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I recently recieved a laptop (Gateway id59c) and the specs seemed ok, so I thought that I could do some light gaming on it from time to time. However I have been running into some problems recently. I tried dota 2 first, and here is the problem: the game runs fine and then slows down (dropping to around 10fps) after 15-20 minutes of gameplay and pretty much stays that way for the entire game. My first thought was that it was due to overheating, and when I checked my temps for my cpu/gpu they were all quite high (75-80 degrees). So I'm sure that the high temps are the source of the slowdown.
However I decided to test some other games, namely warcraft 3 as since its so old that there should be zero problems in running it. However after a while the exact same problem occured! Here's a temperature graph (I closed the game before taking the screenshot):
http://i.imgur.com/WDnvRpc.png
If I'm watching a stream/doing homework/whatever the laptop is usually at around 50-60 degrees which I believe is quite normal for a laptop. Anyways here the gpu seems to be doing fine (hovering around 70 degrees), however both cores reached 80 before the main fan turned on, the game slowed down and the temperature decreased by quite a bit. I also had nothing else running when I was testing the game out.
So to summarize, the laptop seems to be overheating or being overworked on what should be relatively not demanding tasks. I'm really not tech savvy at all, anyone have any advice on what could be going wrong (if anything is going wrong at all)?
Here are the laptop specs:
Gateway id59c Motherboard: Gateway ID59C CPU: Intel Core i3 CPU M 370 @ 2.40GHz GPU: 1023MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 420M RAM: 4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 532MHz HDD: 698GB Western Digital WDC WD7500BPVT-22HXZT1 ATA Device OS: Windows 7 Professional (64 bit)
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The temperatures are looking good, so I'm confused. If it's really overheating, I would have answered the following:
You first of all shouldn't try to game on a bed or couch or something. The machine's temperatures will look best when set up on a table without table cloth and without things near its air vents.
If you already were sitting at a table while trying to play, the mechanism it uses for cooling is probably just stuffed with dust and needs to be cleaned. You might be able to clean it without disassembling anything. You can buy compressed air in cans and play around with that to clean most of the dust out. You would take the air can and blow into the vents it has. I don't know if this can be harmful for its fan! You might get unlucky and it'll break from being forcefully pushed and turning.
It's possible to disassemble part of the notebook to get access to its insides and its cooling. You will be able to clean everything thoroughly like that. If you then also completely remove the cooler it has, you will be able to clean off the old thermal paste and replace it with fresh one. The original paste application done in the factory is also often simply very bad work. You are typically able to beat their work even if you never did this because you can work as slowly as you want. Doing something like this the first time can be fun for certain people, and if you don't think it would be fun for you, you might know someone like that. You could invite that person to have a go at it while serving some BBQ and beer or something.
+ Show Spoiler +I tried to find the specifications for the GPU and CPU regarding temperatures for throttling speed. I could only find it for the CPU. It's 90C in the version sold for a normal socket and 105C for the version that's soldered into the board.
I'm confused what's going on but I suppose it's really simply overheating and throttling speed even if the numbers seem to look good. You perhaps can't really say if it's the CPU's or the GPU's fault because notebooks often use the same cooler for both and their temperatures will be tied together through that cooler. There's the same copper heat-pipe going over both the CPU and GPU and towards where the fan does its cooling business.
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Thanks for your response!
I was playing on it on a table. I have been considering getting a cooling pad or cleaning out the inside as you said, although I have heard that cooling pads are not that effective.
Just to clear up my initial post (not that you seemed that confused by it), I did a test on dota 2, everything is pretty much on low settings:
FPS using frap's benchmark tool, the drop happens about ~10 minutes in: http://i.imgur.com/dr6Sp0c.png
Temperatures again (not sure how to increase the time interval, but screenshot was taken a couple of minutes after ending the game, as you can see, the temperatures are starting to drop off): http://i.imgur.com/aZuzok4.png
If there are any tests or something similar that I could do that might possibly clear up the problem, please let me know.
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I think the program "HWINFO" has everything you need to diagnose if it's really throttling somewhere. You can get it here: http://www.hwinfo.com/download.php
Using it will look like this in practice:
http://i.imgur.com/dnn2YNJ.png
You need to select "sensors-only" when starting the program. On the left, those three windows with graphs, you can open those by double clicking an entry in the sensor window. On the right, I marked where to look to diagnose the CPU throttling.
Seeing if the CPU is throttling is easy enough as it will be mentioned by those sensors. There's nothing like that for the GPU, but you can use those graph windows to get a good guess about what's happening. The GPU clock speed should only be low if the GPU usage is also low. If the clock speed gets reduced despite GPU usage being at 100%, that should mean the GPU is overheating.
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Not sure about now but back then 2 years ago that happened to me when I played dota2 beta. reconnecting to the game would fix it temporarily. I'd try to go to dota2dev.com and ask there.
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Hmm...I play Titanfall on an MSi laptop for a few hours and the temps are consistently in the mid-90s without any FPS drops whatsoever. Your temps look very healthy to me. Maybe it's because of the laptop age? What settings are you using and during those drops in FPS, is the gameplay more intense?
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Dota 2 is being played on low settings (even rendering is being cut), and the fps drops aren't really dependent on the gameplay. Anyways I used the program you suggested, fps is circled:
http://i.imgur.com/88kg6kA.png
That is not the first time the fps has dropped, I was just waiting for a more consistent one. Temps are already reaching high points, but slowdowns are occurring well before this.
http://i.imgur.com/4FQ9Aj1.png
Then at some point later (apparently 14 min) overheating (?) is happening, but again slowdowns have happened well before this point. Also thats not the correct fps as its from the previous screenshot, but its around that value.
All this being said I'm ok/understand why this is happening, I mean it is a laptop after all. It would of course be nice if there was an "easy"" fix to this. Perhaps it would be useful to try and play around with other games/applications and see what happens?
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Here's your CPU on Intel's website:
http://ark.intel.com/products/49020/Intel-Core-i3-370M-Processor-3M-cache-2_40-GHz
Scrolling down, somewhere it says:
T_JUNCTION = 90°C for rPGA, 105°C for BGA
I guess yours is that rPGA thingy and hitting 90C and automatically slowing down at that point? That would explain why it shows those suspicious max 89C in the screenshot that also says "Yes" for CPU throttling.
What I don't understand is why the FPS would already have been dropping in the game before that point. I have no real idea what else could be going on. The GPU only clocked down in the screenshot with the CPU throttling so I don't think it's the GPU's fault.
You can do some cleaning on the air vents it has. You can buy a can of compressed air for about $5. There might be something else that's easy to do on the notebook so you might want to take a good look at everything around the vent area and underside of the notebook and save those $5.
If you want to do some more testing, what might make sense is taking a look at something that's very light on CPU and only stressing GPU. There's a benchmark program called "Unigine Heaven" that works like that, does very little on the CPU. I just wonder if the CPU wouldn't still heat up because of what I mentioned regarding the heat-sink for CPU and GPU being one part and both temperatures always being connected.
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