[SOLVED] Momentary stutter when loading/entering new areas - Replaced old HDD with new WD_Black NVME SSD

[ShangWang]

Hi all,

In the past I've had stuttering issues where through a process of elimination I thought it had to do with using a HDD as the OS. To fix this I got a new WD_Black SN750 500GB NVMe.

I noticed I had these issues even on some of the oldest games like lego batman the video game. Before this I was playing batman arkham asylum and had a similar issue where it seems I get a momentary stutter whenever I had to replay a game from a checkpoint.

I have the Acer Nitro 5 AN515-53, all my drivers are up to date as well as my motherboard.

I don't have any temperature or hardware issues. The new NVME SSD was installed properly and screwed flat down.

I've done many tests on all my hardware including CPU, GPU, and RAM everything works perfectly fine.



Is it normal to get these stutters when entering new areas? Fiddling with settings in-game makes no difference.

 

[geofelt]

Certainly an upgrade to a ssd was a good thing, regardless.
Stuttering can be caused by a lack of cpu capability.

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.
They 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.

It is counter-intuitive, but, try changing the windows power profile advanced functions to a max of 90% instead of the default of 100%
You may not notice the reduced cpu performance.

 

[ShangWang]

Certainly an upgrade to a ssd was a good thing, regardless.
Stuttering can be caused by a lack of cpu capability.

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.
They 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.

It is counter-intuitive, but, try changing the windows power profile advanced functions to a max of 90% instead of the default of 100%
You may not notice the reduced cpu performance.

I've cleaned my fans and re-pasted in the past, everything related to temperature is fine.

I almost forgot about that! I put max power management to 99% for both plugged in and battery mode. I did notice that my CPU does not spike as randomly as before.

I'll let you know if it makes any difference! Is there anything else related to NVMe settings that may help with performance that you know of?

 

[geofelt]

I don't know of any ssd settings that can do anything meaningful at all.
Only if the ssd approaches full will it slow down for updates I would consider 90% as a max.

 

[ShangWang]

I don't know of any ssd settings that can do anything meaningful at all.
Only if the ssd approaches full will it slow down for updates I would consider 90% as a max.

I see, thanks! I think the maximum power state reduction helped a bit but I can't be sure since I wasn't playing in a huge area.

 

[ShangWang]

I don't know of any ssd settings that can do anything meaningful at all.
Only if the ssd approaches full will it slow down for updates I would consider 90% as a max.

On a side note I use throttlestop which can enable and disable turbo boosting. My processor runs at 2.30 Ghz.

If I put the maximum processor state to 99% will it disable the ability to turbo boost to 2.70 Ghz for example?

Edit: Sorry ignore this question I realized those are two different things my bad

 

[geofelt]

On a side note I use throttlestop which can enable and disable turbo boosting. My processor runs at 2.30 Ghz.

If I put the maximum processor state to 99% will it disable the ability to turbo boost to 2.70 Ghz for example?

I am not experienced with throttlestop.
I like to avoid all such "helper" apps which track your usage and sell the results to make money.
Since 99% helped, I would conclude that you were throttling somewhere along the way.
A constant 99% cpu is much better than a yoyo between 100% and 30% when throttled.

 

[ShangWang]

I am not experienced with throttlestop.
I like to avoid all such "helper" apps which track your usage and sell the results to make money.
Since 99% helped, I would conclude that you were throttling somewhere along the way.
A constant 99% cpu is much better than a yoyo between 100% and 30% when throttled.

I'm a bit confused because the lego batman game I'm playing is very old and not CPU demanding at all.
Are there times when laptops have issues when throttling and spiking even when barely using any CPU %?

Also I'm just curious do you know if disabling HPET in device manager might have any affect on performance?

I've delved into a lot of threads regarding it and generally it's a situational fix but I've done these commands to fix a 0.496 max timer resolution bug where it should be 0.500.

bcdedit /set useplatformclock no
bcdedit /set useplatformtick yes
bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes

 

[geofelt]

I'm a bit confused because the lego batman game I'm playing is very old and not CPU demanding at all.
Are there times when laptops have issues when throttling and spiking even when barely using any CPU %?

I would not think so.
Inconsistent performance can be caused by many things.
Malware, lack of ram, HDD performance, game patches, and others.

 

[ShangWang]

I would not think so.
Inconsistent performance can be caused by many things.
Malware, lack of ram, HDD performance, game patches, and others.

I see, but what I mean is I don't know how my CPU could have throttled with the low CPU usage the game requires so I'm wondering when a "100-30%" yoyo might happen.