Severe and random FPS drops in games

Dyslexda

Distinguished
Jan 10, 2011
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For some unknown reason, I'm experiencing severe FPS drops randomly in games. I'm on an Asus G50VT laptop with a fresh install of Win7 64bit (within the past 3 weeks). Specs are:

P7450 CPU @ 2.13ghz
4gb RAM
9800M GS

I used to be able to run games fine, back when it was still using the default Vista install. I turn the graphics down to the lowest possible setting, because I prefer speed over pretty. However, while I can start games up just fine, I will randomly get massive FPS drops every five minutes or so. I don't know exact numbers, but I'd estimate anywhere from 1-3 FPS at its lows, down from maybe 30-40 at its highs. This occurs across the board in all games, from TF2 and BFBC2 to Starcraft II and Empire: Total War.

I've checked through all graphics options; everything in the Nvidia panel is forced to "off" (such as all the AA), so that's not the problem. I ran PerformanceTest 7, and the results were roughly in line with other baselines from similar configurations.

The only thing I can think is that it's the graphics drivers. I once tried rolling back to a really old version of the Nvidia drivers (around 180, I think), and that solved the problem, for the most part. However, I'd really like to avoid doing that; the new drivers have to be conflicting with something, because not everybody's having this problem. Does anyone have ideas? Thanks!