Hello,
I have read through the interwebs the last hours and could not find a real solution to this problem that has actually haunted me for a little more than a month, but only today I recognize it in its full severity. The people I read about, but could not save themselves other than through complete reformating in some cases, all reported the following issues:
Once upon a time everything with their system was alright, but then by usually unknown circumstances one day all of the sudden games, intensive 3d software (such as Maya), and even just high resolution videos would get performance issues to different degrees. The symptoms are that everything starts out fine usually, but at the range of 10 seconds to around 2 minutes into the program, the performance drops, meaning falling fps and even stuttering/scratchy sounding audio issues, all accompanied by the wooshing of a freaked out graphic card fan.
In my case I have a suspect that could have started this, though I cannot really prove it: The new Might and Magic Legacy game which I got. A optically very simple game that nontheless, due to extremly poor programming and zero optimization, still called on so much ressources that it constantly overheated the GPU.(they did some magic faux pas' like not limiting the maximum count of light sources, or letting the most simple and rectangular floor tiles have 5000 polygons and up....
) So with this majesty ruling my hardware for a while, I actually heard the GPU fan roaring in its failsave freak out overdrive mode for the first time since I got the laptop (which is exactly 2 years ago). I played Skyrim with all kinds of HD, lush environment and rich fauna mods without any problem whatsoever, but this retro look game was the first that did push my system to its limits.
..I should have stopped there and read the warning signs, but I didn't really know what could happen at this point and before all my research.
Whatever, so, this is a strong indicator, since those problems that I have now occured at Might and Magic Legacy for the first time, and it is known to cause these problems due to failure of their 3d artists, and now the exact same issues seem to have migrated over to everything else too. Even 1080p movies, though still watchable, have hints of the audio stutter in them that only occurs at extremly high load otherwise.
However, all the other people I have read about could never name the source of the problem - for them it just appeared from one day to another -, and it is also strange that the problem is exactly the same instead of just general crippledness for example, so it might just be incidental. (alot of players also never seemed to have an issue with MnM Legacy)
The reason that only now I saw what has changed -weeks after finishing MnM-, was that I watched aforetime mentioned movie, and then started researching where the problem was. I started some older games and was shocked to discover that every single one has fallen prone to identical problems of MnM. For example in Civ5 (usually not so ressource intensive) I couldn't even handle the game menu anymore. I even rebooted old Skyrim for the first time in who knows how long, and yes, the very same: Perfectly fine for about 10 seconds, then stutter in fps and audio, eventually unplayably crippling lag, shadows in checkerboard pattern etc. . On this opportunity I ran NvideaInspector which I had lying around, and got this cracy temperature spike:
...around 95°C at, I don't know, 30 seconds in maybe. Starting from around 70° already btw. . I don't know to much about exact analysis of hardware I must confess, but that seemed overburdened right from the start even in idle mode.
Thinking this I wondered to what levels it would go back to, and got this after around 10 minutes:
..Actually, even now, as I have researched some more, finally registered on the forum and then wrote all this, it still is on the considered maximum save threshold of 85°! It just won't cool anymore, besides the fan still going rather fast, and showing GPU load of 0% throughout the whole time.(..yes, ofc. I run no program that requires considerable graphic in the background - only this very browser on this very website {double checked in task manager now})
So I guess that is bad. I have no idea if it could be normal for the clock to be at full 675 throughout periods of idleness, but I think it is a save bet to assume No. Something has slipped inside my system that is causing trouble, and I am can only pray to the machine spirits that it isn't truly ruined hardware from MnM.
Ok, that was it so far. If someone has any clue on what could be the issue, I appreaciate the reading investment to here, and would celebrate another writing investment even more
. If more data from me is required, I must warn that I have no knowledge of how to analyze this problem further than this without guidance. I read some people used tools on this problem to produce them logs and such, but I am a newbie to serious trouble (always had a green-red wired thumb with computers so far:ninja, so I have no idea about trouble-shooting on this level, which means I would require names and minimum tutelage on the tools used and such.
Thanks in advance.
-----
P.S.: The driver shown in the screenshot is the latest by the way, and I just updated windows from its last state (sometime in september) to date, aswell as BIOS, yet it changed nothing.
