Finally fixed that annoying lag every couple minutes on games

I have an Acer Aspire 5100 with 2gb of ram, AMD Turion 64X2 1.6ghz processor, and an ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 graphics chip.

When I played games such as World of Warcraft, after about 15 minutes, I would start getting strange spikes of lag where my frames per second would dip from 30-40fps down to 1-2 fps for about 10 seconds, then go back to normal for a couple minutes, then go back to 1-2 fps, etc.
The problem, I discovered was that my laptop was getting way too hot. I downloaded SpeedFan to monitor the temperatures of of my processor. While playing games, it reached over 80C.

Originally, to fix this problem, I had to aim a fan directly at my laptop to keep the temperatures down. It stopped the random lag spikes, but not only was this annoying and loud, it froze my fingers.

After a few months of dealing with this annoyance, I FINALLY fixed the problem. First, I realized that my BIOS was somewhat out of date. So I flashed my BIOS to the latest version provided by Acer: 3.10
ftp://ftp.work.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_5100/bios/Bios 3.10.zip

After that update, I found that my temperatures dropped around 8C while idle, a decent drop. Unfortunately, I gamed on and found that I still encountered the stuttering lag. So I did some more research, and found that the Acer Aspire 5100's Turion 64X2 is good at overclocking. Acer laptops can't be overclocked manually via the BIOS, so I downloaded ClockGen to do this.
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/248/

After installing ClockGen, I went to PLL Setup, located the correct ICS Number (951462), and overclocked my processor from 1600 Mhz to 1900Mhz. I tested this with WoW and it worked perfectly for about 45min, then my whole system froze. So I restarted and went back to overclock again-- this time only to 1800Mhz. Voila! It worked perfectly, and I played WoW for hours without problems! I rechecked SpeedFan for my CPU temperature, and it idled at around 50C and only went to around 70C on a full load (WoW, iTunes, AIM, etc). A vast improvement!

 

THANK YOU for posting this. I have the same exact machine with the same exact problem. I'm looking forward to trying this out when i get home!

 

I actually have the same model (same specs, actually), and same problem. I am really eager to try your remedy; however, I am completely illiterate when it comes to computers, and am not really sure how you changed your mhz from 1600, to 1800. Can you go into further detail concerning the program "clockgen"? For example, for my Acer 5100 would I use the same ICS number? Also, what do I have to do as far as the whole "PLL Control"? By changing my CPU from 1600, to 1800, am I changing my mhz from 1600, to 1800? Hopefully you can help me with my issues. Thanks.

 

Interesting improvement.
Although if you initially has issues with the temperatures, overclocking the cpu would result in a temperature INCREASE.
Then again you did mention upgrading the BIOS which might have kicked the fans into constant operation ... still ... it's odd.

But so long as your temps dropped, it's good.

What you could also do is look into undervolting your cpu, and applyinng a quality thermal paste to it as well.
It would help in reducing your temps more.