2nd Monitor Fullscreen Games Slow Down

[PlasticTastic]

Laptop details:

Vortex III 15.6"
Intel i7-3630 Quad Core @ 2.4 GHz
16 GB RAM
nVidia 680m
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Okay so to cut a long story short, my laptop has water damage, which appears to have only affected the screen backlight. In PERFECT lighting conditions, I can JUST see high-contrast (White windows against black background) on my laptop.

Anyways until I can gather the money to send it off for repair, I'm using an external monitor, and 90% of things are working good and proper. However, when I run a game (or anything for that matter) at full screen, after about 30(ish) seconds, the fps will drop by about 75%. This is fine on non-intensive games such as LoL, which, after the slowdown, runs at 50fps, but I just got Watch_Dogs, and while it's fine at first, it slows down to a completely unplayable level (around 10 fps on lowest settings). When I alt-tab out and alt-tab back in, the FPS is restored, but as before, it slows down after around 30 seconds.

I can run it using windowed mode, however the slowdown still happens, but it is only around 30%. I have tried different monitors, and I have tried using VGA and HDMI.

The fact that it runs fine for the first few seconds after opening the tab makes me think that there's an issue un-related to the water damage. Does anyone have any possible solutions? Thanks!

 

[Jamie0202]

Sounds like either the CPU or the GPU is throttling back. This may or may not be related to the water damage. Check to see if this is the case by using some tools for monitoring temperatures and frequencies over a period of time which will also show you a graph. I have a few programs which do this but I'm not at my laptop right now to confirm their names but if you need to know what ones to use get back to me and I'll check when i finish work.

I can recreate your issue if i overclock my GPU too much. Alt-tabbing also restores performance and i think that issue is down to the GPU taking too much power from the power supply unit i.e. The GPU is trying to draw a certain amount of power but because the PSU can't give it what it wants it changes it's clock profile down so it is asking for less.

 

[PlasticTastic]

Thanks for your response. Here's a graph I got quickly. There does seem to be some throttling when I play a game (in this case, Watch_Dogs on lowest settings). Also I just realised how worryingly high the CPU temperature is, even when it's idling at 25%... Is there any way to cause the fans to go perma-boost, cause I'm really not that fussed about the noise.

 

[GeorgeHillier]

Have you opened up the laptop and given it a clean recently? Sounds like it's throttling, either due to dust or something to do with the water damage (although I'm not sure how, because if it reached the components then they probably wouldn't work at all as they'd short out).

 

[Jamie0202]

Looking at those temps you are definitely experiencing throttling.

I don't think there is any way to manually run the fans at full speed but with the temperatures in that graph they should already being doing so on their own. If not then that's your problem which could have been caused by the water damage.

If you think the fans are running at full speed then you either have a problem with your heatsink , thermal paste or which is the most likely issue, a build up of dust between the fan and the heatsink. Is the air the laptop blows out hot? I'd be tempted to open up the laptop and check for the dust build up. Although some people recommend using compressed air from outside I don't think it can remove the dust properly once it has built up to resemble a carpet on the heatsink. Also when using compressed air people don't realise that it's important not to spin the fan with the air as it can act like a dynamo and apply rogue voltages to the motherboard. For that reason I think it's better to physically open the laptop up and inspect.

There's a few threads about high temperatures and laptop maintenance on the forum which are worth a read.

Edit - It's your CPU which is throttling at over 95C. Using Intel Extreme Tuning Utility you can get a graph with this sort of information which will confirm it.

It's the purple line which is important. My CPU speed is only low here because it's not being utilized fully, not due to temperatures.

 

[PlasticTastic]

The program wouldn't let me show anything on the graphs other than CPU Usage and Processor Frequency, but when I ran the stress test, the CPU throttling went to around 50%. I'm going to take it apart and look for dust buildups now. Thanks for your help!

 

[PlasticTastic]

Hey guys, just an update to say that I finally got around to finding some screwdrivers that actually fit! I've cleaned out the heatsinks on both the CPU and GPU, and the temperatures have fallen by almost 50%, and while the performance isn't quite the same as pre-damage, it's closer than I thought I could possibly get. Sitting around 55C idle compared to around 80, and going up to 80 while in use compared to very high 90s.

Just to say thank you to Jamie and George (+rep to both of you) for your help

 

[Jamie0202]

No problem. If you want to customise the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility graph then you can do that by clicking the spanner at the top right of it. I must have done that a while ago and that's why mine shows throttling as well.