Dell Inspiron 7559 Has In-game stuttering?

[Baeger]

So for those who don't know, this is the laptop I'm talking about, Linus reviewed it here:

So I got the model with the Core i7-6700HQ and it really is a great Laptop for the price, however I can't help but notice stuttering problems in a lot of games and I'm trying to work out why (as if it's a hard drive problem, that can be possibly sorted as it has an m.2 slot for example).

So in Overwatch for example, the game runs at a smooth 70fps on medium-ish settings, however there will be these stutters/frame drops every now and then.  Not so frequently that it's a major problem, but it happens nonetheless.  GTA 5 is another example of this happening however it's much more problematic.  Multiplayer becomes near unplayable just by driving too fast.  

Battlefield 1 is another game.  Now, this is a game that I don't expect the laptop to really run at all, let alone well, but it holds at around 45fps on low settings, but again, same problem, stutters every now and then.

Now I'm lead to believe that this is a hard drive issue as it's probably not the greatest despite having a 8Gb cache I believe (correct me if I'm wrong).  But could it possibly be CPU related? I think the CPU only runs at 2.6GHz by default (with turbo going higher of course) so could it be an issue of the actual Laptop not delivering the horsepower it has on the CPU end? 

Could it even be something as simple as a driver issue?

 

If anyone has any info on this I'd very much appreciate it.  It seems to be a very popular cheap gaming laptop option so I'm sure a fair amount out there have at least tried this laptop out.

 

TLDR; Laptop stutters in games, what could the issue be?

 

[Baeger]

5 minutes ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

Check temps, update drivers, go to power options and enable high performance mode and see if the problem persists on charge

Unfortunately I've tried all those already Laptop is warm to the touch during gaming but I wouldn't say it's excessive with heat as the fans aren't even on full blast (although maybe that's an issue in itself).  I even disabled Intel Speedstep in the hopes that would sort things out (and it has helped slightly).  

Right now, the only reasonable options I have are to install an M.2 SSD and more RAM but I just want to be sure that doing so would be justified.

 

[Baeger]

4 minutes ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

So it stutters even while you're charging it?

It does, I honestly have never used the laptop for gaming without it being plugged in due to the supposed performance decrease on battery.

 

I will check heat stuff with HWMonitor though and see what results that gives.

[Kobathor]

I have the exact same laptop, and you're getting way worse performance than I do. Well, I upgraded it to 16GB RAM, and I added an SSD in the M.2 slot, but that shouldn't net me way better performance. I play BF1 on Medium settings and get 55-60 FPS, and it only dips when the laptop is on a surface that chokes the fans. In fact, the only time it stutters in any of the games I play on it is when the fans get choked or the exhaust is blocked (like when my cat lays up against it because damn the air coming out of that thing is hot.)

 

You should be getting better performance than that, with no dips. I'm gonna blame overheating. Update your drivers, elevate the back of the laptop (to make sure the fans get TONS of air,) then play some Battlefield. See if it starts dipping like crazy. 

 

Also try going into the Advanced Power Manager (don't think that's the exact name but whatever,) and looking at whether the CPU is on a lower power setting when it's plugged in. Check and see if the fans are set at a low setting when it's plugged in, too. Also make sure that, when it's plugged in, you're on the "High Performance" preset in the Power Manager.

[Baeger]

2 hours ago, Kobathor said:

I have the exact same laptop, and you're getting way worse performance than I do. Well, I upgraded it to 16GB RAM, and I added an SSD in the M.2 slot, but that shouldn't net me way better performance. I play BF1 on Medium settings and get 55-60 FPS, and it only dips when the laptop is on a surface that chokes the fans. In fact, the only time it stutters in any of the games I play on it is when the fans get choked or the exhaust is blocked (like when my cat lays up against it because damn the air coming out of that thing is hot.)

 

You should be getting better performance than that, with no dips. I'm gonna blame overheating. Update your drivers, elevate the back of the laptop (to make sure the fans get TONS of air,) then play some Battlefield. See if it starts dipping like crazy. 

