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Hi everyone,
Recently I've noticed a big decrease in the performance of my lap top. A link to my lap top is below (it's 2 years old).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220696
I used to be able to run SC2 at med/high settings and get in the 45-60 fps range. Now, I've got the SC2 on low settings and I get 5 fps anytime supply gets above ~100. It's unplayable in any type of team games.
I continuously also get the message that I'm slowing down the game and to turn down my graphics settings. I've run ccleaner and defraged my computer, and neither made any improvement. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas to what happened? I'm thinking about reformatting my HD next.
Thanks!
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Your laptop is likely overheating. Ensure the heat sinks are clean, and that the fans are clean and operating.
You can download Asus manual etc here: http://ca.asus.com/en/Notebooks/Multimedia_Entertainment/N61Jq/#download
It's very important that you use the laptop on a hard surface, with the fan exhaust and intakes clear of any obstructions. A laptop cooler platform might be a good idea.
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thanks ill take a look at the heat sinks and fans. i have a cooler pad, but i don't know how much it's actually cooling.
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The cooler pad doesn't directly cool,. but it does provide fresh air to the intakes, as well as some surface cooling to the chassis of the laptop. A good one has fans you can re-position for optimal flow to your specific laptop.
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Just throwing the obvious out there -- Make sure your antivirus is up to date. However, what you are describing does indeed seem like it is an overheating-related problem. You should be able to tell by simply touching the bottom of the laptop to easily tell if the issue involves heat or not.
I have also had an overheating issue recently. I recommend downloading CPUID Hardware monitor. It gives you very helpful information regarding the heat of each of your cores.
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Use an application like GPU-Z to ensure that your drivers aren't downclocking your graphics card. I have a Mobility 5650 and PowerPlay can occasionally mess up and downclock my GPU to about 19% of it's max clock rate.
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My antivirus is up to date. I also cleaned out the fans with some compressed air. It didn't look too dirty. I didn't have any thermal paste to reapply, but the fan cleaning did not make a difference. I started up SC2 and played a 4v4 game and I got about 15-25 fps for the first 5 minutes and gradually decreasing as the game progressed. Eventually got the warning to turn down graphics settings even though they were already on low.
I'll download some of the monitoring applications tomorrow and see what I find out.
I've never had an overheating problem with this laptop where the PC would shut down. I've played WoW, SC2, and BF3 on this lap top without any major problems until recently. The air vent would blow out some very hot air when gaming, so I bought a cooling pad to alleviate some of the stress on the system. What I've noticed recently is that there doesn't seem to be very little air blowing out of the vent. Oddly enough, the computer seems cooler than it normally does because there isn't very much hot air blowing out. I'll have a better idea tomorrow running CPUID or GPU-z. Thanks for the suggestions.
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It's not the fan itself that matters. Between the fan and the exhaust vent, there's a little heatsink with narrow fins. Within a couple of years, a layer of dust will build up on the side of that heatsink closest to the fan, eventually blocking it entirely.
The proper way of cleaning this is to open the laptop, remove the fan and then brush off the dust layer. If this isn't feasible (some laptops don't have an access panel for the fan), the ghetto solution is to blast air into the exhaust and hope that the dust layer breaks up.
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I actaully have this laptop this happened to me also I used a can of compressed air and blew out the fan and the main exhaust on the left side (the one that gets really hot) not sure if this is the right way to clean it or not but blowing in the exhaust and on the fan made aton of dust come out and it ran alot cooler and the fan didn't run as hard.
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I downloaded CPUID and here is what I'm seeing.
Idle: CPU - All 4 cores on CPU - 52C (125F) GPU - 53C (126F)
Mid game SC2: 4 cores - 73 or 74C (163-165F) GPU - 73C (163F)
Still was getting ~10-15 fps in game at med settings.
Do these temps look okay? I bought some thermal compound today and was going to apply some to the gpu/cpu to see if it made a difference. Thanks all
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Lol.. I'm doing absolutely nothing on my laptop right now and the core temps are 64C to 67C... it used to be high 40s and around 50s... when I'm idling.. I got this laptop this past summer so I have no idea what is going on...
On topic: That's fine... laptops don't have very good cooling in the first place and the temperatures look the way it should... My laptop goes to like 80s and even upper 80s.. if I play a graphic intensive game for too long... I think I need to clean out my laptop lol. I get around like 120-140 fps on low setting with medium shaders/texture/shadows in sc2. O_o
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On January 10 2012 06:49 Kcip wrote: I downloaded CPUID and here is what I'm seeing.
Idle: CPU - All 4 cores on CPU - 52C (125F) GPU - 53C (126F)
Mid game SC2: 4 cores - 73 or 74C (163-165F) GPU - 73C (163F)
Still was getting ~10-15 fps in game at med settings.
Do these temps look okay? I bought some thermal compound today and was going to apply some to the gpu/cpu to see if it made a difference. Thanks all
You still haven't looked into my suggestion then?
Edit: Also, make sure your battery profile isn't set to "Power Saver".
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On January 10 2012 09:12 Zorgon wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2012 06:49 Kcip wrote: I downloaded CPUID and here is what I'm seeing.
Idle: CPU - All 4 cores on CPU - 52C (125F) GPU - 53C (126F)
Mid game SC2: 4 cores - 73 or 74C (163-165F) GPU - 73C (163F)
Still was getting ~10-15 fps in game at med settings.
Do these temps look okay? I bought some thermal compound today and was going to apply some to the gpu/cpu to see if it made a difference. Thanks all
You still haven't looked into my suggestion then? Edit: Also, make sure your battery profile isn't set to "Power Saver".
Sorry i forgot about your post. I'm running it now, but not sure what I'm looking for. I posted a screen capture of the application running.
http://tinypic.com/r/qrnm7r/5 http://tinypic.com/r/qryolv/5
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Is that what you're seeing with StarCraft 2 open?
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it wasn't open.
i just played a game and took a screen shot after.
http://tinypic.com/r/atkzsj/5
i adjusted my battery settings to max performance since I'm plugged in. I'll get back to you on that one.
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You want to alt+tab into GPU-Z while you're playing a game vs an AI or something.
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Here is the pic in a 4v4 game...
http://tinypic.com/r/2con8ma/5
Changing the power settings to max performance seems to have helped. It's weird though because I haven't changed the power settings in a long time, but all of a sudden I started having problems. I'm still dropping down to 15 fps in 4v4, but that's better than 5 fps. I also haven't gotten the message that I'm slowing the game down. My laptop is definitely running hotter since I've increased the power settings, but it's around the temp that I'm accustomed to it being.
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90C is definitely above the comfort zone. I assume your CPU temperatures reflect this. Your computer needs maintenance or it will sooner or later give up for good.
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Pay atention to Zorgon, if the laptop is unhooked from power, or if it is running in power saver you will see a decrease in performance
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On January 10 2012 11:45 Medrea wrote: 90C is definitely above the comfort zone. I assume your CPU temperatures reflect this. Your computer needs maintenance or it will sooner or later give up for good.
Yeah. CPUID reports highs of 95, 95, 97, 100 for temps on each of the cores of my cpu.
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