Volatile fps and performance degredation while gaming

I bought my m14x about 3 months ago and it was pretty much everything I expected. I use it mostly for gaming and play WoW, LoL, and a few other games. At first, I was able to run WoW on mostly high settings with vertical sync enabled and get 60 fps in most situations. In 25m raids I had to turn a few settings down to good, but would still get excellent performance.

Recently, however, I have been having trouble with constant frame rate drops, and volatility, in WoW and in other games as well. I will be playing at 60fps, then suddenly the frame rate will drop to 20, then 10, then move around between 10 - 59 randomly for a while. It usually happens while a lot of action is taking place on screen, but can also occur when I'm sitting by myself. The video feed becomes so choppy at this point that i have trouble telling what is happening in the game at times, especially during pvp or raids.

I have made sure that my games are whitelisted to run only on my nVidia card, and that my laptop is always plugged in and running in high performance mode. I have tried changing the video settings in game to low, with no effect. I have even gone so far as to reformat and reinstall windows.

I am at a loss as to what to try next. It has gotten to the point that games are almost unplayable on this machine due to the constant changing in frame rate. How can i get my pc to perform like it did when it was new again?

 

Maybe it is overheating? Monitor the temperatures of your CPU and Video card and report back.

A laptop cooler could help out, or at least raise the back end with a book or do not use it on the bed.

 

I almost always have the back of the laptop raised when gaming, and never let it sit on the bed while running. I checked the temps while gaming. the cpu topped out at 97 degrees C, and the gpu at 87.

One interesting thing that I noticed when monitoring the temperatures was the % usage of the gpu. During periods of stable gameplay and frame rate the gpu would be between 85 and 98% usage. However, when the frame rates began to fluctuate, there would be a corresponding drop in gpu usage, sometimes as low as 25%. Not sure exactly what this means. Possibly a bottleneck somewhere?

 

its the Cpu which is overheating and the GPU is downclocking because it is saturated by the heat, M14x is so badly cooled

try to run prime95 and FurMark, one by one and then together you ll see exactly what is wrong

Also Dell tech came to change my mainboard and did repaste with the M4x i bought, now it s better but it is still faulty and going to 98 or 99c on 3 cores

I wish Alienware was never bought by Dell, and i think M14x is the start of the end for Alienware

 

I did some more looking and it seems like overheating is definitely the issue. the cpu will get up to the mid 90's after only a few minutes of WoW now.

That being the case, what is the next step for fixing the problem? Should I contact customer support, is there a fix that I can apply on my own such as thermal paste, or could a good cleaning of the fans/vent solve the problem? As I said, I've only had this machine for a few months. Would that be enough time for the fan to get clogged to the point that overheating would have this severe an effect on the performance?

 

Reapplying the thermal paste can bring temps down a bit, but don't expect miracles. Plus you really have to take things apart to get at the heatsinks. I did it on my M11xR2 and it was not for the faint of heart, but I did get about 5°C cooler. I keep reading that warranty does not cover that, but I don't really understand what part people are referring to.

I'd just get a laptop cooler for now and see if it helps. That lowers my M11x by around 10°C, if you still need to go a little lower, then go to the paste or call Dell. If it cannot run the way you would like it to while using a cooler, there is an issue there.

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Stain

 

Turn off tubro core and you'll drop about 20C. I also redid my paste which helped by about 5C.

 

After reading the thread, I went on newegg and got a cooler.

 

I've just switched off Turbo Mode - as aforementioned its dropped the temps by around 20'C and has not shown any changes in gaming FPS.
I'd rather not wear the components to the point where the system has to throttle down to prevent damage.

Isn't that false advertising on Dell's part concerning gaming?

 

Well, tried disabling turbo following the instructions in this post:
How to lower your laptop temps ( For Core i5 , i7 ) ! - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net
But was only able to squeeze about 30 min of playtime out before the same old problems surfaced again with the cpu peaking at 97 degrees and the gpu at 81.

 

Crap... then your system is overheating.
This is what worries me and has persuaded me to take action.

I've since lowered all my settings and now only have to tolerate an annoying fan.

Get Dell to look into it or repair it.

 

Although high, the CPU temperatures seem to be about what people are typically getting. However, those GPU temps seem higher than the typical ones I read about on this site. Maybe reapplying thermal paste IS the answer. Have you tried a laptop cooler just to see if it helps? Otherwise, give Dell a call. # months is early for these problems.

 

Instead of that method, try setting the Minimum processor state to 100% and use the Disable Turbo feature in ThrottleStop. You will also need to click on the Turn On button as well as the Set Multiplier box so ThrottleStop can control your CPU.

If this doesn't lower your peak temperatures enough then you can try using a reduced multiplier instead to slow your CPU down further.

Intel designs their CPUs to run all day in the high 90C range so you are not going to hurt one by gaming with it at these sort of temperatures but if this is making you uneasy, use ThrottleStop and run your CPU as slow as you like.

New CPUs are getting so small that these peak core temperatures being recorded on the hottest spots on the core are not as dangerous as you would think. The core temperature as you move away from these hot spots dissipates very rapidly and can drop 20C within 1 cm when gaming. It's not like a 1 square inch section of your motherboard is glowing cherry red and running at 99C while gaming.

As long as your CPU is reliable and not reaching the thermal throttling point at 100C and slowing down, you don't need to worry that much about what temperature it is running at.

 

I'm not really worried about the temperature as much as I'm trying to fix the performance issues that I'm having. I've definitely read that it's normal on this laptop for the cpu temps to be in the upper 90's, but my gpu temp gets to the high 80's pretty regularly, and that's when the performance and frame rate issues start. After leaving it off for the night I can usually get a half hour or so of gaming before it hits these temps, but once it does I notice my gpu usage dropping all over the place and the frame rate in my games dropping off significantly.