Suddenly Games Aren't Running Smoothly

[IronSkull]

I've been running Call of Duty Modern Warfare on my computer for the last few weeks without any problems, the game was as smooth as silk. I installed Medal of Honor last night and it was running fine as well.

Suddenly, both games are beginning to lag (not online, this is single player offline mode) and the frames jump from one to the other in both games. It's really annoying me as I know my computer can take the load since they've been working fine in the past, this suddenly seems to have popped up. I did a restart and what not in case it was processes in the background causing a problem, even a shutdown and then a fresh boot-up, but the problem is persisting.

What do you think I should do? DirectX 11 is installed on my PC.

I have an Intel i5 2.5 GhZ processor, 4 GB of RAM and my graphics card is a 1GB Intel HD 3000.

[xendrome]

Check your fans, video card could be overheating and clocking down... clean the video card/CPU fans...

[IronSkull]

Check your fans, video card could be overheating and clocking down... clean the video card/CPU fans...

I'm on a laptop, and this thing is fairly new.

[Tarvis123]

It is plugged into power while playing games correct?

[Wakers]

Any sort of load apart from the games will cause poor performance on an Intel HD 3000 - it's not a proper graphics card, it's built into the processor and it is very weak.

Given that you're using that chipset, the slow down could come from anything. It could simply be that as you progress through the games it has areas which the chipset can't handle as well as it can others.

Make sure you're plugged in while playing, too. Running on battery will underclock the CPU.

[IronSkull]

Travis, yes my laptop is plugged in while I'm playing the games.

Wakers, you have a good point, however it's a long shot don't you think? Medal of Honor has been acting like that since I started playing it, and I'm fairly deep into COD: MW for it to be suddenly acting like that, I've been through some very graphic intensive parts of the game and it sailed through.

[Wakers]

Hmm..yes it's a long shot. I just wonder if your Windows install has become a bit cluttered or bloated and it's having an impact.

[IronSkull]

Alright, quick update. Medal of Honor is the only one that's lagging now, COD MW is working fine. Strange.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

If you take the 3000 out of the equation by lowering the settings to Minimum, do you still get the stuttering? Could it be a pegged hard drive?