[SOLVED] Game micro stutters.

[Stratosan]

Hello there, 😛 this would be my first post here, I have something that concerns me.. well basically I bought a Lenovo LEGION 3 months ago, and these past few weeks I'd say 4 weeks it has been stuttering during gaming.

The laptops specs are : 8GB RAM
GeForce GTX 1650 - 4Gbs
Processor : Intel Core i5-9300H @2.40GHz

Disks:
1 SSD of 117 GB's and 1 HDD of 931GB's

Now, this laptop is 3 months old, All the games I used to play since the start are running perfectly fine with high FPS and so on. The past few weeks the micro stutters have started. Stutters that can happen randomly and range from 0.5 to 1.5 or even 2 seconds of freezes. I noticed they happen sometimes during explosions in games, loading citys and so on.

Now, I'm using speccy, according to speccy boi my temperatures are all fine, GPU at 60 to 64, CPU cores at around 65 to 75 sometimes. Disk temps good too. Keep in mind the games are running perfectly fine FPS wise, no network lag either. It's those random stutters and freezes. Nvidia settings for Physx set to the graphics card too.

Task manager info, my CPU usage can spike randomly up to 100 andit's mostly stable on 81-85 while the game is running. No excess processes running in the background, no Malware detected from Malware bytes no nothing. I tried literally everything I could find on the net nothing worked. Even disabling the Windows game bar process doesn't fix it. I noticed that running the game on windowed mode drops the CPU usage to 75 or 80 from 85 but it still spikes for a split second and the memory usage is also 80% I have n other programs running at all during this whole monitoring I did.

Additionally, I have updated my bios, drivers, windows and everything nothing works. Defrag the HHD didn't work either.

Last notes I have is that it's better when I restart the Laptop and it starts happening after like an hour. And even then the temp monitors look fine for all the components... I'd honestly prefer if I was running the game in lower FPS than having those small freezes, it's very annoying for such a young laptop I feel torn honestly 😛 Any ideas anyone? as to why this is happening or anything that I can test or do?

 

[mdd1963]

Is your OS on the 120 GB drive? Does it have at least 20 GB of free space?

Alas, quad core/quad thread woes while gaming can be difficult to pinpoint..

I'd disable all cloud storage, AV, etc., just to make sure no extra tasks as occurring causing these hitches..

If the problem consistently occurs after an hour, that would seem to point to temps or perhaps a software memory leak... (8 GB of RAM is increasingly a bare minimum these days)

 

[Stratosan]

@mdd1963 Thank you so much for the reply mate, Indeed my OS is on the SSD and it has 53 Gb's of free space now. Also I've tried closing everything as well cloud storage wise, nothing seems to work. At the moment I'm monitoring this with HWMonitor, instead of speccy, According to HW monitor some of the CPU cores, can spike up to 90 or 85 degrees, that is in C

However it's mostly stable at 71-77 now which is alarming as well. GPU utilization drops to 60% but according to Task manager it's 99% which is also weird.

Software leak is as well something I looked into, I can see a lot of processes with the same name, but I'm no expert in this, I have no idea if it's normal for some processes to be duplicated on the task manager.

The current monitoring was achieved with Fallout 76 open.

I'm leaning towards temps as well tbh..

 

[geofelt]

What might have changed since all was well?
Perhaps a windows update has created the problem.
Perhaps your cooling pathways are obstructed.

I read about many issues with gaming laptops.
They seem to be likely related to overheating and throttling.
Laptop coolers need to be small and light; therefore a bit anemic.
Run HWmonitor.
It will record your current, minimum and maximum cpu temperatures.
If, after a session with stutters, see if the max temperature was 100c.
That would indicate some throttling that would match your symptoms.

See that your cooling pathways are clear of dust and unobstructed.

You could go into windows power management and limit the max cpu to 90%, down from 100%.
I doubt you would see any drop in performance, and it might reduce stuttering.

 

[Stratosan]

@geofelt Thank you very much for your input too man, appreciated. I decreased the CPU limit to 90% to test it, I'm actually playing now to see how it holds up in the next 2 hours.

I'm already using HWmonitor, it seems that the CPU core temps are going up and down all the time, but the max that was logged was 89 for at least 2 cores, as for the rest they spiked max at 85 and 86 and 84 and so on all above 80 that is.

Do you think that a laptop cooling system below the laptop would help? the one I'm using now barely works and it's very very old.

 

[geofelt]

Your problem may not be throttling.
Temps are toasty, but 100c. is the throttle point.
So far as I know, laptop cooling pads do not cool, they just augment airflow to the laptop cooling intakes.
That will help, but perhaps not enough.

Another possibility is that your windows C drive may be filling up.
120gb is really too small.
Once a ssd fills past 90%, there are fewer free nand blocks to allow fast updates.
A game checkpoint, for example might take longer.
Consider upgrading your windows ssd.

If your hdd is a 5400 rpm unit, it will be slow.
That would be another candidate for a ssd upgrade.

 

[Stratosan]

@geofelt Ohhh I didn't know that I see what you mean, about the SSD. Though does this come in effect when I run and store all my games on the HHD? the SSD is only being used for windows, even the general programs I have like discord or skype are all stored in the HHD, if the SSD had an issue with filling up, wouldn't that be a visible issue from the start? those freezes and stutters in-game started a few weeks ago only. Nothing else has been changed.

I also noticed that if I'm in the game and I alt tab quick to my task bar, the CPU usage shows 100% then it suddenly drops. my memory usage is also up to 88 or 87%. I never had issues like this before, but nothing has really changed in terms of programs being installed, or drivers changing and stuff.

The only thing I had changed before these stutters started was the Nvidia Geforce experience driver that was updated through the official Nvidia Geforce experience. Also, changing the CPU performance through the maximum limits in the power plan menu to 90 or even to 99 did not help at all.

The only time the games don't stutter is when I restart my laptop for about 30 minutes to 1 hour, then it starts doing so.

Running in game also makes the game stutter more than walking, like it's having issues rendering stuff? probably processing?