Question Newbie. 10 days to Fix Problem

May 14, 2022
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Hello everyone,

Let me start off by saying I don't know much about computers. I bought a new gaming laptop a few days ago, the MSI Katana GF66 and was promised it could play games like Smite very well.

I took it home and was having no problems, everything was beautiful and smooth, then shut down... next day it was having a stuttering problem. Gave up, shut down, next day it was back to being perfect again. Shut down, next day we are back to square one with the stuttering.

I have 10 more days to return the laptop if there is something wrong with the hardware, but to me since it was working fine before it makes me think that the hardware is fine.

I was hoping someone could walk me through step-by-step to help me diagnose the problem because my games are currently unplayable as they require quick turning and reaction speed (the problem seems to be most noticeable when I turn the camera). It seems to be everything, not just games that has the stuttering problem (I sometimes even notice it on GIFs and scrolling web pages)

Intel Core i7 11th Gen 11800H 2.3 GHz Processor
15.6" 1920x1080 Full HD IPS 144Hz Display
16GB DDR4-3200 RAM
1TB Solid State Drive
Nvidia GeForce RTX3060, 6GB
Windows 10

I was hoping to try a series of fixes recommended by the community. I'm desperate.
 
May 14, 2022
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Temperatures have stayed 75-80, fans don't even ever kick on.
The stuttering happens even before I load any graphic stressors like a game.

Update: I installed the new NVIDA graphics driver through the Geforce Experience App, retested Smite and Heaven Unigine Benchmark, both were still stuttering
Update 2: Immeidately afterwards I restarted my PC and started Smite as soon as my PC loaded again. Problem is gone once again.

Clearly there is an issue that sometimes resolves on restart, but then comes back. Please help!
 
May 14, 2022
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GPU runs at about 85 degrees steady after playing Genshin for 10 minutes, no fan. But i dont think this is a heat issue as I've had this problem when first starting a game after the PC being off for the entire night
 
May 14, 2022
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My PC stutters even after being turned on after a long nights rest, at 45C. Are there other things I can try

Update: The problem is back again after being turned on this morning.
Update2: Hit the restart button 2 minutes into the problem, and now it works again.
 
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Karadjgne

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Return it. It's brand new, so should absolutely not require user intervention to repair. It's a laptop, fans should constantly be working, even if somewhat inaudible. Temp sensors are inaccurate, they only apply to wherever the sensor is physically located, they do nothing for other areas such as ram, VRM's etc that don't have sensors.

Any laptop can hit 90's or higher when gaming, they are all cooling restrained, couple of heatpipes etc, so high temps under heavy loads (especially when plugged in and running high power profiles) are to be expected. If gaming temps are 70-80 with no fan evident, you are being throttled by other components that aren't registering a temp.
 
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Karadjgne

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Doubtful. Software/drivers are supposed to run every single time. If it was a software/driver error you'd see those errors in the boot history or event viewer, they'd most likely be flagged red, critical or at a minimum yellow warning.

I'd be more inclined to believe it's hardware related, like your ram isn't fully seated or there's a bios issue and it's not recognizing half your ram at boot, but reset is forcing bios to find it.

If you bought a brand new car, turned the key and it didn't start, turned key off, then tried to start it and it started, tell me how long you'd put up with that insanity. Would you try fix it yourself, take it to a mechanic and pay to have it fixed? Or would you run right back to the dealership, point at the car and tell the manager to fix it or give you your money back...

This is no different. You have a warranty, use it. Your laptop is brand new, it should run like melted butter, first time every time.
 
I'd be more inclined to believe it's hardware related, like your ram isn't fully seated or there's a bios issue and it's not recognizing half your ram at boot, but reset is forcing bios to find it.
The fact that it seems to work after rebooting would make me lean more toward it being a software issue. And even if half the RAM were not being recognized, I wouldn't expect Genshin to perform poorly as a result, as it's a game designed to run on phones, and has rather modest memory requirements as a result.

One possibility, it could be something like a scheduled malware scan or some other task happening in the background. Maybe something like a Windows update getting initiated. When you encounter the issue, it might be worth opening task manager (press Ctrl-Shift-Esc) to see if anything other than the game is using a lot of CPU or other system resources. Though that processor has enough cores and threads where I wouldn't expect that to be as likely of a problem.
 
May 14, 2022
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I haven't encountered the problem again yet, but next time I do I will check task manager. I think I recall checking task manager before though and it didnt show anything with high CPU usage or Memory
 
May 14, 2022
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Turned PC on after having it shut down over night, noticed the problem. There was nothing running in task manager that was consuming resources. CPU, Networking, Disk all under 5% and Memory at a constant 30% as it always is. Processes/Resource Manager did not show anything consuming resources either and no windows update.

I restarted, then problem disappeared. Though I still see some micro-stutter i think