 

Also try going into the Advanced Power Manager (don't think that's the exact name but whatever,) and looking at whether the CPU is on a lower power setting when it's plugged in. Check and see if the fans are set at a low setting when it's plugged in, too. Also make sure that, when it's plugged in, you're on the "High Performance" preset in the Power Manager.

Really? Well at least there's hope if you're running BF1 so well.  Do you think it might be worth investing in one of those fan mount things on Amazon?  If you don't think an M.2 SSD and RAM upgrade would solve the issue, it sounds like that might be my best bet.  I am gaming just with the laptop on my lap so I wouldn't have thought overheating would be an issue but perhaps.

 

Also I'm not entirely sure what you mean in the advanced power manager, I've checked the windows one in power settings if that's what you mean but there were no options for CPU stuff from what I could tell.

 

EDIT: Turns out updating graphics drivers did not solve the issue with BF1.  The game stutters constantly and I have some weird graphics-related bugs consistently.  Placing the laptop at a 45 degree angle seemed to cool it down a fair amount however there are still stuttering issues. 

[Kobathor]

4 hours ago, Baeger said:

Really? Well at least there's hope if you're running BF1 so well.  Do you think it might be worth investing in one of those fan mount things on Amazon?  If you don't think an M.2 SSD and RAM upgrade would solve the issue, it sounds like that might be my best bet.  I am gaming just with the laptop on my lap so I wouldn't have thought overheating would be an issue but perhaps.

 

Also I'm not entirely sure what you mean in the advanced power manager, I've checked the windows one in power settings if that's what you mean but there were no options for CPU stuff from what I could tell.

 

EDIT: Turns out updating graphics drivers did not solve the issue with BF1.  The game stutters constantly and I have some weird graphics-related bugs consistently.  Placing the laptop at a 45 degree angle seemed to cool it down a fair amount however there are still stuttering issues. 

About the fan mount things- you could, but I don't play with one. I play with the laptop on a hard surface and it cools itself just fine.

 

About the power manager- there are a couple settings pertaining to the CPU. If you go to the Windows power manager thing, there should be a "configure power setting" or similar next to the presets. You can fine-tune things there. There are settings for max fan speed, max CPU speed, and max CPU load.

 

And yeah, I'm stumped about the graphics issues in BF1. There is one map that is buggy in general (St. Quentin's Scar, all users seem to report graphics issues on it,) but the rest of the game should be fine.

[Baeger]

28 minutes ago, Kobathor said:

About the fan mount things- you could, but I don't play with one. I play with the laptop on a hard surface and it cools itself just fine.

 

About the power manager- there are a couple settings pertaining to the CPU. If you go to the Windows power manager thing, there should be a "configure power setting" or similar next to the presets. You can fine-tune things there. There are settings for max fan speed, max CPU speed, and max CPU load.

 

And yeah, I'm stumped about the graphics issues in BF1. There is one map that is buggy in general (St. Quentin's Scar, all users seem to report graphics issues on it,) but the rest of the game should be fine.

For whatever reason I couldn't find any of those power options.  I'm not sure if an update removed them or something but unfortunately I can't see anything relating to CPU usage or anything.

 

I think what I'm gunna do is get some more RAM in the system and go from there since I planned on doing that anyway.  

 

Also yeah, BF1 isn't the greatest in that regard, luckily on my main rig the game has zero problems but I travel a lot so it would have been nice to play it on my Laptop at a smooth framerate.

[Kobathor]

1 minute ago, Baeger said:

For whatever reason I couldn't find any of those power options.  I'm not sure if an update removed them or something but unfortunately I can't see anything relating to CPU usage or anything.

 

I think what I'm gunna do is get some more RAM in the system and go from there since I planned on doing that anyway.  

 

Also yeah, BF1 isn't the greatest in that regard, luckily on my main rig the game has zero problems but I travel a lot so it would have been nice to play it on my Laptop at a smooth framerate.

Tip on buying RAM- you should be able to buy a single 8GB stick of LDDR3 SDRAM for your laptop, instead of buying a new 16GB kit. Only one of your two slots is occupied.

 

Good luck!