Suddenly every game runs like crap?

So I went back to my M14x after about 4 days away from it to get ready for Borderlands 2. Thought I'd give Sleeping Dogs a play, but instead I received a slideshow running maybe under 10 fps. What?

Checked power settings, checked Nvidia controls. Everything is set to performance and the Gefore GT 650m.

Tried again, same. Restarted, tried it again. Same.

Restarted, tried a handful of other games. Bioshock ran under 10 fps. Even freaking CS:GO ran like it was going off hardware from the 90's.

What the hell's going on? I was hopinh for a bit of help here before resorting to call Dell.

 

Have you tried running alien autopsy? maybe try clean install with newest nvidia drivers? checked there's no huge processes running in the background (task manager)? Do all the fans sound like they are running normally/does it make the jet engine noise when u try play the games?

 

A clean install is what I'm trying to avoid.

I've kinda figured out the problem but have no idea how to fix it. I ran GPUZ to check my clock speed and for whatever reason my GPU and memory speeds are stuck waaaaaaaaay down. GPU clock is capped at 150 mhz or so and memory is at 400 mhz. No idea why. I don't overclock my system.

 

By clean install i mean:
1) Turn off automatic driver installation by searching "change device installation settings" in the start menu
2) Uninstall everything nvidia u currently have installed. Reboot
3) Run a program such as CCleaner to get rid of any leftover traces (run the cleaner and the registry cleaner). Reboot
4) Install the latest nvidia driver (306.23). Reboot, turn auto driver installation back on and try ur games again

If this doesn't work and you're sure u checked the power settings and ur pc is in high performance power plan and that the games are white listed im not quite sure what could be causing it. If you leave the laptop off for a while, come back and launch a game right away do u immediately get low fps or does it take a while to drop? if it takes a while that might suggest a fan is broken and ur getting throttling. Also does it work for long periods of time without any problems when not gaming?

 

Alright, I'll give it a try and see how it works out.

 

The laptop had absolutely no problems before. None. This is a brand new problem that just happened today. Games are immediately slow.

 

Very very odd. All i can think of is that either a random driver was updated which for some reason stopped ur nvidia one working properly (maybe an intel graphics driver?) or a hardware failure

Did u try doing the clean install with the new driver yet?

 

Okay, update.

It's...working again? After the clean install didn't work I just decided to call Dell. While I was on hold for God knows how long, I decided to boot up Sleeping Dogs and see what the benchmark would give me on the crippled GPU.

And the sonofa ran PERFECTLY? What?

Tested the game and it ran buttery smooth. Crysis and Witcher 2 ran good as before as well.

I'm really completely stumped here. No idea what's going on whatsoever!

 

huh. im still claiming it was the driver just may have taken a while to have an effect.. Alternatively maybe there was something jamming ur cpu or gpu fan so it wasnt working and it suddenly dislodged...

Oh well its fixed now - just need to hope it doesnt come back

 

But thanks for the help! Really appreciated.

 

Can delete this - posted in this thread instead with my proposed solution