Video lag problem with 2010 mbp on lion

[exe163]

Hi, I am having some problem recently with my mbp. I have the 330m 15" version. I did a clean install when lion came out. My system has 8 gigs of ram and SSD as boot drive and 640GB storage drive (disk drive mod). Never had any major problem until recently.

When ever I try to play starcraft 2, my system would lag down to crawl few minutes into it. I have plenty of free ram, free space on all harddrives and I never had this issue before. I tried restarting my computer with most of the items turned off and the problem still occurs. I am guessing the system is running out of vram but I really don't know why this didn't happen before. Any idea on how to debug or fix the problem?

Thanks in advance.

 

[MagicBoy]

Unlikely to be VRAM. More likely to be high temperatures causing the CPU/GPU to throttle back.

 

[exe163]

I have CPU: 72c, GPU: 74c right after I quit starcraft when it starts lagging.

Normal? Too high? how do I fix it?

 

[snaky69]

I have CPU: 72c, GPU: 74c right after I quit starcraft when it starts lagging.

Normal? Too high? how do I fix it?

Those temps are perfectly normal, heck they're even on the low side for a MBP used for gaming.

 

[MagicBoy]

I have CPU: 72c, GPU: 74c right after I quit starcraft when it starts lagging.

Normal? Too high? how do I fix it?

That's fine.

 

[exe163]

Any idea what else could be the source of the problem?

Every time after a restart, I can get the game to run smoothly for a minute or so into the game. After the lag occurs, if I try to relaunch the game, it starts the lag at even at the menu. This problem also occurs with my other steam games that ran fine before.

P.S. Is there a way to check the % of vram used?

 

[exe163]

Any idea what's wrong with my system?

 

[MagicBoy]

Any idea what's wrong with my system?

Not without getting my hands on it.

I sincerely doubt it's VRAM given that Starcraft 2 runs on the 128MB ATI X1600 from 2006. If it only happens in SC2 then it's likely a software issue. I am not familiar with the game but first steps are to ensure OS X is up to date and the game has the latest patches applied.

If you get slowdown problems with other games or heavyweight apps then take it into an Apple store for a Genius to have a look at.