CPU suddenly acting slow

[marcolorenzo]

Hi guys, I hope someone can assist me. Yesterday, I installed L.A Noire and it ran very well. I went and made some food and then after eating, I came back to play it again and then it started running extremely slowly. As far as I could tell, i hadn't changed anything. So i tried to load up another game and it was also running very slowly. At first I used TuneUp Utilities which always gave me some slight improvements but that didn't work. I also ran a few virus and malware scanners which also didn't turn up anything. Then I reinstalled the latest AMD Catalyst drivers (uninstalled through Add or Remove Programs, erased all related files with Driver Sweeper and then did a clean install) which also didn't fix the issue. In the end, i decided to check the Windows Experience Index and after I re-ran the assessment, it turned out that my CPU is now rated 4.6!!! It used to be about 7 to 7.5. Could someone please help me and let me know what could've caused this? Is it a hardware problem with the CPU or a driver issue?

i have a Metabox (Clevo) P150HM with:

i7-2670QM
AMD Radeon HD 6990M
16GB 1333MHZ RAM

Thanks a lot guys, any help would be appreciated.

Edit: I noticed that System Idle Process is taking up a lot of the CPU (around 85%). I did some Googling and saw that most people dismissed this as the cause of the problems. But i can tell you, I've never seen System idle Process use this much CPU before. Now when laptop is just sitting there, it sounds like it's under heavy load even though i'm not running anything.

 

[da22]

Try using the resource monitor to pin point the issue. system idle should be around 97% and fluctuate slightly. Sounds like something is running..Also boot into safe mode and check the status is system idle, then look at the msconfig to see if anything strange is starting up.did LA noire install any 3rd party programs?

 

[marcolorenzo]

thanks for your reply. I just checked task Manager and System Idle Process has disappeared. Now my CPU usage is idling at around 2-8% which is normal so i did a WEI scan again and i'm still getting 4.6...

 

[gamerk316]

Overheating?

 

[Pyree]

Power profile?

 

[da22]

Check the power profile like PYREE said and also install CPU-Z and check its running at full speed and has the correct processor listed. Also check the last windows updates...it could have installed some new drivers.

 

[mubin]

Check cpu speed from bios. If low than usual, then reset default.

 

[marcolorenzo]

Overheating?

It's not overheating. All temperatures are reading normal.

Power profile?

The power profile is set to High Performance as I always do when it's plugged in. This is the default High Performance profile.

Check the power profile like PYREE said and also install CPU-Z and check its running at full speed and has the correct processor listed. Also check the last windows updates...it could have installed some new drivers.

Well i just installed CPU-Z and here's my result:



Note that whilst on this it says that my CPU's clockspeed was almost 2.8GHZ, it was mostly at 798MHz with only occasional jumps to 2.8GHz.

Check cpu speed from bios. If low than usual, then reset default.

EDIT: I can't seem to find any information on the CPU in the BIOS. My BIOS seems a lot more simple than some other machines I've worked with in the past...

 

[marcolorenzo]

Well I noticed that my PC temperature and CPU usage has dropped to a normal state (once again, for no apparent reason) so I decided to run the WEI again. Now my CPU score is back to 7.5, my Mem score rose from 7.2-7.6 and both graphics scores dropped from 7.7 to 7.6. So basically my scores are back to the way it was. All i did was close a few programs before i ran the WEI (Outlook, Skype and Game Booster) which i don't believe should've affected it since they're always running on my computer. I will investigate a bit more and let you know.

 

[Pyree]

No, if the background process decide to stay idle during the duration of the WEI test, then you will be fine. If somehow the background process needs to run (use CPU resource), it will affect the WEI score. So what background process is it? Do you need it running all the time?

 

[marcolorenzo]

Well i turned them all one one by one and the performance is still good. I don't understand, the only alterations i made was installing CPU-Z but that's only a monitoring program isn't it? Very weird. Well anyways, it's working now so i guess there's nothing more to do. i just hope this doesn't happen again and if it does, i can find out how to fix it more quickly.

 

[mubin]

CPU-Z dosnt affect WEI while running background. Its just a monitoring tool. Your cpu will show less clock speed when idle.

 

[marcolorenzo]

Best answer selected by marcolorenzo.