FPS lag spikes

[skippy72294]

Alright. I hate asking for help but... I'm at the limit of my patience and software knowledge on this. Whenever I play Battlefield 3 (and it only seems to be BF3 at this point), my game will be running fine then all of a sudden will drop to such a low FPS that the game sound cuts out. It used to run on medium at 30-35fps with no problems for hours on end (like a month or 2 ago), but now I have it set to low and it gives me problems. I've tried new Nvidia drivers but they didn't help at all so I rolled them back.
Something like this...
(-) means the game is running smoothly and (_) means it isn't...
----------__________----------__________----------__________
And it keeps doing that until I quit the game. It doesn't do that in Team Fortress 2 or any other game I have.

Specs
Lenovo Y570
Nvidia GT555m, screen res @ 1366x768
Intel Core i5-2410m
8Gb RAM (upgraded from 4)

[sfade]

The behavior of the system you describe leads me to strongly suspect thermal throttling - especially because this is a mobile device.

You might try making sure the intakes, vents and fans are all clear. Laptops are rather notorious for getting quite congested over time.

Example: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...old_laptop.jpg

[skippy72294]

Originally Posted by sfade

The behavior of the system you describe leads me to strongly suspect thermal throttling - especially because this is a mobile device.

You might try making sure the intakes, vents and fans are all clear. Laptops are rather notorious for getting quite congested over time.

Example: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...old_laptop.jpg

I haven't cleaned it in like... a month... I'll try that and see if it helps.