This is an old problem that has plagued this system since it came out. You are playing a 3D game and frame rates are great until suddenly they drop to less than 1/5 normal speed. The game is unplayable. You sit and wait and after a minute or two the game speed picks back up to normal and you can go back to playing.

Most people react and say things like try turning down the graphics detail to improve performance, etc. This is not the issue and you have to experience it to understand. It's as if the video card is downclocking itself after prolonged gaming periods and then spools back up to normal speeds after it cools down for a minute or so. The process then often will repeat itself every five to ten minutes.

I've run third party software to log CPU speed and GPU speed while this happens and as best I can tell there is no indication that anything is downclocking during gameplay. I even try keeping the GPU fan manually set to maximum in case it's a cooling issue. Temperatures are reasonable and fan speed doesn't seem to affect the problem one way or another.

Sager lists the current and latest graphics drivers for the 5720 as 79.31 available for download from their website. These are from last winter and NVidia's latest drivers for the mobile 7800GTX are 84.63 and they claim to be compatible with the Clevo M570A but they don't specifically list the Sager 5720.

I have tried both drivers going back and forth using driver cleaner in safe mode between installs and while the latest drivers offer greater overall performance there is no difference in the occurence of this problem.

I did have this problem way back last Winter the first time I tried to upgrade to NVidia reference drivers from 79.31 and solved the problem after reverting back to 79.31 but lately the problem has been coming back.

I was wondering if there has been anyone who knows exactly what's causing this to happen on the 5720 and how to prevent it.

I had this same problem with mine. Cooling is your problem. Rather, cooling is your solution.

I ended up going a bit overboard and cutting a square hole out of my desk and installing a 120mm fan with a switch and a wall-wart transformer to power it. I can play BF2 all day without any issues, but FEAR and Prey do cause it to slow-down as you described. I now play those games with the fan running and I experience zero moments of slowdown. When I first installed the fan I left it off and started up FEAR. About ten minutes in it slowed down to about 8 fps. This slowdown period normally lasted about 1 - 1.5 minutes. I immediately reached under the desk and turned on the fan. Within seconds I was back up to 60 fps.

I'm not suggesting cutting a hole out of your desk, but you may want to look into getting a laptop cooler. One thing to note : The fan on the bottom of the laptop sucks air in the bottom and blows it out the back. All of the laptop coolers that I looked at sucked air from the laptop and blew it out the bottom of the coolers. This is not what you want. You want to increase air flowing through the cooling veins, not create a partial vacuum.

I hope that helps.

Thanks!

I figured cooling was the issue and since I travel with my laptop an underdesk fan or even a bulky portable cooler are somewhat impracticle but it could just be time to take it apart and clean the excess dust out again.

What I was wondering is what is actually causing the slowdowns to occur? If cooling is the solution than the graphics card must be auto downclocking to save itself from potentially damaging heat. From the temperatures I've monitored it doesn't seem to be dangerously hot so the safety threshold must be set too low. The system should be able to run intensive 3D games without overheating in it's default configuration at normal room temperatures.

Maybe there is something in the drivers that can be changed to increase the threshold slightly to prevent this from happenning since I doupt the graphics card is getting so hot that it's actually in danger of damaging itself. On the other hand I suppose it's possible the slim and sleek design of the M570 is just a little bit too tight for the 7800GTX to breath properly. The 7900GTX should run a little cooler with it's smaller manufacturing process. Other mobile PCs sporting the 7800GTX are much larger.

Good question. Check back if you find an answer. For now, I'll stick with my cheap, low-tech solution. :P

I have the exact same problem with mine. I ran rivatuner and let it record the temps for 30 min playing FEAR until it slowed down. The max temp went up to 79c when it slowed to a crawl. I had the fans on max the whole time. I took the heatsink off and applied artic silver 5 and now the max is 74c but it still locks up

The problem seems to be that the "max fan switch" affects primarily the CPU and not the GPU. If this is true, then it would seem like a flaw in Sager/Clevo's design.

I only just recently got Battlefield 2, so I hadn't seen the problem myself until now. I'm about to contact Sager about this.

