Question Abysmal Performance With RTX 2060, Dell G5 5500

almightymints

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So I’m running a Dell G5 laptop, it’s pretty new. It has a RTX 2060, i7-10750H, 16 GB RAM and a decent SSD. My GPU drivers are up to date. I updated the BIOS. I basically updated every driver I can imagine. I made sure to set the 2060 as the default card for all programs in NVIDIA Control Panel.

I booted up Halo Infinite last night and had to bump settings down to low and was still only getting 10-15 FPS at 1080P. Forza Horizon 5 actually optimized itself to high settings and it was running fine throughout the intro, then suddenly dropped to 15-20 FPS. I switched to low settings and it was still in that FPS range, no difference. Forza’s GPU tracker said I was hitting 98-100% capacity on the GPU, even when at a complete standstill in the game and with no other NPCs or large objects around.

Adding to this that Halo Infinite suddenly started running at 60 FPS on Low settings. I switched to medium to test it out but it ran poorly again. When I switched back to low again, it still runs terrible. Very strange - I had a moment of bliss there but it disappeared quickly after I changed settings.

Something else that happens occasionally is I'll boot into a Halo match, get a steady 60 FPS for a few minutes, then it'll suddenly drop to and hover around 10-20 FPS again. Almost seems like the laptop is heating up and throttling itself because of it or something.

Any idea what’s going on? I find it odd that even switching the settings to low makes no difference to the FPS. Even odder that everything was running fine in Forza for the first 10 minutes or so...
If you need any other info from me to help, please let me know!
 
Nov 22, 2021
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This is just a fact based post to describe my issues and Dell's effort to support the issues with my new Dell G5 5500 RTX 2060. The laptop was purchased early June of this year. It took 3.5 weeks from clicking "buy" to arriving at my door. Since powering the laptop on I've experienced the following. Most of my issues documented on this forum, to summarize why I do not recommend the G5 5500 or G5 SE to anyone.

liteblue
 
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almightymints

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Nov 12, 2017
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This is just a fact based post to describe my issues and Dell's effort to support the issues with my new Dell G5 5500 RTX 2060. The laptop was purchased early June of this year. It took 3.5 weeks from clicking "buy" to arriving at my door. Since powering the laptop on I've experienced the following. Most of my issues documented on this forum, to summarize why I do not recommend the G5 5500 or G5 SE to anyone.
Glad I'm not the only one having issues with this laptop. Seems like total junk.
 

almightymints

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MSIAfterburner or HWInfo are good free tools for this
I ran it in the background while playing Halo and this is what it read consistently:
  • GPU - 300 MHz (almost seems like the game isn't utilizing my 2060. MSI Afterburner is reading the card the though)
  • MEM - 5500 MHz
  • TEMP - 97 degrees Celsius (which is crazy high, think that could be the issue?)
 

Karadjgne

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Gpu isn't spinning up. Should be much higher than that. Usage isn't the problem. I'd almost say that you have the laptop to run igpu, not the discrete graphics with those numbers.

It's a laptop. They run hot. 90's is very normal for a gaming load. If running igpu graphics, 97 would d be right inline as that is in the cpu too.
 

almightymints

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Gpu isn't spinning up. Should be much higher than that. Usage isn't the problem. I'd almost say that you have the laptop to run igpu, not the discrete graphics with those numbers.

It's a laptop. They run hot. 90's is very normal for a gaming load. If running igpu graphics, 97 would d be right inline as that is in the cpu too.
That's a good point. Seems likely. Any idea what I can do to get that thing running again? To be clear, I already set the 2060 as the default card in Nvidia Control Panel and in the Graphics settings in Windows.
 
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TommyTwoTone66

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This seems like a pretty straightforward case of overheating.

I dont know in what world 90C is “normal” even for a laptop. It will be thermal throttling at 88C and at 97C the GPU is basically disabled.

You need to open up the laptop and clean all the fans and heatsinks out with isopropyl alcohol, and you need to replace all the thermal pads and paste. After that this laptop should work normally again.
 

Karadjgne

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Laptop gpus are not standard add in gpus like what goes in a desktop. They are pretty much a daughter board with attached heatpiping and usually cooled by the laptop fan, having no fan of their own.

Desktop temps don't apply to laptop/mobile cpus/gpus. The card might claim its a 2060, but that's just marketing, it's closer in actual performance to a 2050-2050ti level desktop gpu.

And yes, gaming temps or other heavy boosted workloads will easily see 90's in a laptop. You are looking at cpus with a TDP of closer to 25w at most and a gpu pushing 40w or so, all with no real cooling system in place other than a clamshell fan. Couple that with minimal and restricted airflow, and battery heat, a laptop is a cooker.
 
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Karadjgne

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^ yes. Most laptops with discrete gpus have such a high current draw, it'd deplete the battery in a mere matter of minutes in some cases. To get around that, Windows power saving will bypass the dgpu if no power in is detected, forcing use of the igpu no matter if set otherwise.
 

TommyTwoTone66

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And yes, gaming temps or other heavy boosted workloads will easily see 90's in a laptop.

True enough, but the laptop will absolutely be throttling both CPU and GPU at that temp.

It seems the cooling solution on the G5 5500 isn’t very good:

https://www.dell.com/community/Inspiron/Inspiron-G5-15-5500-hitting-100c-easily/td-p/7683237

The “accepted” community solution in that case was to undervolt the CPU. Not a bad idea, but I would 100% recommend cleaning it out first.