Is my NP5165 CPU/GPU throttling?

Hey guys!

I was really looking forward to the BF3 beta, and went ahead and started it on my NP5165. At the start of the map where it's a lot of trees and bushes: 90% of the time my framerates remained at around 19-20fps, even if I set the graphics at ultra or low. And 10% of the time it runs fine with 30-40+fps at 1360x786 resolution and ultra settings.

Randomly the framerates just drop for a while, and when I get to the next stage of the map, the tunnels, the framerates quickly get back up to 30-40s again. And it runs perfectly in the tunnels. Then when I come back out in daylight the framerate eventually drops again, and I notice that the CPU is at it's coolest when in the tunnels, where it runs fine. 84C when in tunnels and 89-94C when outdoors, where the framedrops happen.

I tried turning off turbo boost on my cpu (i5-2520), but it still has low fps on the most demanding parts of the map. I tried the beta driver and other drivers, same results.

I was also wondering why running Intel Burn Test and Prime95, the CPU never went over 77C, while playing bf3 got it to the 90's?

I don't have this problem on other games, only bf3 beta, but it just sucks that my friends laptop with almost same hardware doesn't have this problem.

Thanks.

 

Are you running the newest Nvidia Beta drivers? They make a difference of up to 38% on BF3. In addition, you're definitely running it on the discrete GPU, not the iGPU, correct?

Your temps are getting high for the CPU, but not unexpected for that laptop under high load. Try watching your GPU temps as well to see where those are going. If you're worried about temps, raise the back of the laptop and use a cooling pad if you have one.

That said, the 555m isn't an incredibly strong card for that game, so slowness is not to be unexpected. Even the 485m/580m/6990 just barely pass the recommended settings requirement, and they're almost 3-4x more powerful. The 560m is the bare minimum to get relatively high settings.

Hope this helps

 

I installed the latest beta drivers, and running on descrete GPU, yeah. The thing is that it just randomly drops a lot in fps. One round it ran fine the first 5 mins, then the fps went from 40, to 20 on the most demanding places. And when I try to turn the graphic settings down, it still isn't running smoothly with everything at lowest settings. Then suddently it's smooth again, and I turn up the graphics settings again. Weird thing is that it never happens when the gameplay is in the tunnel, only outdoors with the sun and trees. I tried with a cooling pad + turned off turbo mode, but still randomly drops in fps. The GPU temps never go over 71C, so I don't think that's the problem.

 

In this video a guy with the NP5165 runs bf3 at 1080p all settings ultra 28-32fps: Sager NP5165 - Battlefield 3 Beta Gameplay (Part 2) [HD] - YouTube

He has a better CPU than me, but when I am at 720p medium settings some parts of the map gives me down to 18fps, and if I used his settings I get 12fps. I'm starting to think the beta drivers doesn't work for me or something. I placed a 200mm fan under the laptop to make sure it was getting good cooling, so doesn't look like it's overheating, and throttling down, but bf3 isn't really playable for me. Lowest settings possible still gives me drops to 18fps.

 

I would try reinstalling the bf3, remember it is in beta and running it at 1080p medium settings it likes to sometimes plunge my framerates down and I'm running an x7200 with 460m sli. Really it's just poorly optimized at this point and much like bfbc2 I'm sure there will be an update that really boosts performance