What's wrong with my Graphic card and how do I fix it?

[varun706]

Hello,

I have a Lenovo Ideapad Z500 laptop. Bought it in 2013 and till last December it worked perfectly.

Then, one day it refused to turn on and I had it serviced which took two weeks. Turns out the motherboard has experienced an electric short. I received the laptop in somewhat working condition last week. The components are all the same, the BIOS version is the same one I had flashed back in 2014. I tried Cinebench R15 just to make sure the CPU and GPU were working as they used to.

The CPU was just fine scoring 495 points in multi threaded benchmark. The GPU however, rendered the graphics benchmark at around 29 fps. I used to get 48-49 fps in that particular benchmark.

I tried running CSGO and the performance was still not as good as it was before. All games stutter for 5 seconds or so every 10 seconds.
I don't know what to do? Any suggestions on the matter is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[BadActor]

Try updating your drivers and make sure you're using the same graphics settings as when you tested earlier. Make sure your power plan is set to "High Performance."

 

[varun706]

Thank you for the reply. I was using the latest Nvidia Drivers. The laptop's always set to High Performance mode and plugged into the mains. I tried rolling back to the previous stable drivers too which didn't help BTW. I tried MSI's Afterburner to see how hot the GPU was getting and it was always above 90C. But the odd thing is that the ventilation ports on the left of the laptop doesn't get warm that much.

I did notice that the lag occurs when the Core clock is at 450 MHz or thereabout. It keeps fluctuating.

I will check whether the graphics settings have changed, although the 20 fps decrease in the synthetic benchmark kinda tells me that maybe the GPU is throttling under high temperatures.

 

[BadActor]

Sounds like it. You may just need to clean the dust from inside.

 

[varun706]

Yeah, that does seem to be the case.