varying framrate and cpu usage

[BigSteve]

Ok, so after being ingame for about 5 minutes my framerate drops to around 15 fpsand my cpu usge pretty much doubles. after a minute or so everything goes backto normal, then my cpu usage doubles and framerate drops and the cycle starts again.

Its really strange, my graphics are on low, no shadows or anything,
I have a 2.0ghz core 2 duo, 2 gigs of ram vista 32 bit and a geforce 7600.
My processing speed is set to high performance ( im on a laptop )

This issue only seemed to start after spring recent update.

Any ideas?

[LordMatt]

Threaded optimizations?

[BigSteve]

already checked that, its always off. Could it be some kind of cpu overheating?
my gpu is always at a steady 58 degrees though.

[LordMatt]

Is your CPU in fact overheating? You could see if you get similar slowdowns while running something like prime95.

[BigSteve]

ive not tried prime 95, i'll dl it
my computer doesnt slow like this during any other games, company of heroes is very graphically and cpu intensive and that runs fine and dandy ><
I'll try getting prime

[BigSteve]

Problem solved Matt, turns out my CPU was overheating a bit and the power management stuff was slowing it down to compensat (thanks Peet)
I cleaned out my fan and heatsink and its running all dreamy now!
Thanks for the help too Mattykins!

[bashar]

nice