Random FPS drops

cerberus414

OK, I've read through these forums, especially the threads regarding the FPS drops. I don't think most of them are the same issue as mine, but they might be similar. I started playing NS like 5 days ago and it worked very well at first as it did always. I guess I had a nail in my ass or something to have the urge to turn Vsync off for better responsiveness. At first, things were smooth as sailing, but then suddenly, random fps drops started happening. We're not just talking fps drops during intense action, although that's when it happens too, but just randomly at any given time even if I'm in a empty room. It's weird though, because if I stop moving, eventually FPS will go back up from 40/50/60 fps back to 100 fps. That could potentially mean that this isn't a localized map issue. I tried nailing down a pattern between these episodes, to see if maybe one of my background processes is causing it to happen (Diskeeper is known to lag NS), but couldn't find anything. Anyways, I tried the following:


1.) Reinstall NS - Did not change a thing
2.) Reinstall NS/HL/Steam - Did not change a thing
3.) Tried many different settings in the Nvidia control panel (Vsync, triple buffering, AA, etc)
4.) Installed the latest NVidia driver - I think it made things worse
5.) Installed an NVidia driver dated from 2-3 yrs ago. - I think there was somewhat of an improvement, but I can still see drops (from 100 fps to 60ish)

Here are my system specs (It's a laptop):
Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz
2 GB RAM
NVidia 8600M GT
Windows XP SP3
Also, I have the G5 mouse set to 1000 reports/sec (highest) <- Doubt that that can cause problems.

Bacillus

Can you test any other games and hl mods? Doesn't really seem anything would be overheating, but checking temperatures is still nice.

Try recording a demo while playing. It has fixed quite a few nasty bugs on some versions. I'm 95% sure it won't work on this, but it's still worth a try.

cerberus414

Umm yea speaking of temperatures... When I had the newer driver installed, the GPU temp would go up to 93 Celsius when I was playing NS. CPU would go up to ~80 Celsius.
With the older driver that I just installed, it went down a little bit (~84 Celsius when under load for the GPU and about 74 Celsius for the CPU). Bottom line, I don't think I ever had the GPU/CPU go up that high. I know the threshold is usually around 120 Celsius, but can you call that somewhat of an overheat?

P.S. Now that I think about it, when I first start playing, the game seems pretty stable at first, but as I play on, it seems to start happening more frequently. Question is why it would start doing that now?

But yea, you read my mind. I'm in the process of installing CS:S to see if the problem persists in that game as well.

cerberus414

So, i think it is an overheating issue. Ran CS:S for maybe 20 minutes tops in the window mode, and the GPU hit the 100 Celsius mark at which point my laptop shut itself down...
It happened twice (I tried to replicate the situation to confirm this).

So.....crap.....I hate Nvidia is what it comes down to. Quick search via google.com shows that there are massive reports of 8600 GTs being defective (ESPECIALLY the laptop versions).

But then again, I remember playing CS:S with AA at x4 and all settings max out on this laptop before (1 yr ago) for many hours non-stop and laptop was never close to overheating like it does now.
GPU idle temperature seems normal (65 Celsius). In NS's case, it gets hot enough to slow down the video card (drop in fps) but not intense enough to bring the temperature to 100 Celsius and shut the computer down.
Not sure what to do at this point....

cerberus414

I'll be damned, there is a nice compartment on the bottom of my laptop that you can unscrew without taking the whole thing apart. It gives you direct access to the heatsink. When I saw what was in there, I knew right away why this was happening. It's not a faulty video card. There was decent 1/8 inch layer of dust right in front of the heatsink, which came out as one giant patch when I pulled it out (Yes! it was that thick) I'm guessing that suppressed my airflow just a bit (sarcasm). So my GPU temp went instantly from 100 to 65-70 when under load which I think is a much more reasonable range. This was probably the easiest fix I ever had to perform on the computer.

What I learned from this: Clean you laptop out once in a while, it gets dusty!!!