[SOLVED] Laptop performing unexpectedly since day 1

[Vends]

Hello, I got my medion erazer p15805 laptop 2 years ago now, and since then I’ve been struggling to find an issue to this constant problem. I’ve learned to just manage with what I have and experiencing terrible FPS in games still. knowing I am not getting what I payed for. But, I feel like now after 2 years I’m closer to a solution than ever.

my main problem is basically all games ive tried - fortnite, rust, cs:go, rainbow six siege, battlefront V and even roblox and mine craft are performing very poorly with frame drops and stutters, especially on fortnite and mine craft. My brother with a laptop of worse specs (he had a 1050 and worse i5) was achieving better performance, and he payed mush less.

Specs are:
1660 TI 6gb
8gb ram (single channel)
Core i5 9300H
1tb HDD
256gb SSD

After extensive research over the past 2 years, I think that the main 2 problems could be:

1. Since this system is single channel RAM ( single stick of 8gb). That may be the problem. I don’t know much about pcs but I found out that buying a second stick of ram has increased performance for some, but I’m not sure if this is the case with mine - especially as I don’t want to have to go through all the hassle and spending even more money just for this fix to not even make a difference and get my laptop how I want it to perform.

2. I’m not entirely sure about this one, but I discovered my laptop may be heat throttling, and this may be limiting my performance. I’ve never really checked to see properly, but I have noticed my fans do run very loudly and my pc gets quite hot sometimes.

I really hope I can find a fix once and for all, so I can finally enjoy my games in peace knowing I got what I payed for - any help is appreciated

 

[Aeacus]

it is showing that sometimes the problem is thermal throttling, and then sometimes the problem is power limit throttling?

Both are still caused by high thermals.

GPUs usually reduce the power limit to get thermals down, while CPUs reduce frequency.

For example, when I’m in rocket league ( as seen in pocture) i achieve around 160 FPS, with cpu temps averaging 95. In this case, it’s thermal throttling.
Rocket league throttling

But then, when I tried on GTA V it’s a mixture of both - sometimes it throttles and sometimes it’s power limit throttling, but mainly power limit. I tried low and ultra settings, no difference in FPS
GTA power limit
I then also tested hitman 2. I also had high temps here, similar to rocket league. Low and ultra settings had little to no difference in FPS.
Hitman 2 throttling

Max what i5-9300H could do, is 100C, while thermal throttle starts at ~90C. For GPU, GTX 1660 Ti can do 95C max, while thermal throttle (power limit) starts ~85C.

Yes, the fans do work as expected and are very loud - hot air comes out of them. I’ve cleaned or opened up my laptop, but I never suspected buildup of dirt as the problem since it’s been like this from day 1.

The thing with laptops is, that they will struggle with thermals, ALWAYS. And you may not be able to remedy it, ever.

Laptops have all the internals so cramped up, that they often run at the limit of thermal throttle. And it takes very little to cross the thermal throttle threshold, where hardware performance will take an impact.

Like i said above:

Only good thing going for laptops, is their mobility. In everything else, desktop PC does better.

Alright, but do you think I should spread it anyway just to be sure it covers the whole thing?

No need. Mounting pressure spreads the paste around. That is, if you put the cooler back exactly on horizontal level.

Btw, replacing thermal paste/pads, might help, a bit. Especially when you get better paste/pads than what was applied in factory. Thermal reduce could be only few degrees, but it also could be enough to keep hardware away from thermal throttle.

Another thing you can do, is to cap the FPS.
Now, i wasn't able to find the screen max refresh rate, but you should be seeing a change in Rocket League, where you got ~200 FPS before, IF you cap FPS to 144, 120 or 60. With other two games, your screenshot FPS was below 60, so, might want to cap FPS globally to 60 FPS.

 

[Vends]

Both are still caused by high thermals.

GPUs usually reduce the power limit to get thermals down, while CPUs reduce frequency.



Max what i5-9300H could do, is 100C, while thermal throttle starts at ~90C. For GPU, GTX 1660 Ti can do 95C max, while thermal throttle (power limit) starts ~85C.



