All of a sudden lag occuring whenever I try to play games

[TylerL520]

I am not a big time PC gamer but i enjoy playing occasionally, as of late I've been playing Need For Speed Hot Pursuit and Saints Row 3 and for months I've played Saints Row on medium settings perfectly, and Need For Speed on high settings flawlessly. Well all of a sudden a few days ago I'm experiencing major lag and drops in fps all the way to 2-5fps randomly even on the lowest possible settings. I updated all of my drivers and have been trying to figure this out and I just can't seem to be able too so I'm hoping someone here can help me, anything would be appreciated. Thanks!

My laptop is an HP Envy-14 beats edition

Intel i5 M 480 cpu @ 2.67ghz...2.93ghz turbo boost

6GB Ram

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 1GB

 

[TylerL520]

bump...really starting to frustrate me

 

[simon12]

If nothing software has changed it could have started overheating. Download HWMonitor and check what temps the CPU & GPU are reaching.

 

[TylerL520]

ok, downloaded HWMonitor...Average temps appear to be about 70 degrees Celsius and while trying to play a game temps are reaching around 90 degrees Celsius and I saw as high as 96, that sounds hot as hell to me I don't really know what temps mean im overheating but that sounds crazy hot...What could be causing me to overheat so badly all of a sudden???

 

[simon12]

On a laptop I would guess a fan is clogged with dust

 

[DM186]

Yeah that is to high of temps. You should be idle at around 40c. So are you using a chill matt while playing? Also where ever you find a place to blow out the dust in your laptop do it.

If you don't have a chill matt. Then go buy one. I bought mine for $15.00 and they do have them cheaper. Also don't play with it on your lap as it will make it over heat.

If you want a program to monitor your temps, GPU usage, fps, and set your fan to increase so when your temps rise so does the fan and you can watch all that on your screen while playing at the same time.

It is called MSI Afterburner. I will link you to it and it user manual. I never play with out it. Good luck and I hope you get your temps down.

http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/images/Afterburner%20User%20Manual.pdf

 

[simon12]

If its under warranty return it, if not you can try and remove the keyboard which may let you see whats clogged.

 

[TylerL520]

well i took the computer apart and cleaned out all of the dust, it wasn't too bad but i hoped it was enough to get the temps down..but it did nothing still seems to be very hot...hp screwed me out of my warranty so i dont know what to do now

 

[DM186]

If you know how to add thermal paste to your GPU and maybe your CPU would be the next step or try using a chill matt like I suggested above. But if you don't know how to work on the inside of your laptop.

I would take it to a shop and have them take a look at it. It is a shame that HP duped you out of your warranty.

 

[Guest]

Just thinking about other possibilities, It wouldn't hurt to run a malware scan (Malwarebtyes is good for that). and Also Antivirus just for common list of things to check. And, if you tend to play around the same time frame every night/day and have an antivirus or malware scanner check to make sure it's not running automatically durring game time. Similar to that Windows Automated defrag is another thing to check

 

[TylerL520]

I'm pretty confident that I would be able to do the thermal paste job, but I don't think I want to risk possibly messing something up even worse.

Before I even thought about overheating as the problem I was trying other things to fix the problem so I updated literally every driver I possibly could I think lol, I updated the bios, and ran multiple virus scans and malware scans, I defragged my hard drive, ran ccleaner and probably even more I can't remember.

I should have never bought this damn thing and HP's horrific customer service and screwing me out of a $200 warranty has not made my experience more enjoyable.

Since clearing the fans, the average temp is now around 55-60, and highest i've seen is 85...That is alot better but my problem hasn't stopped. Regardless of display settings i try to play any game on my fps constantly drops from 60ish fps to 2-5fps and my startup time is still way longer than its ever been. Every hardware test that I have ran says everything on my computer is perfectly fine I do not understand this at all.

 

[shad3s0fGravy]

Uninstall the drivers and reinstall the drivers again. ATI is known to have horrid drivers and your graphics card is manufactured by ATI.

 

[shad3s0fGravy]

The only thing left to do is reformatting your HDD and reinstalling Windows 7 or w/e OS you have on it. Try this. After you have done this and it still drops, then you know it's a hardware problem.

 

[TylerL520]

uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers multiple times with no success unfortunately

I backed up my HDD but i dont have a windows 7 disc to reinstall so i think im just gonna have to deal with it

 

[DM186]

Call around to shops and ask questions or go to the shops and ask questons. Find out how mush for them to find out what the problem is and if it is a simple fix do it your self.

There is only so much you can do to a laptop. You can let everybody tell you all the way to fix it but you have alresdy done just about everything you can do except check your RAM.

Here is a test you can run on your RAM. Try it and do the recommended time it tells you to do. Then get back to us with the results. Good luck.

http://www.memtest.org/