Severe FPS Drops Consistently Happening

[Defame]

In all the games I play I'm having severe fps drops pretty consistently every 30 seconds to a minute at the longest and they last for 5 seconds or so. Judging by how choppy things get I'd say it puts me down to around 10 frames when they happen and then it clears up almost instantly. I've uninstalled and reinstalled games, updated graphics driver, turned game settings down to low, disabled anti-virus software and that hasn't fixed it. It feels like the spikes are even more constant since I updated my graphics driver. This all started within the past month or so I think. I'm fed up with it happening every time I engage an enemy and have a massive lag spike so I need some help troubleshooting it.

I'm on a 3-4 year old Lenovo Ideapad laptop, here are the specs:

Windows 10 64-bit version 1709

Intel i3-5020U

Intel HD Graphics 5500

8GB DDR3 RAM

1TB Toshiba HDD

 

Something to note is that the HDD is new but it's external connected via USB. Don't ask, I know it's ghetto. Anyways, Windows is on it. I installed it a month or two ago. One other thing, I usually notice the lag spikes happen after my computer has been on for a while.

 

 

 

[iRileyx]

Probably overheating/thermal throttling, that laptop definitely isn't designed to be gamed on.

Have you tried monitoring temps and usage whilst gaming?

[chckovsky]

Wait, so you're running windows off of an external USB drive? That might be a huge part of what is happening here.

 

Anyways, I like to monitor stats with something like MSI Afterburner when testing new games or components, optimizing settings, troubleshooting etc. It can give you a nice short or super detailed info on your computer's system resource use and temperatures, depending on how you set it up. This can be very useful for troubleshooting stuff like your problem here. For example if your RAM is almost or completely full when these fps drops happens, it's likely something to do with a slow hard drive (which you do have, if your running off of an external usb drive). If your CPU is hitting 80+ degrees, it may be throttling (different CPUs have different tjMax (max operation temperature), so check your model).

 

Running a 5 minute CPU stress test in Intel Extreme Tuning Utility will likely tell you if your CPU is throttling performance and causing the fps drops. Keep in mind stress test are generally more demanding than games so even if you do throttle under stress, it may not be the cause of your fps drops. However if your throttling is severe, there you likely have your problem.

 

Download and keep HWmonitor or something similar open while gaming. After some time ingame you can exit and see what the temperatures have been. Sometimes it's not the actual cpu bottlenecking but other overheating components.

 

Since your laptop is a few years old, I'd open it and clean the fan/heatsinks if you're comfortable doing so. Things get very bad in laptops and often very quickly. I opened my moms old laptop the other day. Found a dust bunny that was almost completely restricting the fan from spining.

 

Let us know what you come up with after testing some of these suggestions.

[Defame]

10 hours ago, chckovsky said:

Wait, so you're running windows off of an external USB drive? That might be a huge part of what is happening here.

 

Anyways, I like to monitor stats with something like MSI Afterburner when testing new games or components, optimizing settings, troubleshooting etc. It can give you a nice short or super detailed info on your computer's system resource use and temperatures, depending on how you set it up. This can be very useful for troubleshooting stuff like your problem here. For example if your RAM is almost or completely full when these fps drops happens, it's likely something to do with a slow hard drive (which you do have, if your running off of an external usb drive). If your CPU is hitting 80+ degrees, it may be throttling (different CPUs have different tjMax (max operation temperature), so check your model).

 

Running a 5 minute CPU stress test in Intel Extreme Tuning Utility will likely tell you if your CPU is throttling performance and causing the fps drops. Keep in mind stress test are generally more demanding than games so even if you do throttle under stress, it may not be the cause of your fps drops. However if your throttling is severe, there you likely have your problem.

 

Download and keep HWmonitor or something similar open while gaming. After some time ingame you can exit and see what the temperatures have been. Sometimes it's not the actual cpu bottlenecking but other overheating components.

 

Since your laptop is a few years old, I'd open it and clean the fan/heatsinks if you're comfortable doing so. Things get very bad in laptops and often very quickly. I opened my moms old laptop the other day. Found a dust bunny that was almost completely restricting the fan from spining.

 

Let us know what you come up with after testing some of these suggestions.

