laptop performance in nonstop wave of measureable drops

[tviceman]

I have no idea where to begin with this. For the last few months I've noticed that while using my computer (specifically in games where it is most easily seen and measureable with fraps) the entire system is going through a very, very specific and timed pattern of normal performance for 5 seconds and then dropping severely low for 1-2 seconds. Using FRAPS while in a game (lets say a fairly undemanding game like Civilization 4) while in game, just letting the screen sit (no mouse movement or any in-game interaction) FRAPS is recording the game being at 60 fps for 5 seconds, and then dropping down to 15-20 fps for 1-2 seconds. It happens every time, in every game, at the exact same pace and interval. It also doesn't matter if the game itself is stressing my computer or not, once in-game every 5 seconds the performance just simply plummets for 1-2 seconds regardless of on-screen activity.

In an attempt to figure out what is going on, I've uninstalled MSE, disabled windows defender, uninstalled my touchpad driver, I've ran GPUz in the background to make sure my video card core and shader speeds weren't bouncing around, I have CPUz running to verify the CPU isn't dropping off in performance, I've had the task manager open to monitor resource and hardware usage but nothing at all indicates anything down clocking.

I'm running win7 x64, I have tried using older and the latest (259) drivers from nvidia without success, the OS is up-to-date, and I have the laptop set to maximum performance. The performance drops happen whether or not the laptop is plugged into an AC outlet.


Does anyone have any idea what else I could do to diagnose, test, and figure this out??? I can take a FRAPS video if you want to actually see the cycle of performance dropping (if that would help)

 

[tviceman]

Turns out my CPU is overheating and throttling down. It will throttle down to drop the temperature enough to allow itself to throttle back up to full speed and just keeps repeating the cycle. I took the notebook apart, cleaned off the gunked up TIM, applied new TIM, and air sprayed out any dust (which there wasn't much of).

Interestingly, the fan inside my notebook works but it isn't speeding up to 100% when the CPU is overheating or approaching extremely high temperatures. I know this because when the notebook first powers up the fan spins at 100% for a few second and is noticeably louder than other at any time while using it.

After about 12 hours of letting the new TIM set, I reran some of the programs that was causing it to over heat (just about anything more stringent than web browsing) and it *seems* to be doing better, but I tried prime95 and the cpu was hitting 81 degrees after about 7 minutes and began the throttling loop.

 

[Gunbuster]

Have you tried updating the BIOS?

 

[tviceman]

Thanks for the suggestion and I did just that. The update was successful so I'll run some more tests now.