random CPU throttling without overheating

Hey forum,
I have an issue that is bothering me for a long time now. I am using a 2 1/2 year old Dell Inspiron 9400 with a T5600 and a Go 7900 GS and that is my main gaming computer besides a PS3. Well, I can't really game anymore on it since a couple months, because I get totally weird random lag, which is totally unrelated how intensive the current game scene is.

First diagnosis you will come up is probably the GPU overheating, however that is not the case. I use various temparuture/clock monitoring programs and all report hot temperatures (around 80-85° C when playing games), but no change in clock speeds (375mhz) and furthurmore I do not have a change in 3Dmark06 GPU scores, however I do in CPU, which is sometimes about half the usual score (under 1000).

I figured out what exactly the problem with my CPU is by now, the throttling kicks in intensively, sometimes my CPU is running at 300MHz!!!!!

But why? I do not get it. It can't be overheating, because the temperatures are not critical, after undervolting, I never really get over 60°, before it, I had temperatures max of 80° but my notebook never had a problem with it, until a few months ago.

I tried disabling the throttling with RMclock and it surprisingly worked with some games. I don't have problems with source games e.g., however I do with EVE online and the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (Not 100% sure though, maybe it was just pure luck)

This is one of the most random and weirdest problems I ever saw and wonder if you guys can help me out.

Thx in advance for any advice.

 

What were the changes on your computer immediately before this happened?
(driverwise would be interesting)

Is it Vista or XP? - Is the power setting set to "high performance", "Balanced" "battery saving"?

 

I have no idea about the changes, because I had a rather long pc games break and I only noticed my problem when Valve offered the orange box weekend deal.

I am using win xp and the power settings are set to max performance.

Today I tried stalker on my father's xp (dual boot on the same notebook) and I had the same lag issues, which would indicate that this is not a windows problem, but it must be the bios, right?

I decided to update my BIOS but I can't, because it requires the AC and battery to be plugged in, however my battery is semi-dead. It still works to some extent but neither BIOS nor Win is recognizing the battery anymore. #

It seems as Dell wants us to buy a new notebook every 2 years and programs self-destruction.

 

You could buy a new battery

 

Not really worth it, since I'll buy a x200s for college and from then on my father has to deal with the problems this notebook has :-D

 

OK...

Whatever.
It may benefit him though.

 

it could need a lot of de-pubeing, also avoid using it in power save or balanced mode, you should be able to disable throttling in the BIOS (speedstep)

 

pubeing?

Never heard that word before and I always thought speedstep is responsible for the multipliers and not throttle.

 

well it is but the job of it is to reduce the speed of the processor

 

clean the cat hair out of the machine.