NVIDIA 950m Lagging and Stuttering

[Misterguymandude]

Hi, and thanks in advance for any input or advice, and apologies in advance for being long-winded..

So, I’m using an ASUS K501UX with Intel i5-6200U @ 2.30GHz 2.40GHz. 8 GB ram, on a 64 bit Win 10 (version 1511) machine with a NVIDIA 950m GPU that I bought only about 2 months ago. Up until the other day, I’ve had zero issues with anything. I usually play older games (GTA IV, Skyrim, and things like that) and those have run extremely smoothly on this machine.

The other morning I was prompted for a new windows update. I was in a big rush to make it to a very important meeting, so ended up having to hard shut down the computer just after the update had cleared 100%. I assume this was the big fat anniversary update, but cannot be sure. When I was eventually able to turn the laptop back on, it was stuck in a restart loop and wouldn’t even make it to the sign in screen. Eventually, I managed to get into the repair menu and rolled back to the previous version of windows 10.

Happily, everything booted up just fine after rolling back and all seemed well with all of my usual programs. Unfortunately, when I loaded up any game… they were all unplayable. It kept cycling between running fine for a few seconds and then lagging and stuttering like crazy for a few seconds and then repeating this cycle. In GTA IV, textures and things like that didn’t seem to be a problem… just the damned lagging and stuttering. I figured it may have been something wonky that went wrong with the windows update / rollback, so I used the “reset this PC” option (removing all files and apps).

After reinstalling everything on the computer (back to windows 10 version 1511), again absolutely everything else works fine and smoothly… except for gaming which is still having the exact same issue. Since then, I’ve poked around online for solutions, but nothing has worked so far. The XBOX DVR is disabled, I have my power settings on high performance. I’ve monitored the GPU temperature and it stays below 55 degrees even when the game performance is horrible. I always use a fan pad and make sure the vents are not filled with dust. I’ve tried completely uninstalling my NVIDIA driver using DDU and doing clean installs of the current driver. That didn’t work and the games are still lagging and stuttering. I also tried installing a few older versions of the driver (including the one ASUS K501UX machines are supposed to have) and still the problem persists.

At this point, I have no clue what to try next and can’t seem to find other solutions online. I’m also increasingly unsure if this is a hardware issue (since reinstalling windows and trying different drivers hasn’t helped), or if it’s a software issue (since this is a very new machine with absolutely no other performance issues that would suggest the GPU is fried). Any insight or help from you all would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Misterguymandude]

Pardon the wall o text, the formatting from word was lost when I pasted it in here.

 

[webworkings]

When you uninstalled and then reinstalled the driver, did you reboot the computer in between?

 

[Misterguymandude]

When you uninstalled and then reinstalled the driver, did you reboot the computer in between?

Hi webworkings, thank you for replying. Indeed. I used the restart into safemode option in DDU to complete the uninstall, then rebooted into windows normally before clean reinstalling the driver. For good measure, I also restarted yet again after the driver finished reinstalling before testing it on games.

 

[webworkings]

Have you tried switching back to the to the original installed graphics card to see if you get the same issue?

 

[Misterguymandude]

I may be misunderstanding, but the GTX 950m is the gpu that came with the laptop out of the box. As for the drivers, I've tried out the most recent (372.90), some older drivers (372.70, 372.54, 368.39), as well as the driver that's apparently included in the original ASUS k501ux factory settings (353.84) which I've left currently installed. There doesn't seem to be much variation between these drivers and the issues with lag and stuttering.

For what it's worth, I poked around in device manager for the GPU which tells me "the device is working properly" and there don't seem to be any oddities when looking at the events log.

 

[terryc4]

Same issue here...

My Asus K501ux (i7 GT950M) got a windows update 2 days ago (i think it's anniversary update), and yesterday it started lagging and stuttering in every game I played. I have tried several Nvidia drivers and also used DDU to uninstall/install them, but it still doest work. Now i'm trying to restore the system to see if it improves .. 🙁
------
Update:
The lag issue doesn't improve after restoring the system to factory default status.
It's still lagging when using 950m to run any games.

 

[webworkings]

That was my next suggestion. Trying a system restore to a point prior to the start of the problem.

Also, you may want to try launching in "Safe Mode" and see if you get the same issue or not. If you don't, then something on the computer is the cause.

 

[Misterguymandude]

Same issue here...