 

Intel Extreme Tuning Utility doesn't have my CPU listed on the supported product list so I'm hesitant to try it. Will it work without bursting it into flames? lol

[chckovsky]

1 minute ago, Defame said:

 

Intel Extreme Tuning Utility doesn't have my CPU listed on the supported product list so I'm hesitant to try it. Will it work without bursting it into flames? lol

Yeah it just won't overclock. There's no chance of anything that isn't already almost dead dying.

[Defame]

1 hour ago, chckovsky said:

Yeah it just won't overclock. There's no chance of anything that isn't already almost dead dying.

Just spent 10-15 minutes in CS:GO and I'm noticing the FPS dips are consistently 5 seconds apart and they feel about 5 seconds long now. Funnily enough I managed to kamikaze a bombsite with a USP at 5 frames and headshotted someone lol. Anyways, at idle my CPU was running around 120 degrees fahrenheit at the most and after playing CS:GO it was on average 200 and peeked at 220.

 

I tried opening the pc but there's a screw that's in there tight and I'm worried I'll strip it if I keep going at it. I didn't have any luck getting it out.

[chckovsky]

8 hours ago, Defame said:

Just spent 10-15 minutes in CS:GO and I'm noticing the FPS dips are consistently 5 seconds apart and they feel about 5 seconds long now. Funnily enough I managed to kamikaze a bombsite with a USP at 5 frames and headshotted someone lol. Anyways, at idle my CPU was running around 120 degrees fahrenheit at the most and after playing CS:GO it was on average 200 and peeked at 220.

 

I tried opening the pc but there's a screw that's in there tight and I'm worried I'll strip it if I keep going at it. I didn't have any luck getting it out.

Yeah that's going to be thermal throttling area. Most modern Intel chips throttle at 95-100 degrees celsius, so 95-105 will definitely kill performance. What's happening is that every five second or so your CPU gets so hot it slows down dramatically in order to not overheat. When temps go below the limit again, the cpu starts working, but after five seconds or so, it's too hot and needs to slow down again. Then the cycle repeats.

 

Open the fans and try to manually remove as much dust as possible (with a non-conductive tool). There's more than likely a huge dust bunny in there, blocking airflow and/or keeping the fan from spinning as fast as it should. If that doesn't do enough, try replacing the thermal paste.

[Defame]

13 hours ago, chckovsky said:

Yeah that's going to be thermal throttling area. Most modern Intel chips throttle at 95-100 degrees celsius, so 95-105 will definitely kill performance. What's happening is that every five second or so your CPU gets so hot it slows down dramatically in order to not overheat. When temps go below the limit again, the cpu starts working, but after five seconds or so, it's too hot and needs to slow down again. Then the cycle repeats.

 

Open the fans and try to manually remove as much dust as possible (with a non-conductive tool). There's more than likely a huge dust bunny in there, blocking airflow and/or keeping the fan from spinning as fast as it should. If that doesn't do enough, try replacing the thermal paste.

I deconstructed the whole laptop last night and did a full clean on it. The fan was clogged with about a 1/4 of an inch of thick dust. Temps are on average 15-20 degrees cooler now at idle. I'll do some game testing later and update this post.

 

Edit: Spent half an hour in CS:GO again and the average temp was around 140F over both cores and peeked at 170F. I'm not really sure what "package" refers to in HWMonitor. I'm assuming it's the average of the entire CPU? Anyways, so far no FPS dips and everything is running smoothly.

[chckovsky]

3 hours ago, Defame said:

I deconstructed the whole laptop last night and did a full clean on it. The fan was clogged with about a 1/4 of an inch of thick dust. Temps are on average 15-20 degrees cooler now at idle. I'll do some game testing later and update this post.

 

Edit: Spent half an hour in CS:GO again and the average temp was around 140F over both cores and peeked at 170F. I'm not really sure what "package" refers to in HWMonitor. I'm assuming it's the average of the entire CPU? Anyways, so far no FPS dips and everything is running smoothly.

Glad to hear you got it fixed!

 

Package temp is the overall temp of the CPU. However, most modern processors allow you to see temps per core which are usually both higher and lower than the package temp.

[Defame]

Just now, chckovsky said:

Glad to hear you got it fixed!

Thanks for your help man!