I've been having this problem for a few months now, but it's starting to happen more often, and I have tried everything I can think off.
The problem is this: when playing a game, the framerate will suddenly drop to about 10-15 fps, and continue like that for 20-60 seconds, then continue on as if nothing happened. It seems to only be the video, since audio continues normally.
If it were just one game, that would make sense, but it happens in everything: L4D2, Oblivion, Arkham Asylum, Modern Warfare, Borderlands, Morrowind, even Firefox. Lag in freaking Firefox. And it isn't in high-graphics areas: it will continue like that when I'm on the title screen, or a menu. The places it happens in also bear no relation to detail: I can run into this problem in one location, but on my next visit have no problems at all. I have also not noticed any correlation with RAM usage (it happens even when I have 2 gigs of free RAM) or disk usage.
My system is a stock Asus M50VM. Core 2 Duo P8400, max clock set to 2267 mHz, power settings set to never go below 90% or above 100% when gaming. GeForce 9600M GS, also not overclocked. 4 gigs RAM. Vista Home Premium (don't say anything about that). Nothing overclocked, modded or otherwise fucked with, hardware-wise.
Does anyone have the slightest idea why this is happening?
Download hwmonitor, run it, play your game, and when it starts lagging, switch quickly to hwmonitor and screenshot and post it here
You think it has to do with temps?
I'll try that, but it might take a while before I can catch it happening. Some days I can't get anything done; others it never happens at all. Knowing my luck, now that I'm trying to get it to happen it won't.
Okay, this is weird. I didn't grab a screenshot, but just playing normally got my GPU over 100C. Still didn't trigger the framerate problem, but now I have two things (possibly related) to worry about instead of one.
Temps seem stable for everything else. CPU ranged from 28C to 73C, main temp ranged between 46C and 88C, with both going down to 66C-ish just a minute after gaming.
The GPU has me worried, though. Max temp was 107C. I don't know much about normal temperatures, but that seems excessive. It's cooled down to 70C after a minute or two of nothing, so that seems to be peak load.
Well, after cleaning out the fan area of dust, my temps have lowered about 30 degrees (Celcius, even!), and I have not had the lag problems since doing so.
Problem seems solved. I never thought about a laptop getting fan blockage, although in hindsight it seems rather obvious.
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