[FIXED]Laptop problem

[pixy]

Hi folks, recently whenever I play my games in my laptop they all suddenly lag. I've had this laptop for 8 months and I have never had this problem when I play my games on the laptop, they all ran smoothly before this happened.

The problem
Whenever I start the game, it runs smoothly for about 2 to 5 minutes, but then suddenly the FPS rate drops significantly. For example; on Battlefield 3 all medium settings, my FPS starts at a steady 40 fps, but then after about 2 minutes it drops to below 20 fps. Same goes for L4D2, it starts on 60 FPS, but then it plummets to below 20 FPS after about 20 minutes. For some reason, after I quit the game, the lag effects other areas of my laptop as well such as when firefox, microsoft word etc. The problem disappears whenever I shut down my laptop and restart it after about 30 minutes to an hour but it starts again when I play a game.

I updated my GPU and I tried clearing up my harddisk space but it didn't help much. Any solutions, recommendations guys?

Technical info about my laptop;
Alienware M15x
> Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
> 6GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM (1 x 2GB + 1 x 4GB)
> Intel Core i7-740QM Processor (1.73GHz, 4Core/8Threads, turbo boost up to 2.93Ghz, 6M cache)
> 1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M, driver version 285.62
> 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
> 15.6 " Full HD (1080p)

[Fuzzy]

Sounds like a heat issue - I'll instruct you more later as i'm on phone now

[Julio.]

With my old laptop (which used to do this) I found it helped by putting something under the back of the laptop to prop it up to give it better airflow.

Alternatively you get get a laptop cooling base with fan in for very cheap.

^ These solutions are for if you do not wish to open up your laptop. With a screwdriver and shizzle.

[SushiSaurus]

Sounds like over heating to me. You can try installing SpeedFan and see if there is a notable rise in temperature when the lag starts to hit. Although laptops generally get quite hot, quite quickly any how.

[b2311e]

It sounds like its overheating for sure.
Try letting as much air out as possible, and if it feels hot, then try to lower your settings to put less demand on the CPU and the GPU.

The noticeable lag might be due to your processor 'throttling', which is the process of easing strain on itself and effectively reducing its power so it will produce less heat.

[pixy]

Thanks for the input folks.

It was an overheat issue after all. I bought myself a laptop cooler fan and it fixed the problem.