Can anyone help me with fps issues (PC)?

Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 @ 2.00ghz
4GB RAM
ATi Mobility Radeon 4750

I'm running everything on medium/low, msaa turned off.

It's a 2 month old laptop and the only things I've installed on it are NBA 2k10 and Dragon Age Origins. The game ran fine for the first month or two but recently it's been slowing down mid game. It doesn't really make sense as it runs perfectly for 5-10 mins but then just slows to a crawl (with 0 new processes starting in the background).

I'm certain my PC is free of any spyware and viruses.

I'll try a defrag but that's not likely to change anything as I've barely installed anything on this system.

This just confuses me, I know my laptop is not the greatest but had no problem running the game for many hours with 30~ fps for the first months and now it consistently slows down every game. Really annoying :/

You are probably having heat or power issues. Make sure the laptop is plugged in when gaming, not just running off the battery or that it is not automatically going into "low power mode." Your cpu might be throttling down due to high temperatures, so check to see if you can disable that feature in the BIOS. Disable any antivirus programs and disconnect from the internet.

Try alt-tab when 2K10 starts to slow down. Look for anything suspicious in the Task Manager. Wait a minute or two and then go back into 2K10. If it runs normal but then slows down again, it's an overheating/throttling problem.

Whenever 2K10 slows down, I use a program called speed up my pc by uniblue. It let's me prioritize cpu power to where I need it. I recommend trying this or something similar.

this is also exactly what is happening with my laptop right now. it was also working fine during the first months then now it lags during games.I also had the same findings as stated by pdub, and now he confirms that my observations are right! thanks pdub.

thanks also al ka pwn, ill try to test the program

just like to follow up on this,,

Is this a game problem or laptop specs problem, will this be fixed if i change some specs in my machine? or this is just simply keeping the laptop cool to avoid the lags?

thanks!

Probably a laptop problem since you said that the game ran fine for the first few months. Do what Pdub said:

You are probably having heat or power issues. Make sure the laptop is plugged in when gaming, not just running off the battery or that it is not automatically going into "low power mode." Your cpu might be throttling down due to high temperatures, so check to see if you can disable that feature in the BIOS. Disable any antivirus programs and disconnect from the internet.

You can create a custom power option for your laptop to make sure it's getting enough juice and enable the game to run faster, you can even set it to a 'high power mode' while running on batteries with the obvious drawback of a fast discharge.
With added power means added heat. Get a laptop cooling fan, cooling pads suck imo. Better yet, get two. I have a laptop cooling fan and a small fan that acts as a 'vacuum' near the exhaust port of the laptop. I also have custom power options for different situations such as 'games', 'download', 'scan', etc.