Major CPU Spikes in game with M17x R2

[WYLCaRD]

Hey there all you Techmeisters!

I've been experiencing some major CPU spikes while playing Battlefield 3. It seems to occur at 10-15 second intervals.

I've turned everything to low or off with only the screen resolution staying on 1920x1200 because the resolution didn't make any difference to the spiking.

In game, I've done a performance overlay and the spikes really do go off the chart when it hits. Frame rates drop from 60-70 down to 10 and I even loose audio till the spike settles. Obviously I get killed a lot because of it - nothing worse than having someone in your sights then *boom* CPU spikes and you're dead

Anyway, I've tried Razer's Game Booster and Process Lasso to inhibit background programs from interfering - this is after I've already shut down all non essential processes and services - and no difference.

It's like there's a bottleneck in the processing. Anyone with the same issues?

My system's got a Q9000 quad CPU, SLi GTX 280's and 8Gb RAM. Mind you in between spikes, the game runs pretty sweetly.

Cheers.

[Guest bifnewman]

I had an issue like this. You should check your CPU temps. If the CPU is overheating, it will throttle the clock and it will run a lot slower to maintain operatable temperatures. If the temperatures are too high during load, then I suggest repasting the CPU.

[WYLCaRD]

I had an issue like this. You should check your CPU temps. If the CPU is overheating, it will throttle the clock and it will run a lot slower to maintain operatable temperatures. If the temperatures are too high during load, then I suggest repasting the CPU.

Thanks for the reply. As I'm not familiar with PC geekspeak, treat me like a 6 year old. How would I 'repaste' the CPU? Heating sounds like the most likely culprit along with the cores in the CPU not optimised for the game software.

Will rigging the cooling help?

[Guest bifnewman]

Thanks for the reply. As I'm not familiar with PC geekspeak, treat me like a 6 year old. How would I 'repaste' the CPU? Heating sounds like the most likely culprit along with the cores in the CPU not optimised for the game software.

Will rigging the cooling help?

Thermal paste is between the cpu core and heatsink and its a heat conductor that allows the heat to transfer easily from the cpu to the heatsink where it is cooled out by the fans. Here is a very good tutorial thanks to this great community.

http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m17x/29-%5Bphotoguide%5D-cleaning-replacing-thermal-compunds-gpu-cpu-m17x-r2.html

[WYLCaRD]

Thanks! It's ppl like you that make this place tick.

Anyway, I did a little more research and found that I may have to upgrade the CPU because the Q9000 doesn't like too much thrown at it. Possibly a QX9300 I'm thinking, which I'll have to gather more info for.

Also, I managed to recover from an almost disastrous bios reflash while trying to update - posted on another thread. Got the bios (A09) off the Dell US site but it apparently wasn't compatible. I was wondering if I need to update the bios sequentially? That is going from A03 (which is what mine is) to A05 then A06 etc? Or can I just go straight to A10 and bypass the rest. I'm seeing on here that the A10 seems to be a popular version - with unlocked varieties to boot.

Thanks for the help.

[Brian]

Your system is an M17x R1 so be very careful you don't end up trying to flash it with M17x R2/3/4 bios else you may end up with a bricked system. Unfortunately given the age of the R1 I don't think any bios mods were developed for it.

You may be able to overclock the cpu using Intel xtu for a performance boost but like @bifnewman said, keep an eye on your temps.

Sent from my GT-N7000

[WYLCaRD]

Your system is an M17x R1 so be very careful you don't end up trying to flash it with M17x R2/3/4 bios else you may end up with a bricked system. Unfortunately given the age of the R1 I don't think any bios mods were developed for it.

You may be able to overclock the cpu using Intel xtu for a performance boost but like @bifnewman said, keep an eye on your temps.

Sent from my GT-N7000

Thanks for the advice there Brian. After the attempted bios flash, my system now starts up then stalls just before windows loads up. All I get on the top left is a flashing cursor. However, after a soft reboot (Ctrl,Alt,Del) it loads properly and still runs ok. Tried having a look at the bios and nothing seems out of place. I guess my system is that old even the bios can't be updated (A03). Oh well, at least it's still running.

Also, with the spikes, a friend suggested running the game without SLi using just one GPU and guess what? It worked! What I can't work out is why Alienware built the M17x with 2 GPU's but a powersupply that's too weak to run them both at the same time under heavier conditions. With the one card running, I was even able to increase some detail levels and have no performance hit at all. Stoked!

[elkay]

It's definitely power-throttling, I had that problem in some games on my R1 and R2. Basically, the BIOS is throttling either the CPU or GPU when power consumption surpasses what the power brick is rated for. I used a Kill-A-Watt to verify it. You can use ThrottleStop to get around it. There are a bunch of threads you can Google rather than me get into specifics here on how to do it.