I have a Sager 9750 with AMD FX 60, nVidia 7800, and 2 gigs RAM. My
problem is that when I am playing graphics-intensive games, the FPS
(normally silky smooth) drops to around 10 for a short period
before going back up to normal. This occurs fairly frequently, with
the FPS drop happening about every 10 seconds and lasting for about
3-5 seconds. I have formatted, and updated all drivers, but the
problem persists. It is slightly less frequent if the computer is
very cold, but it still happens. All the computer's vents are
clear, and I even put the machine up on a cookie rack for more
airflow, but the FPS drop still occurs. Does anyone else have this
problem? Any ideas? Thanks.

I've never seen a definitive answer from anyone so i'll give the definitive answer. It is definitely heat. I've gone through 3 vid cards now, i've replaced the cpu, mb has been replaced, and the issue would keep coming back. I assumed that whoever puts these together knew how to effectively apply thermal paste and to use something reputable like arctic silver. On all the cards i have had, they have globbed it on. It doesn't help that the heat sink and the gpu don't make the best contact even when screwed down. After playing around with differing amounts of arctic silver, i found the perfect size was a tad bigger than a pin head. That's all you need. I had a 20C drop in temperature since doing this. I think it will have to be redone every 6 months or so to keep the card from burning out as it does eventually get back to high temps.

In conclusion, clevo didn't think their cunning plan through when putting these cards in. The fan is barely adequate, and the general airflow going through the card is minimal at best. Hope this helps someone else who was trying to find a fix. I never believed other people when they claimed it was heat related and the vendor claimed over and over that it coulnd't be heat. Never listen to a vendor.

I'll have to add to this post since there is no need to restate the evident. I tried calling Sager and PCTorque where I bought my Sager 9750 at but they just insisted that I send it in to be looked at.

I know it's heat related because they did tell me about the Fn+F2 feature that will boost your cooling fan to 100%. It helped with the frequency of the FPS drops but it still occuring.

I've completely taken this laptop apart, clean the entire inside, fans and heatsinks. I used AS5 (thermal paste, artic silver 5) on the GPU and placed new heat tape on all of the Memory chips. Reformatted and still no luck.

Still a very nice computer but because of the heat issue, playing the latest titles at times is watching a powerpoint slide presentation at 10X normal. It's plays smooth for about 20 seconds, and then the FPS drop to about 10 for approx 5 seconds. This repeats with all of the following games.

COD4
Bioshock
Mass Effect
Witcher
Age of Conan

I've given up fixing this and can't see paying 400 or so bucks for a 7950 video card. I've got a 7800 now. I've learned my lesson and will never buy another laptop for gaming purposes. To expensive and upgradability is very limited. Great computer otherwise though but it has been an issue ever since I've purchased it.

I think this has more to do with the 7800 than anything else. I had the same problems with my 5720.

Read this old thread that I used to discuss the issue....

http://www.notebookforums.com/thread175414.html

In the end I just found that using a notebook cooler or propping the computer up and blowing a fan across the bottom is the best solution.