Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I’m running Guild Wars 2 on a Thinkpad T420 with Windows 7 (specs below). When I first run Guild Wars 2, I get a normal and acceptable frame rate (>60 fps) for about five minutes of game play at which point the FPS suddenly and inexplicably drops to around 7-10 fps. If I restart Guild Wars, I still get the slow framerate, but if I restart my computer, I can enjoy another five minutes of playable framerate before the behavior repeats.

So I know my laptop should be able to supply a better frame rate than it is, and I don’t know what is causing this sudden drop. Thoughts?

Specs:
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
CPU: Intel core i5-2520M, 2.5 GHz
GPU: NVIDIA NVS 4200M (~2762MB memory)
RAM: 4 GB
^ That’s all I think should be relevant, but let me know if I should provide any more information.

Thanks.

thermal throttling. your cpu/gpu is overheating and slowing down to prevent permanent damage. Try cleaning out your fans/heat sink.

…and if you take out your CPU’s heat sink to clean it, don’t forget to apply a new coat of thermal gel before putting it back on, or that heat sink is just a big piece of metal sitting in the middle of your computer doing jack squat.

I just mention this because it’s something I’ve forgotten before.

Thanks for putting me on the right trail.

I didn’t really feel like taking apart my laptop, but I stumbled a website that suggested it could be the battery’s fault. Took my battery out and everything is fine. I get a steady 50 fps now.

This is not the original battery that came with the laptop, although it is by the same people who made my laptop. In any case, it has never worked that well and seemed to get burned through very quickly. So maybe it’s been causing my laptop to heat up this whole time, and I just never noticed.