[Gaming] Laptop CPU Usage fluctuating

[pescaru]

Hello,

I am having an issue with the cpu usage in games, as it's having annoying drops (fluctuates), causing fps drops too (from 150-200fps to 60-100) every 5 seconds (i will attach a picture).

 

I can give you my pc specs, maybe you can spot the problem for me (so far, it made me thinking that it would be a ram issue/bottleneck, as you will see in the following laptop specifications), pretty please

Laptop specifications:

Intel Core i5-9300H (4.1GHz Turbo, 4 cores, 8 threads, 8MB cache)

nVidia GTX 1050 3GB

RAM: Integrated 4GB memory @2400Mhz + (added by me in the only ram available slot) 8GB @2400Mhz 

512GB SSD

 

Really waiting for your help and answers. 
Thank you !

 

EDIT: In the first picture, i disabled hyperthreading because that caused only cpu0 to work at 100% and fluctuate, and the rest of threads work at lower frequency, but they fluctuated anyways

[emosun]

your gpu is at 75c so i imagine the cpu is hot as well . more than likely both are sharing the same heatsink so it would make sense they both move up and down to try and reduce heat. whats the cpu temp at?

[Alex Atkin UK]

9 minutes ago, pescaru said:

Hello,

I am having an issue with the cpu usage in games, as it's having annoying drops (fluctuates), causing fps drops too (from 150-200fps to 60-100) every 5 seconds (i will attach a picture).

 

I can give you my pc specs, maybe you can spot the problem for me (so far, it made me thinking that it would be a ram issue/bottleneck, as you will see in the following laptop specifications), pretty please

Laptop specifications:

Intel Core i5-9300H (4.1GHz Turbo, 4 cores, 8 threads, 8MB cache)

nVidia GTX 1050 3GB

RAM: Integrated 4GB memory @2400Mhz + (added by me in the only ram available slot) 8GB @2400Mhz 

512GB SSD

 

Really waiting for your help and answers. 
Thank you !

 

EDIT: In the first picture, i disabled hyperthreading because that caused only cpu0 to work at 100% and fluctuate, and the rest of threads work at lower frequency, but they fluctuated anyways

Having mixed ram capacities in dual channel is generally not a great idea.  Only half that 8GB stick will perform at dual-channel.

[pescaru]

1 hour ago, emosun said:

your gpu is at 75c so i imagine the cpu is hot as well . more than likely both are sharing the same heatsink so it would make sense they both move up and down to try and reduce heat. whats the cpu temp at?

97c at maximum, but in the cpu specs i remember they mentioned that it can go to max 97-100c, so i guess it's not an abnormal behaviour

 

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Having mixed ram capacities in dual channel is generally not a great idea.  Only half that 8GB stick will perform at dual-channel.

Thank you for your answer! Are you sure it's 4GB working on dual channel ? When i asked on other forums, they said it's not going to work dual-channel at all

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 minutes ago, pescaru said:

97c at maximum, but in the cpu specs i remember they mentioned that it can go to max 97-100c, so i guess it's not an abnormal behaviour

 

Thank you for your answer! Are you sure it's 4GB working on dual channel ? When i asked on other forums, they said it's not going to work dual-channel at all

CPU-Z says dual channel above, so clearly its trying.  This is where things could be complicated as we don't really know exactly how its doing that.  Theoretically it should run dual-channel until it accesses that last 4GB, but in practice who really knows?

I don't think it would cause your specific problem, more likely micro-stutter in games, but again its hard to say.

[emosun]

20 minutes ago, pescaru said:

97c at maximum, but in the cpu specs i remember they mentioned that it can go to max 97-100c, so i guess it's not an abnormal behaviour

Thats the max temp before the cpu starts damaging itself and automatically shuts the machine off.

 

Cpu is wayyy too hot to run at full speed and its trying to cool itself off. Get the machine under 80 preferably around 70c

 

What youre seeing here is why most people dont use laptops for sustained heavy loads. The cpu can handle it but the cooling cannot. As a result youll need to turn down your expectations and settings to get the temps leveled off before you just fry out the thermal paste on that thing.

[pescaru]

Just now, emosun said:

Thats the max temp before the cpu starts damaging itself and automatically shuts the machine off.

 

Cpu is wayyy too hot to run at full speed and its trying to cool itself off. Get the machine under 80 preferably around 70c

 

What youre seeing here is why most people dont use laptop for sustained heavy loads. The cpu can handle it but the cooling cannot. As a result youll need to turn down your expectations and setting to get the temps leveled off before you just fry out the thermal paste on that thing.

Thank you for your answer!

Do you think undervoltage does help to reduce the heat ? 

[emosun]

4 minutes ago, pescaru said:

Do you think undervoltage does help to reduce the heat ?

turn the settings in your game way down so the cpu is doing less. You can undervolt it if you want but the cpu has to be doing less work for any real improvement.

You also have to expect a lot less from this machine and change your expectations to match the form factors limitations. It's not a desktop , it doesn't have any way of cooling itself off in the same manner , so don't expect it to be able to do the kind of sustained load a desktop can.

[Alex Atkin UK]

3 hours ago, emosun said:

Thats the max temp before the cpu starts damaging itself and automatically shuts the machine off.

 

Cpu is wayyy too hot to run at full speed and its trying to cool itself off. Get the machine under 80 preferably around 70c

 

What youre seeing here is why most people dont use laptops for sustained heavy loads. The cpu can handle it but the cooling cannot. As a result youll need to turn down your expectations and settings to get the temps leveled off before you just fry out the thermal paste on that thing.

Actually:

 

[emosun]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Actually:

Actually

5 hours ago, emosun said:

Cpu is wayyy too hot to run at full speed and its trying to cool itself off. Get the machine under 80 preferably around 70c

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

So an Intel engineer telling Linus that 90C+ is fine is not good enough for you now?

[pescaru]

In the picture below, i got some max temperatures of the core, they got to a maximum of 98C.

 

An interesting fact i observed ingames is that, when cpu throttles, the temp goes to 70c (probably obvious).

[emosun]

3 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

So an Intel engineer telling Linus that 90C+ is fine is not good enough for you now?

yeah not really , intel is barely even competitive. their engineers barely make anything that evn is worth buying atm so when he says 90c is fine i'll take it with a boulder of salt.

 

The machine is throttling to cool itself off , so cool it off and it'll stop throttling. Gotta be nuts to sit there watching the thing hit thermal limit and back off over and over and think it has anything to do with something else.

 

30 minutes ago, pescaru said:

An interesting fact i observed ingames is that, when cpu throttles, the temp goes to 70c

yeah , becuase that's where it wants to be so move the temp down to that point.