Yeah, so I bought this Inspiron XPS laptop september of 2004. It worked perfectly for a few months but then I started to notice a continuous drop in performance over the course of the next 4 months. However, I didn't pay much attention to it because I was busy with college. Now that I am back to gaming I notice that I can't even get more than 10 fps on UT2004. I've noticed that my loadup times for the laptop have dropped and generally things are running much slower. Also, my fan is running full blast after about 5 minutes of just being on.
Here are my specs:
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Pentium 4 3.4 ghz
I know that my laptop shouldn't be running this bad. Bear in mind that I have UT2004 running at LOWEST details for every category and I have it running at 800x600 and 16 bit. One thing I do notice is that if I leave the laptop off for about a day and then turn it on and try to play I do get around 80 fps for 5-10 minutes. Then it slowly starts to drop down to 10 fps. Could this be a heat problem? Is my cpu or video card damaged?
Also bear in mind that I recently reformatted my laptop(10 days ago) and have all the appropriate drivers up to date. In my defense, this fps problem has been persistent before and after the reformat. Anyone with any suggestions as to why my gaming laptop has become so mediocre? Its a shame to spend 2,600 dollars and not have something do what its built to do. BTW, I still have 2 years left on my warranty.
Also, I blew out the dust from the fan vents and it seems that my cpu is throttling when it gets to a certain temperature. I can play the game for a while but then my fps starts to go down and when I ran rightmark clock utility it showed that my cpu was only running at 1600 which is half of its potential clock speed. Could it be that the XPS was poorly designed and that whenever its doing something intensive for a while it begins to overheat and therefore reduce its clockspeed? could this also be why my framerate has been horrendous and why my fan is continously running on high?
Anyway, I called dell technical support and they gave me the run-around asking if I was sure UT2004 was compatible with teh Inspiron XPS...its a gaming machine for crying out loud. I have the proof that the XPS is throttling cpu power but they won't believe me. Now they want me to send it in to the depot so they can check it and reassure themselves that there is no malfunction with the hardware. I know there isn't! Its simply a design flaw that replacing parts won't fix....Any ideas on how to get through to dell? I figure I might as well send it in and see what they say but i'm almost positive replacing parts won't fix the problem because the Prescott processor in my XPS is just generating too much heat.
I know of a lot of people over on the dell community forums who are having the same problem with this exact same system. A few of them have been able to get free upgrades to the Inspiron XPS generation 2 because the gen 1 isn't in development anymore. I'd appreciate any feedback on how to proceed.
Here are my specs:
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Pentium 4 3.4 ghz
I know that my laptop shouldn't be running this bad. Bear in mind that I have UT2004 running at LOWEST details for every category and I have it running at 800x600 and 16 bit. One thing I do notice is that if I leave the laptop off for about a day and then turn it on and try to play I do get around 80 fps for 5-10 minutes. Then it slowly starts to drop down to 10 fps. Could this be a heat problem? Is my cpu or video card damaged?
Also bear in mind that I recently reformatted my laptop(10 days ago) and have all the appropriate drivers up to date. In my defense, this fps problem has been persistent before and after the reformat. Anyone with any suggestions as to why my gaming laptop has become so mediocre? Its a shame to spend 2,600 dollars and not have something do what its built to do. BTW, I still have 2 years left on my warranty.
Also, I blew out the dust from the fan vents and it seems that my cpu is throttling when it gets to a certain temperature. I can play the game for a while but then my fps starts to go down and when I ran rightmark clock utility it showed that my cpu was only running at 1600 which is half of its potential clock speed. Could it be that the XPS was poorly designed and that whenever its doing something intensive for a while it begins to overheat and therefore reduce its clockspeed? could this also be why my framerate has been horrendous and why my fan is continously running on high?
Anyway, I called dell technical support and they gave me the run-around asking if I was sure UT2004 was compatible with teh Inspiron XPS...its a gaming machine for crying out loud. I have the proof that the XPS is throttling cpu power but they won't believe me. Now they want me to send it in to the depot so they can check it and reassure themselves that there is no malfunction with the hardware. I know there isn't! Its simply a design flaw that replacing parts won't fix....Any ideas on how to get through to dell? I figure I might as well send it in and see what they say but i'm almost positive replacing parts won't fix the problem because the Prescott processor in my XPS is just generating too much heat.
I know of a lot of people over on the dell community forums who are having the same problem with this exact same system. A few of them have been able to get free upgrades to the Inspiron XPS generation 2 because the gen 1 isn't in development anymore. I'd appreciate any feedback on how to proceed.
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