My Asus K501ux (i7 GT950M) got a windows update 2 days ago (i think it's anniversary update), and yesterday it started lagging and stuttering in every game I played. I have tried several Nvidia drivers and also used DDU to uninstall/install them, but it still doest work. Now i'm trying to restore the system to see if it improves .. 🙁
------
Update:
The lag issue doesn't improve after restoring the system to factory default status.
It's still lagging when using 950m to run any games.

Thank you for the update, and it sucks to see other people having the same issue. On the plus side, if we are both having the same issues after the Win 10 update that came on Friday, it may suggest that the problem is with some setting somewhere going wonky rather than a hardware issue. I'll be sure to keep this thread updated whenever I try something new, and hopefully a solution when one is found.

That was my next suggestion. Trying a system restore to a point prior to the start of the problem.

Also, you may want to try launching in "Safe Mode" and see if you get the same issue or not. If you don't, then something on the computer is the cause.

When the problems first came up, I initially tried to load a restore point. Oddly enough, the system couldn't find one so I couldn't proceed with that. I will definitely try running things in safemode. Good idea! I will report back once I get a chance to do that.

 

[velo3100]

Can you tell me the cpu and gpu usage while gaming?

 

[Misterguymandude]

Can you tell me the cpu and gpu usage while gaming?

Hi velo3100. Took me a few days before I had some free time to do this. I used msi afterburner to monitor things. From the time of loading up a game (GTA IV) and for about 5 minutes of gameplay, CPU usage held fairly steady at around 85-90%, and GPU usage hovered around 55% during the credit and loading screens, but then bounced between 95-100% and about 15-20% during actual gameplay (I assume corresponding to the cycling of lagging/stuttering and normal performance). As mentioned in the OP, GPU temperature held stable between 50-55 degrees the whole time.

 

[velo3100]

It sounds like to me that the cpu is being used quite a bit. Also it is a bit strange that the gpu usage goes up to 100% when the loading screens are. Are you sure that it is using the nividia gpu?

 

[Misterguymandude]

It sounds like to me that the cpu is being used quite a bit. Also it is a bit strange that the gpu usage goes up to 100% when the loading screens are. Are you sure that it is using the nividia gpu?

Positive that the nvidia GPU is being used for games. It's set to do so by default, and I double checked in the nvidia control panel tp make sure this is the case. Just a minor point of clarification, though... the GPU usage only goes up to 100% during gameplay (then goes up and down rapidly). During credits and loading screens, the GPU runs at a relatively steady 55%.

 

[velo3100]

Could you check what programs are running when you play the game? It sounds like that the reset has caused some programs to run when they shouldn't. The only other thing I can think of is the bios needs to be updated.

 

[Misterguymandude]

Could you check what programs are running when you play the game? It sounds like that the reset has caused some programs to run when they shouldn't. The only other thing I can think of is the bios needs to be updated.

Took a peek, and all that was running was the game and task manager. There were a number of background processes (mostly for Intel, Windows, and Nvidia), but those weren't eating into the CPU performance. Spoke with a friend that's much more savvy than I, and he also suggested trying out a firmware update. Since there doesn't seem to be many other options to try out, I may give that a go this weekend.

Windows is also starting to prompt me for another update, Torn between letting it update to see if anything is fixed, or mucking around with other things first.

 

[Misterguymandude]

Well... Windows decided to take the liberty to complete the AU update, itself. The lag/stutter problem remains.

 

[AtomSphere]

sounds exactly like what I am having. In my thread, I complained that CPU is utilized much more (15- 20%) and some games GPU will be underutilized. I suspect it has something to do with directx since 3Dmark for direct12 shows no changes but the skydiver test revealed graphics score is higher by 4FPS but physics score did drop!

 

[AtomSphere]

Great news! I just solved my issue 1 hour ago. Reinstall Windows. The issue has to do with a software that controls the CPU clock.
I noticed my idle CPU clock doesn't drop below 2Ghz even when I stop all background processes from taskbar, now when idle my clock idles below 1Ghz (the way it should be).

Try uninstalling then reinstalling any intel CPU clock controllers for your notebook. There are a lot of factory or Intel program responsible for controlling your CPU speed.

 

[webworkings]

Interesting. Thank you for posting your fix.

