FPS drops in all games?

I have an M17xR2 with 2x ATI 4870s and an i7 920XM. My problem is that after playing nearly any game for more than 10 minutes I get a sharp FPS drop of around 30-40 FPS. I get the same thing with Crossfire on and off so that is not the problem.


Here are some of the games I've tested it with, all at 1920x1200 res and high in game settings:

Mafia 2: Before: Avg 70 FPS After: Avg 35 FPS

Stalker: Call of Pripyat: Before: Avg 60 FPS After: Avg 25 FPS

Starcraft 2: Before: 60 Fps After: 35 FPS



Any idea on what could be causing this?

 

How are your temps? Maybe overheating then downclocking?

 

You can use HWMonitor to record your max CPU and GPU temperatures while you game. When the game performance gets worse, ALT+TAB out and see what your max was.

 

Yep, just tested it and the the clock drops down. Attached a pic, it hit 98 C and then dropped down, is this too hot? It does sound a little high but I'm not sure

 

If you click on the boxes in GPU-Z that say the temps, little green words will appear. Click each of them twice, or until they say 'MAX'. That way you can see exactly what the max temps were. But yeah, by the sounds of it, you're throttling. Now you just need to find out what's not right. If you're mechanically inclined, there are mods you can do to dramatically drop your temperatures. I'm betting that if you slap some AS-5 on there you'll be good to go. It's the new laptop, right? That means it is not an issue with dust in the heatsinks. A couple of people have had this similar problem. When they got in there to check, there wasn't enough thermal grease (TIM) on their GPU dies.

 

Piggy-backing on this issue

I purchased my Alienware M17x-R2 back in March 2010

Intel 820QM, 8GB 1333, 2xATI4870 1GB, 120GB SSD - should be fast right?

I hadn't done a lot of gaming recently on the AW so I loaded up Modern Warfare 2 - wasn't very impressed with the performance i was getting: about 30-40FPS

I uninstalled the video driver completely, reloaded the newest driver I could find, 10.10 - and was able to then get 91FPS in game (FRAPS to monitor FPS)

Yesterday when I tried to play i'm back in the choppy 30-40FPS range - and oddly my video fans are not spinning up like they had been.

Several reboots, several driver reloads, crossfire disabled (even WORSE FPS), crossfire re-enabled - still hanging in the 30-40FPS range


Any one have any ideas as to why my video cards are not cranking up?

I loaded GPU-z to monitor the heat, neither card made it over 52 degrees F while in game.

 

Yeah Neutron, your cards aren't being fully utilized. Did you...?

1. Install Driver Sweeper.
2. Uninstall both cards in the Device Manager. Hit 'Yes' to uninstall the driver.
3. Reboot into Safe Mode (F8).
4. Run Driver Sweeper to get rid of all ATI driver stuff.
5. Reboot normally and run the 10.10 driver.
6. Make sure that your CCC sliders are all to the left ACCEPT for Cat AI and Mip Mapping.
7. Make sure you're on the 'High Performance' power plan in Windows.
8. Double check GPU-Z to ensure you're in CrossFire mode.
9. Make sure you're not in Stealth Mode.
10. Minimize unnecessary background processes.
11. If push comes to shove, yank the CMOS battery connector and hold the power button down for about 30 seconds.

The crappy thing is that this has happened to me before, I just don't remember how I fixed it.

 

ok - I did use Drive Sweeper, but didn't do the Safe mode part - re-doing now

Thanks for the help!

 

You can thank me if it actually works. I don't know what impact doing it in Safe Mode really has.

 

Thanks for the help, I definitely plan on ordering the thermal paste and doing the mod. I just ran some tests in Furmark and GPU-Z showed that the fans stayed at 30% until it hit 98C. Is there any way to make the fans go to 100% at lower temps?

 

No, not that I know of. It would be nice though.

 

Ok - that took a while!

We seem to be working much better now. GPU temps are up to 70F, FPS is up in the 70-90FPS range...

I have no idea what would cause this... but this is the 2nd time a strip down re-load of the ATI drivers has made a difference.

The first time i didn't need to go so far as this time - but glad it's working again!

Thank you for the advice!

 

Glad it's working now. Enjoy!

 

Thanks again for your help, I went into the laptop earlier today and cleaned out both of the GPUs. They were coated in dust. : / Anyway just cleaning them off got me a 30 C drop in temp after testing in furmark! No more in game problems for me.

 

30°C? Wow! That's a nice drop. Maybe it's time to check mine!

 

Yeah I know! and it also seems like all of my FPS shot up in most games too... Mine was pretty clogged up though, Yesterday I was playing New Vegas with 50 FPS on high now I'm playing with 60 FPS on Ultra? Very happy I went and did that.

 

Could you do me a favor and tell me what your CPU idle temperature is? I pulled a bunch of crud out of my CPU heatsink and it's still idling at 60-62°C. What does your 920 idle at?

 

That does seem a little high, mine idles at 45-50C.

 

I reapplied my thermal paste, cleaned the crud out of the heatsink, and removed some SSD tweaks I had running. Now I'm idling at 45 °C and the CPU fan is still running on low speed. Does it have to get below 40 °C for the darn fan to quit?

 

Oles chiefs yeh the fan will almost always run on the R2 machines. The only time I have seen them not run are when I first start up the notebook or on really cold days. Yep most likely you will have to be lower than 40 deg C and in the low 30s for the fans to stop spinning.

Cheers.