Question Regarding Underclocking

[itscometothis]

Hello,

I have been having issues with my gpu recently. I am using an Acer Aspire 7740G laptop with a Radeon HD 5650 graphics card. Every now and then the computer will crash and display random colors on the screen with a weird noise (from the audio) and the only thing left to do is to hard reset it. I'm sure this must be an issue with the gpu since it doesn't do this in safe mode (as safe mode uses onboard graphics). I read that underclocking the gpu could be a solution. I downloaded MSI Afterburner and I see that the core clock (MHz) is maxed at 550 and the Memory Clock (MHz) is at 800. I don't know much about clocking cpus/gpus, so I was wondering if any one here could advice me on the matter. Is it a good idea to underclock and if so, by how much? The temps for the GPU and CPU idle at about 45 degrees Celsius so I don't think overheating is the issue... Thanks for any help you can provide!

 

[itscometothis]

I should also mention that while monitoring the MHz and GPU Usage% it has randomly spiked to 500 MHz (80%) for seemingly no reason. Is this normal? Are GPUs supposed to do this?

Edit: I see that both Core Clock and Memory Clock are running at 500 and 800 respectively (in other words, maxed out). However Usage % is at 0. All I have open is Chrome as I write this. Is this normal?