Frame drops on unplugging power (outside of games)

[Shreyas Tripathy]

I have been experiencing this issue for the past month or so where I encounter hefty visual response lags and video frame drops when I unplug my laptop from the power source.

 

Here are some of the things I have tried"

• Check the power mode and set it to Better Performance and High Performance (saw no change)
• Checked what GPU is being used for the display and browsers (It is the onboard graphics: Intel UHD 630)

 

Now, it takes roughly 20 seconds or so for the whole thing to settle down. But for those 20-odd seconds, the system feels pretty much unusable.

 

Some video players (especially the Amazon Prime Video one), even fails to continue playing the video and starts showing the buffering animation. Is this a graphics issue or something else?

 

[HanZie82]

Changing power plans doesnt really have any influence on the difference between being power or running from battery.
You could go deeper into the powerplans but i would suggest checking your anti-virus status, and make sure the graphics drivers are up to date and installed. (depending on type of your GPU) Cus you might have more GPU then just a Shitty Intel one.

[Shreyas Tripathy]

I have a GTX 1050Ti but the way it is configured, I can't change what GPU the display uses. Probably locked out by ASUS. But I am still unable to understand why I am facing this issue now? It's been over a year since I got it so it has to do with either some Windows update or some driver update.

 

PS: Graphics drivers are up-to-date

[Arphis]

Most likely its Nvidia Optimus switching to the iGPU when you unplug the laptop, Nvidia created it to save power while in battery mode.

 

You might be able to change its behaviour in the Nvidia driver settings, just check if Optimus is enabled and if so, disable it. If there is no setting for this in the driver panel you might have to check your BIOS for an entry containing Optimus.

 

 

1 hour ago, Shreyas Tripathy said:

those 20-odd seconds

... probably come from your laptop shoving all the stuff that was in your 1050ti's memory into the iGPU's memory which is basically just your RAM. It might actually just delete the content of your VRAM and load it again, hence the buffering.

 

46 minutes ago, Shreyas Tripathy said:

But I am still unable to understand why I am facing this issue now?

Probably because the last Geforce driver update enabled Optimus by default. If you dont find any entries for Optimus you might want to rollback to an older driver version from before you encountered the issue.

[Mark Kaine]

5 hours ago, Shreyas Tripathy said:

I have a GTX 1050Ti but the way it is configured, I can't change what GPU the display uses. Probably locked out by ASUS. But I am still unable to understand why I am facing this issue now? It's been over a year since I got it so it has to do with either some Windows update or some driver update.

 

PS: Graphics drivers are up-to-date

Are you saying you try to play games with the power unplugged. 

On battery? 

 

Or is it really just "videos"?

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Arphis said:

Most likely its Nvidia Optimus switching to the iGPU when you unplug the laptop, Nvidia created it to save power while in battery mode.

This is of course also possible. 

 

Fact is you can't play games on a laptop (especially not an apparently weak one since it has a 1050ti) with power unplugged. 

 

Edit:  if it's really just about video playback -  I still don't understand,  I can play videos just fine on battery with the iGPU -  I even specifically set it to use the iGPU for videos only.  

 

 

Might be a driver issue after all then - I only use drivers provided by the manufacturer of my laptop,  so it's old and it just works. 

 

PS: full specs may be helpful