P.P.S.: System Specifications: Asus N55S with i7-2630QM (4x2.0GHz), 8 GB Ram, Geforce GT555M, Win 7 Home Premium 64bit
even more P.S.: When I switch manually to only use integrated graphics, I don't have those issues anymore. ...Well, any game that is too complex to be handled by integrated ability alone will of course have an entirely different set of problems now, but all else is fine where it wasn't before. This proves that the problem must lay with the graphic card (or the systems treatment of it).
I have read through the interwebs the last hours and could not find a real solution to this problem that has actually haunted me for a little more than a month, but only today I recognize it in its full severity. The people I read about, but could not save themselves other than through complete reformating in some cases, all reported the following issues:
Once upon a time everything with their system was alright, but then by usually unknown circumstances one day all of the sudden games, intensive 3d software (such as Maya), and even just high resolution videos would get performance issues to different degrees. The symptoms are that everything starts out fine usually, but at the range of 10 seconds to around 2 minutes into the program, the performance drops, meaning falling fps and even stuttering/scratchy sounding audio issues, all accompanied by the wooshing of a freaked out graphic card fan.
In my case I have a suspect that could have started this, though I cannot really prove it: The new Might and Magic Legacy game which I got. A optically very simple game that nontheless, due to extremly poor programming and zero optimization, still called on so much ressources that it constantly overheated the GPU.(they did some magic faux pas' like not limiting the maximum count of light sources, or letting the most simple and rectangular floor tiles have 5000 polygons and up....
..I should have stopped there and read the warning signs, but I didn't really know what could happen at this point and before all my research.
Whatever, so, this is a strong indicator, since those problems that I have now occured at Might and Magic Legacy for the first time, and it is known to cause these problems due to failure of their 3d artists, and now the exact same issues seem to have migrated over to everything else too. Even 1080p movies, though still watchable, have hints of the audio stutter in them that only occurs at extremly high load otherwise.
However, all the other people I have read about could never name the source of the problem - for them it just appeared from one day to another -, and it is also strange that the problem is exactly the same instead of just general crippledness for example, so it might just be incidental. (alot of players also never seemed to have an issue with MnM Legacy)
The reason that only now I saw what has changed -weeks after finishing MnM-, was that I watched aforetime mentioned movie, and then started researching where the problem was. I started some older games and was shocked to discover that every single one has fallen prone to identical problems of MnM. For example in Civ5 (usually not so ressource intensive) I couldn't even handle the game menu anymore. I even rebooted old Skyrim for the first time in who knows how long, and yes, the very same: Perfectly fine for about 10 seconds, then stutter in fps and audio, eventually unplayably crippling lag, shadows in checkerboard pattern etc. . On this opportunity I ran NvideaInspector which I had lying around, and got this cracy temperature spike:
...around 95°C at, I don't know, 30 seconds in maybe. Starting from around 70° already btw. . I don't know to much about exact analysis of hardware I must confess, but that seemed overburdened right from the start even in idle mode.
Thinking this I wondered to what levels it would go back to, and got this after around 10 minutes:
..Actually, even now, as I have researched some more, finally registered on the forum and then wrote all this, it still is on the considered maximum save threshold of 85°! It just won't cool anymore, besides the fan still going rather fast, and showing GPU load of 0% throughout the whole time.(..yes, ofc. I run no program that requires considerable graphic in the background - only this very browser on this very website {double checked in task manager now})
So I guess that is bad. I have no idea if it could be normal for the clock to be at full 675 throughout periods of idleness, but I think it is a save bet to assume No. Something has slipped inside my system that is causing trouble, and I am can only pray to the machine spirits that it isn't truly ruined hardware from MnM.
Ok, that was it so far. If someone has any clue on what could be the issue, I appreaciate the reading investment to here, and would celebrate another writing investment even more
Thanks in advance.
-----
P.S.: The driver shown in the screenshot is the latest by the way, and I just updated windows from its last state (sometime in september) to date, aswell as BIOS, yet it changed nothing.
P.P.S.: System Specifications: Asus N55S with i7-2630QM (4x2.0GHz), 8 GB Ram, Geforce GT555M, Win 7 Home Premium 64bit
even more P.S.: When I switch manually to only use integrated graphics, I don't have those issues anymore. ...Well, any game that is too complex to be handled by integrated ability alone will of course have an entirely different set of problems now, but all else is fine where it wasn't before. This proves that the problem must lay with the graphic card (or the systems treatment of it).
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