CPU randomly idles

[BRUTAL]

Hello,
recently I've been noticing performance issues on my laptop which have made it slow and no as responsive as it should, like while gaming my fps dropps low when this problem happens.
I have an intel turbo boost monitor installed, and i've noticed that when these performance-drop-spikes occur, the monitor displays the cpu activity bar as if it is idling (attached picture), like it isn' required to process anything, but it shouldn't be doing.
Does anyone have any idea why it could be doing this and how I could fix it?

 

[Ghan]

I would guess it's getting too hot. See if you can find out what temps the CPU is experiencing when it does this with a program like CoreTemp.

 

[BRUTAL]

I'll let the picture do the talking.
Are these temperatures high enough to explain the performance drop? I wouldn't know .

 

[Ghan]

I would say absolutely. 80C on a laptop CPU is bad news indeed. The Tj Max (the temp after which Intel says the chip may start to suffer damage) is only 100C. That value is by no means good, however. You should never even get close to that temp.
I get to 80C on my desktop i7 920 if I run Prime95 maxing out the CPU at 100% for an hour or more, and that's bad enough. If you're hitting this with only moderate usage, then there is a problem.

Make sure the vents on the laptop are clear and clean, and maybe try to use the laptop on a flat, cool surface to maximize airflow. Also make sure the fan(s) is/are working properly.

 

[BRUTAL]

I guess my laptop has temperature problems, one of my cores randomly spiked to 86°C just a minute ago.
And yea, all I am doing is running a firefox browser, itunes, and minecraft, and it's getting this hot from just that.

The vent area seems clean from the outside, though I'll try taking a look inside.
But the laptop is always on a flat surface (I use an old clipboard, lol).
As for your last point, I'm not sure how I'd find out whether the fans are working properly?

 

[Ghan]

If you can hear/see them spinning, then that's usually a good sign.

What model laptop is it, and what video card does it have?

 

[BRUTAL]

Yea I can always hear it going, not sure if I've ever tried looking through the vents to see it though.
It is a dell studio xps 1645, and it has an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730.

 

[Ghan]

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19320784.aspx

 

[BRUTAL]

Hm, I came across that link a few weeks ago, but didn't think much of it because the fact that those posts are from 2 years ago.

 

[Ghan]

Is your laptop fairly new? I didn't look around to see if they were still selling that model.

 

[BRUTAL]

Uh, I believe I got it back in the summer of 2010; and iirc this model isn't sold anymore. ><
I was thinking maybe it had something to do with the thermal paste used inside my laptop.

 

[Ghan]

It's odd that this has just started happening recently. Though, if you had the problem mentioned in that post and you never addressed it, it could have lead to these issues later on.
Do you still have any kind of warranty/support on the machine? If so, I'd call Dell and see what they say about it. If you haven't changed anything recently then it sounds like this is not something that you can easily fix.

 

[BRUTAL]

Yea I guess you could be right. I don't believe I have any sort of warranty, though I'll have to double check.
But if that is the case, I'll just have to try buying a cooling-fan-pad in hopes that will help.

 

[BRUTAL]

Bump, the problem described in the first post still occurs even at low temperatures.

 

[Ghan]

What are you doing when it does it? What is the max temp that CoreTemp records for the CPU?
Can you check the temp of your graphics card when it's happening? http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/