HD4670 overheating

hi there. i have a studio xps 1640 (see my sig for detals) bought back in august 2009. usually i don't play on it, i only played like 5-10 games on it, but i noticed that after playing a while (like 15-30 mins) the fps usually drops significantly, sometimes it's barely notable but sometimes (usually when playing newer games) it gets so slow that it becomes completely unplayable. i heard back then that the gpu is overheating so i even bought a 9-cell battery for better airflow, it helped but it didn't solve the problem. since i don't play that much, i didn't bother much so far trying to figure out this problem but sometimes when i do play on this machine, this problem comes over and over again and now it kind of bothers me. well, i could buy a cooling pad for it like many others did but i really don't want to, i don't want to carry that around, the laptop itself is heavy enough alone, i think a well-built laptop shouldn't be overheating under any normal circumstances, it should be fine without a cooling pad. today i tested it, i ran an opengl test in gpu caps while monitoring the gpu, it starts with 50-60 C (on idle), in like 10 mins goes up till 100 C, then the gpu's clock goes down from 675/800 to 300/500 (to prevent overheating i guess), that's when it slows down, cools down to like 90 C, then it switches back to normal clocks and temp goes up till 100 C again and it starts over and over again. i guess that's not normal, is it?
is all HD4670 like this or just mine? (i also heard i could re-pasta it but i think it wouldn't be a long term solution)
is HD5730 any better? (i heard it consumes less so it should be less hot too..) maybe i should ask them to change to that under warranty? i also have dust under the screen so i'll have to call them sooner or later anyway.

 

Well the paste/ dust filter removal did it for me. My 4670 was overheating with Furmark, and on the verge of overheating in games (98C). A warmer ambient temp would have caused throttling.

Left 4 Dead GPU 98C -> remove dust filter -> 94C -> re-paste -> 85C

The dust filter trick eliminated my CPU throttling as well. And with the paste, my system is cool enough to run Prime/Fur for 30 minutes with no throttling. Before the paste, it would only go for 5 minutes.

 

that could be also a solution but i wouldn't try hand-made mods (if something goes wrong it could make things even worse), i think a device should work fine without any mods, if it's not it's their job to solve it..

 

Well then... why didn't you call already?

 

i was just trying to investigate how common this problem is amongst other users, as i remember back then many people said that it's overheating without repasta or other mods..

 

GPU Throttling was extremely common for a while until BIOS A09 came out for the XPS 1645 (don't know the equivalent revision for the 1640), which changed the 84C limit to 100C for the 4670. Only a handful of people were hitting 100C with "real-world" applications.

 

yeah i remember back then the limit was 84 C, it was even much worse than now. it's also possible that last time i tested i either didn't have the latest bis installed or my antivirus caused the slowdown (recently i noticed sometimes it just ate my whole cpu) so i'll test it again with "real-world" games, but it's not comforting that from a gpu test tool it overheats within 5-10 minutes.
btw what did u mean when u said yours stays cool for 30 mins? after 30 minutes it did overheat or u just tested it for 30 minutes and till then it didn't overheat? in an ideal case a gpu shouldn't throttle under any load..

 

I only ran the tests for 30 minutes and it didn't overheat/throttle. The temps seemed to level off so I think I could have ran Prime/Fur indefinitely. But anyway no "real-world" application is going to come close to the heat of Prime/Fur.

 

I want to put in some paste but im scared warranty issues and stuff.

 

I wouldn't have done it either but I saw this post from a Dell representative in the video guide thread. http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ging-thermal-paste-as5-studio-xps-1645-a.html

 

lol if they can prove it. but the paste is very nicely applied! it must have been opened! Okay I will do research on what paste is the best. Currently the highest it has ever gotten to is 83 on a core though. 79 GPU

 

thanks for this video, i might try it.
btw can anyone tell what temperature the 5730 can get while maximum load (withoud mods)?

 

80-way Thermal Interface Material Performance Test

 

^That is a huge list! I just went straight for the best ones.

 

I'm using the G751 myself, it was 1st place in the above test, and in the top 5 for every paste benchmark I could find. I've had pretty good results with it, though I don't think it's significantly better than tried and true AS5.