Alienware M17x-R1 Stutters/Hitching

Hey fellas,

I have an Alienware M17x-R1

Windows 7 64 bit
G-force GTX 260m
4 gigs ram
2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

When playing games I notice little stutters ever 5-8 seconds or so. For example Red Orchestra generally runs around 50 FPS but every so often I see it jump down around 10 FPS and there is a noticeable little hitch or stutter. This happens in other games as well: LoL usually solid 50FPS but I see it fall into the 30s with a noticeable stutter, HL2 runs over 100 FPS, i notice stutters in this as well. I have also noticed poor performance in games that I feel I should be able to easily run: RO2, Risen, Shogun TW.

My system temps seem to be stable as far as I can tell. Gpu never gets above 80 and CPU never gets above 50.

I have tried, Nvidia drivers, Dell drivers (currently). I did a clean install of windows. My laptop is not running off of the onboard card, it is running from the GTX. My laptop is in performance mode and all settings are 100%.

I have run 3dmark 06 and received a score of 10800, which is above average.
My Wprime score is 32 seconds running the 32m test, which is about average.

My GPU and CPU are currently overclocked (temps are fine), but I have tried stock settings resulting in to noticeable differences.

I have pretty much every system monitor, testing program in the book, so if you want to see something just let me know.


Would love some help on this. Let me know if you need anymore info.

Thanks in advance!

Hello, well all I can tell you is check for dust and shut down any unnecessary processes. Judging by temperature your card is working really hard while CPU not so much.

It's possible that you're topping out on vram sometimes, have you tried turning down the resolution but keeping the graphics quality settings?