The thing with laptops is, that they will struggle with thermals, ALWAYS. And you may not be able to remedy it, ever.

Laptops have all the internals so cramped up, that they often run at the limit of thermal throttle. And it takes very little to cross the thermal throttle threshold, where hardware performance will take an impact.

Like i said above:




No need. Mounting pressure spreads the paste around. That is, if you put the cooler back exactly on horizontal level.

Btw, replacing thermal paste/pads, might help, a bit. Especially when you get better paste/pads than what was applied in factory. Thermal reduce could be only few degrees, but it also could be enough to keep hardware away from thermal throttle.

Another thing you can do, is to cap the FPS.
Now, i wasn't able to find the screen max refresh rate, but you should be seeing a change in Rocket League, where you got ~200 FPS before, IF you cap FPS to 144, 120 or 60. With other two games, your screenshot FPS was below 60, so, might want to cap FPS globally to 60 FPS.

Alright, thanks for the help. Yes, usually when I play rocket league, I’ll cap it at 144 just so the frame rate is more stable ( though it sometimes even drops below this). But any other games, such as fortnite, gta and even roblox won’t have any difference capping at 60 FPS, as it frequently drops below this and FPS is usually around 50 and 40 - it just goes to 60 periodically.

anyways, thanks for all the support. I now know what my next steps will be - upgrading the RAM and applying the thermal paste. I’ll let you know how I get along.

 

[Vends]

Both are still caused by high thermals.

GPUs usually reduce the power limit to get thermals down, while CPUs reduce frequency.



Max what i5-9300H could do, is 100C, while thermal throttle starts at ~90C. For GPU, GTX 1660 Ti can do 95C max, while thermal throttle (power limit) starts ~85C.



The thing with laptops is, that they will struggle with thermals, ALWAYS. And you may not be able to remedy it, ever.

Laptops have all the internals so cramped up, that they often run at the limit of thermal throttle. And it takes very little to cross the thermal throttle threshold, where hardware performance will take an impact.

Like i said above:




No need. Mounting pressure spreads the paste around. That is, if you put the cooler back exactly on horizontal level.

Btw, replacing thermal paste/pads, might help, a bit. Especially when you get better paste/pads than what was applied in factory. Thermal reduce could be only few degrees, but it also could be enough to keep hardware away from thermal throttle.

Another thing you can do, is to cap the FPS.
Now, i wasn't able to find the screen max refresh rate, but you should be seeing a change in Rocket League, where you got ~200 FPS before, IF you cap FPS to 144, 120 or 60. With other two games, your screenshot FPS was below 60, so, might want to cap FPS globally to 60 FPS.

Hello again. I know it’s been 2 weeks, but I’ve finally been able to upgrade my laptop to the 16 gb 8x2 successfully. I’m pleased with the results as I no longer suffer from any of the stuttering and lag in games I was having before, and my laptop is so much faster and better in general.

I also did the 3dmark time spy test again and my laptop finally reached a score of 5380 (average for laptops of same spec is 5300). Which is much better than the appalling 4000 I was getting before.

thank you everyone that contributed in helping me with this, I really appreciate it and merry Christmas.

 

[Vends]

Hello again. I know it’s been 2 weeks, but I’ve finally been able to upgrade my laptop to the 16 gb 8x2 successfully. I’m pleased with the results as I no longer suffer from any of the stuttering and lag in games I was having before, and my laptop is so much faster and better in general.

I also did the 3dmark time spy test again and my laptop finally reached a score of 5380 (average for laptops of same spec is 5300). Which is much better than the appalling 4000 I was getting before.

thank you everyone that contributed in helping me with this, I really appreciate it and merry Christmas.

Also, I have not done the thermal paste as I wanted to try this out first and see if it made a good enough difference, and this seems to have done the trick so I’ll probably not bother with repaste for now

 

[Nighthawk117]

Good to hear it fixed it, merry Christmas.