Severe performance and FPS issues on an old but capable video card

[ijustwanttoplayeq2]

Hello,

I am running an olllld dell XPS laptop i got when it was old for its time in 2003.

I still have it to this day but have been unable to play video games because of bad FPS, even when I'm running the games in high performance profiles. It has run perfectly even in quality based profiles before. I can't remember when this started happening.

Here are some basic specs:

Intel Pentium 4 3.40GHz
3.39 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM

ATI Mobility Radeon 9800 256mb

My question is whether this is a hardware problem that is causing this or an external influence on my computer. If there are any possible solutions that don't involve a fried video card, i'd be happy to hear em, if I'm gonna have to go through all kinds of you know what with dell though be gentle about it cause that may not even be possible without throwing down some loot cause the warranty's definitely up.

[Calum]

Sounds like it could be a heat issue.
Turn the laptop off, use a cotton swab or something to hold the fans still, then either use compressed air or just blow out the vents, which should hopefully remove any built-up dust.

[Dias de verano]

Pentium 4 at 3.40 GHz was not even released yet in 2003, so I don't see how that spec is "old for its time" in that year.