Laptop with MX230 stuttering

bibo145 · May 30, 2020

Hello, I got a X512FJ-EJ225T laptop with the specs below:

- i5-8265U

- Nvidia 230MX - 2GB GDDR5 (Driver 445.87)

- 1x 8GB RAM

- 120 SSD

- 1920x1080 screen

- Windows 10 Home - 1909

When I play games, it stutter really bad, I tried multiple OEM ASUS GPU driver, the oldest driver I could find in NVIDIA website, and I'm using the newest one at this moment, I re-installed windows, I always use it plugged, I've put the 99% on max processor thing on the energy management, I've tried everything I could find, disabling windows game bar thing, tried to cool it with an old cooler-base, but it didn't drop the temperature (maybe the base is too old and slow, idk), and the temperature doesn't even seems to be too high, I think... The only thing that seems to have worked better was when I installed Ubuntu and tried to run Albion, it had lower FPS but it didn't cause any stutter at all.

The game running is Albion Online, which is not the most optimized game ever, but the same occurs on League of Legends.

NOTE: The tests were made with all the default NVIDIA panel control configurations.

Here is an image of my GPU working while the game was showing on background, but the windows was focused on GPU-Z screen, the GPU clock seems pretty stable, even if it shows lots of Thermal Cap reason, that's why I don't really think it's a thermal issue...

And then, I clicked on the game screen, I was at the character selection screen, which has no fancy animations, only my character and this fireplace which we can notice the stutter.

Link to the stutter GIF: https://imgur.com/La4poJX

(The green arrow is when I clicked on the game) I literally did nothing else, and the GPU went crazy.

The game is already on minimum settings, sometime it seems that in Full-screen, with v-sync on, it works better compared to Windowed full-screen mode. Also, it's worth noting that if I set better graphics, the GPU seems to run more stable, because it's kinda know it has to run better and won't be lazy, but it still stutters after all.

Other tool I used to check my GPU function was the NvOptimusTestViewer64. And when I'm playing games, it goes to ON->IDLE->ON like crazy.

The images below are from the game League of Legends, which we hope to be more optimized, all the drivers configurations were the default one too. All I did in game was running the river up and down, no heavy effects at all.

Opened LoL on med-high settings, full-screen and v-sync on, running at 60 fps, some times goes down to 45-50, seemed to have no stutters at all:

https://imgur.com/LgTR9RR

All settings on low, windowed mode and no v-sync, fps reached max 70 and goes down to 30, note that the the settings are lower than the above:

https://imgur.com/UGd617O

Went back to the starting setting, med-high settings, full-screen and v-sync on, and it got worse, stuttered like the second settings:

https://imgur.com/FWAo9u7

The PerfCap Reason on the graphs are:

Grey: Idle

Pink: Thermal

Blue: Reliability voltage (not sure what this one means)

Here you can see a gameplay with the same specs as mine, and it runs really well.

To finish, some FurMark running, the first image is 1920x1080, avg 13 fps, and the second 1024x576, avg 28 fps.

https://imgur.com/nkXLBJ5 (this one green cap was Power, not sure what it means exactly)

https://imgur.com/KvDsYzZ

That's it for now, I don't know what more I can bring to you guys, but I'm up to anything that would help you find a solution with me.

Sorry if the post is confusing, feel free to ask and I can try to explain better. Thanks for now. (I posted imgur URLs because my images went on queue and didn't load in the post...)