TM 8204 - Random CPU Spikes Driving me Crazy

Hi all,

I'm new to the forum and I wish I had registered earlier. There is definately a lot of knowledgable people here.

I just bought the TM8204 off E-bay, thinking I made an awesome purchase for it's price. Knowing Acer, there is no support whatsoever. Out of all the problems i've dealt with, this one makes me want to rip my hair out, constantly.

During Video Playbacks, All types, Streaming liveplayer, Xvid/Divx, Feeds from an External TV Box, the video feed would be not smooth. Like it would freeze for a half second then for the next half second, play really fast, and then be smooth for about 2-30 seconds, then repeat.

I've tried updating the Graphics driver millions of times and cleaning it with driver cleaner. I've used Catalyst 7.2 and 7.3 .. no help there.

I've installed the Community Codec Pack but I don't think this has anything to do with codecs? I could be wrong.

The only thing I noticed was that randomly while opening up task manager, these quick video freezes would (i am assuming) be the result of my cpu usage spiking momentarily +15-25%. It does this even when the computer is idle and all i'm doing is staring at the performance chart.

Tried to find prior threads on this but no success. Any help?

Thanks!

 

If you bought it used, then the thermal compound is probably pretty worn if it's been used for some time. I recommend putting new thermal compound, aka arctic silver between the heatsink and processor and for the gpu.

 

Have you tried a clean windows installation ? Sounds to me an old windows stuffed with useless programs.Also, do you experience this problem when your laptop is plugged in or when it's running off battery ?
What program are you using for playing movies ? Try VLC player it's much better than WMP IMO.

This has got nothing to do with the spiking problem.The CPU/GPU is not overheating.Throttling happens at extremely high temps (say 90*C and this will not happen when playing movies [ever] ).And the thermal paste never wears off this easily.Plus, the process of applying new thermal paste voids the warranty and is not a newbie's work.

 

Hmm, I guess I could try installing Windows again. Although I think that it was doing this off the bat. I get this problem when the AC is plugged in and in battery mode as well.

It isn't only movies with WMP, but anything. I use Powerdvd and get the same issues playing dvds, as well as the same thing when i use my TV Tuner which uses the Leadtek Winfast PVR.

Actually I noticed i get throttling (I believe that's what my problem is called?) during game sequences as well, but it isn't as noticeble.

Could this be due to an overload of background services or what should i be looking for? I dont' want to re-install windows, then reinstall the same programs I currently use and bog down the system again