FPS on my m1330 dropped drastically recently

Hi, I own a m1330 t7500 with 3 gigs of ram. I've had this laptop since January.

I use it regularly to play WoW, but recently, the FPS I get ingame has dropped from around 35 to about 15. I have all of the latest drivers. My hard drive is defragmented, and there's not a lot of stuff on the drive anyway.

I'm at a loss as to what to do to remedy the problem, does anyone have any clue?

 

You're playing with the AC adapter plugged in, right? In any case, we need a little more information on what you've done to the laptop since January, any firmware updates, replacements, etc...

 

Yeah, I always play with the AC adapter plugged in.

I haven't applied any firmware updates; I use my computer mostly for school, video games, and music. I apply updates from support.dell.com regularly (I check for updates about once a week), so mainly just driver updates.

I've reformated the computer once since I got it, and I've had the LCD screen replaced (bulb in the old one went out), but neither of these seem to be connected to the FPS drop; my FPS was fine after both events.

 

hm.. maybe the gpu overheats.. try to read out the gpu temperatures while playing.. I have a similar problem when I play CS:S.

 

You should also check the temperature of your GPU just to make sure you are not one of the unlucky owner who got a bad card - if you have read recent news about NVIDIA defective cards.

 

That's what I was afraid of.

If overheating is indeed the case, my laptop would be noticeably warm, correct? My notebook is always rather cool to the touch; I use an antec notebook cooler.

 

How about you try to recall what are the drivers you have recently installed. I would suggest roll back driver, starting from video driver. If still no improvement, trace back what other drivers you have installed. If nothing helps, then unfortunately, you have to either call DELL for help or reformat the laptop. I am no computer wizard, so I don't know any other tricks (my ultimate solution has always been to restore the HDD to a previous backup, never fails me).

 

Did you change your power settings from "High Performance" to "Power Saver" or "balanced" perhaps?

 

fatasswilly,

check your temps with a software.
your notebook cooler might be cooling your chassis but not your internal parts under heavy load

 

Using CPUID Hardware Monitor:

My GPU is about 94 C with WoW running, but it's reached a high of 104 C.

Idle temperature is 68 C or so.

 

I always have it on High Performance when I'm gaming.

 

94C - 104C is a bit warm... try give Dell a call and see what they can do about that

 

I noticed that when I'm running WoW, my GPU temp will steadily go up til it's at about 104 C, then it'll drop to 95 C.

My FPS stays at about 35 until the GPU temperature hits 104 C. Once the temperature goes down, so does my FPS, to a steady 20 FPS.

Is this a new feature of the latest video card driver from the dell website? I think that I started having this problem after I installed that driver (I have a terrible memory), but I don't really want my video card to overheat and fail like the other ones =\

 

Update, in case anyone cares:

I downloaded driver 169.04, uninstalled the drivers that I downloaded from support.dell.com, and installed 169.04.

I used rivatuner to overclock my GPU to 600 / 700, and now get 45 FPS in WoW with all settings turned up, 1200x800.

All this, with my GPU temp running at 95 C.