Higher FPS when using external display

[linksorazelda]

On my laptop, Dell Inspiron i7559 (important to note, this is the 4K touch variant), applications fail to run smoothly.

[Specs]: i7-6700HQ, GTX 960M 2GB, 8GB RAM, 4K touch display


In Cemu (Wii U emulator), while running my dump of Smash 4, I get framerates as bad as a constant 15fps. However, when I connect my device to a 720p external display, I will get a full, steady 60fps. This remains true even on battery power. I have made sure that I'm using dedicated graphics for the application.

I do get 100% GPU usage on the 960M when it is running on the 4K laptop display. This goes down to 60-70% when I run it on a native 720p display via HDMI with the laptop display disabled.

However, I also tried setting the resolution of the laptop display to 720p via settings, and made sure the game also was rendering in 720p. Unfortunately, this yielded the exact same results as running it in 4K natively. Is this a lost cause? I could care less about 4K, but I needed a touchscreen.

 

[hang-the-9]

Did you check with support for the emulator if you need any help with it? Are there issues with normal games?

I had to check with our forum rules about emulators, looks like they are OK as a topic but tread in a grey area since downloading games you don't own is piracy and that is not allowed on here.

 

[linksorazelda]

Did you check with support for the emulator if you need any help with it? Are there issues with normal games?

I had to check with our forum rules about emulators, looks like they are OK as a topic but tread in a grey area since downloading games you don't own is piracy and that is not allowed on here.

No... it is only piracy if I download an ISO or dump off the Internet, not if it is my own locally dumped copy. I can prove that it is my own.
It happens with all games. I essentially have never seen 60fps, not even in Fortnite on low settings. Everything is set in GeForce Experience, Maximum Performance in Windows settings...

I suspect it may be thermal throttling, but that wouldn't explain why it runs fine while connected to an external display. In fact... this is my idling right now. 70 degrees Celsius with only Discord and Task Manager open. 54% CPU usage. 30% dGPU usage.