[M17xR3] FPS issue on demanding games

This is a problem that has been bothering me ever since I received my laptop last year, and I've yet to find a concise fix.

I'm running an M17xR3 with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M.

The issue is this: whenever I play anything graphics-demanding (even in the slightest - such as ARMA II, which was released quite a while ago), my frame-rate will frequently drop to abysmal lows and recover to normal after about 15-20 seconds, only to drop again perhaps a minute later.

Examples of games this has happened on: Star Wars: The Old Republic, ARMA II, WH40k: Space Marine, Shogun 2: Total War, other MMORPGs. Oddly enough, sometimes my laptop never experiences this issue after a restart, but it does happen more often than not.

I was lead to believe that this is throttling, a manual adjustment of the FPS due to the graphics card overheating, but this is really hard to believe. I have a friend who has an M14xR3 with an Nvidia card only slightly higher than mine in model number and has never experienced this issue.

It's incredibly frustrating and drives me away from playing anything on my PC - shooters are ruined because of the choppy visuals and action games quickly become hectic.

I am in no way experienced with issues like this and don't really know what to provide as far as specs go that would be helpful to fix this. I know Nvidia cards have a tendency to heat up, but like I said before, I have other friends who have been playing side by side with me on almost the same machines who haven't experienced this issue.

Does anyone have any idea as to what this could be? I do have the most recent drivers for my card, and this problem has persisted even after I replaced my hard drive. I'm really at a loss at to what is causing this.

Thanks in advance. If there are any specifics I left out or are needed, please let me know.

EDIT: After searching a bit, the problem I'm having seems to be identical to the one in this thread, even down to the details such as black screen flickering and the rare IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL BSODs (although I haven't had one of those in a long while).

 

sounds like your 460m is throttling because its getting to hot. Have you tried cleaning out your fans? Could also be a bad driver.

 

Throttling was what I was expecting.

I don't think it's the fans that are the issue - this problem has persisted since I received the laptop - but I will clean them out if you think that might help.

As far as a bad driver goes, I only recently installed the latest driver for my card, but this problem has persisted throughout several different drivers that I've been using.

If there are any drivers you think may be bad or may need to be installed or changed, just let me know.

EDIT: Out of curiosity, how loud should the fans get when the GPU is under a lot of pressure? I know they can get rather loud after running them through a setup test on BIOS, but I've never heard them get up to that speed outside of the test.

 

my system never got to to loud when I had my 460m in it. This 6990m runs a lot hotter.

I just thought of something, go down to the lower right hand corner and click on the battery. What performance setting is your computer set to? If its set to powersaver I bet that's whats giving you so many problems.

 

It's set to High Performance, that was one of the first things I had suspected and checked when the problem first popped up.

As far as bad drivers go, do you think that would be a quick fix? I feel like the card really shouldn't perform this poorly.

 

Yea sounds like there is definitely a problem. Have you whitelisted your games to make sure they run off the 460m and not the igpu? If you have the 3d display forget I asked.

 

It seems likely to me that you are having driver issues (possibly compounding other issues). The reason that I say this is that the primary cause for the IRQL BSoD is driver issues.

Click the start orb at the bottom of your screen, type "cmd", and hit enter. Once the console window opens, type "verifier.exe /all" followed by enter.

After you have done this, restart your computer and watch for a BSoD. If you do get a blue screen, right down the driver name which caused the problem. If you do get a blue screen, you will have to restart in Safe Mode and open another cmd window where you have to execute the following "verifier.exe /reset" to make your computer start properly again.

The drive name which appears with the STOP is important as it means that it is a badly written or non-working driver which needs to be replaced.

 

I have the 3D display, but I'm unfamiliar to the term "whitelisting".

I'll try that in a minute, thanks for the tip. I'll let you know what happens.

 

+rep for the help eddie.. hope this helps you zodack I'd try it and see what happens.


Edit: If you have the 3d display, you don't need to bother with whitelisting as you don't have to deal with intergrated graphics.

 

Alright, here we go. It did BSOD and I tried to write down all the drivers after STOP as accurately as I could (I had to BSOD it maybe two or three times to get a good picture enough to write them all down, haha).

Here's what I caught.

"STOP

0x000000C9 (0x000000000000023E, 0xFFFFF88001A01324, 0xFFFFF98008C10E10, 0x0000000000000000)"

Following that was:

"dtsoftbus01.sys - Address FFFFF88001A01324 base at FFFFF88001A00000 Date amp 4f10358a"

It's all Greek to me - hopefully you guys can tell me what is going on.

