Random downclocks.

I'm using the asus in my sig, and i have my GTS 360m overclocked to 600/1800/1900 from a base of 550/1383/1600 i think. Anyway, I've been getting random downclocks in Starcraft 2. This is very rare and it has only happened in the past in Medal of Honor (lowering to base clocks and playing it like that fixed it). But it never happened before in sc2, and so far it has happened twice, both times random, where the GPU would downclock to the minimum and nothing but a restart would fix it.

It seems it could be because of the newest Nvidia drivers? This never happened with previous driver versions.

 

It's probably overheating and downclocking to keep from burning up the chip. Consider downclocking or using a notebook cooler. Have you checked the temperatures?

 

My temps are always between 90-92c. Apparently good enough to be considered stable. The highest it has hit is 98 on furmark at which point i turned it off, no downclocks then either so...

 

90-92? Jeez... my GPU is hot when it hits 70C. 90C is VERY hot, 98C is scary. The breakdown temperature of silicon is around 105C, and those thermal sensors aren't exceedingly accurate. It could be that long gaming sessions or just certain GPU actions performed by those games that don't happen in Furmark cause it to overheat or just be unstable while overclocked.

Try running the game not overclocked, see if you see the same random slowdowns. If so, you're running at too high of an overclock, and you need to back off or not overclock at all when running those games.

 

Maybe Nvidia Powermizer causing this. Check to see if it's enabled. Oh and what are you using to overclock?

 

90 is very hot, but not quite dangerous. 98 is hot enough to cause damage if sustained. I agree with Pitabred, your OC is too high, especially your shader clocks, and your laptop is throttling to protect itself. I'd lower your OC until you find something that keeps you at 90C max under FurMark.

I have a pretty high OC on my GPU, but its max temp is only 80C...

 

From the G51 owners thread, I've heard that 90 is normal, some guy hits 102 and manages to chug onward.

Edit: Also strange enough, the temps seem to be around the same OC or not.

Recently it went up to 96, but blowing out the dust lowered it to 90. Usually stays at 90-92 on sc2.

 

Even if it's not temperatures, chips may not work right at higher clocks than they're designed for. That's why many times to overclock you also have to raise the voltage.

Seriously, try lowering the overclock and see if it's more stable, and go up on small increments testing thoroughly in the games that screw up each time you change the clocks.

 

My laptop also reaches 85C always, with or without overclock :/