clean your laptop out, and you can also try capping your framerate to ease the burden, idk something like 150 should be fine.

I would like to state this only a terrible purchase for someone who really wants a gaming PC. Everyone else this is a Solid Purchase at a pretty decent price.

I must ask, how and why did you learn that?

It does look like a really good quality monitor, but I am not sold on the price/performance of it. idk I just feel like for that price you can get a better IPS monitor, or a similar one for less.

It only happens for a split second i.e. about .5s so it's hard to open a menu when it happens. No mouse acceleration at all.

also a mouse test I did, apparently the smoothness is about normal for a G400 on this test, though my precisions seems to be about 12% lower than some other people for precision

http://i.imgur.com/DgXNutQ.png?1

bump in case anyone knows something

also, i've just fully reinstalled steam and tf2, and the problem is still there.

going to try playing CSS or something to see if it happens on it too.

-edit-
I am not 100% sure on this but I am pretty sure it happens in CSS as well :(

No, no, no I meant like your actual power settings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwTGT5Q8BGM

set it to high performance and you should be good.

so recently as in the last 2 weeks

tf2 has begun to stutter a significant amount more than it has in past, but my FPS never goes below 100, but I still get random stutters every few seconds and they last for only a fraction of a second. I haven't moved, my ping is always 20ms - 80ms depending on location and my interp has remained the same.

I think it might be my Logitech g400 mouse, but I don't have the typical USB disconnect issues like many other users have reported.

I thought it could be a heat issue, but none of my components go above 85c (they used to go above 95c, but I got a laptop cooling pad now).

The stutter is so bad it feels like I can barely move my crosshair, yet I still see players moving (though they're not as smooth as they should be, but it seems to affect my crosshair placement alot more than it does players moving around)

System:
CPU: i7-2630QM @ 2.0GHz
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600
GPU: GTX 540m 1GB GDDR3
(yes it's a laptop, and yes I have fixed my power settings)

Well the only other problem that could be going on is your power options not being high performance.

Your problem is DX9 http://teamfortress.tv/forum/thread/13870-poor-framerate-with-dx9-fire

since 6s doesn't have pyros that often you never suffer from how poorly TF2 DX 9 handles fire, but in HL their's at least 2 pyros, and odds are you're standing near burning players when you experience your fps drop.

Best way to fix this is run in DX 8.1
in case you don't know how to do this
Goto Launch Options for tf2, and put in "-dxlevel 81" without quotes

Latest Nvidia Drivers that works with DX 8.1
32bit: http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/win8-win7-winvista-32bit-306.97-whql-driver-uk.html
64bit:http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win8-win7-winvista-64bit-306.97-whql-driver.html

Do you currently run the game in Dx 9?

also OCing your processor might not be an option, as I believe you don't have a motherboard that can unlock your CPU and your CPU didn't come unlocked either.

-edit-
nvm I just looked at your steam account screenshots
you're definitely running tf2 in DX 9. Willing to bet your FPS drops are around Burning Players / Fully Charged Medics.

try -dxlevel 81 in launch options and if you have a weird strobing effect, you'll need really old drivers (since you use Nvidia), but this is only if you want to fix your fps drops. Merry Christmas!

also check my thread about DX 9 fire if you want to test out any of those situations
http://teamfortress.tv/forum/thread/13870-poor-framerate-with-dx9-fire

Latest Nvidia Drivers that works with DX 8.1
32bit: http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/win8-win7-winvista-32bit-306.97-whql-driver-uk.html
64bit:http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win8-win7-winvista-64bit-306.97-whql-driver.html

Had this problem last night except no blackscreen (mostly because I use -novid)

how I fixed it

-Uninstall My Custom Hud
-Verify Game Cache
-Restarted

and tf2 works fine again.

I mostly like this HUD. Only problem is I hate how the stock hud and consequently your hud looked with the scoreboard overlay.

I thought diamondback only did 102 dmg crits?