Question Drop in Performance After Battery Drain

[LithUchihaX]

Hi everyone! I have come here in search of help with my laptop. It is a Lenovo Legion Y520-15IKBA Laptop (Lenovo) - Type 80WY. The integrated graphics card is an Intel HD Graphics 630, with the dedicated graphics card being a AMD Rx 560. It's not a terribly powerful laptop, however, it runs the games I play, such as League of Legends just fine. Well it used to. ):

A few days ago, I was playing on a solid constant 60 fps. However, the night before I unplugged my laptop for the first time in many months (a bad idea, I expect many of you will tell me). The battery dipped under 20% in the middle of a game, and it went from a solid 60 fps down to 10-15. Immediately I plugged in the charger again, but the performance issues still remained. I notice in the task manager that it seems like my dedicated graphics card is always at 0% use.

I have tried numerous things including reinstalling my graphics drivers, updating BIOS, setting my power plan to High Performance, resetting my laptop entirely and starting fresh, tinkering with the AMD Radeon settings, but nothing has worked to restore my computer's performance as it used to be. I noticed that not only in just games, but general performance with things like Discord or just watching videos was much slower as well.

The temperature of the laptop always seems relatively stable, and I believe everything in terms of drivers and updates are good. Any help would be so much appreciated! Any info you guys need I will happily provide, I just hope to fix this.

 

[Lutfij]

Might I ask which version of the BIOS you're currently on for your laptop? You will also need to mention which version of Windows 10 you're on? We're currently on 1903. Did you source your GPU drivers from AMD's support site?

Apparently the support site for your laptop lists the GPU as an Nvidia GPU.

 

[Ketchup79]

I couple options here - if you set the power profile to high performance on battery mode, it may stop it from going to integrated video on battery. Another option is to go into the BIOS and set the video to AMD. It is probably set to auto, or something like that, which will let it auto-adjust based on power input.

One final thought is that 20% is the point at which most power management software will say "hey, I need to conserve power." and will automatically switch the laptop to integrated graphics, which is probably a good idea for the life of your battery.

 

[LithUchihaX]

Thanks for the replies guys! My BIOS Version/Date is 5JCN25WW, 7/18/2018 and my version of Windows seems to be 1809. Ill try updating it to the current version. I also did get the drivers straight from AMD's support site. Ah there were two version of my laptop, the one with the Nvidia is the IKBN, mine is the AMD with the IKBA.
I practically use my laptop as a desktop, in the fact that 90% of the time its at home, always plugged in (because the battery life itself when I first got the laptop was already not very good, so I've resorted to just using it plugged in always). So pretty much, this problem only occured after I let my laptop go onto battery once. Ill try some more things in the meantime.

 

[LithUchihaX]

Alright guys, this is really strange and still doesn't make any sense to me but my problem was solved by an odd suggestion by my gf. She nonchalantly told me to "Try letting the battery drain to zero and then charge it again," and it worked. My laptop is once again running optimally. Literally can't believe it was this simple. Does any of you guys know how?

 

[Ketchup79]

The actual charge of the battery and the amount it was reporting to the laptop were out of sync. Draining the battery puts them back in sync. However, a full drain is not good for the overall life of a lithium battery. Laptops used to come with utilities that would do this for you, but I don't know if this is still a "thing."