Intermittent Graphics Problem with Dell XPS (L502X) - Please Help!

Hi Guys,

I've had my XPS for a few months now and have been absolutely loving it. I use it mainly to play ME3 and although experimented with a light OC to play it at 1080p on my plasma I've not ran the laptop with any OC for a while now as I prefer the laptop screen (my reticle at 1080p was just too small!). Anyway, recently the laptop has developed a little problem.

Basically, now and then it just can't run ME3 at all. The BioWare animation at the start is stuttery and I notice that when I close a window the 'fading' graphical effect lasts much longer, like the system is struggling with even that task.

Thus far the problem goes away if I simply restart my system, but I'd like to find a better solution if at all possible.

I can supply any information that might be helpful, sorry if this post is missing anything important but I'm not at all familiar with computers and this is my first proper PC. I did install fraps, and the first instance of my XPS misbehaving happened shortly after. So, thinking fraps was the problem, I uninstalled it. But the problem persists, albeit intermittently.

So...any XPS experts out there that can help this noob out?

Thanks very much in advance to anyone who can shed some light on this.

Cheers,

Adrian

 

I've experienced similar issues in the past. Try some of these suggestions.. hopefully one might fix it.

- Update to latest drivers/downgrade to latest official Dell
- Make sure the laptop is plugged into AC
- Make sure the power scheme is set to 'High Performance'.
- Check to make sure that there is no program using a high amount of resources (Ctrl+Alt+Del, Task Manager, Organise Processes by CPU and Memory. When the game is running, this should be top).
- Check that ME3 is set to run on the dedicated graphics: nVidia Control Panel, Manage 3D Settings, Program settings and find ME3. Make sure it is set to 'High Performance nVidia Processor'.


Does this happen for any other games you have?
What kind of temps are your chips running at?

Hope I helped

 

Thanks so much for the tips.

I have the latest drivers from NVIDIA for my graphics card (and the problem was the same before and after the new one was installed) but haven't installed any updates from Dell. Should I try this? The only option that came up when I entered my computer's information on the Dell site was a BIOS update, which I performed but which did not rectify the problem.

Good tip on the AC power - as soon as the battery reaches around 50% my FPS drops so I keep it plugged in all the time if I'm playing. The power scheme is set to high performance, although there isn't an option to change which graphics ME3 uses - the game is absent from the list. However I tried setting the global setting to High Performance Processor, but again this hasn't helped.

Next time it happens I'll be sure to check out task manager, although I don't recall anything big running when I looked previously. But I'll definitely double check.

I'm sure it would happen with every game as even Windows itself slows down dramatically. Not so much in speed of the processes (although I've not tested this) but moreso in terms of the graphical effects themselves. When I close a window usually it's very snappy and just disappears. However, when this problem arises, the window takes a few seconds to close and 'fades' from view much more slowly than usual. So it seems to be a widespread problem.

I should say this happens fairly infrequently, maybe 1 in 6 boots, but I thought I should check anyway just in case it's a precursor to something more serious. Thanks again for the help!