Low FPS on High End Laptop

[sotfoun10]

Hi guys! This is actually for a friend of mine. He has a Laptop with Intel Core i7 4710HQ Cpu with Intel HD graphics 4600 (no oc) and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M gpu. So even though he has a very good rig he has little fps( compared to mine). For example I with the AMD FX 6300 and a Radeon R9 270x in NBA 2k18 have about 100 fps in gameplay but he has 40-50 fps in gameplay( with V sync off). He also is lagging sometimes but that also could be an internet problem. So what his problem may be? Maybe a setting or something also? Personally, I don't think this is a graphics card problem since you would be having other problems. The only thing I could thought of was overheating since his gpu while gaming gets to the mid 80's.

 

[sotfoun10]

I have an update he used the HWMonitor and it showed that in idle his core cpu temp is 50 C and while gaming his core temp went up to the 80's C. Is that normal for a laptop cpu... His cpu fan while gaming goes to 3500 rpm and it's really noisy

 

[DSzymborski]

Your 270X is roughly twice as powerful as an 850m while his CPU is about 20-25% more powerful. That 850m is in the same neighborhood as a GT 1030, so his FPS doesn't sound that far off to me (I've seen 750tis benchmarking this at 60-70 fps and that's about a 20% more powerful GPU). If he's concerned about it, he should benchmark it rather than looking at just one game. Higher temperatures are normal for a laptop.

 

[sotfoun10]

Hi mate thanks for the quick reply. So everything is normal with his cpu going to 50 C in idle ? So it is just that his gpu is not good enough for high gaming settings ?

 

[DSzymborski]

Hi mate thanks for the quick reply. So everything is normal with his cpu going to 50 C in idle ? So it is just that his gpu is not good enough for high gaming settings ?

I'd prefer an idle temperature a skosh lower, but it's nothing unusual for laptops, which simply tend to run hotter than desktops due to design (the components are designed to reflect this reality, as well). The 850m was a solid mid-rangeish laptop GPU when it was released, but that was three years ago, so it's natural to see it move down the food chain a bit.

 

[sotfoun10]

One last question about his noisy fan ... in the first months of the laptop the fan wad not noisy at all but suddenly it started to get really really noisy. He sent the laptop for repair but they told him that there was nothing wrong with it but the noise hasn't stopped. Should he buy abother fan from let's say coolermaster?

 

[Solandri]

Scroll down to the synthetic and game benchmarks for the 850m and see if he's getting results which are similar.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-850M.107795.0.html

Also check with a monitoring program like HWMonitor or HWInfo64 to check his GPU temps while gaming. On these Optimus laptops, if the wrong driver is installed or installed incorrectly, sometimes games end up playing on the Intel graphics. The GPU temps will tell you which GPU is actually being used (you may have to start the monitoring program after starting the game, to get it to recognize the Nvidia GPU).

Also, vsync should always be turned off on Optimus laptops. The way Optimus works is the Intel GPU always controls the screen. The Nvidia GPU acts as a co-processor. When it finishes drawing a frame for the game, the Optimus drivers transfers that completed frame from the Nvidia to the Intel GPU, and the Intel GPU displays it on the screen. So it has the same effect as vsync being on (with the vsync draw and display buffers being split between the two GPUs, instead of located in one GPU). Turning vsync on in the game could add additional lag.

Edit: For fan noise, try turning the laptop off and blasting out the insides and fan/heatsink with compressed air. Over time, dust tends to build up causing the laptop to run hotter, causing the fan to spin at a higher RPM. Clearing out the dust usually fixes it.

There's also the possibility that a fan bearing is going, and what you're hearing is vibration. The only thing you can do then is to try to oil or grease the bearing (sometimes very difficult or impossible). If that doesn't help, then you have to replace the fan. This type of noise is usually also prevalent when the fan is at low RPM.