M17x R3 Random 'Stuttering'?

Good day to all who read this!

Recently, I bought a brand new Alienware M17x R3, and I absolutely love it, except for one annoying issue. Every so often the laptop 'stutters', slowing down immensely. Its most noticeable during gaming, video watching, or listening to music. I can be watching a video just fine one moment, and the next moment it turns into a choppy mess, with the audio repeating. It may last for 1 second, or up to 3. Not too bad, but lately its been happening more and more often.

There doesn't seem to be much of a difference in the rate of it happening when doing different tasks. Video Gaming and Video watching have it happen about the same amount of times.

I haven't really done anything to the machine, except changing the Video Card preference to 'High end Nvidia card' (from the control panel.) I have since reapplied the factory settings, and its still a problem.
I think it may be a overheating issue, but I'm not sure how to be sure of this.
Any light that could be shed on this issue would be greatly appreciated.


Computer Specs:
Alienware M17X R3
i7-2630QM @ 2.00GHz
8GB DDR3 RAM
Geforce GTX 560M
Running Windows 7

Thanks in advance!

P.S. Although I'm decent with computers (not completely lost) I'm not the most experienced, so please have patience with me.

 

Last time i had stuterring, the problem was the hd.

 

A similar situation has happened to me about 3 times. All of the sudden the audio and video glitches for about 1 to 2 sec every couple of minutes until I reboot.
I have the AMD6970. It seems to me that it is not video card related.
I don't believe it is temperature related as I have hwmonitor64 and every time I watch temps they are normal. Never over 76C for video or CPU, even when running intensive programs.
It almost seems like a process is taking 100% of the cpu cycles and it is causing stuttering. Since I'm not the only one, next time it happens I will check what processes are running.

I have had NO other problems with this laptop, and I don't want to call tech service to do all the stupid things it seems like they would want me to do.

Computer Specs:
Alienware M17X R3
i7-2720QM
8GB DDR3 RAM
AMD 6970
750 GB X2 Raid 0 (Didn't really want!)
Running Windows 7

 

Hm, I decided to keep on the temps as well, and I didn't see it going above 58C or so and it still happened while watching a video. I'll keep an eye on CPU usage as well I suppose, what program will you be using to do so?
On the idea of it being a problem with the HD, I currently have a 1TB HDD, I suppose if it isn't something with CPU usage, I'll look more into it.

 

is this anything related to you? because i got this problem, and posted in a thread no one answered yet...

may be related, watch it.

Audio is jucked! - YouTube

 

I remember a similar problem with mine. My issue was due to sli, though you don't have this problem. Try seeing if the problem still persists while only using the onbaord video. And not the gtx580. Let us know what that does.

 

Hi Conchy, you want to check your temps?

For Vid card, download Furmark...run the burnin test for 5 mins and post your frame rate and temps. This will tell us if you are overheating.

For CPU, download 2 programs. HWINFO64 and Prime95. have both running. Run 8 worker threads in mixed test on prime95 (this is the default) and monitor your temps on the "Sensor" tab on HWinfo64. Run it for 15 mins, report your temps

The first thing i would do for stuttering is reinstall the video card drivers and the go from there. THis has solved it for me when i had similar issues in the past

 

Its prob the video card drivers if you don't have the 285.79 beta drivers, get them here hope this fixes your issue.

 

Sounds an awful like http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/626733-m17x-r3-high-kernel-latency.html