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I just recently bought a Lenovo y580 with both HD intel graphics and an Nvidia GTX 660m. It works great except for one thing: playing games. Every time I load a game, either with Steam or Games for Windows Live, games will end up crashing. I've already talked with lenovo tech support and they couldn't help other than send my new laptop for repair which would take 7 days. So before I do that I thought I'd ask around.

These are the games I've tested and what happens when they load:

Civilization V: Game loads fine but once it gets loaded to the game, there's noticeable "tearing" popping up and certain things flash. Within a minute of this, the game crashes. Does the same thing regardless if Vsync is on or off.

Total War Shogun2: Game gets to the menu screen. The background of the menu screen shows what is expected - slideshow of in-game environments rendered on high settings (this is expected). However, within 2 seconds of the menu loading up it crashes.

Age of Empires 3 (Non-steam): This game is several years old so it should work on this brand new laptop fine. However the results are similar to that of Civilization V. Noticeable "Tearing" and after a few seconds it'll freeze/crash.

I've done tests on all these games with both the latest stable Nvidia driver 285 as well as the nightly build 307. In addition, Nvidia control panel is set on using the dedicated graphics card for all programs.

So is there anything I can do to fix this or will I have to send it back for a week to tech support?

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Please can you provide more information about what happens when it crashes. Is there a blue screen or does the laptop freeze completely? Doess this happen with the original drivers supplied with the laptop? Have you checked to see if the graphics chipset is overheating? Something like HWMonitor (cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html) can do this for you. – James Jul 22 '12 at 19:20
i'll try the link you sent. But as for crashing there's no BSOD, it just crashes to the desktop and Windows gives no indication as to the cause. This happens with the stock drivers provided on the lenovo website, the stable release from the nvidia website, and the recent nightly build also from the nvidia website. – dcap Jul 22 '12 at 20:38
I just tested the temperatures during a Total War benchmark test on 1080p and it never went above 55C – dcap Jul 22 '12 at 20:50
Are you sure there's nothing relevant in the Action Centre within the Control Panel? – James Jul 23 '12 at 8:45
Also, try Start->Run->dxdiag to see if any problems are shown. Ultimately I think it's probably a hardware problem though, so you will probably need to return it. – James Jul 23 '12 at 8:48
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2 Answers

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This problem could be caused by either software or hardware.

If it is hardware then there is not much sensible that you can do without voiding warranty. If that is not an issue try to monitor the GPU temperature with something like GPU-Z. If it is too hot when idle and rising sharply when you start a game then you probably found the problem. And you still can not repair it without voiding warranty, the smart move it to send it back for tech support all HW related problems.

If it is software then it is likely due to some problem with the graphics driver. If you did not change anything then try downloading and installing the newest driver. If you did that and it started crashing afterward try either reverting the update, or use the restore disks to restore the computer. (Warning: That will wipe any data you put on it).

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I was told during the tech support call to restore everything to factory settings which I did. Since then I've downloaded all drivers available to the graphics card from both lenovo and nvidia's website but nothing helped :( – dcap Jul 22 '12 at 20:49
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"with both HD intel graphics and an Nvidia GTX 660m" Hello Dcap,

so you say you used the latest drivers from nvidia, have you tried the drivers provided by Lenovo? In these dual GPU setups where the gpu is usually dynamic gpu switching, a certain driver is required to work.

Try this one:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS027803

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protected by Breakthrough Dec 15 '12 at 23:05

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