Why is everything slow all of a sudden? (FPS)

[piperthepepper]

I have a "gaming" laptop with a Geforce GTX 860M. I always make sure I keep it updated. I say gaming with quotation marks because I can't play games anymore at high graphics without significant frame drops.

Ex. Rise of the Tomb Raider, I was able to play at High (I believe Ultra was the highest). with no screen freezes in 2015. It's now 2018 and I cannot run the same settings without my screen stuttering and freezing. (I do not game very often so for me, it was a sudden change)

Now, I'm trying to play PvE on Fortnite and I can't play unless it is the absolute lowest settings and even then, it is unbearable.

I have tried cleaning my C: drive, and clearing the fan of debris, I'm not sure what else I can do (without taking my laptop apart). I believe I've done most of what has been said in other threads on the topic.

Any advice?

 

[androbourne]

How old is this laptop... I purchased my laptop 2 years ago with a 970m so.. if you are running on an 860m I'm assuming is a cheaper laptop or very old. Like 5 plus years old.

You can do some troubleshooting here and they but as equipment age there are things like heat that slowly degrade equipment over long periods of time... This is why industry standard states to replace stations every 5 years. (due to increased chance of hardware failure).

I would start with basics such as running DDU, fully uninstall all video drivers with it and reinstall cleanly. You can also try running system scans for viruses, malware, spyware and adaware as these can effect system performance. Monitor temps with HWMonitor, over time thermal compound dries up causing heating issues and degrade in performance, perform a check disk or advanced disk diags and make sure your drive isnt have issues etc...

 

[piperthepepper]

I have a MSI GE70 or something like that. I bought it the beginning of 2015 for about $1k which I hoped would last a little longer than the 3 years I've had it. Do laptops really degrade that quickly?

So it's definitely not over 5 years old. It also has an integrated intel driver but I made sure the geforce driver was in use. I use malwaremalbytes as well as Mcafee and those scans are all clean aside.

Temps are:
GPU ~35-45 while general browsing
CPU 45-55 while general browsing

I can't remember which one b ut one of them, I believe CPU goes to 75-88 during attempted gameplay.
Fan Speed 2874 RPM (Have no idea for ideal speed)

I was planning on doing the heatsink thing but knowing me, I'd probably blow up my laptop on accident lol.

Recently I replaced my battery as the previous one stopped charging at 85-90 percent and I wasn't sure if that was the cause.

What is this check disk you are referring to? Like cleaning the C: drive? I've done that before as I read that space available also affects performance (?)

 

[androbourne]

I have an MSI GE17 its like the next direct level of the exact laptop you have. I think you are fine with the age of the system. Mine is roughly that old and still runs like a champ.

Most CPUs will thermal thottle at 90c. If you are reaching 88c... you are most likely hitting thermal throttling which would cause those dips. What about your GPU temps? What are those at when you game?

And yes if you have a bad hard drive it can also cause issues. You can run a check disk from CMD.

https://neosmart.net/wiki/chkdsk/

 

[RobCrezz]

Chances are you just need to clean out fans/intakes/exhausts and apply new thermal paste to the CPU and GPU.

 

[piperthepepper]

@androbourne GPU/CPU during game play 82/84 respectively. Where the fan blows is very hot. GPU/CPU has now changed to 68/89. So it fluctuates a lot. I'll run a check disk now and let you know.


@RobCrezz is there a dummy friendly link to do this? I've made sure I cleaned out the fans with compressed air and the websites I've seen for cleaning heatsink and applying thermal paste says it's for advanced users only.

 

[piperthepepper]

Finished running the CHKDSK and there were 0 bad file records processed.
0 Kb in bad sectors. So it seems (from my standpoint) that there was not much wrong with the disk.

 

[androbourne]

Thats good. My main concern is still the CPU temps. That is high even for that laptop. I would use something like CPU-Z or Afterburner etc... and play a game and watch both GPU and CPU. I'm sure on CPU you will see large dips of it going from like 90% down slow for a short period of time then back up again. If it does this it means you are hitting thermal throttle. May need to open it up and replace thermal compound.

Make sure to check GPU temps as well.

 

[RobCrezz]

@androbourne GPU/CPU during game play 82/84 respectively. Where the fan blows is very hot. GPU/CPU has now changed to 68/89. So it fluctuates a lot. I'll run a check disk now and let you know.


@RobCrezz is there a dummy friendly link to do this? I've made sure I cleaned out the fans with compressed air and the websites I've seen for cleaning heatsink and applying thermal paste says it's for advanced users only.

Its a bit different for each laptop, but heres a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD3AGwHKWp4

Its pretty easy to do as long as you are happy removing screws.