[SOLVED] Laptop GPU clock oscillating between idle and load speeds when gaming

[flamingkatana]

My GPU seems to have a load clock frequency of ~1500 MHz, but when I run games, I see the number plummet to around 400 MHz, and sometimes it drops to below 200 MHz. Naturally this results in some terrible FPS and general unplayablilty in my games on my laptop.

Before anyone offers any advice, I want to point out that I have tried altering power settings on my laptop, I have used DDU to wipe and reinstall my drivers, and I have used the power management settings in the Nvidia Control Panel. It was all to no avail. My card temperature seems alright; it's running at around 70 C when these clock speed drops happen. Because of this, I feel like it's unlikely to be a thermal throttling issue, though I don't see any options in my computer's BIOS to alter a thermal throttling limit, or fiddle with any GPU settings for that matter.

My computer specs are as follows:

Dell Inspiron 7567
i7 2.8 GHz 4 core
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050ti (Mobile)
Windows 10
16 GB RAM

I've been having these problems for almost four months now, immediately following a factory reset I did on my computer. Prior to the factory reset, I wasn't experiencing any of this, so I feel like it is unlikely to be a hardware problem.

 

[hotaru.hino]

There might be an issue with Optimus not kicking the application to run on the 1050 Ti and instead shoves it on the Intel iGPU. I think there's a way you can blanket force whhich GPU to use in either Windows or the NVIDIA Control Panel.