performance issues

a little over a year ago I bought a quanta kn1c-pm, that atm had pentium m730 cpu, geforco go 6600 128mb, and 2x256mb ddr@533mhz. in november I decided to upgrade the memory to 2x1024mb@533mhz corsair memory cards because of the mediaediting and gaming I was doing demanded more and at first I was very satisfied.
but probably starting around spring or so I was getting heat issues, not bad ones, fixed them with cleaning and updating the bios but its still in the upper range so to speak, cpu at 55-60c when idling and browsing and up to around 75c when gaming.
whats really starting to worry me now though is that Im now experiencing a big performance loss compared to even before I upgraded the memory. for example WoW rarely if ever goes over 20fps on very low settings, and still manages to push up the temperatures to about 70c.

I am using NHC and have tried under/overvolting with no result in either direction. the bios Im using is q3b81 and the graphics drivers are old 71.89 tweaked so that it actually identifies the 6600 as a nvidia card. I tried xtremeg's latest drivers but that got me my first bluescreen ever when loading nv4_mini that wouldnt go away so I went back to 71.89.

has anyone experienced anything similiar? or do you have any advice on what the problem might be and how to try and fix it?

 

have you tried reinstalling windows?

 

If you have not opened up the laptop and cleared out the dust and stuff that will accumulate in there after a year's time, then that would be the first thing I would do. Canned air is what you need.

 

I keep a rather tight maintenance on my os, so Id rather not go through the trouble of reinstalling unless theres no other solution.

I have opened up and cleaned it on a few occasions, not with canned air though. but will that really affect the performance that greatly?

 

Since you cleaned it already, then it is probably fine - if you didn't do it for a year, the dust could be clogging the fans and causing the grahpics card to overheat. Is your video performance also slower in other games?

Might try upgrading your video card drivers:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=64910

 

yea its about the same in oblivion for example

 

Ive just finished a smartplacement- and pagefile-defragmentation and installed new drivers for the graphicscard, to no visible improvement at all : /

a friend of mine suggested that the psu and/or motherboard could possibly have too little power to supply the system with the increased memory even though 2gb is supported by the model. can he be right and if so is there anything I can do about it?

also did some cleaning. it wasnt very dirty at all, some dust on the fan but nothing clogging, Ill see if I can get some canned air to get it off tomorrow.

 

If your heatsink isn't seated well or making good contact, it will cause things like that. Did you disassemble the laptop at all to clean it out? If so, you may need to re-disassemble it, and ensure that the heatsink is making good contact, and you have an adequate amount of thermal grease (not too much, not too little)

 

k, I didnt know that, but no its still factory assembly. I havent taken it apart at all

 

Make sure your video card is set to maximum performance.

 

it is set to max performance

to point out the difference in performance it used to be around 60-70fps and now tops at 20fps, with lower settings then I used to have. (strangely changing settings doesnt seem to affect fps much anymore though)

 

Hm . . do a manual Windows Update and see if it finds any new drivers for you, for any parts of your system.

 

yea, I did that before defragging just to makes sure

 

thnks for all the advice Ive gotten so far, but Im sure you can see why Im a bit frustrated

 

I cleaned it out even more today, and the temperature dropped a little more again, but still no difference in performance. Im getting a bit desperate, anyone have any other suggestions?