Laptop Problem. Video card seems to throttle?

[DerelictDev]

It has a built in 9700 mobility 64mb and it works great. I play source with very good framerate and when i do the video test i get about 75 fps.

Recently though ive noticed that during game the fps will drop dramatically to 15fps from 60, 70. Sporadically itll go back up and run smoothly but soon after drops again. What in the world is happening?

I thought it was some type of video card throttling like cpu throttling to save battery life but in bios there no options to enable/ disable anything...

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Just a tip: Try running off of AC power and then see if it does that still (to save battery life or whatever).

 

[DerelictDev]

Yea im running off AC currently and its doing it..

 

[tiap]

Laptops generally have additional power saving programs. Check them and the settings. If that is not the solution, then check to see if it is throttling down from a heat issue.

 

[DerelictDev]

Thats the thing, i didn't instal any programs that should be throttling it. I did a clean format with a standard Win XP Pro, not the included Sony software shit.
It could possibly be a heat issue but is there a way to find out and/or stop it?

 

[tiap]

Sorry, didn't know it was bare os.
I don't know of any progs that monitor the gpu like Throttlewatch does a cpu, but I would try it first. In fact I don't know if a mobile gpu is designed to throttle down. Perhaps check ATI's specs.

 

[batmanuel]

Check the driver control panel. According to ATi's specs on the Mobile Radeon 9700, there is this bit of tech on the chip:

ATI?s PowerPlay? technology continually monitors the workload on your notebook by automatically adjusting clock speeds and voltages based on your level of activity to extend battery life even longer.

It is probably enabled by default when you install the Cats, so I'd check the Catalyst Control Panel and see if there are any Power Play options listed, possibly a slider that lets you adjust between better power consumption and more performance.

 

[DerelictDev]

Seems to be a plan. Read up on ATI's site about it and that its user configurable with a software switch. Where in the world is this software switch?! I went through all the settings and they are identical to the regular ATI control panel as a desktop. There is no POWERPLAY switch to turn on/off. I even went and found the laptop box and manual but guess what. The manual had absolutely nothing at all about the video card in general. Figures... sony...

With further googling it seems that alot of companies exclude this feature for stability reasons... i guess its time to contact sony but i doubt itll get anything done. Damn

 

[win32asmguy]

Either the processor, GPU, or ram is overheating to a critical level and the bios is underclocking it. I used to have a dell 600m that would do this. The only fix was to use an earlier bios revision. You might try installing hacked drivers such as the omega ones to get access to the powerplay option.