Lower Performance and FPS Drops on Laptop

[iQuimper]

Hello. I've had an Asus laptop (Asus VivoBook Pro 15 N580VD, I'll put the system specs below) since october 2018 and in the last two months or so I've noticed regular and sudden FPS drops in any game I play. While playing Overwatch on high settings and full hd resolution I noticed the following things:

• sudden drops from 60fps to 20-30fps
• GPU temperature constant at 79 celsius , usage at 99%
• CPU temperature fluctuates regularly between 75-85 celsius and usage at 20-25%

Battery settings are set to  "High performance" and graphic card settings to adaptive. I've searched all around the internet and couldn't find a fix or at least the cause of my problem. Could anyone help me? Thanks in advance.

SystemSpecs.txt

[PineyCreek]

Checked vents for dust?  Checked fan speed?  Seems a little early for it, but perhaps Asus put really crap paste between the chips and cooling solution.

[schwellmo92]

Can you monitor CPU and GPU clocks and see if they dip when the FPS drops? You might be thermal throttling.

[iQuimper]

9 hours ago, schwellmo92 said:

Can you monitor CPU and GPU clocks and see if they dip when the FPS drops? You might be thermal throttling.

CPU clock seems to remain stable at around 3400MHz, no matter the temperature, but when the drops occur, the GPU clock goes from ~1500-1600MHz to 1100-1000-900-800MHz, even if the temperature remains stable at 79 celsius.

[schwellmo92]

7 minutes ago, iQuimper said:

CPU clock seems to remain stable at around 3400MHz, no matter the temperature, but when the drops occur, the GPU clock goes from ~1500-1600MHz to 1100-1000-900-800MHz, even if the temperature remains stable at 79 celsius.

You can download HWiNFO and run it in the background, when you throttle see if it mentions anything about power/thermal throttling in one its statistics.

 

[iQuimper]

12 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

You can download HWiNFO and run it in the background, when you throttle see if it mentions anything about power/thermal throttling in one its statistics.

 

For core 0,1,2 (except 3) thermal throttling turned to "Yes", also "Package/Ring Thermal Throttling" turned to "Yes", but only for about 10 seconds, then it was back to normal.

[schwellmo92]

32 minutes ago, iQuimper said:

For core 0,1,2 (except 3) thermal throttling turned to "Yes", also "Package/Ring Thermal Throttling" turned to "Yes", but only for about 10 seconds, then it was back to normal.

That's your CPU, does the GPU have any throttling stats?

 

EDIT: Maybe your CPU is throttling? Are you sure it stays at 3.4GHz?

[iQuimper]

19 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

That's your CPU, does the GPU have any throttling stats?

 

EDIT: Maybe your CPU is throttling? Are you sure it stays at 3.4GHz?

Well according to msi afterburner yes, it stays at 3.4GHz. Also I don't see any thermal throttling row for my gpu but Performance Limit - Termal, Performance Limit - Reliability Voltage, Performance Limit - Utilization all turned from No to Yes

[schwellmo92]

15 hours ago, iQuimper said:

Well according to msi afterburner yes, it stays at 3.4GHz. Also I don't see any thermal throttling row for my gpu but Performance Limit - Termal, Performance Limit - Reliability Voltage, Performance Limit - Utilization all turned from No to Yes

Well if your CPU and GPU temps are in check the next most common thing to cause throttling is the VRM which usually doesn’t have sensors on laptops. You can try undervolting your CPU and GPU or disabling CPU turbo boost.

 

In the Dell XPS community people place thermal pads between the VRM and bottom of the chassis to dissipate heat (it’s metal), or use tiny finned heat spreaders. You could try the same.

[iQuimper]

6 hours ago, schwellmo92 said:

Well if your CPU and GPU temps are in check the next most common thing to cause throttling is the VRM which usually doesn’t have sensors on laptops. You can try undervolting your CPU and GPU or disabling CPU turbo boost.

 

In the Dell XPS community people place thermal pads between the VRM and bottom of the chassis to dissipate heat (it’s metal), or use tiny finned heat spreaders. You could try the same.

Well, i don't think my CPU temps are okay. While playing Overwatch it reaches even 96 celsius. Nonetheless, I'll try those things and thanks for everything so far.

[schwellmo92]

13 hours ago, iQuimper said:

Well, i don't think my CPU temps are okay. While playing Overwatch it reaches even 96 celsius. Nonetheless, I'll try those things and thanks for everything so far.

Oh, you never mentioned that you said 75-85c. 96c is quite high, try disabling turbo boost with Intel XTU when you game and see how that goes.

[iQuimper]

50 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

Oh, you never mentioned that you said 75-85c. 96c is quite high, try disabling turbo boost with Intel XTU when you game and see how that goes.

I undervolted my CPU and disabled turbo boost, with Intel XTU. It shows improvements but it's still thermal throttling.

 

Edit: I just did a stress test with Intel XTU. CPU Utilization was at 100% but the temperature never exceeded 86 celsius and while gaming my CPU was never above ~~50-60% but it was thermal throttling. I don't know if this is normal or not. Maybe I should try undervolting my GPU (keep in mind that my GPU never exceeds 80 celsius)?

[schwellmo92]

24 minutes ago, iQuimper said:

I undervolted my CPU and disabled turbo boost, with Intel XTU. It shows improvements but it's still thermal throttling.

 

Edit: I just did a stress test with Intel XTU. CPU Utilization was at 100% but the temperature never exceeded 86 celsius and while gaming my CPU was never above ~~50-60% but it was thermal throttling. I don't know if this is normal or not. Maybe I should try undervolting my GPU (keep in mind that my GPU never exceeds 80 celsius)?

It’s the culmination of heat generated when both the CPU and GPU are working that’d cause the CPU to get so hot. They’re both in a small confined space and probably even share the same heat pipe and heat sink.

 

You could try undervolt the GPU as well to something like 0.9v, I did that on my XPS and barely lost any performance because the GPU’s usually have more voltage than they need for the default clocks.

 

Failing that you would have to try repasting with a good thermal paste or liquid metal. Unfortunately these types of laptops aren’t really designed for running heavy mixed usage workloads like video games, my Dell XPS has the exact same problems.

[iQuimper]

3 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

It’s the culmination of heat generated when both the CPU and GPU are working that’d cause the CPU to get so hot. They’re both in a small confined space and probably even share the same heat pipe and heat sink.

 

You could try undervolt the GPU as well to something like 0.9v, I did that on my XPS and barely lost any performance because the GPU’s usually have more voltage than they need for the default clocks. Failing that you would have to try repasting with a good thermal paste or liquid metal.

How exactly do i undervolt my GPU with MSI Afterburner? "Core Voltage" slide is just black and I can't increase it or decrease it.

[schwellmo92]

8 hours ago, iQuimper said:

How exactly do i undervolt my GPU with MSI Afterburner? "Core Voltage" slide is just black and I can't increase it or decrease it.

Part way down this page there is instructions https://sff.life/how-to-undervolt-gpu/

[iQuimper]

1 hour ago, schwellmo92 said:

Part way down this page there is instructions https://sff.life/how-to-undervolt-gpu/

Undervolted the GPU too. It shows great improvements but at times it still thermal throttles. Now the next thing to do might be repasting, but I'll see to that. Anyway, thank you very much for everything!!!