Question Laptop behaving really strangely.

[Garuna]

I bought a gaming laptop (ASUS TUF FX504GM) about 2 months ag. I didn't play any hardcore AAA games on it for a long time. A few weeks ago though i installed a bunch of games like GTA V, Apex Legends and i noticed that every game suffred from huge FPS drops. Apex Legends would randomly drop from 60 to around 30 frames. GTA V would also routinely drop to less than 40 frames. These drops would happen even at the lowest possible graphical settings.



I tried everything under the sun and i discovered that this laptop has something called a low TDS. ASUS has limited the TDS to 25W but the GPU needs 45W. So i tried to undervolt the CPU using Throttlestop and [watch your language] around in MSI Afterburner. The results were inconsistent. Immedietly after undervolting, the laptop performed just fine. I played 2 hours of GTA V at a near constant 60 frames with the temparatures never exceeding 70.



The next day however when i played GTA V, it froze as soon as the game started. The same thing happened in Apex Legends and several other games. I freaked out, reset all the settings in Throttlestop and Afterburner to deault and uninstalled both then restart my computer.



Now the computer is plagued with a new problem. Games run like they used to but after some time, the FPS crashes to less than 20 and never bounces back. Apex Legends for example runs at 60FPS but after 5 minutes the FPS drops to less than 20. It stays the same way until i restart the game. This has been happening in every single game. Weirdly every time i restart the laptop, i get a notification saying "Your PC needs to be restarted to finish setting up this device: Motherboard resources". I'm at a complete loss. I have no idea what to do.

 

[iPongi]

Are you using it while plugged in or with just battery power? My asus gl702 cuts down on the power states if I try to game on it while unplugged and limits everything to 30fps.

 

[Garuna]

I'm using it plugged in but now that you mention it, for some reason this laptop can't run games on battery. I used to be able to play while on battery but all of a sudden games run in slow motion in single digit FPS as soon as i unplug the laptop. That isn't normal for any laptop let alone a gaming laptop. And i've made sure that the laptop isn't switching to integrated graphics while on battery either.

 

[iPongi]

I can't seem to figure out if your monitor uses g-sync technology or not. If yes, you should try enabling g-sync for windowed and full screen mode in the nvidia control panel because that setting seems to lag out a lot of games a lot on my laptop as well. if needed you can download intel extreme tuning utility to see if the power related issue can be resolved with setting the power limit slightly higher than factory settings (this worked for a thinkpad t480 that one of my friends bought for school and light mobile gaming use). They are the turbo boost power max and turbo boost short power max settings.

 

[Garuna]

I bought ASUS TUF FX504GM a few months back. After loading a few games onto it, i noticed that every single game drops FPS like crazy. I'm not even sure if i can call it an FPS drop. It's more like an FPS tank. The FPS falls down all of a sudden and almost never recovers.

In Apex Legends, the FPS drops from 60 to 20 within 5 minutes of playing no matter what graphical settings i run the game on. The FPS stays that way till i restart the game but drops soon after. A few games straight up freeze for several minutes then recover on their own. I've noticed the same issue in Assassin's Creed, GTA V and recently Mortal Kombat 11.

The FPS does not drop due to the game being graphically demanding because i've literally run Apex Legends at 1024x768 resolution at the lowest possible settings and the FPS always drops to 20. Before the drops, the game runs perfectly smooth.

Here's all the stuff i've tried :

1. Installed MSI Afterburner and Riva Tuner to see in-game temparatues to see if it's a thermal throttling issue. All the temps seemed normal to me barely crossing 70 so I don't think it's a thermal throttling issue. This laptop is only 2 months old and I always make sure to run it on Overboost fan mode.

2. Tried re-installing the NVIDIA graphic drivers and several other drivers. Did a system restore. Formatted the PC twice. The issue still persisted.

3. Tested the computer for malware, viruses with Kaspersky and Malwarebyte's. They all came up clean.

I'm at my wits end. The ASUS customer support in my country is useless. I took the laptop to them and they ran their BIOS hardware checker which only checks for hardware failures and after a whole hour of me waiting for the scan to finish, it came up clean. After convincing them that it's not a game issue, it's a problem with the laptop, they said all they could do was format it for me. The replacement process has almost 0 probability of succeeding and it'd require me to give my laptop to those morons for weeks which I can't do. I bought this laptop after saving for literally years and I feel so cheated. You guys are my last hope.