Strange Video problems in PC games

[southerncross]

Hi,

This is a problem , Iv been having for the past 1 and half years now. If someone can sort this out, it would be huge.

I have a laptop, a compaq presario 1555 AP, it is 30 gb harddisk, pentium 4 with 2.4 ghz processor, 512 mb ram, 64 mb allocated to display , the graphics card is ATI radeon mobility 7500 series.

To sum it up, a very good system. I brought it in 2003, I brought 3 games along with it, one was global operations, the other one was empire earth and third one was dungeon siege.

When i brought this laptop in 2003, All these games worked smoothly and had no problems, after 8 months I reinstalled the OS with windows xp retail CD that came with the LAPTOP, i had also 4 factory image CD. The games worked fine then also.

In 2004 end , something began to happen, the when i played the games, 5 minutes after the game started, the graphics would begin to be sluggish and then after 5 to 7 minutes of sluggishness the game would beccome smooth again, Again after 5 minutes of smoothness it would become sluggish. It was the same for all games. Other than that the laptop was fine and worked well with all other applications

2005, I reinstalled everything, installed the latest driver, defrag my disks regularly, clean out registry using sys mechanic etc, the laptop was in top condition and fast and smooth. The games worked fine for the first 1 month, then again the SAME THING !

I have done everything I can, put the latest drivers etc, turned off acceleration tried with that, did everything possible. ITs still the SAME.

I dont know whats going on its something to do with refresh rate ? video card something i dont know. 5minutes into game smooth then after that becomes sluggish then smooth then sluggish. the very same games that worked fine in the begining.

please help, it seems only thing remaining is to reinstall using the factory cds, back to the begining, but i dont want to do that.

 

[HAVOC]

Well, it sounds to me like you are experiencing a heat issue. Due to the extremely small size of the notebook, airflow with-in is very restricted.

Your notebook at desktop is considered at "Idle". When your PC is idle it is using the least amount of power and the result is less heat. Once you start up a game, your components will require much more power and conversely give off much more heat this is called "Full Load". Heat is a killer for electronical hardware. Especially the CPU and GPU, both which are heavily used in gaming. When your CPU gets to hot it will throttle or automatically decrease it's speed in an effort to use less power and create less heat. The GPU is fairly similar.

You said when you start up a game it's fine, nice and smooth. Then after 5 or 10 minutes it will become sluggish. This screams "heat issue" to me. This will conitnue on and off until your internal components cool down. Then if you start up the game again, after a few minutes and increased temp, the sluggish, 'ill responsivness" will start all over again.

If I were you i'd think about addressing the heat issue. Or at least start there. If you're not comfortable opening up a notebook, "Which is a P.I.T.A" you might consider taking it to someone who can. There is probably a huge amount of dust and debris that has collected inside the notebook, blocking airflow from fans & heatsinks. A good overall "internal cleaning" may be in order. Possibly a reapplication of thermal compound on CPU or GPU.

I hope this helps...