Framrate peaks and troughs on laptop while gaming

Hi. A few months ago I bought an Acer Aspire 5536G laptop. I've noticed that the frame rate behaves oddly while gaming. For the most part I get around 60fps, but roughly every 20 - 25 seconds I experience 10 - 15 seconds of a framerate drop to around 6fps. I've updated all my drivers, and tried lowering graphical and sound settings to minimum, but it makes absolutely no difference (my top end framerate improves on lower settings, but the regular 'chugging' framerate remains around 6fps whatever the settings).

I've experienced this on several games, including World of Warcraft, Battleforge (both online and offline), and even when watching videos on YouTube and the like. It seems likely that it's GFX card related, but I'm at a loss as to how to resolve it, or why it's happening.

Here are my specs:

AMD Turion X2 (2.2GHz, 1MB L2 cache)
4GB DDR2 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD4570

So not exactly a performance machine, but should be a match for the games I'm running, especially at low settings. And the fact that it can manage 60fps for more than half the time suggests to me that it is capable on the whole.

I'd be very grateful for any help / suggestions. Thanks in advance.

 

Greetings, Splendid Belt...

Sounds more like some other process or application running in the background...make sure all other programs are disabled, nothing 'phoning home'...

One other quick thought: check your process list, see if the ATI Smart and ATI Hot Key Poller processes are running - if so, disable them...

 

Thanks Caliban. I checked, and the two processes you mentioned aren't running. At the risk of being over-exhaustive, here are the processes I did find:

ArcadeDeluxeAgent
Ati2evxx
avgtray
BackupManagerTray
CCC
CLMLScv
csrss
dwm
EgisUpdate
ehmsas
ehtray
ePowerTray
explorer
GoogleToolbarNotifier
iTunesHelper
LManager
MOM.exe
mwlDaemon.exe
PLFSetI.exe
PMVService.exe
RtHDVCpl.exe
SkypeNames.exe
RtkBtMnt.exe
SynTPEnh.exe
taskeng.exe
taskmgr.exe
winlogon.exe
wmpnscfg.exe

Seems like an awful lot. Would I be well advised to shut down all the non-essentials? If so, which should I leave running?

Many thanks in advance.

 

I apologize - I used the term "processes", when I should have used the term "services"...

Check your services by running services.msc - Black Viper has a good list of what can be safely disabled...

From your posted list, I can see several non-essentials - any one of the updaters, anything that polls the internet can cause frame rate lags...

 

Okay I'll try that, thanks. I had a look at the Services, and the closest thing is Ati External Event Utility. I'll check Black Viper.

Thanks again.