complaining the fans were to loud and came on all the time. I was a little bit worried that there might be an issue but now I have used it my mind is set to rest. I can only assume that these people have never used a gaming PC before. Yes its a lot louder than a non gaming laptop but its still quieter than my old desktop. I also use a cooling pad so when idle the fans very rarely boosted at all.


-----------------------------------------------------


So after all this I installed steam and downloaded a game to play. Was running out of time so I installed Counter Strike GO first as its not to large. Downloaded relatively fast but it did show I had some kind of strange issue with my wireless connection dropping internet access intermitently (I will mention this more at the end).

Once the game was installed I fired it up. Slapped everything on max and watch the game cruise along without breaking a sweat. Not exactly a graphical showpiece but still looks nice and the 1080p screen shows its jaggy free glory.

Happy with that I set off tomb raider to install. Luckily it actually downloaded quick enough for me to play about for 10 mins before I had to sleep. The Nvidia experience settings seemed reasonable so I went with those to start off. Game looked really nice but frame rate was off. Not bad just off. Re-checked the settings and for some reason it had set it to 40hz mode. Switch that to 60hz and game was butter smooth. With that in mind I went back and turned a couple of the ultra settings down (as they basically look identical) and turned on crazy hair mode (tresseffects or what ever its called) along with a few other things like post processing. Game still runs amazing and looks crazy good. Lara's hair now all animates as separate strands and, while not actually realistic, its pretty impressive.

Left it downloading max payne 3 while at work today so will be interesting to see how that runs and looks.

So overall very impressed. Great price, great service, great performance.


----------------------------


Wireless issue

Just quickly on the wireless issue. It basically keeps dropping internet connection. The wireless signal is fine its just the actual internet. It randomly happens and can happen really frequently. normally last 30-60 seconds and then kicks back in again.

So for example, while downloading tomb raider, it would be solid 3 MB download then just drop to 0. Then go back up to 3 again for a while then drop to 0.

While gaming this is terrible because you loose connection and freeze for short periods.

Have tried
• Latest drivers
• Changing channel on router
• desabaling bluetooth.

Still have to try a few other things (including turning off the baby monitor) so hopefully I can get this working.

However if anyone here has had a similar issue and found a fix please let me know.

Thanks.

 

[TheGSL]

I had the usb issue too, only the usb 2 port worked after a new install on an ssd of w7 ultimate, same machine as yours but 17 inch. However, I eventually sorted it by downloading the latest drivers from intel then using the 'have disk' option for updating drivers, then forcing w7 to use them, which sorted it.

Not had an issues on wireless, however, that was only in the beginning when I used it, but no drop outs. Is it possible to connect using a lan cable and see if it still happens? If it is and it does, then it is not the wireless, so it is a process of elimination.

 

[Genome]

I havnt actually installed the LAN drivers yet but I do intend to. I have a few ideas to try. However I have a fair few devices plus another laptop that work fine on wireless.

Thigns I havn't tried yet

• Check power settings incase its not on max.
• Try using it downstairs closer to the router
• Plug it in (although I am pretty sure that will work fine as it does on the other laptop
• Read somewhere about changing wireless to a permanent connection. no idea where that would be though.
• See if there are more windows updates (there prob are, so you never know one might fix the issue)
• Change the card to not be N and down to B&G

There was also a couple of others I read up online that I will give a go if I need to. I will try the obvious ones first tonight though (closer to router, win updates and LAN connection).

Hopefully it will get sorted. Looks like a pretty common issue with no definite fix, varies from person to person. last bit to get working smoothly.

edit

Reading a little more it might be an issue with the Killer 1202 drivers. I will tongith try downloading previous versions and trying those instead. See if it makes any difference.

 

[Genome]

So another update in case anyone is having a similar problem.

I tried a few more things last night to try and eliminate the problem.
• Power settings to maximum performance.
• Reinstall drivers.
• Baby monitor turned off
• Closer to the router.

None of these fixed the issue. However after playing around with a few of the settings I was convinced it was happening less often. I havn't tried much since reinstalling the drivers so will let it go a bit more to see if the issue is the same or not before doing anything else.

However after reading more online I'm starting to think is more than likely a driver or software issue. So at some point I will try stopping the killer software at start-up in case its somehow causing the issue (just let the driver fun) and failing that will try install some older versions of the driver.

I dont know if anyone at PCSpecialists has heard of this issue before or has any suggestions but anything would be appreciated.

 

[kruppsy]

Bullet points up in here.

:2guns:

 

[Genome]

OK final post on this. I seem to have fixed the issue and it was something to do with the drivers.

After reinstalling the drivers I noticed that it was failing to install a LAN driver. I didn't think anything of this because I don't use the LAN port. However seeing it again on a reinstall made me take more notice. So I installed the LAN drivers that I linked to in my first post. Then I uninstalled the killer 1202 drivers and then reinstalled them. This time I also logged onto my network as soon as the wireless was available (its a longing install process and the wifi becomes available pretty quickly).

This time, watching the install process (click the tray icon that says stuff is installing to view it) and nothing failed at all. I don't know if logging on to the network fixed this or installing the LAN drivers first did but it worked (I would guess it was the LAN drivers that fixed it). After downloading on steam and monitoring the network with the killer 1202 software it didn't drop once where as before it would always happen well within that time.

---------------------------------

So to sum up this thread.

If you are installing win 7 yourself on a new PCS Laptop you may find that the drivers disk doesn't run. If thats the case just browse the disk (right click > open) and go to the drivers folder. Most should have windows 7 versions but some don't.

For the drivers not on there go to this link:
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forum...V-Win7-drivers

If you have an optimus V then that should get you almost everything you need except the killer WLAN drivers as that isn't standard. For those just go to the website and get the latest versions:
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&r...gUaJC4-18xTtiOiSomZtaiA&bvm=bv.56988011,d.cGE

Make sure that before you install them you have the LAN drivers installed first. Also try logging on to your network the second it becomes available (unsure if this is needed though) and let the install process complete. Its pretty long and looks like it hangs at the end but just wait. More installs will kick in.

edit: after further testing I still had wifi issues, albeit slightly different ones. So I found an older version of the drivers and installed them and havnt had a single issue since.

Hopefully this will help some people that had the same issues as me.

--------------------------------

Just want to say thanks to PCSpecialists. While the driver disk was a bit of a pain everything else was fantastic and for the price I paid for the optimus 5 with i7, 8gig ram and gtx765m I couldn't be happier. It runs modern games incredibly well and the laptop doesn't feel hot anywhere, even after 2 hours of gaming.

 

[adator]

What do you think of the built in speakers? Some people have said there not great, at the moment that's the only thing putting me off getting one really well that and the fact my old laptop still works perfectly fine.

 

[Genome]

What do you think of the built in speakers? Some people have said there not great, at the moment that's the only thing putting me off getting one really well that and the fact my old laptop still works perfectly fine.

To be honest I havn't really noticed if they are good or not as I always use head phones so its of no concern to me. I don't use my laptop where its particularly appropriate to use the speakers (Normally in the bedroom while the wife tries to sleep) so it would be hard to test. Also headphones are so much better anyway that I would prob not think that much of the sound from the speakers regardless of quality.

I know they are at the very least fine for if I was to watch a film and just want some sound from a game while I was playing.

 

[TheGSL]

The built in speakers are very poor. Quiet, but tinny when on full, no bass at all, useable, but if you want decent sound either headphones or a usb sound card.