Slowdowns after some time of heavy gaming.

Hello everyone, I've recently started to play some heavy gaming in form of CoD4.

I've, however, got a problem, after about an hour of gaming the game will freeze, I have to take up the task manager by ctrl alt del, only to be tabbed into the game again, so it obviously unfreezes, but when I get tabbed in again, the performance is hit a lot, and this can continue, only to freeze again and rinse and repeat.

In the end it gets so bad I have to reboot the computer, because even Windows Vista (x64) starts to lag, Firefox for example can't scroll properly.

The drivers I use are 177.98, I get the same result even if I OC or not (rivatuner 2.10), I've never really had this problem before. It's as if the card permanently until reboot, clocks down, or the V-RAM is filled up without clearing. (Trying to apply OC after this happens gives nothing, it stays laggy).

Anyone got an idea? (I've as said, never had this problem previously, I've played CoD4 previously for 10h+ without ever seeing this happen).

[Computer setup]
Compal FL90
3Gb DDR2
1.5Ghz C2D
8600M GT

EDIT: Disabling PowerMizer I've already tested, with no effect what so ever.
EDIT2: The temperature is not that high, I've had it previously on up to 90 without any slowdowns, when the temperature hits around 75, it slows down for me now.

 

I had that happen to me too. I used to put a personal fan right under the intake of the laptop and that would cool it down immensely. Though.....it wasn't too practical. Don't know any other way to do it other than buying a notebook cooler. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=263039

 

There's not a way in hell I can live with that, in worst case I'll have to contact Zepto for service/replacement :\

EDIT: And yes, I've just recently (one week ago) blown out the laptop with compressed air.

 

Sounds like an overheating problem, or the display driver crashing. Usually when the display driver crashes and recovers it keeps the GPU at 2D speeds and requires a restart to fix it.

-J.B.

 

Well.. Overheating at 75..? When I've seen it have a go at 110?

I do not get any Windows errors telling me the drivers crashed like it does when that happens.

 

I did post temperature, I do check it regularly, it "overheats" as you call it at 75c. It's recently cleaned with compressed air, this GPU have hit 110 when I've checked it in RivaTuner once without slowing down (Yes, I did clean it the second I noticed that), why would it start overheating at 75 degrees now?

 

if its not overheating.... then....

you might have pagefile, memory issues.

the cached files fromt he games might have issues uncaching for other programs to work optimally.

make sure you have at least 2GB of ram, and set the pagefile size to (max) twice that.

 

It never hits over 60% RAM, as I have 3Gb and a 3.4Gb pagefile (I would know if it hits low memory, it gives me a warning then, a experience from Crysis with small pagefile)

 

Is your display driver crashing? Do you get "nvlddmkm has stopped responding and has successfully recovered" errors? From my experience those are what would slow down everything graphically on my laptop until I restarted it.

-J.B.

 

You got to read my replies

 

do a Memtest86+ to see if any of your RAM has errors.

 

Been there, done that, I did a 3h sweep with no luck, it's deffo the graphic card and/or driver, question is what and why.

 

hmm.... probably software issues then.

I would do the following:
1) make sure your system is free of HDD errors:
- go to START > RUN > type: CMD
(Vista users must run Command Prompt as Administrator)
- type: CHKDSK C: /F
- say yes, and restart to let windows do the HDD scan

2) make sure your system is defragmented:
- get Diskeeper Lite (x86 + x64) for free here:
http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd...u/download.htm
- Its in the Intel Desktop Utilities... in the 88.9 MB download
- Just extract the files from the EXE and you will see the Diskeeper folders (one for 32-bit, one for 64-bit). And install it.
- Run the program
- Analyze and Defrag your C: Drive

Lastly, I would try to disable unneeded program, like Anti-virus, Firewall, etc... from running in the background to see if the performance is better.

 

Let's see how this'll turn out now, I did the one thing you're supposed to do, nuke Windows from orbit and start all over, if it still hangs on, I suppose it's the hardware (and I'll also blow it out with compressed air, again).