FPS drops for a minute or two then recovers

Have you cleaned your computer recently, especially the vents and fans? Seeing as you have been using this laptop for around 2 years, this could be your GPU throttling to prevent overheating.

I had an Alienware M17x gaming laptop that after a few years of use would throttle the GPU due to bad airflow to prevent the risk of damage. After cracking it open I saw the fans were covered in dust.

If the laptop is getting hot and airflow is not ideal, the GPU will reduce the framerate dramatically to protect the GPU and allow the GPU to cool down. For me that was generally 10-30 seconds.

This could explain why this is a new issue to games that didn't exhibit this behavior in the past. Your laptop could have had better airflow the first time around (this was certainly the case with me).

This happening during intense action sequences also could be an indicator that as your GPU works harder to perform in those sequences, it becomes hotter and your computer decides to throttle it.

A good way to test for this is to download a GPU stress testing software - since I'm no expert, here's a popular result from a sister site.

I fixed my issue by first cleaning my vents and fans in the laptop, and then taking it to a store to have the thermal paste re-applied to my GPU. Also consider the position in which you use the laptop. If you keep it in your lap or on a soft surface, the problem could be exacerbated by further blocking the airflow.

This could be caused by a number of events.

• A background process could have started
• An area could have not finished loading before you moved into it
• Something could have been taken out of memory

->Also, your game could be auto saving of quick saving, I have the same graphics chip in my laptop and whenever it quick saves the FPS drops to 20 for a couple of seconds, but I have much faster RAM.

But from looking at your specs it might be a RAM issue. 799MHz is very slow and could affect loading times and save times