Also, instead of going into Safe Mode and getting into the command line for the "verifier.exe /reset", my computer just went into startup repair and after that started up fine, although if I do need to put that command in just let me know.

 

That's Daemon Tools. I'd try uninstalling it.

 

This is a driver used by Daemon Tools which has been known to cause a ton of problems. My suggestion is to uninstall Daemon Tools and do the Driver Verifier again to check and see if there are any other driver problems.

Also, I'm just wondering, have you checked your temps when the FPS slowdowns were occurring? In extreme cases, the IRQL BSoD can also be caused by heat issues.

 

Alright. I'm uninstalling it now. I've barely ever used it - makes me wonder why it's still on here anyways.

Also, no, I haven't checked my temperatures when those issues happen - but the last time I got an IRQL was several, several months ago, maybe even last year. This issue is a persistent one that just keeps happening, and the IRQL screens are far less frequent.

 

Alright, when you are done try the Driver Verifier again to see if any other errors show up.

Also, if you have a chance, run MSI Kombustor to see if you can force a BSoD. It should kick your temps up extremely high very quickly and cause any issues to show up.

 

Alright, after a second Verifier I got no BSODs. Although now for some reason my CPU usage is up to about 56% and everything is running rather slowly. Probably not related.

As for MSI Kombustor, is it relatively safe? I don't want to accidentally fry anything.

Thanks for all your help so far.

 

Uninstalling Daemon Tools shouldn't slow it down, if anything it will speed things up a tiny bit. You should check your Task Manager to see if there are any high usage programs running.

It is completely safe as long as you keep an eye on it. The only think that should really be hit hard is the GPU and you'll notice that the temps sky rocket the moment you start to run it. If you can't run it for extended periods of time without your computer crashing or the temps going too high then there is another problem with the system. I would say that if the temps went above 90 degrees Celcius that you should close the program and give it some time to recover before trying it again. (Although I don't know the "safe temps" for your system so that 90 degrees may be a little low or high for what is typically expected.)

 

Yeah, it was nothing a restart didn't fix.

Alright. I'm downloading MSI Afterburner now (which is supposed to come with Kombuster as far as I know).

I'm unfamiliar to actually monitoring my GPU, so I'd like to ask: is Kombustor going to give me a temp readout or am I going to have to do that some other way?

I'll run it as soon as it's installed. I should be expecting a BSOD from high temps if something is wrong, correct? And if that happens what should I look for?

Sorry for my inexperience, I know it probably makes things a bit more complicated to explain.

 

he is gonna hit 78C and then the system will start to throttle if it gets to hot. Nowhere near 90C.

 

Kombustor will tell you in multiple places on screen what your temps are along with a graph of the change over time.

It may blue screen, there isn't really anything to look for if it does, just that it blue screened.

That's what I had figured. I'm mostly trying to see if something intense would crash the system.

 

You hit the nail on the head. It reached 78C and throttled down to 72-ish, and kept repeating that.

 

Sounds like you need to clean out your fans and maybe also need to repaste your GPU.

 

Alright - I'm guessing compressed air or something of the like for the fans?

And this is a kind of amateur question, but what does repasting my GPU entail? I'm unfamiliar with that term - I saw it in the past thread but didn't know what it meant.

 

Compressed air sprayed at an angle into the vents. It would probably be best if you opened the bottom of the laptop and manually removed any possible obstructions, though.

Repasting means removing the heatsink from the GPU and replacing the current thermal paste with new thermal paste. You can buy thermal compounds, such as IC Diamond and Arctic Silver, online. There are tons of different brands and which one you use is up to you.

If you do decide to repaste, this video shows the process on an M17x R3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITj5XV7XimU

 

Alright, thanks. Getting into the back of the M17x isn't hard at all, so cleaning the fans will be fairly straightforward.

As far as repasting goes, do you suggest a DIY or getting a computer hardware store to do it for me?

 

It depends on where you would justify your skill level. It isn't difficult at all but if you haven't done it before it can be time consuming.

 

Alright.

Thanks for all the help. Hopefully this'll be a quick fix.

I really appreciate it, both of you guys.

 

It's no problem, I hope that you get any and all issues resolved.

 

Happy to help

 

Zodack, Did that solve your issue? I am having exactly the same problem with my M17x R3...However I have the 580m video card.