Latitude D800 slows to a crawl when GPU fan kicks in

I recently had to replace the video card in my Dell Latitude D800 after a bad vbios flash. I couldn't find a Geforce 4200 (the card it originally came with when I bought it in Summer 2003) so I grabbed a Geforce 5650, which had twice the memory and a faster gpu, so I figured it would at least be a nice upgrade from my old one. It installed fine, and I got the drivers from Dell, and I'm not experiencing any video problems (aside from flash video on sites like Youtube and Gamespot taxing the system much more heavily than they should) - but when the GPU fan kicks in it's incredibly loud, and the whole system slows down significantly. Also, it seems like even mundane tasks like having a few tabs open in my web browser will cause fans to kick in, which never used to happen.

Any idea why this could be happening? I don't know if it's specifically the new video card, if it's the new BIOS (I had used A01 or A00 or some really old one until a few months ago) or Windows Search 4 which seems to have caused a memory leak in IE, or my PC just aging, or a combination of factors.

I'm using the latest BIOS version, A13 I think.

(sorry for the double post, I originally made this in the general Dell forum before seeing this subforum)

 

I'm not familiar with the Dell system, but when you installed the new GPU did you do replace the old thermal compound with new product? Did you clean the fan and the heatsink while you were in there? If you did this, perhaps the heatsink that you have installed is not adequate for the task... and when you start to ramp up the graphics demands the system simply cannot dissipate the heat fast enough.

I think that you may be taxing the system too much. Your computer is four years old, and while I'm sure it is good at many things, playing videos or any other taxing graphics processes may be too much for it to handle... unless they (what you are trying to view) is also from that era.

 

What idle and full load temperatures are you getting for the GPU? Throttling may be taking place because the temperatures are getting too high. this could be either due to a poor thermal connection between heatsink or GPU, a clogged cooling system, or just that the GPU is making too much heat.

HWmonitor should provide the temperature information.

John

 

Thanks for the replies, guys.

Here's the data HWmonitor gave me:

That's with IE7 (a few tabs), AIM (old version) and Winamp (old version) open.

Most of the software I use is old, and I don't really do anything taxing on my system. I don't play any games or edit video, sometimes I use Photoshop 7which now takes much longer to load. I didn't install the new video card myself, I had the tech unit here do it since they're a Dell certified repair center and work for free.

EDIT: Here's an image of the readout from the program:

 

and now a little bit later ACPI is showing 55C. No fans kicking in oddly enough, and everything performing as usual without the intense slowdown.

I just went to speedtest.net to see if I could tax the system a little more (flash seems to be especially taxing since the new hardware) and the fan kicked in and I got it up to 64 C. It stayed on for a while and got it back down to 41C.



EDIT: Also, when the GPU fan is on there's a sound similar to the CPU/HDD tiny clicking noise that occurs when the can symbol flashes (you know the little noise I mean? all computer make it) but the processing light doesn't blink.

 

Also, startup and shutdown take MUCH longer than before.

I'm starting to think it may also be a software issue, specifically with Windows Search 4.0

 

Any thoughts, guys?

 

Time to boot off a Linux live CD and see if you get the same problems when running under Linux. If you do then it's hardware / BIOS and if you don't get problems then it's the Windows / software.

John