I started playing the new FEAR expansion and also dark messiah of might and magic and they are unplayable due to the framerate slowdown problem. Since I bought this laptop as a desktop replacement for games, this is pretty unacceptable. I have contacted SAGER but have not as of yet heard back. Maybe they should replace the 7800gtx with a cooler 7900gtx.

I contacted Sager. After sending a few emails back and forth about checking for dust, replacing the thermal grease, etc. they agreed to send me out a new videocard to replace my borked one and I'll send back then dead one to them. I hope the new one is a better revision or even (crosses fingers) a cooler running 7900.

This is definitly a heat problem. I experienced the same issue with a 7800 GTX in a Sager 9750 (much larger than the 5760, but the gpu cool is worse still!) I had to go overboard and create my own custom cooling pad for it. The Go 7800 GTX runs at 65W while the Go 7900 and 7950 GTX run at only 45W. By adding external cooling, I eliminated the problem completely, but when it was all said and done, it was pretty ridiculous. Definitly under-engineered to deal with the heat.

Well, it's good to know that it isn't just me!!

I've been posting all over the CS:S forums because I figured it was something to do with my hardware just conflicting with CS:S; because when I loaded up the game I was receiving a "minimum video requirements not met" and freaking out because this laptop is twice as good as my desktop.

But, I even start with low FPS =( I start out at 60FPS (my desktop runs at 100-110 flawlessly) ; I would have assumed that this would hit 150ish at least. Then after about 10 minutes it slows down to 20FPS and makes it unplayable. It eventually pops back up to 40 after a few more minutes; but usually I can't stand to play while it works its way back up.

Any solutions, or ideas, for my initial low FPS?
I didn't think it was getting that hot, and the previous owner apparently has never had any problems with the FPS slowing down like this =/

Cyn what are your machine specs?

Ive got the 5720

Pentium M 760
2 gb ram
7800GTX

Problem has gotten worse.. it started to affect Unreal Tournament 2004 now... even that is throttling down. I'm pretty sure it has to do wtih cooling like you guys said.. but I don't know how to fix it.

Basically, the bottom gets REALLY hot.. I put a house fan on it, and it took longer for the throttling to happen, but after about 20 minutes of gameplay it came back.

What should I do?
It didn't used to be like this.. it just started overheating recently.
I'm thinking a fan inside must have died or something of the sort.
I'm pretty sure I stil have a warranty of some type.. should I send the thing back and get them to fix it?

The guy in the other thread (next line down) said Sager replaced one of his RAM modules and the problem went away. Try testing your RAM because that's what I'm going to do. I'm not optimistic though because I suspect the RAM must need to really get warm for this to happen. I don't see how RAM errors can cause these slowdowns.

Like you said the problem appears to be a throttling issue but I've tested that possibility thoroughly by monitoring temperatures and all aspects of system performance such as CPU, FSB, RAM, and GPU speed while playing FEAR. The slowdowns with sudden and consistent frame rate drops to about 20% normal occurred but none of the parameters were out of normal. I've even tried disabling the CPUs thermal protection feature (not a wise thing btw) and replacing the thermal paste on all the heatsinks.

The problem occurs in some games but not others. I can run BF2 at 1920x1200 all day with no problem but when playing Portal I had to turn the settings way way down just to be able to get through the slowdowns without tearing my hair out.

Anyway, I'm going to run some tests on memory....I'll post later.

I'm not sure if anyone still follows this problem but it seems after more than a year of frustration and assumed heat/throttling issues the real culprit has been found.....

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9740960-7.html

I had tried everything from every CPU/GPU monitoring/clocking app I could find to tearing the thing apart and re-seating the CPI/GPU heatsinks with arctic silver. All with no luck. As it turns out the culprit is my Logitech MX518 gaming mouse!

Here is a possible solution that may or may not work for you....

http://forums.vugames.com/thread.jsp...art=0&tstart=0

Bump.

Since someone else seems to be having this problem still with a newer machine and an 8700M I figured I should bump this thread. I never did manage to solve this problem and it was hitting me again when I played portal. I've changed pretty much everything at the software level including switching to Vista 32bit and all new drivers (of course).

I'm wondering if anyone else is having these problems on the newer Sagers.