Performance Issues

Ok I have the M9750 with the 7950's SLI. I have been running games great until a few days ago. I have this irritating frame drop in a few of my games. A severe drop. For example when I'm playing Team Fortress 2 I have about 90 frames. Ok, sweet. But then as soon as I see the opposing team I drop to 39 frames. I don't understand. I have tried other drivers for my video card, but they all do the same thing. Reverted back to my original. Now I'm stuck. For what reason is it doing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

sounds like many problems. Could be overheating, software issue, game issue. Does it only do this with certain games only? What i would rec you do is dust out the vents and the laptop, make sure nothing is clogging them, and monitor your gpu temps using HWMonitor. It sounds like you are having SLI drops...like one of your 7950's are giving out during stress, which is why when you see the other team in the game u drop to single gpu performance. If its not a temp issue i would do a clean install of windows and reformat completely....thats the quickest and easiest way of eliminating issues.

 

It does it in Portal also. Don't know if you've played the game or not. But when there is a "Portal" open I drop to 39-40 also. I dusted it out the other day. I will try to dust deeper into the system besides just blowing into vents. And the funny thing is I just reformatted a week ago too, but I will give the dusting a try and monitor my temps. If all else fails I will get ahold of alienware. Also, I have been told that I need to apply more thermal paste to my GPU. Would this help?

 

it sounds to me as one of your gpu's is being stressed to much and dropping out thus eliminate SLI. You may have a card going bad on your hand. You don't have your GPU's overclocked do you? if so try dropping the clocks back to stock and see what happens.

 

if it's a GPU getting stressed and it didn't happen before, could try running OCCT. check if you get the same effects and how repeatable.

 

Ok, well i did some monitoring. And it seems as though my cards are both peeking at 96 Celsius... Wow, thats hot. Is the thermal paste a good idea?

 

try it and let us know whats up.

 

k Will post back as soon as I can.

 

I had that same machine and my cards never got that hot , usually around 82 if i recall correctly its been over a year now though, my friend has it now but he doesnt game on it at all , just surfs the web lol.

I applied AS5 to them the day i got it though.

 

ok well, I applied some AS5 to both GPU's and under load one card reaches around 78 now while the other is at 85... I'm confused. Should it be that way?

 

no you must of messed up on one ....

one will be alittle hotter but usually not that much

 

When I run my 7950GTX cards in SLI, I notice that the secondary GPU runs about 4 degrees hotter as well, don't know why. 96 degrees was definitely too hot. You should be trying to stay 90 or under if possible, but these cards do get hot in the m9750. If you're under 90 now, I'd say those are good temps.

 

You can also check Project Freeze under the OCZ forum I believe. Its focus is the W840DI chassis which is a newer version of your m9750. Particularly the last 5 or 6 pages I believe have some useful pictures for mods you can do to try to bring down temps.

My 3870's in mine idle at 37 degrees C now.....under load never over 70 (used to go up to mid 90's)

edit: here is a link
Project Freeze

I know that the layout is very similar, especially the GPU cooler - not sure about the CPU cooler but that isn't the problem here.

 

your primary card should be the hotter one

 

Ok, I applied a little more to my daughter card and now its down to 82 during load. The other was at 81. This is awesome. I appreciate your support guys. You were definitely a big help.