CPU usage randomly drops

Hello, im hoping somebody can help me with an issue i have been having with my G72Gx laptop.

Recently I have been experiencing random "lag" and FPS drops while playing games, they last for 1-2mins then it will clear up and run great....but this happens continuously. So I opened up the hardware monitor and noticed that the frame rate drops and game pretty much coming to a halt appears to be associated with the CPU randomly dropping down to 10-20% usage. I left the game running and watched the monitor for several hours. It will sit steady at 75-80% CPU usage then randomly drop down to 10-20% at which point the games take a huge performance dump until it ramps back up. I have spent several days, and many hours trying to troubleshoot this myself. Some of the things I have done are:

updated BIOS
updated video card drivers
turned off anti-virus software/windows firewall
tried playing in standard and overclocked mode (same results)
turned off all other applications that may be running in the background

At this point I am stumped, is this a hardware issue? or is there something else software related that I may not have tried yet?

 

I would see what your temps are at on your cpu...if stuff starts overheating on laptops they will often times down-clock themselves

 

temps are around 65C, which from what i have read sounds normal.

http://ultimatecomputers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3644 <---- I found this, and wonder if it could be the issue/resolution.

 

I'm having the same issue with the fps drops and lag, but I've noticed my TSS1 temp goes crazy (fluctuates up and down between 80C and 90C) when I'm getting my lag, I haven't checked the CPU usage though. I would imagine we have a similar if not the same problem. I'll take a look at the core parking solution and report my results.

EDIT: Well, it was worth a try, but sadly, it did nothing to help my lagging problem Guess it's back to the drawing board.

 

What are your fans doing during the time it lags or right before? Are they working overtime, or are they running normally? I know you said your temps were within a normal range, but heat is the first thing that popped into my mind. You might want to clean out your vents and fans if you haven't done so already.

 

ill take a closer look at the temps when i get home tonight. If i cant figure it out, I guess its going back to best buy and ill have to live with the 3 week wait to get it back.

 

update,

so its not a heat issue, max temp was 72C when it started doing, which was only a few minutes after boot-up and starting ffxiv. It also does this on Aion, so its not buggy ffxiv causing the issue.


Final update:

After a hardware scan it turns out I had a failing HDD.