Frame rate problem!!

[username_3622419]

Frame rate problem!!

Hi guys, I've a very big problem. When I play with this game I've a frame rate problem. When I start to play, the frame rate is about 40-35 but than a lot of minutes, it fall down to 10! It seems very strange! Can you help me?

This is my PC:
Alienware m14x r2
CPU: intel core i7-3610QM 3.2 GHZ con turbo boost
RAM: 8 GB:
Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 1GB.

I've just installed the last version of the game and the last drivers of NVIDIA.

This is a result of a test made with EVGA Precision:
GPU: 69° 99%
Memory usage: It was stable on 350-400 MB.

 

[Jim_The_Great]

I don't think your rig is the problem since it's better than the recommended specs.Maybe it's the temperature.69 degrees is pretty high and if your problem occurs after a while it maybe caused by the GPU overheating over time.Try blowing the dust off and purchasing some extra fans to install in your case.I had similar problem with my CPU while playing this game which caused my PC to shut down with no warning.

EDIT:Have you tried playing the game on lowest settings possible?

 

[GuyNwah]

69C isn't bad at all for the GPU temperature. 99% usage is normal, the way this game runs. The 650M is a suitable GPU, even the DDR3 models are good enough.

With an Alienware M14x, CPU overheating is also a possibility. Lots of complaints about that. If the CPU runs too hot, it will dial its clock and multiplier down to protect itself. So I'd check my CPU temperature next.

If you can record temperatures in real time, you want to look for an event that shows some part of the system heating up, to the point where the frame rate drops, then cooling off (probably rapidly).

 

[username_3622419]

Thanks for the answers. My GPU model is 650M DDR5. When i play The Witcher 2, the temperature of my CPU is about 75°-85°.

 

[Jim_The_Great]

Thanks for the answers. My GPU model is 650M DDR5. When i play The Witcher 2, the temperature of my CPU is about 75°-85°.

My PC would shut down when the CPU temperature reached 60 degrees.You definetely need some extra fans.

 

[prometheus34572]

My PC would shut down when the CPU temperature reached 60 degrees.You definetely need some extra fans.

Kind of a low temp for that to be happening but I guess that's how your bios is set up or something. But temperatures in the 60's-70's to me are very low and nothing to be worried about. I run reference design cards in SLI and playing demanding games I can reach mid 80's easy and still that doesn't really bother me that much since these cards are designed to handle that kind of temps perfectly fine, they can even work just fine in 90's but once they hit over 100 they throttle down clocks to save the chip from overheating. The noise is kinda annoying though but nothing a headphone cant fix.

There's really nothing much you can do to cool reference design cards to begin with anyway's. I have over 11 fans pushing air in and out my case giving great airflow and 3 big fans for my Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler, but still with all that air cooling going on, I cannot cool down my video cards at all, they heat when they want to heat up. The only thing that would cool these things down is to change their reference cooling to aftermarket coolers or go liquid cooling really. I cant imagine how hot high end laptops must get, all that power cramped up in that little tiny space with very little cooling.

So yeah temps in the 60's are meh, I wish I could get temps in the 60's with 100% GPU usage.

 

[GuyNwah]

Because this is a laptop, aftermarket coolers aren't really in the range of things the OP could do. Well, cooling pads, but not a monster Noctua cooler.

75-85C is too hot for the CPU, even an Ivy Bridge. It will start cutting back at about 75C. 69C is not unhealthy for the GPU, but others have reported that M14x's with nVidia GPUs start cutting back near that temperature.

So my best guess is your M14x is going into thermal limiting, possibly on both the CPU and the GPU. It is not reaching unsafe operating temperatures, but it is reaching the range that the built-in monitoring starts avoiding trouble.

Monitoring programs that can produce a strip chart readout (MSI Afterburner will do it for the GPU; there are many that will do it for the CPU) are very handy for this. Run the monitoring programs while the game is playing. As soon as you see the frame rate drop, alt-tab to the monitors. You should see a temperature drop that was at the same time as the frame rate drop. The peak temperature, just before the drop, is the mark at which the M14x declared an overtemperature and cut back.

Notebook cooling pads help some, but the real problem is that "gaming" and "notebook" are two words that don't belong together. Alienware made a lot of compromises to get all those bells and whistles into the M14x's case.