Random drops to 0 FPS in some games

[Red_Fox_Rogue]

I've been running into some issues lately with a weird freezing issue in games where the game drops to 0 fps for between 1 and 5 seconds, before resuming as normal. Audio seems unaffected.

This only occurs in certain games. The worst seem to be Hearthstone and Minecraft, but much more complex games like CSGO, Overwatch, and Mirror's Edge run without a problem.

CPU and GPU usages don't spike, and remain relatively consistent for what I'd expect for playing the game. Temperatures are staying comfortably below 65 celsius.

The one curiosity is my disk utilization is very erratic, usually staying around zero, but sometimes spiking to 100%. These spikes seem to correspond to the freezing.

Also, even when my disk utilization is at 100%, the read/write speed seems to only be around 10-20 MB/S, despite the fact that my disk is rated for 75-100.

Is that just an old disk acting up, or something I can fix without buying a new one?

 

[helpstar]

which other hardware do you use? cpu, gpu, psu, motherboard

check hdd with its manufacturer´s tool

which application/process is using the disk? use taskmanager, ressource manager

 

[geofelt]

I suspect your games are taking a checkpoint save.

If you have not yet done so, convert windows "C" drive to a ssd.

 

[Red_Fox_Rogue]

which other hardware do you use? cpu, gpu, psu, motherboard

check hdd with its manufacturer´s tool

which application/process is using the disk? use taskmanager, ressource manager

CPU is a 4-core intel i5
I have an integrated intel graphics card, and an nvidia Geforce 640M
I don't know what PSU I have right off hand, and I'd rather not open up my computer if I don't have to. Let me know if you think that might be the problem, I'll crack out the screwdrivers.
motherboard is an acer MA40_HX

The test of the disk you recommended revealed nothing wrong.

The spikes seem to be caused by different things. The most frequent individual culprits are "system and compressed memory", "antimalware executable", and "local security authority process", but more often than not, task manager shows a large disk utilization, but doesn't actually show that much usage between all of the programs.

 

[Red_Fox_Rogue]

I suspect your games are taking a checkpoint save.

If you have not yet done so, convert windows "C" drive to a ssd.

I'd like to avoid buying anything if I can help it. Maybe that's the solution, though.

 

[helpstar]

Ok. It's a laptop then.

Run 3dmark basic edition (firestrike) and post the link which comes up at the end in your browser

 

[Red_Fox_Rogue]

Ok. It's a laptop then.

Run 3dmark basic edition (firestrike) and post the link which comes up at the end in your browser

Yes it is. Sorry, I should have mentioned that.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11444623

it notably did not freeze during all of its tests, however I wasn't able to check disk usage because the tests got excited when I tabbed out.

 

[helpstar]

how much free space is on the hdd?

let the laptop on over night, so eventually updates could be made

run furmark for about 10min

run prime95 (version 26.6) with coretemp for about 10 min

peak temperatures while the tests are running?

install memtest86+ on an usb flash drive and boot from it
do you have a ramdisk mounted or do you know why 3dmark says you have about 10GB RAM with just one 8GB module?


update nvidia drivers to version 368.81
use intel update utility to update the igpu and the chipset