unexplained fps drops

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L

laptop user 777

Commendable
Apr 14, 2016
2
0
1,510
i have been experiencing FPS drops in games. The intensity of the game seems to determine the rate of the fps drops per minute but no matter how simple the game is and how low i put the quality settings i still get the fps drops. The fps drops consist of dropping to around 3 fps for a few seconds.

every time I've seen a thread about this the suggestion is that the laptop/PC is over heating and should be cleaned out. i use an external fan and constantly monitor temp so i know its not. i have also looked into 'parked cores' and found this is not the problem.

my specs are as follows:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 960m
intel(r) core(tm) i7-4720hq cpu @ 2.60ghz 2601 Mhz, 4 cores, 8 logical processors
8GB Ram
windows 10
notebook


any help would really be appreciated
 
Solution
C
There are more than one reasons for this to be happening in a notebook. The most probable cause would be thermal throttling. Either the gpu or the cpu reach a high temperature and in order to bring it down (or prevent from rising) they drop their performance. Another reason would be your storage. Is it a classical hard disk drive or an ssd. THe hdds used in notebook are pretty slow since battery consumption is the first priority (instead of performance). Hdds could cause those drops.

Also your laptop should be about 2 years if I am correct. Have you ever cleaned it internally? Laptops tend to gather a lot of dust that adds significantly to performance issues.
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C

CBender

Reputable
Dec 30, 2015
1,018
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5,960
There are more than one reasons for this to be happening in a notebook. The most probable cause would be thermal throttling. Either the gpu or the cpu reach a high temperature and in order to bring it down (or prevent from rising) they drop their performance. Another reason would be your storage. Is it a classical hard disk drive or an ssd. THe hdds used in notebook are pretty slow since battery consumption is the first priority (instead of performance). Hdds could cause those drops.

Also your laptop should be about 2 years if I am correct. Have you ever cleaned it internally? Laptops tend to gather a lot of dust that adds significantly to performance issues.
 
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Solution
L

laptop user 777

Commendable
Apr 14, 2016
2
0
1,510
i have a program that increases fan speed to increase cooling and a i use an external fan with it so i don't think that temperature is a problem. As for dust, i have acer dust defender which reverses the airflow every 3 hours to clear out any dust. it is also only 6 months old.

i do have a SSD but my windows 10 is on there so i put all my games on my hdd. i think that would be a the problem. is there any way to remedy this besides putting my games on the SSD?
 
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C

CBender

Reputable
Dec 30, 2015
1,018
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5,960
Unfortunately I don't think so. It is a very common problem. Essentially you hdd speed bottleneck your entire hardware. So although you have quality components, at the end everything hangs from that hdd. The only thing that comes to mind is to buy one of those hybrid drives. They offer high capacity with an ssd working as a buffer. They provide better performance with a 'small' price premium. But as long as the game demands frequent or large read/writes I don't think the problem can go away.
 
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R

rc1262

Dec 22, 2018
2
0
10
"more than one reasons for this to be happening in a notebook" well thanks. Who would have guessed...



Ever found an actual solution? I have the exact same problem since about a year and im tired of hearing random guesses like 'dust, hard drive, ram, bottlenecks...'. In games (cpu demanding like warthunder and planetside 2) the drops are coming every few minutes like a total freeze. From stable (capped) 60 fps to 3 fps for 4-6 seconds. Really strange is that it can go sometimes 2-3 weeks without any drops, so all seems fine and then they come again and im in hell.
my specs:
msi ge60 2pe apache pro
i7-4720HQ
12gb ram
c: 256gb ssd (2x m.2 sata raid0) + some sandisk ssd 960gb
gtx 860m
all newest drivers and win

Let's just assume that it isn't the temp and there are no real bottlenecks, since it usually runs all fine and stable (even at 90°C), ok? And also lets assume it's nothing with the energy options in windows or nvidia drivers, because i've tried all that already, ok? I've run a ram diagnostics program 2 months ago (because of a hint), took a half a day, but the ram is definitely not the problem.
Finally i see 3 plausible sources:

  • Something with (mobo?) energy supply: fps drops are similar to when i pull the plug out and energy supply is switched to battery, in which case the fps will be capped at 30 but then all stable.

    something with gpu: when keeping an eye on the task managers gpu graph, it seems that the drops occur after the gpu hits100% workload

    something with cpu: when keeping an eye on the task managers cpu graph, it seems that when drops occur and the gpu hits 100% the cpu load goes down to 15% (from 50-80%)

    something with windows. i will reinstall windows sooner or later and just hope it goes away.
I dont plan on keeping this laptop forever but i hoped it would last longer.
 
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