Gaming frame rate issue. Possibly my laptop fans?

[flavio]

I have a ASUS NV50 laptop. Core2 Duo P8600 @2.4 Ghz. 4GB RAM. Vista. 9650M GT video card.

I have played 100's of hours of games on this laptop. Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, Fallout 3, Dragon Age, Assassin's Creed, etc.

I tried to jump into a game of Killing Floor with some friends the other day and was getting around 5 FPS. Totally unplayable. I tried LFD2 and got the same thing. i updated my drivers and shut down the laptop for 30 minutes or so. Start it back up and try Killing Floor solo and I'm getting 95 FPS. Switch to LFD2 and get 70 FPS but after 10 minutes or so I'm down to 5 FPS again.

My guess is that is heat and I haven't heard a fan turn on this laptop since I've started investigating. I don't know that that I heard fans when I was gaming ok before but it seems like a place to start.

So my question is...do you think it's the fan(s) or is there some other explanation for this?

If it is most likely the fan(s) what do I do. I see no fan blades to blow air into through the vents. Should I take this thing apart to investigate?

 

[AndroidVageta]

EDIT: To answer your original question, yes, it is a heat issue. When the GPU gets too hot the system will automatically throttle the GPU and RAM speeds to help try to cool it down.

Have you used a program like GPU-Z or Speedfan to check temps at all? I would do that first...and if it a heat issue, try blowing some air through the vents and what not...had a friend recently whose laptop was getting hot as hell...got a can of compressed air and blew that baby dry. Turns out a layer of dust had accumilated on the heatsink and was preventing air and the fan from doing its job...been running cool since!

Also, if you dont hear the fans (I would game hard to make sure you KNOW theyre on and then just hold your head to the laptop, see if you can hear them) they might be dead. I know that a laptop with a P8600 and 9650GT is going to have a pretty damn decent fan! You should be able to hear it when its going a full steam for sure.

If not you might have to replace the fan...shouldnt be too hard...and depending on how your laptop is setup you should be able to replace it OR just see if its spinning by removing the bottom access door...should be no reason to completely dismantle it.

Hope one of these works for you...but I would definitely first and foremost clean that baby out, especially considering how often and how long youve used it, its had plenty of time to collect dust!