Question Stutters when gaming

[NexonM]

Greetings folks,
It's almost half a year since I have bought gaming Laptop Y540:
i7 9750 4.5 GHZ
GTX 1660 ti
16 GB of RAM 2666MHz
1TB NVME SSD
144 Hz
Since the very beginning I had issues with sound, there was crackling sound always present when using headphones, which I decided to figure out by myself. There were also some other minor issues which I resolved by reinstalling windows 10. Everything worked flawlessly for a little while....
After a month or so I started to feel that in games there are points when it becomes laggy, I had undervolted my laptop back then to lower down temps a bit so I thought that was the cause of it, so I tried different setting, even reverted everything back but nothing seemed to help. I tried literally everything I could find on the internet but nothing seemed to work so I gave up eventually as I had prioritize my uni studies for a while.
Last month I started having more time to game again and I was trying to find solution for this. I even reintalled GPU drivers using DDU, tried many different versions, didn't help.
I should clarify that there are two parts of this issue actually:

1. Happens in every game, when want to open menu, map, or something else, there is immediate fps drop, I use riva tuner and MSi afterburner so I can see it drops like from 100 fps to 3,2,1.
2. Happens in most games, (Borderlands 3, AC Odyssey...) when I normally play and don't open anything there is small very short stutter every about 2 minutes. Interesting part is, as I can monitor it via Riva tuner, there is usually very small fps drop when this occurs (10-15 fps down) while frame time graph goes like roller coaster though. I found one workaround that actually helped a little, I created a task that splashes cached RAM every minute, that helped a little. But it's still annoying.

I have even tried all guides to "enhance" Windows 10 to perform better, I changed Nvidia settings, power supply settings, I have checked RAM and also SSD because when I bought a laptop with OEM Antivirus, it was working really subpar, once I deleted it and started using Windows Defender instead, it performed nice.
Any suggestions what else I can do? I will try anything.

So I did some research and I let MSI afterburner to make some benchmarks and also I really followed graphs in MSI afterburner and this is what I got in 3 games I played (Borderlands 3, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Witcher 3)
Borderlands3.exe benchmark completed, 41908 frames rendered in 447.844 s
Average framerate : 93.5 FPS
Minimum framerate : 0.0 FPS
Maximum framerate : 138.0 FPS
1% low framerate : 0.0 FPS
0.1% low framerate : 0.0 FPS
eurotrucks2.exe benchmark completed, 20132 frames rendered in 239.765 s
Average framerate : 83.9 FPS
Minimum framerate : 0.3 FPS
Maximum framerate : 90.0 FPS
1% low framerate : 0.3 FPS
0.1% low framerate : 0.3 FPS
Witcher3.exe benchmark completed, 5832 frames rendered in 41.000 s
Average framerate : 142.2 FPS
Minimum framerate : 5.6 FPS
Maximum framerate : 144.5 FPS
1% low framerate : 9.8 FPS
0.1% low framerate : 4.4 FPS
And more importantly!
These are graphs when playing Borderlands 3 :

https://imgur.com/a/XZdmETT

View: https://imgur.com/a/XZdmETT

https://imgur.com/a/USjiPFm

View: https://imgur.com/a/USjiPFm

https://imgur.com/a/ncuwaqm

View: https://imgur.com/a/ncuwaqm

So as you can see, CPU remains at the same frequency all the time so we can say, that's not an issue, but GPU usage can drop heavily even during playing. Also frame times...

 

[lga1156_ftw]

Your only benchmarking the gpu and not cpu. CPU usage goes only to 10-15% and it draws 20w from usual 45w limit.

Are you using intel xtu to undervolt? If so then run the stress test and see the graphs, is it power / thermal throttling?

Also download aida64 and look all temperature sensors under load, do you see high temps on ANY sensor?
Try to run aida64 system stability test while stressing both cpu and gpu.

Are you running newest bios version, look with msinfo : BHCN36WW , if not then go to Lenovo site with your service tag and download latest bios version for your model, make sure power cable is plugged in and battery atleast 50%. Then disable antivirus until next boot and continue with the bios update.

