$100 if you can fix this

A

Apo11o

New Member
Okay so maybe you won't get $100, but you'll get my appreciation and respect! I know this is long, but bear with me!

My computer has developed a tick where, when running a game or any graphics intensive program, the frame rate severely drops to about 4 1/2 fps in bursts of about 60 seconds at a time. These intermittent slow downs happen about 2-3 minutes apart. For example, a game will run fine for about 5 minutes upon startup, but not before long, it begin to alternate between 2.5 minutes of smooth playing, 60 seconds of lag, wash, rinse, repeat.

Drives me absolutely insane! The odd thing is that when I hit esc and go to the menu, it runs perfectly fine.. but the second I exit back into the game, it lags. One thing associated with this issue is that the sound of the fan gets noticeably louder the second it returns to normal.

Luckily i'm a graphic designer and this problem does not affect Adobe programs, or any non game programs for that matter. However its been persistent problem for about 2 years now. What i'm getting out of the situation is that somewhere along the line, I or some dust particles (there was quite a buildup of dust when I opened up the back to clean it out) damaged the fan, putting it in this constant loop of slowing down and speeding up when the computer gets really memory intensive. I have a feeling this is irreversible to :(

Thoughts? suggestions? Thanks for reading all this.
for the record, i'm running a dell inspiron 8600 with a 1.8 GHz processor, 1 gig of RAM, and an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo graphics card.

Any help/insight would be VERY appreciated!
 
If I have ever learned anything it's that when you have a graphic error, go update your drivers and then if that wasn't the problem you can at least rule it out.

Tuffie.
 
Watch you temperatures while not running games, and also when you are. come back and let us know.
 
Or Rivatuner, which is also good! It displays all the clocks of your card and temps in graphs, so you can monitor them easier!

Now, where's my money? :P
 
Kornowski said:
Haha! nVidia FTW! But I'm not going to start a war, sorry. Wait, there wouldn't be a war, nVidia wins! :P
Click to expand...

WHAT?

Anyways.

If its overheating, simply remove the dust from the inside of the laptop. Try downloading the inspirion/xps/lattitude fan control gui. If that doesnt work, re apply thermal paste to the heatsinks.
 
I cleaned out my computer a little while ago and there was quite a bit of dust buildup, but it's clean now. Otherwise, I would have no clue about how to re apply this paste you speak of. I guess google will help me with what I need to know?
 
update: I downloaded the fan control gui and ran both the first and second fan separately and the second fan sounds a bit sickly... However, I'm unsure how to access it through the computer casing.

@moto - i've fiddled with the anti-virus and it does nothing :/
 
First and second fan?

You have two on your graphics card?

You can remove the side panel of your computer, there are two screws at the back, simply undo them and the panel slides off towards the back... :)
 
I had a fairly simmilair problem with my old Compaq V300 notebook once. turned out the thermal pad between the CPU and the heatsink was cracked due to movement. have you ever reseated the heatsinks in your Laptop? (aka, take them off, cleam the heatsink and the chip, put new thermal paste, and put it back together? )
 
yeah a friend of mine was having a problem kinda like that but he thinks its his computer when it might be the game, but yeah he would be playing and his charater would freeze and then keep going but he wouldn't be moving( if that made any scence)
 
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