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Hey what's going on guys? Its Darth. I've been having this annoying problem where my fps randomly drops CRAZY low, then stays there and doesn't raise back up. Basically, I'll be hitting around 45, 50, 60 fps throughout the game for the longest time. Then, about half-hour (or more, sometimes less, depends) it just randomly hits 9-11fps, and stays. Its highly disturbing and frustrating. I know it isn't the video/graphics card because I wouldn't stay at a constant high fps.. It is quite an old laptop (2009ish) I am running on, definitely not compatible with "high-powered gaming" but it shouldn't be THIS bad running a 2003 game, especially when I run it on the lowest settings possible.  I've updated my drivers as well. Also, I have a cooling-pad so it doesn't get hot.

I've done basically everything. Lowered the settings clear to "lowest" - 800x600 res, still fps drops. Turned off all programs, did a disk defragment on the hard drive, cleaned the computer, scanned it. Also fixed the registry. Turned my color depth in graphic options to 16bit, instead of 32 bit. Removed the Window 7 customization. And I've also set the priority to above normal, and high. Still, nothing. I don't know what else to try honestly like.. 

Any suggestions?

Thanks very much for the help!


-Darth

It has to be heat. You can be using a cooling pad but a laptop of that age might already have the CPU/GPU cooler clogged with hair/dust and while the cooling pad will help, you're still not getting air past the heatsink fins.

This is what I've seen MANY times in laptops:




Grab yourself HWMonitor and Prime95. Run Small FFT's in Prime95 and watch temps in HWMonitor and post back. Also post what CPU you have (it should say in HWMonitor).

Intel graphics and a single-core CPU doesn't look like it would do well even with AA. I would still bet heat though.

I never played an online game with dial-up, I'm impressed by those who have. Absolute warriors.

Intel graphics and a single-core CPU doesn't look like it would do well even with AA. I would still bet heat though.

Yeah I know it isn't the greatest for gaming  but it still does the job and let's me play most games! 

I took a couple screenshots of the Prime95 and HWMonitor. How can I post them on this?

-Darth

Imgur.com is pretty good

Gotcha! Give me on a second and I'll post the before and after.


Okay, here's before:



Let the test run a little bit then I had to leave so this is what it got to, pretty sure it is the heat:



-Darth

That's pretty damn hot for a 35W CPU. From what I can tell, thermal shutdown is at 105C and you're at 89C so there might be throttling going on or perhaps instability. Who knows though, with gaming it might be going higher. Why don't you leave HWMonitor open and play AA until your FPS drops real low. Be sure to close out of Prime95.

Post back with another screenshot.

Do you own an air compressor or know anyone that owns one?

Okay, so whenever my FPS drops you just want me to tab out of the game and screen shot the monitor?

Yeah I have someone who has a air-duster by the way.

By the way when you say "throttling or instability" is that meaning that's whats causing it to suddenly DROP so fast? Also, which one should I be looking at? The one that's my most concerned? Core # -256?


Okay, I played some AA, here's the screenshot I got when my FPS dropped.



-Darth

I'm betting that the CPU is throttling itself back (reducing performance to reduce it's heat output to prevent thermal runaway) and that's the problem.

An "air duster" isn't really the same thing as an air compressor. You want a lot of PSI (unless you're comfortable enough to disassemble the laptop?).

Ahhh I see. Well I'm taking it up to my fathers house whenever he's available he said he'll strip it apart and clean it all out. He also told me it was probably dust build up in the fans, etc. (I just figured since it wasn't "hot" it wasn't the heating problem.)

So basically I just should get this cleaned out then, and see if that fixes the problem?