Dell Studio 15 CPU Underclocking Under load

[Sampsy]

I have noticed while casually gaming on my laptop that after a while in any game my fps will suddenly drop by a considerable margin. It isn't an extremely powerful laptop; I have a studio 15 with an i3 350m, HD 5470.

I was just playing around in Guild Wars when one such frame rate drop occured and noticed the desktop CPU monitor was reading 80-100% load. Nothing was listed under the task manager as being a significant drain other than GW. So I opened CPUz to check things as something was obviously wrong and it appears that my laptop has formulated a cunning plan to boost my gaming enjoyment. Rather than remaining at stock speeds of 2.27GHz it has decided, while under load, to lower the multiplier all the way down to 2 and run a core clock of 266Mhz instead. Is my laptop retarded?

 

[olivier renault]

What's the temps? That's usually the reason CPUs throttle. Could be a problem with extended periods of high load on the CPU, or you have defective cooling (fan problems, bad contact at the heat sink...).

 

[Sampsy]

Core temp is reading Core 0 @ 57 & Core 1 @ 56. Processor raised multi to 3 then 4 since my last post. Under the current power plan when my laptop is plugged (it is plugged in atm) in it is supposed to run at a minimum of 100%, on battery 50%. This is clearly not the case.

Edit: Coretemp and CPUz are not listing the same clock speeds. CPUz is now at 665Mhz (133 x 5), Coretemp 927Mhz (133 x 7)