Dell Studio 1555 - Random drops in FPS

Hi Guys,

Spent a few days playing with my new studio 1555, I am finding heavy drops in FPS whilst gaming. I have spent all today trying to find the cause.
As an example, if I am playing DOW2, I get approx 30fps, every 2mins or so it will drop to 15fps.

I am expecting it to be heat related but:
1. I cannot monitor the GPU temps
2. There is no program I can find that recognises the GPUs speed to check if it is down clocking
3. It only lasts about 2 secs then I shoot back up to 30fps.

I have tried vista 32 and vista 64.
I have monitored temps with HWMonitor and all but an ACPI are fine, the ACPI temp gets upto 93c as other users reported
I have tried turning off my wifi and playing offline in case it was network related
I have checked all drivers and updated where necessary
I am now at a loss.

Has anyone else noticed this problem and does anyone have any suggestions?
thanks

 

Have you tried turning off PowerPlay in the ATI Control Panel?

Also, see if you have any luck with AMD GPU Clock Tool and monitoring the clocks.

EDIT: GPU-Z has a Sensor tab that shows the real-time clocks and temperature.

 

What are your settings for DOW2? I noticed when I was just testing the Demo, there would be sudden drops when the game suddenly decided to introduce a crapload of particle effects.

 

John - thanks for that,just turned off powerplay so going to test that.

Manofest - I am running it at 720p medium. It definately isnt effects related as the drops are really random (ie I may just have the hero and scouts on screen) I have also tried lowering resolution but got the same.

Also TF2, I can be looking at a wall on a server with just me and see drops!

Thanks for the help though

 

I would say
1. Turn off powerpower, retest the game to see if it happens.
2. Downgrade the drivers or upgrade them if you dont have the latest drivers.
3. Dust out the fan.
What are you temps when your playing the game.

O btw i would reccomend re-applying thermal paste to the processor, because dell uses terrible paste. It might void warrenty though/

 

Disable unnecessary services using the checklist provided at www.blackviper.com

Install the latest vista drivers for 4570 from DNA

Disable superfetch service in Vista. It thrashes your HDD like anything.

BTW which AV software are u using? Try disabling the real time monitoring when u are playing the game..

 

Thanks for the advice guys

It seems powerplay was the culprit! I have disabled it and not had any drops in fps since.

BTW, I have already taken the laptop apart and put AS5 on the CPU, I am tempted to try a copper mod for the gpu as it currently has a thermal pad on it.

 

Sweet. I've noticed that such features are based off of how much power the GPU thinks it needs, rather than what the user wants.

 

Yeah thanks John, I repped you for your help!

I have always owned nvidia laptop gfx cards so didnt even think to turn off powerplay!

Also the 4570 is so new none of the monitoring software picks up the clocks so I couldnt even monitor it. I tried GPUZ and riva tuner.

 

Thank you.

You can try ATI Tray Tools, it is the last program I know of. You can adjust all GPU settings with it (minus PowerPlay) and setup the On Screen Display to show you the GPU temperatures and clocks when in-game. Provided it detects your card properly.