 

[AtomSphere]

Interesting. Thank you for posting your fix.

welcome! Spend 3 days testing so many things (even changed cmos battery). Could had saved myself a lot of time with reinstall followed by 1/2 day of reverting to my personalized settings.


detailed version: http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-3206044/nvidia-gpu-underutilized.html

 

[Misterguymandude]

Great news! I just solved my issue 1 hour ago. Reinstall Windows. The issue has to do with a software that controls the CPU clock.
I noticed my idle CPU clock doesn't drop below 2Ghz even when I stop all background processes from taskbar, now when idle my clock idles below 1Ghz (the way it should be).

Try uninstalling then reinstalling any intel CPU clock controllers for your notebook. There are a lot of factory or Intel program responsible for controlling your CPU speed.

Congrats! Glad to hear you found a solution for your computer ills.

Reinstalling windows was one of the first things I tried, but unfortunately didn't fix anything. The search continues lol

 

[AtomSphere]

Are you able to right click the game shortcut and choose which grapics processor to run with? I hear sometimes it is an issue with some updates or changes that suddenly makes the IGPU do the job instead of the DGPU. 55c under load for the GPU is very low. My GTX960m runs at 83c under load

 

[plan3s]

My girlfriend has ASUS K501UX with 5500U, 8GB and 950m. Noticed similiar problems. An interesting fact is that she bought the same laptop twice, because in first PSU roasted after replugging it to another power source within 2 days of use. We've seen several ASUS laptops from that series in outlet stores with note "Returned by customer, replaced PSU in an authorized service". Seems like a pattern for those guys.

In some another thread I've seen before (can't find it right now) someone reported that stuttering could have been correlated with voltage issues of Intel processors (backed up with some AIDA findings).

Now, could it be potentially linked? Maybe one of components has troubles with power management (like CPU bottlenecking GPU or so).

We've been trying to run Fallout 4 on that laptop, various materials in the internet suggest that it could be ran without problems on medium settings. Yet, GameReady driver not only suggests that the game is unsupported, but also running it on low produces stutters, some weird screen cutting, even system malfunctioning (!) with eventual freeze. GTA 4 worked fine, but needed some -commandline manipulations to allow it to recognize the GPU.

 

[Misterguymandude]

Are you able to right click the game shortcut and choose which grapics processor to run with? I hear sometimes it is an issue with some updates or changes that suddenly makes the IGPU do the job instead of the DGPU. 55c under load for the GPU is very low. My GTX960m runs at 83c under load

Indeed I have tried this, and it has not helped with the issues unfortunately. Since I've monitored the GPU usage while playing, I'm quite confident that the GTX905m is being used during gaming.

My girlfriend has ASUS K501UX with 5500U, 8GB and 950m. Noticed similiar problems. An interesting fact is that she bought the same laptop twice, because in first PSU roasted after replugging it to another power source within 2 days of use. We've seen several ASUS laptops from that series in outlet stores with note "Returned by customer, replaced PSU in an authorized service". Seems like a pattern for those guys.

In some another thread I've seen before (can't find it right now) someone reported that stuttering could have been correlated with voltage issues of Intel processors (backed up with some AIDA findings).

Now, could it be potentially linked? Maybe one of components has troubles with power management (like CPU bottlenecking GPU or so).

I appreciate the reply!

I've started to have some other issues lately which may suggest power problems (or worse), including one instance where the computer froze up, and a BSoD this evening. I haven't had a chance to look over the dump file (since I'm still learning how to do this), but in my Events Viewer it seems that I've been absolutely inundated with WHEA-Logger warning (not error) 17... since the Win 10 AU update last week that reads as such;

"A corrected hardware error has occurred.

Component: PCI Express Root Port
Error Source: Advanced Error Reporting (PCI Express)

Bus😀evice:Function: 0x0:0x1C:0x4
Vendor ID😀evice ID: 0x8086:0x9D14
Class Code: 0x30400"


Poking around a bit, it seems some people have been having this issue after big Win 10 updates. Although this is all really starting to veer far away from my lowly level of technical knowledge, and I'm not at all sure if this even relates to the issues stated in the OP, what I've read may suggest some very screwy driver issues. Nevertheless, there seems to be deeper problems afoot.

Kinda at a loss now. Very odd that things were working absolutely beautifully up to this damned Windows update, now issues are cropping up constantly.

 

[AtomSphere]

maybe tough it out and that the next update fixs it. Plus reading the previous few post, if you can try a different PSU maybe that can cross it off the list of potential problems.