Degraded Gaming Performance

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Earbanean

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#288499 4-Jul-2021 16:14

My son has a BYOD laptop, which he had also used for a bit of gaming. It used to be OK for light gaming (Minecraft, Star Wars Squadrons), but about a month or two ago it became to laggy etc to game on. It's a Lenovo Ideapad with I5-10210, GeForce MX330, 8 Gb RAM, ethernet internet connection, 100Mbs Fibre plan.

We know that laptops aren't ideal for gaming - particularly one with these specs. It's primary use is school BYOD and it does that great. However, it had been OK for gaming up till that point, then it's performance dropped such that it was no longer usable for that. It seems like some setting was changed inadvertently or something. Is there anyway to check what could have caused the performance drop? Would some sort of benchmarking software identify a problem?

gehenna

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#2738676 4-Jul-2021 16:20

Restore to factory and test again following the clean installation. Sounds like a lot of work but decades in IT has shown time and again that it's faster than trying to track down the problem.

lNomNoml

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#2738677 4-Jul-2021 16:26

Update the graphics driver and see if that resolves the issue, here's the link for the Windows 10 64-bit one: https://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/471.11/471.11-notebook-win10-64bit-international-dch-whql.exe

Most likely this -> Also look in the graphics settings and see that the dedicated GPU us selected as the primary and not the integrated, here is how to do that: https://support.lenovo.com/nz/en/solutions/ht078706-how-to-configure-switchable-graphics-on-ideapad-laptops-windows set it to "high-performance NVIDIA processor".

Good luck.

Earbanean

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#2738716 4-Jul-2021 17:43

lNomNoml:

Update the graphics driver and see if that resolves the issue, here's the link for the Windows 10 64-bit one: https://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/471.11/471.11-notebook-win10-64bit-international-dch-whql.exe

Most likely this -> Also look in the graphics settings and see that the dedicated GPU us selected as the primary and not the integrated, here is how to do that: https://support.lenovo.com/nz/en/solutions/ht078706-how-to-configure-switchable-graphics-on-ideapad-laptops-windows set it to "high-performance NVIDIA processor".

Hmm, that could be it. When I tried to do that, the NVIDIA Control Panel said that Windows OS now manages selection of graphics. I googled that and it seems that was something that changed last year. So I used the control panel and selected each gaming app and explicitly chose the MX330 for each. We'll see if that makes a difference.

Earbanean

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#2738718 4-Jul-2021 17:44

gehenna: Restore to factory and test again following the clean installation. Sounds like a lot of work but decades in IT has shown time and again that it's faster than trying to track down the problem.

My son had already tried that and it didn't seem to help. I assume he did that correctly, but he may not have.

ratsun81

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#2738731 4-Jul-2021 18:58

What you need to do is figure out where/if the system is bottlenecking, all computers will have a pinch point somewhere.

Id recommend watching this video to help you diagnose where the problem lies and go from there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqY-BL5pLjQ

there is some very good information here to show you how to look at a system and try and figure out where you might have a problem.

nzkc

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#2738734 4-Jul-2021 19:08

Could be thermal throttling. Give the fans and any vents a good clean. Will probably need to pull the back off to really get at it.

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Earbanean

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#2739011 5-Jul-2021 09:13

ratsun81:

What you need to do is figure out where/if the system is bottlenecking, all computers will have a pinch point somewhere.

Id recommend watching this video to help you diagnose where the problem lies and go from there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqY-BL5pLjQ

there is some very good information here to show you how to look at a system and try and figure out where you might have a problem.

Thanks. I'll have a look and see if I can find the issue.

Batman

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#2739015 5-Jul-2021 09:18

Most likely thermal throttling from over heating

Batman

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#2739017 5-Jul-2021 09:19

nzkc:
Could be thermal throttling. Give the fans and any vents a good clean. Will probably need to pull the back off to really get at it.

Usually won't work. Thermal paste is more likely to do something but not a guarantee. It's the entire cooling system design, to both the cpu and gpu and other components you might not know about from the mobo design

Batman

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#2739018 5-Jul-2021 09:21

When it comes to gaming most laptop specs are not worth the paper they're printed on. You can have all the top specs but if cooling is not well designed it will thermal throttle every time you game