Skyrim Low FPS, Jittery Mouse, Etc

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Joshua Cohen

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Jul 9, 2014
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Hi,
I have a Sony Vaio F Series laptop with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M GPU I bought in Jan of 2012. I played many different games with no problems.

About 2 months ago I noticed games were getting jerky. This started with World of Tanks after a graphics update and I thought the machine just couldn't handle the graphics. Then I noticed it was happening on crappy FB games like King's Road as well.

Yesterday I fired up Skyrim after not playing it for about a year. It was dreadful. Once I got into the first splash screen I immediately noticed the mouse was lagging. I brought up my last game and the toon barely moved and when it did the whole screen slowed down.

I downloaded and used FRAPS to monitor the FPS. When the toon was standing still it registers about 35. When I move it drops to the 4-8 range. At this time I only have 4 GB of RAM (out of the available 8) and I have just ordered two new sticks of 4 each to get a matching set. However, the game played perfectly with just 4 for the first 12 months I had it.

I will also share that I have noticed the bottom left side of the machine is hot. And has been for about 4 or 5 months. Really hot. I saw on other posts people posting links to a HWMonitor image, so I did the same.

https://flic.kr/p/ofQQxX

I saw someone talking about thermal throttling. I can intuitively guess what that is and given the temps recorded in HWM, I am guessing that is a good bet. If so, what could cause the heat to rise so dramatically? I don't remember it being this hot out of the box.

I'm a complete novice at overclocking (never done it) and have very little knowledge of speeding up or slowing down a computer.

Any help would be most appreciated. Thank you in advance.

JCJC
 
Solution
V
It indeed looks like your affliction is thermal throttling. Most probably, there's a dust build-up in the cpu heatsink, as gpu temps are high, but seem to be normal for a load scenario...

I suggest you remove battery, ram sticks and disk, then carefully disassemble the lower cover of your laptop and clean the cpu fan with a can of compressed air or a non-static soft brush. You might be lucky, as most laptops by now only have a detachable cover for the cpu heatsink. Should you, however, be unlucky, you might have to remove the entire plastic cover.
Most electronics shops offering some kind of technical support will probably do it for you for a small price, should you not want to do it yourself :)
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Vynavill

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It indeed looks like your affliction is thermal throttling. Most probably, there's a dust build-up in the cpu heatsink, as gpu temps are high, but seem to be normal for a load scenario...

I suggest you remove battery, ram sticks and disk, then carefully disassemble the lower cover of your laptop and clean the cpu fan with a can of compressed air or a non-static soft brush. You might be lucky, as most laptops by now only have a detachable cover for the cpu heatsink. Should you, however, be unlucky, you might have to remove the entire plastic cover.
Most electronics shops offering some kind of technical support will probably do it for you for a small price, should you not want to do it yourself :)
 
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Place_Matz

Place_Matz

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Mar 3, 2014
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Definitely heat problems. I would do the same as Vynavill recommended. Disassemble your computer and clean all of the individual parts. You can try to clean it yourself but it is best to give it to some professionals. What you could also do is buy a cooling pad for 30-40 dollars. I know it is a bit expensive but it might fix your problem!
 
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Vynavill

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Yep, after a cleanup, a cooling pad would be a nice investment to look at. Unless you plan on spending most of your time gaming on it, some more cheap models can come as low as 20-25$, otherwise the price is usually around what Place_Matz hinted at.
 
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Joshua Cohen

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Jul 9, 2014
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That is great news! Thank you very much. I did take the machine with me to Afghanistan right after I bought it and if Afghanistan has anything in abundance, it is dust.

I'll let you know how it goes!
 
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Joshua Cohen

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Jul 9, 2014
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I spent some time watching videos and then took a crack at taking off the back cover. Came off almost as advertised. Cleaned the fan with air, then realized I should just take the damn thing off and do it right. When I did so I got a look under the heat sinks. What does thermal paste look like? I have no idea because there was none on my chips. There was gobs of this gray shit all around the chip (not touching the heat sinks) so I'll assume that was TP. I watched a few more videos, cleaned it all up, reapplied the paste, etc. Now my temps are all in the 40 degree range, my fan hardly ever comes on, and processing speed has vastly improved.

Thank you for all the help and advice!
 
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Vynavill

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Yes, that was thermal paste. It's put between the heatsink and the chip to fill the microscopical gaps between the two surfaces and to allow a better thermal exchange.

Applying it is a delicate process, as putting too much can have the same effect of not putting it at all...
If you saw it popping out of the sides and sprinkled all around, then there definitely was too much.

Glad you got it fixed, and don't forget to select the answer you think is best ;p
 
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