EDIT: if you havent already tried drivers straight from lenovo site, open it again with service tag and then go to Display and Video Graphics : download both INTEL and (newer) NVIDIA graphics driver to your desktop. Boot into safe mode when your internet and wifi is unplugged, use DDU and select INTEL then clean and recommend, boot again into safe mode and do same with NVIDIA. After that boot normal windows and do not yet put interet back, proceed to install both drivers from your desktop.

 

[NexonM]

Your only benchmarking the gpu and not cpu. CPU usage goes only to 10-15% and it draws 20w from usual 45w limit.

Are you using intel xtu to undervolt? If so then run the stress test and see the graphs, is it power / thermal throttling?

Also download aida64 and look all temperature sensors under load, do you see high temps on ANY sensor?
Try to run aida64 system stability test while stressing both cpu and gpu.

Are you running newest bios version, look with msinfo : BHCN36WW , if not then go to Lenovo site with your service tag and download latest bios version for your model, make sure power cable is plugged in and battery atleast 50%. Then disable antivirus until next boot and continue with the bios update.

EDIT: if you havent already tried drivers straight from lenovo site, open it again with service tag and then go to Display and Video Graphics : download both INTEL and (newer) NVIDIA graphics driver to your desktop. Boot into safe mode when your internet and wifi is unplugged, use DDU and select INTEL then clean and recommend, boot again into safe mode and do same with NVIDIA. After that boot normal windows and do not yet put interet back, proceed to install both drivers from your desktop.

Hello, thanks for you reply!

I use Throttlestop so I downloaded Aida 64 and gave it a try. Of course high temps were first suspect so I knew it's not the cause, in CPU stress test for about 10 minutes, max temperature was 80 degrees on CPU. In games using riva tuner there are usually CPU temps around 68-75, except BF 5. And GPU is cool as hell, like 60 degrees all the time. I don't know how to measure thermal throttling during aida 64 but CPU clocks were 3,8 GHz all the time (I set it like that in throttlestop) and power draw was constantly between 40-41 watts.

In combined CPU and GPU stress test: max CPU temp was 84, while GPU was hitting 61. CPU was drawing 44-46W. I don't use newest Bios because I tried them all and found 26,27 offers best temps and fan activation by far. I recently tried newest BIOS but it made no difference with this issue.
"Last month I started having more time to game again and I was trying to find solution for this. I even reintalled GPU drivers using DDU, tried many different versions, didn't help. "
This is what I wrote in first paragraph so there you go... made no difference.

https://imgur.com/a/tD8PWq5

View: https://imgur.com/a/tD8PWq5


Anything else to try?

 

[lga1156_ftw]

Try this :

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMvCbtbi_dQ&list=WL&index=4&t=0s


If that doesnt help try rollback your windows build (if your running 1903 or newer only)
18xx and older doesnt cause issues, if check for a guide. If you cant rollback just clean install older version.

 

[lga1156_ftw]

You can test your charger failing with using "high performance profile" for battery from power options, meaning your running it even if charger is unplugged. After that unplug your charger and run only battery try to game and see if your fps is dropping.

 

[lga1156_ftw]

Clean install is one of best ways to resolve issues like this, just grab a usb, write down your windows 10 key (if you dont have it on your back cover). Then go microsoft site and download windows 10 installation usb, boot from it and format ALL partitions, create new one and install on it. Then only take drivers you need from windows update / laptop manufactor site.

Do you have any other HDD than "1TB NVME SSD", make sure it has latest firmware installed (only if new updates actually resolves the issue check patch notes)
Also if you have RAID mode on bios change it to ACHI, heres how:
https://support.thinkcritical.com/kb/articles/switch-windows-10-from-raid-ide-to-ahci

 

[NexonM]

Try this :

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMvCbtbi_dQ&list=WL&index=4&t=0s

You can test your charger failing with using "high performance profile" for battery from power options, meaning your running it even if charger is unplugged. After that unplug your charger and run only battery try to game and see if your fps is dropping.

