Stuttering when gaming.

[ivanrcks95]

Hey everyone! Ive got an older "gaming laptop" a 2012 Lenovo Y580. Its nothing by modern standards but its perfect for me to do Uni work and some light gaming on, it runs games like League at 1080p High at an average of about 65fps, and even ran more intensive games like Crysis 2 at 1080p High, averaging about 48fps, perfectly smooth no issues, until recently. It started to develop a strange issue where after about 5min in game it would start to frame drop and lag and stutter like crazy, i honestly didnt know why. So i had asked a few friends and they suggested its a temperature throttling issue, great, got some compressed air cleaned the whole laptop(had quite a bit of dust in it), and then ran AIDA 64 stress tests while monitoring the CPU and GPU usage/temps. CPU idled at 49 C, while at 100% usage it peaked at 69 C after about 15min stress test. GPU idled at 43 C, at 100% usage after 15min it peaked 63 C. Absolutely no sign of throttling anywhere and the stutter/frame drop after 5min issue still persists, so now im stuck and need help in figuring out of what else it could be, any suggestions are appreciated, ill put the specs of the laptop down below.

 

2012 Lenovo Y580

Core i7-3630QM

Nvidia GTX 660M

12GB of RAM

240GB Kingston SSD

Running Windows 10 64-bit with all drivers up to date and never giving any issues.

[NelizMastr]

I'd try to run games with the MSI Afterburner overlay open. Select to display CPU and GPU clock speeds, usage and temps and check what happens when the lag spikes start.

[bleedblue]

is the stuttering also in Leage and Crysis 2? Have you tried running GPU stress tests?

[ivanrcks95]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

I'd try to run games with the MSI Afterburner overlay open. Select to display CPU and GPU clock speeds, usage and temps and check what happens when the lag spikes start.

Will give this a go and report back. Thanks!

[ivanrcks95]

Just now, bleedblue said:

is the stuttering also in Leage and Crysis 2? Have you tried running GPU stress tests?

Yes, used to run perfectly smooth, now stutters in both games as well, GPU stress test results are in original post.

[ivanrcks95]

I also want to add, the games start up running perfectly fine without issues, smooth and stable, only after about 5/8min in game time does the issue appear, hence the initial assumption that it is temperature throttling related.

[bleedblue]

8 minutes ago, ivanrcks95 said:

Yes, used to run perfectly smooth, now stutters in both games as well, GPU stress test results are in original post.

I thought AIDA64 was for CPU, my bad.

[ivanrcks95]

Ran a MSI overlay as @NelizMastr suggested, this time on cuphead, as with cuphead the stuttering would always start after completing the tutorial and entering the map. On idle CPU was at 39 C, GPU at 37 C, when stuttering started GPU1 usage at 35% with a temp of 56 C, GPU2 usage at 50% with a temp of 55 C. CPU stayed at 62 C and 10% usage. GPU memory usage fluctuated between 800mb-1100mb depending on what was happening on screen. Temps and usage fluctuated barely 1 C +/- and 3% +/- on both CPU and GPU. So clearly not a temperature throttle issue.

[ivanrcks95]

Side note, there was a weird behavior with FPS, entering the game at first it was at 170-190fps, then when stuttering began it locks at 60fps, even though vsync is disabled everywhere, in game and in nvidia settings.