Aspire 5820TG "Stuttering" issue

Hey all

My new laptop seems to have developed a stuttering problem. This was first made apparent by playing World of Warcraft – I would get a constant 60FPS, but all of a sudden the game would freeze for 3 seconds or so, then go back to max fps.

This problem seems to have invaded into other aspects of my computer use. I can be using MS Word, and the screen will freeze for 3 seconds. If I continued typing in those 3 seconds, the letters would be spat out after the 3 second freeze. These freezes occur quite often when I am playing video games, but they can occur quite often when I am in windows too.

The specs of my laptop are as shown:
Acer Aspire 5820TG
i5 520 2.40GHz (4 CPUs) with 4 gigs of ram
Windows 7 64 Bit
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 (1 gig)

Could anyone suggest the next step I could take in resolving this issue?

Here's a key notes I should mention:
1) I've already formatted my computer, but the problem persists.
2) Sometimes during the stutters the laptop fan will increase in speed (I can hear this).
3) I output my laptop to an external monitor. This causes other problems, as I frequently have problems with resolutions being changed randomly and the screen will flicker to black (as if it's detecting new monitor hardware) and then either go back to its original resolution or change to another resoultion.
4) I have not installed any driver updates - when I go to the "Acer Updater" program it tells me that there's no drivers to download.
5) Something in the back of my mind is telling me that it only happens when I switch to the high perfomance graphics card.

The following link is a print-out of my dxdia

https://docs.google.com/document/ed...d6i2AlRcyUrOR-JvsTTV0&hl=en&authkey=CL2w5cAG#

Thanks for taking the time to read my message, and any help will be greatly appreciated. I'd like to know the next step I should take in tackling this problem - hopefully I won't have to bring this in to an Acer support centre.

Edit: I've also emailed Acer's support site for some information regarding this topic.

 

It's possible it may be overheating, these laptops run quite hot. Try running hwmonitor in the background while you're playing warcraft and the problem happens, then check the max temps reported by hwmonitor (the third column). If the CPU is getting to 95c+ or the GPU is getting to the high 80s, what you may be seeing is the laptop trying to cool itself down.

 

I've ran HWMonitor when playing... the temperature levels are well within acceptable standards i'd say (I was getting as low as 36 celcius)

 

First: Do you have an WD HDD in it? I've had 3 different laptops with 5400rpm WD harddrives and they all had this problem to some degree.

If so: Try quietHDD and run it, go to misc settings and untick enable AAM (acoustics management) and APM (advanced power management). Click apply.

See if the problem is still there. For me it helped a lot at least.

Second tip: Do an clean install of win 7 to get rid of the acer install crap. That often removes useless crapware that might follow the acer install.

Third tip: New harddrive. On one computer I gave up and bought another HDD, an seagate 500Gb 7200rpm and the WD 640Gb that came with the computer is now making use as an external HDD for MP3 in an 2.5" HDD enclosure.

Fourth tip: It might be something completely different than what I suggested.....

 

If by "WD", you mean "Western Digital", then yes. (Excuse my lack of computer knowledge, mate ).

I'm trying out the quietHDD as you suggested as I write this now. May I ask if your laptops where Acers specifically, or just had the presumed-to-be-faulty harddive brand?

 

I had an Acer Aspire 5740G with the same stuttering problem. It was due to the Western Digital hard drive. quietHDD solved the problem for me. Make sure to put the quietHDD shortcut in the Windows startup folder.

 

It's Western Digital specific problem and notebook manufacturers are no to blame. This issue is caused by parking heads and/or spin-down of the drive.
Someone at WD wanted to be “green” and save sooo much energy by stopping the drive as often as possible- as you see it wasn't such a good idea.

 

Yes Western Digital.

And as said by others already it's not related to laptop brand, but to the WD harddrives. And yes two of those computers were acers, the last was an Asus.

 

Hey guys, it seems that the "QuietHDD" app fixes my problem...You're all legends!!!! I can't thank you guys enough. I'm sorry that you were all faced with the same problem, but I can't tell you how much this helps me.

Absolutely excellent help!

 

hi guys,
First of all I am new to the forum, so hi again.

I own a 5820TG laptop for two weeks. Yesterday I have replaced the WD drive with a PQI S525 SSD 128GB drive and afterwards I did a clean install with my Windows 7 Ultimate key.

From that moment I am experiencing "stuttering" as described by the thread author.

I have installed both GPUs driver, AHCI and chipset driver, LAN and audio driver,wifi was installed from Windows driver libs.

Moreover my SSD is running dramatically slow. I spent 340$ equivalent for a drive, that is bloody slow. When I was unpacking a ZIP file, it ran at 1,5 MB/s speed.

What can I do?