hey everyone,

I bought a 1 year old Dell Precision M6300 Laptop off of ebay a few weeks ago. I realize it is not a gaming laptop but the deal was too good to pass up, and I figured that specs were enough to handle most games.
The specs are as follows:

2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo T7500
80GB HD
4GB Ram
Nvidia Quadro 1600m w/256 Deticated video memory

I belive my issue has to do with driver software but I cannot be sure. Initally when the laptop came, it had the old users stuff on it so I wanted to do a clean install. Before formatting the drive, I installed Crysis on it just to see what would happen. I was able to get decent performance with a mix of Med and High settings, so I thought I was set. I did a clean install of XP Pro, installed the drivers from the dell website and then attempted to install Dawn of War 2. Not only did the game lag but the intro video was so choppy that I couldn't even make out what was going on. I realized that DOWII was taking up 70-90% of my CPU and the rest was taken up by other system processes thus causing the lag. My Pc meets the recommended specs for this game and on my desktop with a P4 3.4GHz and 9600GT the processor only runs at about 30-50% in game max settings. Next I tried Titan Quest, an older game, and this too lagged during the intro movie (and the Nvidia logo vid lol). Just to see how bad this really was, I installed WarCraft III (released 2003) and even that game lagged during high activity. Just as a frame of refrence, if I try to play an HD youtube vid, the proc goes to about 60%.

What is the most likely cause of this issues? I have the latest video card drivers so I don't think it is that. I have wasted 2 days already trying to figure this out, and any help would be appreciated.

Hi do you get any crashing or errors or BSOD's to indicate the problem also are all the drivers from Dell including the graphics?

Nope, there are no error messages, no crashes. Just poor performance. I actually just tried something and noticed that I could run Titan Quest windowed for about 5 min before the lag began. It is strange because the processor was only running at about 80-95% but there was still bad lag.

Ok, I just found out something that may be helpful.

When I first turn on the laptop anything I do will run fine (games, videos ect.)

After 3-5 minutes, the lag gets bad and I have to stop whatever I am doing.

If I try to do anything else after this point, the processor will be at very high levels and any video playback will be horrid (like 1 frame evey 3-4 seconds.)

The Processor goes back to normal with a restart.

Maybe it has something to do with the processor getting used too much initally and then getting bugged? Anyone seen this before?

Is the graphics and other drivers from Dell? Have you tried downloading and reinstalling it also is your direct x up to date?

The drivers are from the Dell website. I tried both the newest NVidia drivers and the ones that were released from Dell but neither seemed to make much difference. I have direct X 9.0c.

I noticed one other thing about the 3-5 mintues and then lag. The lag occurs when the cpu fan kicks on, after a few mintues. After the fan turns on, everything takes 5x the cpu it should normally take.

Does the laptop get hot?
It could be an overheating issue.
http://majorgeeks.com/downloadget.ph...645693c3caf633 Speedfan
It will tell you temps.

If there is a fire Icon next to the hardware its bad