Huge frame drops in game

anickson96

Hello everyone! I bought acer aspire nitro 5 with gtx1060 in january and installed win10 on it. Im playing only fortnite on the laptop. From the very beginning i had huge frame drops from over 100 to below 10, but this was happening very rarely and i said whatever its not a big deal. But now it happens a few times every match i play in fortnite. I dont know what causes it but its unplayable, playing on 5-7fps on a brand new laptop..... Any advices on what may cause this and how to fix it?

tobimaru

Try running a free program like HWinfo64 or Nitro Sense to monitor your temperatures while you are playing a match in game. This should tell you whether or not you are reaching high thermals while gaming, causing the frame drops.

If you monitor temperatures and don't see a significant problem there, take a look at your Task Manager next. While gaming and at idle, monitor the performance tab of Task Manager and see if any hardware is at 90% usage or higher.

tobimaru

anickson96 said:

Today when i had the fps drop i opened task manager and cpu was on 90%, also i saw 90% gpu spiking in nitro sense at times, i see why i have fps drops now. When i open nitro sense and enable cool boost my frames drop more rare but do i need to open it everytime i play a game to enable cool boost or it works in the background? 

CoolBoost should stay enabled in the background. It should even stay enabled after a reboot which is nice. I leave it on all the time personally.

tobimaru

Try running a free program like HWinfo64 or Nitro Sense to monitor your temperatures while you are playing a match in game. This should tell you whether or not you are reaching high thermals while gaming, causing the frame drops.

If you monitor temperatures and don't see a significant problem there, take a look at your Task Manager next. While gaming and at idle, monitor the performance tab of Task Manager and see if any hardware is at 90% usage or higher.

anickson96

CPU min52 max 96 GPU min53 max80, in game CPU average is 85-90 GPU average is 75-80, i have a cooler beneath my laptop

tobimaru

The maximum CPU temperature of 96C is a definite limit and where you are seeing the throttling. The GPU is also not at its max boost core clock at 80C, so performance is not optimal.

Do you have CoolBoost enabled for the fan? Ensure all airways underneath and behind the laptop are clean and free of dust.

Search around for "CPU undervolting" and "thermal repaste" for your laptop model. These are typically the last things users do to lower temperatures and avoid thermal throttling. You can lower you max temps sometimes 10-20C by using a better thermal paste and lowering the CPU voltage slightly.

anickson96

Today when i had the fps drop i opened task manager and cpu was on 90%, also i saw 90% gpu spiking in nitro sense at times, i see why i have fps drops now. When i open nitro sense and enable cool boost my frames drop more rare but do i need to open it everytime i play a game to enable cool boost or it works in the background? 

tobimaru

anickson96 said:

Today when i had the fps drop i opened task manager and cpu was on 90%, also i saw 90% gpu spiking in nitro sense at times, i see why i have fps drops now. When i open nitro sense and enable cool boost my frames drop more rare but do i need to open it everytime i play a game to enable cool boost or it works in the background? 

CoolBoost should stay enabled in the background. It should even stay enabled after a reboot which is nice. I leave it on all the time personally.

anickson96

I noticed that when my fps drop my GPU usage drops below 10%... whats wrong with my laptop.. my fps drops in the beginning when i start playing the game when temperatures are not that high

tobimaru

When the GPU is at 10%, is the CPU at 100%? This would indicated a CPU bottleneck if so. Essentially, the GPU is "waiting" while the CPU works.

If you're still seeing 90C+ temps while gaming you are also likely still throttling. This worsens the bottleneck effect, because it's not running at maximum turbo boost in order to protect from damaging temperatures.

anickson96

the temperatures are not every time high when the frames drop, also the CPU is not at max usage every time but the gpu is under 10% everytime when my fps drop, but yes it heats sometimes and cpu usage spikes to 100% at times but not every time when the frames drop