Video card question (possible overheat?)

I got my dell back in may and have loved it ever since, however, I am having a pretty bad video card issues. When I'm playing a game, be it World of Warcraft or Half-Life 2: EP2, I get decent frame rates (30+) then out of no where it goes to 10-15, then a minute or 2 later it will go back to normal and it will constantly do this over and over. When I first got my machine it did not do this however for the first month of using it, I was programming and didn't game much.

My question is this a "defective" card I have or what?

M1530, 8600GT, 4GB ram, 2.5GHZ cpu, Vista.

Highest temp I got on my video card was 75c (166f), I have no installed the new bios version yet.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

Are you running the latest drivers provided by Dell? If not, then try them out and see if the problem persits. If it does, then it could very well be a defect as it spans across multiple games (which shouldn't have 2 min lag dips). If you are within your warranty period, give Dell a call and explain the drop in performance and they should repair it for you. Just keep in mind that they may use refurbished parts for it, which doesn't exactly give one the peace of mind, but I suppose it could be better than keeping a defective video card?

Good luck!

 

dxdiag shows: 7.15.0011.5669
Dell shows:7.15..0011.5663

 

Well, 75C is a bit warm, but to the point where I could see it downclocking itself. Are you clocks dropping at all or are they steady? Use something like to GPU-Z to check your clocks

A driver update may also help

 

a temperature of 75 C is not unusual for a video card at all - so don't worry!

however, depending on which temp taking software you're using it may take the surface temp or the die temp for the graphics processor. The one you're showing is probably the surface temp. Die temps can exceed 100 C.

If you notice a recognizable decline in battery usage, heat produced, or lackluster performance, THEN it may indicate a defective card.

Hope That helped!

 

nrguser, it's the video card. There are reports in about the overheating issues with mobile Nvidia cards in the 8400 and 8600 series. Any laptop with either of those video chips are effected. You can try updating the BIOS but I doubt it will help much when it's mainly a hardware defect. You can try it, though.

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/07/25/nvidia-gpu-update-for-dell-laptop-owners.aspx

 

75 is fine in fact normal even low for gaming.

 

What would be causing the FPS drop then?