Nearing my wit's end with my g50vt

Hey guys, having a little issue with my G50VT-X1...

I am having an issue where nearly all my games will play fine for about 15'ish minutes then start to stagger to the point they are unplayable. I've closed all unneeded processes, stopped all unneeded services, no other open programs, turned off all aero effects, and STILL end up with the same results. Just yesterday I wiped the system and started over...still no luck

I think the problem is related to the gpu throttling but not sure where to go from there. All my googling is bringing up results from a few years back and some just dont seem to apply.

The primary games I currently play is Oblivion, WoW, Dragon Age: Origins, and The Witcher. All of those games play fine for about 15-20mins then stagger horribly. I've tried dropping all settings down to a minimum but all it does is buy me an extra 15-20 minutes.

I'm using Windows 7 x64
Processor is Core 2 Duo P8400 @ 2.26GHz
4GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS 512MB Dedicated, 1791MB Shared system memory
Currently using latest drivers from Nvidia (Though I have tried rolling back, and even tried beta drivers)

I've opened the laptop up to clean any dust accumulated over the past year but it was suprisingly clean. Fans still running too. I dont run the game on maximum settings and not crazy about 'crispness', only preference is a higher resolution so things aren't so gigantic (tho I have tried funning on lower resolutions and still doesnt help).

Any ideas or suggestions?

 

Use the latest drivers, and clean your laptop well. Even a fine layer of dust can mean a 10 degree shift in temperatures.

 

What he said, but the internals. Compressed air is your friend, pop the back covers off (unscrew actually) and get all the dust and debris out of there.

Also you might think about re-applying the thermal paste on the GPU and CPU, or having it done if you don't feel qualified. For a first timer an easy to apply top quality TIM (Thermal Interface Material) is Arctic Silver 5; there are plenty of guides online.

 

have you used a temp monitor at all to see how your temps are doing? Most hardwares have internal downclocking features when the temp is to high and does this to prevent damage to the item.

 

If you do decide to re-apply thermal paste, I can't recommened MX-3 enough! It's awesome stuff, dropped my temps by 10C+ over stock paste, and quite a bit better than even AS5 did.

 

try to defrag your computer and do an anti virus/malware scan. i recommend auslogic for a defrag

 

I think this is a temp/GPU issue as mentioned above, and has nothing to do with defragging.

 

RMA brotha. G50VTs aren't usually troubled with downclocking.

 

Anything over a silver-based paste, really. Especially if you're new, the fact that newer pastes won't short out your components if applied a bit messily is a strong selling point.

MX-2 is a good one, easy to apply and giving good performance. I've used MX-3, which also worked great, and I'm currently on Arctic Silver Matrix.