Framerate Issues after PC cleanup

Hi every one. I've been playing Global Agenda smoothly for the last days. Yesterday i disassembled and cleaned my laptop (a gateway FX p-7805u) and now I'm having issues in the game.

What happens is that the game usually runs smoothly, low settings net me 60 fps, higher settings 50-40. But every 15-20 seconds, the frame rate slows down to 15, stuttering the game and making it impossible to play properly. Changing settings only ups my normal frame rate, the slowdowns still occur.

Now I've got a feeling that the GPU or another piece of hardware seems to be voluntarily slowing down every 20 seconds, or a certain graphics acceleration function of it is not working properly, so I might have screwed something up when i disassembled the machine. Strangely, Mass Effect 2 seems to run as smoothly as ever.

Anyways i need some kind of benchmark or software that would allow me to identify where these slowdowns are coming from, any suggestions?

 

A couple of suggestions, in order:
- open up the machine, check and reseat all connections
- ensure the heat sink and fan are clear of dust and possible obstructions
- you didn't touch the thermal paste, did you?
- ensure that both fans are working

 

-I'd rather be sure its a hardware issue before i open it, the laptop's got a gazillion little screws and parts to be unmounted in order, therefore i want to know whats malfunctioning before i rip it open again.

-Heat sinks were cleaned when i opened it yesterday. ME2 doesnt bring the GPU to 90C, only 70C now.

- Went to any lengths possible to avoid touching it yes... If i had ed up, it would show unusual temperatures right?

- Again, the machine is 20C cooler now as I can see in Hardware Monitor and the heat output from the fans feels a lot cooler now.

Here are the figures from HW monitor.

Hardware monitor ACPI
Temperature 0 60°C (140°F) [0xD04] (TZS0)
Temperature 1 60°C (140°F) [0xD04] (TZS1)

Hardware monitor Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8400
Temperature 0 49°C (120°F) [0x33] (Core #0)
Temperature 1 48°C (118°F) [0x34] (Core #1)

Hardware monitor NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS
Temperature 0 65°C (149°F) (GPU Core)

Now I assume there is a possibility of the thermal paste being compromised and the increased heat somehow not showing up in the monitor, but other games run ok and i feel the machine is overall cooler now.

 

Some more suggestions, based on that info:
- did you apply any updates since the computer was cleaned?
- have you monitored the maximum temps reached while gaming?
- ensure that your graphics driver is updated
- defrag the hard disk

 

how You clean it?

 

Well to Bog's suggestions ( thx for helping me mate)

- I installed Service Pack 2 before cleaning, but I did not have these issues, only high temperature.
-Checked temperatures while playing, they did not reach the 80s like before cleaning.
-First thing I did after the graphics bug was to download the latest driver to the 9800M GTS
- Ill defrag it tonight see if there's an improvement.

@Fantomasz
Well i kept it simple, just dissassembled the pc, made sure not to touch or in any way disturb any thermal paste, then removed dust clogs in heatsinks and other areas that with airflow. I followed detailed instructions i found in this forum. Unfortunately I missed a screw or two along the way because now i have more screws than what i started with, still the computer seems to run ok and temperatures have improved vastly. Its no point disassembling it again if i can't identify what's causing the problem.

Unless i screwed up the thermal paste somehow and the result don't show in the hardware monitor and my pc is slowly melting... except that feeling the fan vents i can clearly feel much cooler air, and the pc itself is not as hot as it used to be. Funny thing is that the cloggin on the GPU heat sink was barely 20% of its surface, i'm not entire sure why its so much cooler now.

 

maybe try reinstalling your gpu drivers.

 

Another thing you could look for is any resource intensive processes that are showing up during gaming. You can use something like Sysinternals to make sure that system resources are sufficiently available for your games.

If none of these options work, the alternative is to do a System Restore to effectively remove SP2. This might solve the problem, but there are no guarantees.

 

I must have taken appart more than 10 laptops for various reason, each of them was de-assembled very meticulously yet not once did I manage to fit back all the screw upon reassembly, I have to figure out this phenomenon >< (anyway it never actually effected the laptops if tha makes you feel better.)

 

Many manufacturers don't use standard size screws (ex, size 1, 2, 3) and almost all models have tons of them to start with. My solution is to grab a piece of paper and literally draw where each screw goes. It may sound somewhat ridiculous, but at the end of the day every screw is in its place!

 

A defrag later and its all gone.

Silly me. Thanks for all the help guys, ill make sure to hang around too and give advice in turn where possible, cheers!

 

See, I tell people that they might as well try defragmenting to see if it helps in gaming and they never believe me!! Any game that tries to seamlessly load data during play will grind to a halt if one of the data archive files is heavily fragmented. MMOs are the best example of this behavior. A slight fragmentation of one of the WOW data files can REALLY turn the game into a slide-show, even on a powerful rig.