Seems about the same, but quite surprise how it was able to run on battery for a while.

If that doesnt help try rollback your windows build (if your running 1903 or newer only)
18xx and older doesnt cause issues, if check for a guide. If you cant rollback just clean install older version.

Problem is, I have this issue for quite long, since october I think, actually maybe around the time I transitioned from 1809 to 1903. So maybe this is a cause?

 

[Zstar14]

Greetings folks,
It's almost half a year since I have bought gaming Laptop Y540:
i7 9750 4.5 GHZ
GTX 1660 ti
16 GB of RAM 2666MHz
1TB NVME SSD
144 Hz
Since the very beginning I had issues with sound, there was crackling sound always present when using headphones, which I decided to figure out by myself. There were also some other minor issues which I resolved by reinstalling windows 10. Everything worked flawlessly for a little while....
After a month or so I started to feel that in games there are points when it becomes laggy, I had undervolted my laptop back then to lower down temps a bit so I thought that was the cause of it, so I tried different setting, even reverted everything back but nothing seemed to help. I tried literally everything I could find on the internet but nothing seemed to work so I gave up eventually as I had prioritize my uni studies for a while.
Last month I started having more time to game again and I was trying to find solution for this. I even reintalled GPU drivers using DDU, tried many different versions, didn't help.
I should clarify that there are two parts of this issue actually:

1. Happens in every game, when want to open menu, map, or something else, there is immediate fps drop, I use riva tuner and MSi afterburner so I can see it drops like from 100 fps to 3,2,1.
2. Happens in most games, (Borderlands 3, AC Odyssey...) when I normally play and don't open anything there is small very short stutter every about 2 minutes. Interesting part is, as I can monitor it via Riva tuner, there is usually very small fps drop when this occurs (10-15 fps down) while frame time graph goes like roller coaster though. I found one workaround that actually helped a little, I created a task that splashes cached RAM every minute, that helped a little. But it's still annoying.

I have even tried all guides to "enhance" Windows 10 to perform better, I changed Nvidia settings, power supply settings, I have checked RAM and also SSD because when I bought a laptop with OEM Antivirus, it was working really subpar, once I deleted it and started using Windows Defender instead, it performed nice.
Any suggestions what else I can do? I will try anything.

So I did some research and I let MSI afterburner to make some benchmarks and also I really followed graphs in MSI afterburner and this is what I got in 3 games I played (Borderlands 3, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Witcher 3)
Borderlands3.exe benchmark completed, 41908 frames rendered in 447.844 s
Average framerate : 93.5 FPS
Minimum framerate : 0.0 FPS
Maximum framerate : 138.0 FPS
1% low framerate : 0.0 FPS
0.1% low framerate : 0.0 FPS
eurotrucks2.exe benchmark completed, 20132 frames rendered in 239.765 s
Average framerate : 83.9 FPS
Minimum framerate : 0.3 FPS
Maximum framerate : 90.0 FPS
1% low framerate : 0.3 FPS
0.1% low framerate : 0.3 FPS
Witcher3.exe benchmark completed, 5832 frames rendered in 41.000 s
Average framerate : 142.2 FPS
Minimum framerate : 5.6 FPS
Maximum framerate : 144.5 FPS
1% low framerate : 9.8 FPS
0.1% low framerate : 4.4 FPS
And more importantly!
These are graphs when playing Borderlands 3 :

https://imgur.com/a/XZdmETT

View: https://imgur.com/a/XZdmETT

https://imgur.com/a/USjiPFm

View: https://imgur.com/a/USjiPFm

https://imgur.com/a/ncuwaqm

View: https://imgur.com/a/ncuwaqm

So as you can see, CPU remains at the same frequency all the time so we can say, that's not an issue, but GPU usage can drop heavily even during playing. Also frame times...

Hi there, have you resolved this stutter issue yet?, chiming in because i've been experiencing similar stutter on my y540, as have many others it seems