Random game performance drops

[aspro]

Okay as I have never really played games on this machine I am not sure how long I have had this problem.

The problem being that when playing games on the Macbook (2Ghz CD with 2GB ram, OS X 10.4.8) it will seemingly randomly have a massive drop in performance for a few seconds before returning to normal again (~30fps to 2-5fps in World of Warcraft, ~60+ to ~5-8 in Warcraft III.) Both these games are universal binaries and seem to run very well apart from these drops.

I have tried to see what processes where running while these drops occur and it seem to simply be that the game in question drops its CPU use from ~100% to about 30%. No other processes seem to take up the rest. Though I cannot test WoW as my subscription has run out I do recall that when I was checking the Activity Monitor when the drops were occuring in that game I did notice jumps in kernel_task cpu utilization.

I don't know whether this has anything to do with the random shutdowns I used to have as I havent played any games on it from when I got that fixed (around september IIRC) until recently. Because it is happening to both games I believe it is either a hardware or OS X problem.

I would greatly appreciate any ideas on how to investigate this further as it is annoying to say the least having the game almost stall what seems like every few seconds.

Thanks!

 

[4np]

Hmm I don't know; could it be the processor or the GPU scales down when it is getting too hot?

[offtopic]
Nice town, Hobart I've been there in 2001. Any web development jobs there?
[/offtopic]

 

[aspro]

Oh, I forgot to mention that when the drops are occuring the sounds stutter too sometimes sound glitches like constant ringing (like what you get in your ears after a rock concert etc.) persist afterwards.

I am going to install bootcamp and see if the issues occur in windows.

 

[aspro]

Another update: I cannot replicate the problem under bootcamp, so I think the problem must be something to do with Mac OS X. I'm going to wait until 10.4.9 and see if that fixes it.

 

[romerom]

Another update: I cannot replicate the problem under bootcamp, so I think the problem must be something to do with Mac OS X. I'm going to wait until 10.4.9 and see if that fixes it.

10.4.9 is out and unfortunately, it isn't fixed

REALLY wish Apple would get on this Do not think its a Blizzard issue.. its being thrown from the kernel..

 

[aspro]

I recently took my Macbook in for a service and they found that my fan/logic board was faulty. Since getting those fixed I have not yet experienced any more of the interrupts. I am fairly sure now that it is caused by overheating, though as warranty doesn't cover software work I was not able to get the techs to look at it so I can't confirm that.

If I don't get it again in the next couple of weeks I'm going to say it is caused by excess heat.