Dell Inspiron 7720 GT 650M is Underclocking Itself!!! PLEASE HELP

So here is the story.

About a month ago I noticed that I was getting really poor performance at times. I was playing Red Alert 3 and getting 15 frames per second on Low settings. That didn't make any sense.
I installed a program to monitor Clock Speeds, Temperatures, and FPS called MSI Afterburner. I noticed that for some reason the GPU was stuck at a clock speed of 135MHz and the Memory Clock is at 202MHz

I tired rebooting Windows 8. Nothing changed

I went and installed the current drivers from Nvidia and to my surpise it went back up to 745.

After I re opened MSI Afterburner I noticed the clock speeds changed frequently. Once in the 600MHz range, once in the 400MHz range. And now I am back to 135MHz.

I am thinking I should uninstall MSI Afterburner?

I originally got it just to monitor my FPS in game. I fiddled with the overclocking options available within MSI and that's what I think is causing this issue.

I am hoping someone can help me figure this one out.

I am pretty noob when it comes to PC.


PS
If anyone has experience with overclocking please let me know. I would really like to get as much power from this thing as possible. I would be willing to put on after market thermal paste etc and get a cooling pad etc.

I am looking for a mentor to walk me through and help me troubleshoot via Skype or Email.
Let me know if you wouldn't mind helping!

 

I mean, you said it yourself... try uninstalling afterburner and see if it helps?

What are the temps on the GPU when it begins to throttle?

 

Have a look at the GPU and CPU temperatures using HWMonitor.

 

get rid off crappy "clock speeds, etc" and erase msi afterburner....restart pc.

hopefully your clocks will go back to stock

if not........i should reinstall windows to put back power management settings which runs together with the nvidia card

i have OCd 7720 to its limit many times...........i right now use a more stable clock (see link down below)