Question Not getting same FPS that I used to get ?

[Odonix]

Ever since about a year ago I noticed that my laptop hasn't been performing anywhere near as well as it used to.

My laptop is an Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575-33BM
The processor is a 7100u which uses Intel HD 620 graphics.

In Device Manager, it was telling me that I had the latest driver for my graphics which is from 2017.
I then manually installed the latest graphics driver. It works fine, but that did not fix the issue.

I used Intel Extreme Tuning Utility(XTU) to read temperatures.
Temps at idle average around 40°c and the hottest it reads under load is about 70°c.

When I am playing a game it does not matter what settings I use, from the lowest to the highest, I get the same garbage performance.

I used to be able to play Minecraft with over 100fps but now I'm lucky if I get 30.
In League of Legends, I stay around 20fps and my champion lags around the map (I don't think its an internet issue, I get 10 ping, 200mbps down, and 30mbps up, connected via ethernet), this is with any settings including very low + low spec mode.
Just navigating throughout windows is slow while having the game's launcher open.

I did spill hot chocolate on the laptop a couple of years ago but I managed to turn it off in time and clean it up before it shorted out.

I opened it up the other day and it was all clean inside except that there was some hot choclate in between the cpu and cpu cooler, so I am going to buy some Arctic MX-4 and replace the thermal compound after cleaning the area.
However, I don't think this is the cause of my performance issues due to the temperatures being decent.

I did notice while playing games that both my processor and iGPU were only being used at around 50% with no thermal throttling.

I have all of my power options in windows, the control panel, and intel command center preferring performance rather than battery saving.

Also around a year ago, the laptop started feeling super slow and so I thought it was because I was using a hard drive and it was its EOL, so I replaced my boot drive and installed an NVME SSD.
That helped quite a lot but this performance decrease still remains. The hard drive has been wiped clean multiple times, so doing it again I don't think will do anything either.

I have looked into this for hours and I have no idea what the issue is...

 

[Lutfij]

I would ask you to use some rubbing alcohol and clean the PCB as thoroughly as possible to rid any hot chocolate residues on the laptop's PCB. Be careful not to knock out any capacitors or SMD's.

You will need to see if you have any BIOS updates pending on your laptop. If there are any updates, go ahead gradually working your way to the latest then update the OS. Then use DDU to uninstall your GPU drivers and manually install your GPU drivers in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator with the latest drivers found off your manufacturer's support site(if it's an Intel iGPU, use Intel's support page).

 

[Odonix]

I would ask you to use some rubbing alcohol and clean the PCB as thoroughly as possible to rid any hot chocolate residues on the laptop's PCB. Be careful not to knock out any capacitors or SMD's.

You will need to see if you have any BIOS updates pending on your laptop. If there are any updates, go ahead gradually working your way to the latest then update the OS. Then use DDU to uninstall your GPU drivers and manually install your GPU drivers in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator with the latest drivers found off your manufacturer's support site(if it's an Intel iGPU, use Intel's support page).

I can't just install the latest bios? I have to start from the one that was after my current version?

I installed the latest driver from intel's website already. I tried at first with the exe but it gave an error, that is why I downloaded the zip and installed them manually with Device Manager.
Windows is on the latest version too.

 

[Odonix]

I also don't think updating the BIOS would do much either since it had the same BIOS when it was still working well, I have never updated it.

I am thinking that maybe something is turned off in the BIOS. I noticed that my processor doesn't go past 2.39GHz, maybe something is limiting that, and also maybe it's hyperthreading is off too?

EDIT:
It seems I have the latest BIOS already and hyperthreading is on. There are not a lot of options in the BIOS either.

 

[geofelt]

Are you running plugged in?
On battery, performance will be degraded.
Possibly, your battery is failing, they will have electronics that might signal erroneously battery vs. plugged in.
Do you have sufficient ram?
Intel HD620 will carve out some of your ram to use as video vram.
Normally, that allocation can be increased for better performance.
Not certain if that is in the intel adapter app or the bios.

 

[Odonix]

Are you running plugged in?
On battery, performance will be degraded.
Possibly, your battery is failing, they will have electronics that might signal erroneously battery vs. plugged in.
Do you have sufficient ram?
Intel HD620 will carve out some of your ram to use as video vram.
Normally, that allocation can be increased for better performance.
Not certain if that is in the intel adapter app or the bios.

Performance doesn't matter whether it is plugged in or not because the battery settings are in favor of max performance, and I have tested with and without being plugged in and it doesn't change anything.

I have the same amount of RAM as I did when it performed well. I know 4GB isn't a lot and an upgrade would help a lot, but I didn't need it in the past. I may upgrade the ram though.

The BIOS only has options for boot order, security, wake on lan... basic settings. I have looked through the intel app, optimized the games, set the battery to max performance, etc.

 

[Odonix]

Any new ideas?

The thermal compound arrived yesterday. I will apply it sometime in the near future.
It won't be a fun job since one of the screws keeping the PCB in place is stripped and the other is really tight.

 

[Odonix]

I finally got around to replacing the thermal paste.

However, when I had the laptop open I noticed that the board has what I believe to be a couple of shorts?



Got a picture before I changed the thermal paste:

The good news is that replacing the thermal compound has seemed to maybe have helped. The max temp used to be around 70-80c, now it is more like 50-60c.

Game performance seems to be improved quite a bit, but still doesn't feel exactly as good as it used to?

What do you think the deal is with the board? I have no idea what that area of the board is for, but since it is close to the left of the cpu, I'd imagine it's quite important and I am surprised it still works as well as it does. Don't believe it is hot chocolate either, there was some around that area but it came off with rubbing alcohol, I went over this with rubbing alcohol a good number of times and it wouldn't come off, also it is darker in color compared to the dried up chocolate.