Games running slow then fast then slow, etc.

[MyComputerBlows]

Hello guys, I'm relatively new here and not a techie, so I'm hoping someone could help me locate and resolve my problem. When I first bought my laptop, games like Warcraft 3 ran very smoothly, with zero problems. Now, about a year later, I can barely even play WC3. When I enter a game, either in Single Player, on Battlenet, or on LAN, my gameplay will be incredibly choppy and slow for about 5-10 minutes, then for about 15 seconds it'll start running smoothly again, but after that 15 seconds it'll return to being very choppy, slow, and ultimately unbearable.

I've been told that it could be my graphics card overheating, but I have a cooling pad underneath and a huge tower fan blowing straight on my computer. It's as cold as ice, yet the problems persist. I've tried killing all unnecessary programs. I've changed the video settings in game to the absolute lowest quality, and I've even disabled AVG temporarily to see if that helps. Nothing helps. It's still the same problem.

Now, in the past on some forums I've seen people post their system specs. How do I do this? I tried dxdiag, save all information to desktop as text file, but it gives me a bunch of unnecessary gibberish, like paragraphs of code, just random letters and numbers, which is not what I've seen on the specs other people post. Could someone help me figure out how to do that? That way I can post my specs for you and someone could potentially help me.

Thank you so much.

 

[MindoverMaster]

First of all, welcome to TF, mate!

The GFX card or CPU could be stressed, as to the lag. Show us a screenshot of HWMonitor. Run it while you are playing WC3. That will show us the max and min temperatures. If you don't know how to make a screenshot, a guide is in my sig.

To post your system information, your best bet is to use a combination of CPU-Z and GPU-Z. These will tell you most about your system; CPU (processor), GPU (greaphic card), Motherboard, amount of RAM (memory)

 

[jroane]

Also, when was the last time you used a program like Ccleaner or abexo to clean your registry? Make certain that your temporary files have been cleaned and compressed, and defragment your hard drive. You'd be surprised what a difference a dirty windows install can make - I've seen pure gaming rigs chugging along because of 400+ registry errors and a hard drive that's never been defragmented

Sounds silly, but if your temperature readings come back in the green, your next bet is lag via fragmented drive

In fact - how often do you format your system?

Also keep in mind that every program installed represents a performance decrease, small 2.5" laptop drives see this impact more greatly.

As data is written to the disk, the arm is pushed further and further to the edge of the platter. This causes read times to rise, since the revolutions take longer (like overdrive in a vehicle, lower RPMs and slower performance)

In addition to defragmenting/cleaning/removing registry errors - you want to make certain that at least 30-40% of your hard drive is free - an overloaded drive is a laggy one

 

[MyComputerBlows]

I cleaned and repaired my registry just last week, and I've also defragmented, virus scanned, the works not too long ago too. Nothing has improved its performance. Here are some links to some of the stuff you suggested with the GPU-Z and CPU-Z and all that.

I also have the CPU-Z report, but it contains too many characters to post in the message. Is there somewhere I can upload the text file?

 

[Slaymate]

Your CPU and your GPU are both running Extremely HOT.

 

[MyComputerBlows]

I don't understand. I run a dual fan cooling pad underneath, and I've got a really large tower fan blowing right against it. My laptop feels ice cold..

 

[jroane]

Wow forget my last post those numbers are way too high!

Find someone to take the laptop apart and inspect the internal fans, new thermal paste (high quality stuff) needs to be applied to the CPU and GPU

Or, it could just be failing. I had a HP DV9000 multimedia laptop that was a hoss until it started idling at 90-110C like yours is, then it died a few months later.

What make and model is your laptop, just curious

 

[MyComputerBlows]

HP G60 Notebook PC
PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.1
AMD Turion Dual-Core RM-75 (2 CPUs), ~2.2 GHz
2814 MB RAM
Running Windows Vista Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001)
NVIDIA GeForce 8200M G

 

[jroane]

HP is the red flag in this situation

a quick google search shows me that this is a big problem with that model - I can tell you from experience that it's a big problem with HP/Compaq systems in general

If it's under warranty, it's due for a repair

If it's not under warranty, it's due for a replacement

You'll be much happier with a $500 desktop PC =)

 

[MyComputerBlows]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of HP. This is my second HP Laptop and I've been thoroughly unimpressed with both. I'm not sure if I'm still under warranty though...