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Question Laptop UNBEARABLY slow when gaming ?

May 19, 2022
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Hey guys, I have a razer blade 2018 base model (i7-8750H, GTX 1060 Max-Q, 16GB DDR4, 256gb SSD + 2tb HDD) which used to run perfectly fine; i let it sit for quite a while and now opening it up it runs perfectly normally... until i open any game; in any game it is unbearable slow, not only in game but also in menus, with a delay of several seconds for doing things as basic as scrolling or even clicking the exit button! I have updated drivers, reinstalled windows, downgraded to windows 10, formatted both the hard drive and ssd and installed windows 10 again, installing drivers again, and running the games on the ssd instead of the hhd, but none of this works! Weirdly it runs any non-game app perfectly fine, and also performs well in benchmarks, but in games, it just refuses to work, with horrible input delay and frame rates, even in lightweight games such as among us. Please if anyone has any suggestions please let me know!!
 
I see many complaints about gaming laptops not performing well.
Usually gaming while plugged in.
One common cause is thermal throttling.
Laptop coolers must, of necessity be small and light.
The coolers are also relatively underpowered.
If you run an app such as HWMonitor or HWinfo, you will get the current, minimum, and maximum cpu temperatures.
For intel processors, if you see a max of 100c. it means you have throttled.
The cpu will lower it's multiplier and power draw to protect itself
until the situation reverses.
At a lower multiplier, your cpu usage may well be at 100%
What can you do?
First, see that your cooler airways are clear and that the cooler fan is spinning.
Use a windows balanced power profile, not the performance profile.
Set a minimum cpu performance to something like 20%

It is counter-intuitive, but, try changing the windows balanced power profile advanced functions to a max of 90% instead of the default of 100%
You may not notice the reduced cpu performance.
 
Hey guys! So I have a couple updates. I tried messing around with drivers, and noticed that under unknown devices, "Base System Device" and a bunch of PCI Devices and Controllers were missing their drivers, but when I go to install them it says windows can not locate the driver. After that, I tried uninstalling the graphics card, running it on integrated graphics, and doing so made game menus not laggy at all, so I am confident it is a problem with the graphics card, and I think this basically eliminates any sort of thermal or power problems. Please let me know if anyone has any other ideas!
 
Hmmmm true; I checked the temps on everything while launching a game and they were perfectly normal though, and the fans were totally fine, and also it lags in places where it should not be thermal throttling, such as menus in games as light as even among us. I tried installing the Max-Q drivers from razer and also turning the computer to performance mode, no changes :/
 
I also attempted to run FurMark, and it displayed an error explaining the graphics controller was not compliant with OpenGL 2, but I had just installed the latest drivers, and did this several times; I believe it is a driver issue. Does anyone have any ideas on what to do?
 
performs well in benchmarks
what benchmarks?

and what do you mean by "performs well"?
that you are scoring in top percentages for your specific components?
I tried uninstalling the graphics card, running it on integrated graphics, and doing so made game menus not laggy at all
menus interacted fine but gameplay was performing as it should using integrated graphics?
horrible input delay and frame rates, even in lightweight games
include the different games you are running and what settings you are attempting to use in each.
I tried messing around with drivers, and noticed that under unknown devices, "Base System Device" and a bunch of PCI Devices and Controllers were missing their drivers, but when I go to install them it says windows can not locate the driver
Windows will only install those included with the OS unless you point to a location where you have downloaded those provided for your system.

you would need to find these particular drivers from the system manufacturer support pages and install them manually.
if you can't locate them, contact manufacturer support and explain your situation to them.
 
Oh wow thank you so much! To answer your questions:

what benchmarks?
and what do you mean by "performs well"?
that you are scoring in top percentages for your specific components?

The benchmark that did work was Novabench, both Userbenchmark and FurMark refused to score the GPU. It was scoring perfectly fine, somewhere around the middle 50%.

menus interacted fine but gameplay was performing as it should using integrated graphics?

Yes, so using the DGPU the menus in games were EXTREMELY laggy even in the main menu, when the actual game had not been launched yet. There were extremely noticeable input delays in every game I tried for things like moving the mouse to a button; the button would light up seconds after the mouse was placed on it; and things like scrolling, and launching into most games would yield very very low (<1) FPS. For some reason Geforce Experience is also incredibly laggy, but that and games are the only effected apps.

Turning on integrated graphics would cause the games to run perfectly well, as well as they could on integrated graphics, so not great, but the menus were smooth and lag-free.

include the different games you are running and what settings you are attempting to use in each.

The games I tested:
Rainbow 6 Siege - Lowest
Fortnite - Lowest
Battlefield 1 - Lowest
Among Us - Lowest
[Geforce Experience?]

All of these games run practically the exact same, even among us, which is a paper light game, and Geforce Experience, which is not even a game. Uninstalling the GPU in the devices manager would cause them to run at a regular speed.

Windows will only install those included with the OS unless you point to a location where you have downloaded those provided for your system.
you would need to find these particular drivers from the system manufacturer support pages and install them manually.
if you can't locate them, contact manufacturer support and explain your situation to them.

I will do this right now!