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General discussion

strange slowdown in 3d games

by etiennestrydom Dec 2, 2009 4:44PM PST

Hi all.

I have a Gateway p7011 (i think) that I bought in 2008. It has duo-core chip, 4 gig of ram and Nvidia Geforce 9800m. I am running Vista 64 bit home.

The laptop worked fine until about 3 month ago, when it suddenly stared to experience extreme slowdown in 3d games.
The laptop runs fine for about a minute in game, smooth as ice, after which it is suddenly very slow for about twenty seconds (running at less than 1 frame every ten seconds) . It then returns to normal speed, only for the whole thing to start over again in another minute.

It does this in all games that uses 3d, even very old ones. Basically any game released after 2006 wil give trouble.

I have reinstalled windows, cleaned the vents and fans in case its overheating. I even changed to older drivers, but this just caused the games to crash instead of slowing down.

Can it be a virus ? AVG doesn't pick up anything, but that doesn't say much. There was a time when I was between antivirus programs, and its a possibility that the laptop could have been infected.

Might it fix the problem if I format the hard-drive, something which I had not done until now ? How about upgrading to Windows 7 ?

Or is this the graphics card that is going ?
Thanks

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There are other software causes too.

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Dec 2, 2009 9:20PM PST

For example the old Spybot Teatimer when combined with some software (antivirus) or others can create nutty issues like that. The lessons are hard here. We get to discover what does and does not work. What's hard for most is the old "it worked before" which only serves to slow down discovering that it's some update that caused it.

Here's the method I use. I go get HIJACKTHIS and produce the log file. For me I do my own research. Others will ask others to do that or begin learning and researching.

Cheaper than replacing the laptop.

-> In closing there are hardware issues that can be in play. For example many laptop cooling systems can lift up on a corner inside the laptop. I've lost count how many I had to fix for this but the routine is open up the machine to the point I have good access to the heatsink and then remove that. Apply fresh compound and then re-assemble it proper.
Bob

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