First gen Envy 14 - Random fps drops. Need assistance

Hey all,

I've been trying resolve an issue with random fps drops. I have a first gen Envy 14 1002tx.

This all happened about a week ago. When playing BF3 I normally get around 30fps avg. All of a sudden the fps will just drop to around 5-8fps for 1-2 seconds and spring back up to normal 30fps. This happens in 15 sec intervals so pretty makes the game unplayable.

Things I have tried are uninstalling display drivers in safe mode, reinstalling stock drivers. Test - still fps drops. Installed 11.9 drivers that use to run fine - same thing. Installed 11.10v3 that was probably most stable - still random fps drops. Did system restore back to a point where game was running smoothly - no dice, still the same thing.

Just to make sure it wasn't my internets fault, I tried single player games that use to run fine like GTA4 - same thing happens. The weird thing is all the games that use to run fine are having this random fps drop issue - MW3, BFBC2. Except for older games like Warcraft III which run fine. So I'm guessing it might be memory intensive games. But the reason why all of a sudden these games that use to run fine are having these random fps drops stumps me

At this point I am out of ideas and am getting pretty worried it's a hardware fault. My Envy 14 is out of warranty too . If someone who is more tech savvy would know what else I could try I would be thankful

 

GTA IV is horrible for me. I dont play it anymore because it runs perfect at prety high settings and then drops frames and slows down a lot randomly. Especially when driving. I spent a lot of time trying to fix it with no good solution. Even dropping graphics down a lot doesnt solve it. It is a known problem with the game. Weird that it used to work well for you though.

Playing BF3 was pretty good with the beta for me on 11.10v1 drivers though.

I dont think there's anything wrong with your Envy FYI.

Someone who has BF3 can probably help you with what works best for them there.

Could be a heat issue as mentioned below too if it really is something new.

 

Does your fan ramp up when this happens? My guess is that you've got heat issues causing your GPU and/or your CPU to throttle for a few seconds at a time to shed some heat. If you've got the know-how, open up your case and clean out your system, particularly the fans. You might also want to reapply thermal paste, potentially with something better than stock like Arctic Silver 5 or IC Diamond 7.

 

Thanks for the quick replies.

Yea my fan does ramp up when during the fps drops. Overheating never really occurred to me. So I decided to open up my laptop to check it out and could see that the side fan had a bit of dust on it. Something that probably needed some compressed air to clean, so for now I decided to put everything back together. Gave BF3 another whirl and managed to play 5 mins without it randomly dropping to 8fps. I was very pleased.

I will keep this monitored. Thanks again for the suggestions