1) It started with artefacts on the screen when playing Pirate Galaxy. The label on the enemy would stay in it's location on the screen long after the enemy was gone or I even went to orbit. It no longer does that but it did it for quite a while there.
2)Shutdowns. The machine will just shut down (usually when playing that pirate galaxy game which is a multiplayer game with medium graphics I would guess) It stops dead. Starts right up again and after boot and all can go back to playing. This is not consistent but if playing for a while will do it without cool mat for sure, sometimes it will even with cool mat. I am guessing this is a heat issue.
3) Now it hesitates. For example, watching a youtube video or any other streaming video it will run for a minute then sound will keep going normally but video will freeze for about 3 - 5 seconds then pick up where the sound is. It does this very consistently now for the last 2 - 3 weeks. There were times even while I was typing in this text where it froze and I had to wait for the 3 letters I typed to appear before I was able to move on.
I ran furmark for about 30 minutes yesterday, temp got up to 97 degrees C. Rendering of the donut was a little jerky but it never shut down.
what do the guru's think?
Specs:
Dell Studio 1558
Microsoft windows 7 pro 64 bit service pack 1
Intel® Core i7 CPU Q 840 @ 1.87GHz
Clock Speed 1.9Ghz
L2 Cache Size 1024
RAM
Page File Size 8,124.5MB
Available Page File 100.00 %
Virtual Memory 16,247.3MB
Available Virtual Memory 83.52 %
DIMM_A 4,096.0MB
DIMM_B 4,096.0MB
250 GB HDD
DVD/CD-ROM Drives
PLDS DVD+-RW DL-8ATS ATA Device
Disk Drives
WDC WD5000BEKT-75KA9T0 ATA Device
Display Adapters
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers
Intel® 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family 4 Port SATA AHCI Controller - 3B29
Ricoh PCIe Memory Stick Host Controller
ATA Channel 0
Ricoh PCIe SD/MMC Host Controller
ATA Channel 1
ATA Channel 4
Ricoh PCIe xD-Picture Card Controller
thanks for your wisdom, of course if you need any more info I will be glad to supply it.