Insane framerate drop out of nowhere?

[Haunt]

About three days ago I was playing games with a few friends, and my FPS suddenly went to hell. I generall run 50-60 FPS in WoW. My average has now become 10. My computers reasonably new (About 4 months). I've done Virus scans, Malware Scans, Drivers updates, and have gone as far as to try a system restore. Anyone have any idea's? Would really appreciate any advice given.

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU
4GB of RAM
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 260M

This is on any game.. Online, offline. single players, you know name it, it's happening.

[Cilraaz]

Stickies exist for a reason

[Haunt]

Yes I saw that. It doesn't help, this is an out of nowhere drop in FPS, not something like what's shown on that threat. I looked. :/

[Wries]

May be an overheating issue. Have you checked your temps?

[Haunt]

Yeah I did, they're perfectly normal. :/

[Cilraaz]

Yes I saw that. It doesn't help, this is an out of nowhere drop in FPS, not something like what's shown on that threat. I looked. :/

Obviously you didn't. You haven't mentioned specific CPU temperatures. You haven't mentioned checking for CPU downclocking. You haven't mentioned logging with GPU-Z or GPU temps. You haven't mentioned your driver version. It's tough to remotely troubleshoot a problem with no information other than "it's broke".

[nwo]

Stickies exist for a reason

Yeah, and that reason is: so people freak out when they read the first line and say "this crap doesn't solve my problem" and then they open up a new thread "halp, my pc is broke i dunno what to do!"

But on a more serious note... A beefy laptop like that can easily overheat so you have to watch your temps closely since that is most likely what is causing your fps problems. Get a $20 cooler master coolpad for it, open up the case, remove all the dust from the HSF, and you'll be good to go.

[Haunt]

I'm looking at GPU-Z right now, it says my temp is 58.0. I don't know if this is normal or not.
The Driver version is 197.16.
I'm not too comp-savvy, so I don't know what you mean by downclocking.

(edit) Looking at my Sensors on GPU-Z, they're doing some strange things.

GPU Core Clock, GPU Memory Clock, and GPU Shader Clock were all going a bit weird. Does this have something to do with it? They were spiking to the top of the scanner chart.. thing, when I started up a game. Does this have anything to do with it?

[None]

Make sure your laptop power settings are set for performance and not battery saving, if you're gaming the battery saving setting is just going to frustrate you when it decides to downclock your hardware to save power. That temperature is pretty good but make sure it stays below 80 or so celsius.

[Haunt]

Yeah, its on Balanced, i'm just really out of idea's on what could be happening. Last night I downloaded Directx 11, and my games ran perfectly. I turned on my laptop this morning and they were at 10-15 FPS again. I don't know what's going on.

[nwo]

You want to monitor your temps when you put your hardware under stress or full load, not when it's sitting there doing nothing. With that said, you want to look at your temps at the moment when you start having problems or after about 10 minutes of gaming, whichever comes first.

[Haunt]

The temps have been stable the entire time :/..

[Haunt]

Kinda figured the Directx thing would give someone some ideas.. 'cause that seemed really odd to me. ???