Performance Problem With E6400

Hi,

I have an E6400 that I bought at the end of 2008 (IIRC in October, I think they were maybe on the market for a couple of weeks tops when I got it), and have recently been having performance issues.

Even old games & games that should work really well on it (warcraft 3, call of cthulhu, tf2 at lowest settings + 640x480) sometimes start out ok but quickly grind to a halt (slide show kind of speed).

I tried reinstalling windows (both xp and vista) & also tried running warcraft 3 via wine on linux - nothing helps much, sooner or later there is significant slow down.

I would have thought it might be the intel graphics, but then again that card is not *that* weak (warcraft 3 came out at 2003 and I have managed to run it with a 450Mhz pentium 2 + voodoo 2!), and it does start out plenty fast (sometimes).

Any idea what the problem might be?

-Ido.

 

TF2 isn't that old. And it does have more stringent requirements than those other games. Check your GPU temps though, if the games start out fast, then there's no reason why the computer couldn't play them normally.

 

Thanks,
TF2 isn't old, but at lowest settings and at 640x480 it should run fast enough.

How do I check my GPU temp? And what can I do in case it is getting too hot?

-Ido.

 

HWmonitor will show various temperatures but doesn't separately show the Intel GPU. I therefore suggest I8kfanGUI which can show a chipset temperature. The fan should go to fast speed once the chipset / memory temperature reaches a relatively cool 50C.

However, on overheating Intel chipset would be unusual. Therefore also look at the CPU temperatures. These shouldn't get above around 70C. If they are getting very high then maybe this is what is throttling. Load up the monitoring page of RMClock and it will show any CPU throtting (but note that there is a button to select which core to display. Find out which is the hotter (one of mine id 5C hotter than the other) and watch it).

John

 

You were right, it was a heat issue.

I've placed the laptop on a Jaegermeinter bottle that was in the freezer and tried a game which previously ran atrociously slowly - and it ran really well!

What can I do otherwise to keep the computer cooler?

-Ido.

 

If you are getting a heat problem with Intel graphics then there's something wrong with the cooling system. Probably either the heat sink not fitted properly or the fan not running properly (get the bottom off and check it is not clogged with dust). I8kfanGUI will show the fan speed and you can check with your hand to see if it is blowing out hot air.

Run those programs mentioned in my previous post and see what the temperatures and CPU throttling do.

If you have on-site maintenance coverage then call Dell to fix it.

John

 

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19247293/19504888.aspx?PageIndex=1

 

Dell laptops are well know for heat issues dating back to the infamous 600m where playing 3D games overheated components which caused slowdowns in games. This is nothing more than poor engineering.

 

Same issue here. Tried running CnC Generals and the game will run fine for about 10 minutes then everything starts to become sluggish. RMClock would show the CPU core clock at 2.4 Ghz yet throttled to 600 Mhz. I8kfanGUI shows the chipset and GPU temps at 56 C (which I think is the threshold for the CPU to be throttled)

Has anyone here with the Intel GPU able to game successfully?