I've bought a while ago this laptop (http://languish.org/forums/index.php?topic=4863.0) and I'm rather happy with it.
However, I notice that it keeps having hicups.
When playing game or running a hardware intensive app (say, Photoshop stuff), the system will freeze for a a split second or up to a second before resuming normal operations.
As this seems to coincide with a suspicious clicking from the internal hard drives (and happens, for example, when a game loads a new music piece from HD), I'm guessing this has to do with data transfer between HD and RAM. I've suspected the HDs going to sleep and taking this moment to re-start, but I've tweaked these settings with no success.
I suspected that the VRAM file was the culprit, but at 16GB RAM this seems silly.
I tried an app that will prevent HD read heads from going to an "idle" position. No luck.
Usually it's not a big bother, but in some cases it becomes rather annoying: Shogun 2 TW doing the hicup fairly often whenever you click something. Or in Skyrim or similar games where this hicup has the effect of a server lag in an MMO, causing you to circle a dozen times or jump off a cliff.
Any idea what the real culprit might be and how to eliminate it?
It might be due to HD indexing. Try turning that off.
I did that. It seems better, but not by much.
In games I notice that it seems to happen more often when the game loads a new sound (dialogue, music etc.).
So I also updated my realtek drivers (laptop has no name onboard audio) and reduced the audio quality (to 24bit, 44100Hz). Will have to see if this helps.
I also wanted to toy with the audi hardware acceleration - wasn't that in DXdiag? I can't seem to find it anmore.
New drivers have marginally improved things, but I still get a "hicup" every couple of minutes when I play Skyrim (usually just before somebody says something when I pass them, like guards).