Laptop tech support needed

[noobster]

So lately something has been boggling my mind in terms of my laptop. Imagine this scenario:

I'm playing world of warcraft at at around 25 fps and then BAM out of nowhere down to 3 or so fps. 5 minutes later it's back up to 25. Now imagine that happening like every 20 minutes.

I have a 1.6ghz processor, some random radeon graphics card (i know it's good enough to run wow though), and 768mb of memory (which is also good enough to run world of warcraft). I can't figure out what the hell is causing this problem. I know it's not my internet as it's connected to my router and very stable.

Any help is appreciated and thanks beforehand

edit: before it's mentioned all my graphics settings are set to the minimum and it's the only program im running at the time

 

[ZinkOxide]

I'm sure you've tried this, but run a scan for, well, everything. Viruses, spyware, the works. In addition, is this a WoW only problem, or have you noticed in in other games? Or any other program period? If it's only in WoW it's possibly a problem withing the game. If so, contacting Blizzard is probably the way to go.

 

[noobster]

i don't really play any other resource-heavy games like wow so im thinking its not the game but my laptop. i'll do a scan for sure though

 

[cook]

the only thing i can think of is that because youre using a laptop the cpu is using throttling features to reduce heat. its definitely a possibility.

 

[husk]

Yeah, this happens to me when I'm my laptop too (the slowing down then speeding up). If it gets too bad I just flip my laptop over for a bit and let it cool off and that usually solves the problem for a while.

 

[Toshi0220]

Yeah, probably to do with your laptop overheating or something. Try asking the WoW Tech Support forums, they are actually really helpful!

 

[ShadowPuppet]

It would be safe to assume that you're running on external power while playing, then?

 

[PixelTwist]

Buy an external cooling rack for your laptop. That helps keep my laptop cool.

Download a program to monitor the temp of your laptop. If it is running hot, you'll want to get that taken care of before it starts to damage itself. One of my RAM slots stops working when it runs too hot.

 

[noobster]

yes and also yeah that sounds like a good idea pixeltwist, temporarily though i've got a fan set on high right next to it.

 

[Kikuichimonji]

My guess would be that the problem lies in your video card, if it's an issue of hardware inadequacy. Since you're using a laptop, the video card is inevitably going to be integrated, and the labeled video memory might actually be system memory that the video card is sharing. The fact that you only get 30 FPS average on minimum settings with WoW (which isn't really a demanding piece of software) also points to this. If you're looking for a solution, probably the only thing you could really do is to get memory with lower cas latency, if the system slowdowns are resulting from the video card's use of system memory.

 

[DM]

If you need any further assistance, there is a computer help superthread over in Face of Smogon.