Choppy gameplay - framerate up & down- gaming notebook- please advise

Hi

I have a 2 year old gaming notebook-

Pentium M 2.13 Ghz
2GB RAM
Nvdia Geforce Go 7800 GTX
Windows XP Pro SP2

It was made by 'Vicious PC' -a since 'gone out of business' company who offered this for a good deal at the time.

From the get go this (yet unresolved) problem has arisen periodically (not all the time) during gameplay- in eg. Battlefield 2 (a game moderately older than the notebook), (with maxed out graphics settings) the frame rates drop down to choppy play for approx 10 seconds then go back to normal framerates for a moderately longer time and then back down again repeating this cycle infinitely- even when I drastically lower the graphics settings, the same up & down frame rate occurs. I imagine the fact that it does play smoothly for more time than not though indicates the hardware is up to the job. I have noticed this is more so if gaming once the laptop has been powered on for some time and perhaps indicates this is perhaps a overheating issue. I have a notebook cooler which it sits on but doesn't seem to make much of a difference. That said over the last 2 years in the past on many occasions my games (call of Duty 2, Half Life 2, Red Orchestra & Battlefield 2) have run smoothly with maxed out settings for hours without choppiness- I only ask as it is back again. Other than freeing some space on my main hardrive for the OS to operate more smoothly in general I'm not sure what else to do

Any advice for further cooling, monitoring temps (what are 'healthy CPU & GPU temps?) and anything I haven't thought of would be gratefully appreciated.

Thank you

 

Have you tried various graphics card drivers (eg. Laptopvideo2go) to see if the problem lies there?

 

Try looking in this thread for GPU and CPU monitors:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81690

You GPU temp should obviously be below 100C. If higher, you're GPU will throttle down. CPU should be below 80C but really depends on what CPU it is.

You may want to open up your system and do the basics like blow it out with an air dustor and better yet (more advanced) replace the thermal compound on your gpu & cpu with some Arctic Silver 5.

 

thank you for the tips- I just re-tested gameplay in Call of Duty 2 with maximum settings and in simple terms, the ratio is approximately 5-6 seconds of choppy gameplay to 35-40 seconds of smooth motion (no idea how to test the exact framerates), in a somewhat cyclical pattern- don't know what that is indicative of?? I also just for the first time ironicaly removed the base plate and physically blew into the machine's 'innards' to clear any dust but turned out to be not as dusty as I imagined.

Having an Nvidia Geforce Go card, the drivers are quite specific- ie. the most recent driver on the Nvidia site was released back on July 5th 2006 (Forceware Release 80 version 84.63- I cannot find anything more recent- when I contacted Nvidia they said contact my laptop manufacturer for specific drivers but as I say I can't as Vicious PC no longer exists- laptopvide2go looks quite complex but will look into it thanks- I'm a bit wary of installing an incorrect driver- I'll also look into monitoring my GPU & CPU- my CPU is a Pentium M 2.13GHz

Grey 728- do you have any more info on 'replacing the thermal compund with Arctic Silver 5' ?

with gratitude,
j

 

If fixing the cooling system doesn't do anything for you, the simple but least likely fix would be a system defragment. Just defragment all of your drives and then see if the problem goes away.

Otherwise, try those laptopvideo2go.com drivers and make sure your computer isn't overheating by following my fellow form posters directions.

I just open up the bottom panels and blast the whole comp with compressed air.