AN515-57 issues [low wattage, low fps, slow on boot] don't understand why this happened.

trenchshovel
trenchshovel Member Posts: 3 New User
edited July 2023 in Nitro Gaming

Recently my nitro laptop has substantially decreased in quality for seemingly no reason at all, it should be running better than ever as I have recently gotten better cooling in the form of a cooling pad to stop overheating issues I was having. However from out of nowhere my laptop has stopped being able to run any games at all pretty much, I did not notice this for a week or so as I was playing some old RTS games mainly but this week I started playing some newer titles with my friends (which I have previously ran perfectly) when I INSTANTLY noticed something was wrong, even on low settings on olderish games like destiny and ghost recon wildlands I was getting very choppy low framerates in the 30-50's (after a lot of tinkering, originally around 15-20)

My first thought was to check the nvidia performance monitor, as previously, as many nitro owners may relate to, the wattage has been capped to ungodly low numbers, and that it was. My GPU was capped at 20 watts which wasn't too strange as this had happened practically ever since I bought this laptop back in November, usually just opening the device manager, disabling, and then re-enabling the GPU fixes it, tried that, didn't work, tried again, didn't work. Thought that maybe I hadn't updated drivers in a while and maybe it was messed up, updated every single driver, still didn't work. Checked my power settings, nothing was wrong, tried every single thing out, read a whole lot of forum posts but never really got an answer that helped.

Before I get into the next segment I wanna explain the slow on boot thing. Every single time my laptop is restarted I have to open throttlestop as for some reason a few months ago it suddenly wouldn't work properly, my laptop is EXTREMELY slow until I run throttlestop and enable max performance, without doing so everything takes about 7-10 seconds to register, most things can take a minute to load up, booting now takes around 6 minutes, which originally took below 30 seconds. This is annoying but it is not the end of it for me, I have patience, I am just annoyed and don't understand why this happened.

Now, a day ago I tried factory resetting the PC, took a while as I just mentioned, PC is extremely slow without throttlestop on, had to go through the most painful windows sign-up ever but in the end got the machine up and running with throttlestop again. Decided to test out Destiny 2 as that had been running poorly as I stated earlier, which it shouldn't. It ran perfectly even on high settings, was happy with the results, turned off my pc, got off for the day, just to find out later that it had gone to the same broken state as before, stuck on 20 watts no matter what I do, EXCEPT for when I am on battery life without the charger in. Whenever my charger is unplugged the wattage to the GPU goes up, not as high as it would be normally but significantly goes up as games suddenly become playable. Device manager turning on and off doesn't work, nothing seems to work, its really frustrating. I know this has happened to LOTS of people with acer nitro's and I really just want any suggestions on how to fix this, I should have warranty so if all fails I can try that but I do not count on that actually working out for me.

TLDR: stuck on 20 watt, unlocks without battery, not the charger or something like that since it did work after my factory reset for one gaming session

Got this for like 1000 euro not long ago and it should not be acting like this, plz help 😕

[Edited the thread to add issue detail]

Answers

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 45,092 Trailblazer

    Because the air exhaust vents are on the bottom cover of this model, a cooling pad doesn't help much if at all due to counter-flow. Not much air flows in if flow out is impeded. Better to simply raise laptop about an inch above a hard surface to promote better air flow in and out taking care not to block any of the vents. I use a toaster oven rack to raise mine, reduces max processor temps ~5*C under heavy loads.

    What does NitroSense app show as CPU and GPU temperatures when under heavy gaming load? Also, click on battery charge icon in tray. Is slider all the way to best performance?

    Jack E/NJ

  • trenchshovel
    trenchshovel Member Posts: 3 New User

    Again, not a temperature issue at all, simply mentioned that, the temps are always under 80 when gaming (used to be 90 without the pad, although it does raise it so that obviously does help)

    I have it on high performance, tried ultra performance, doesn't change anything.

    I am going to try completely re-installing every driver later today and will say if that makes a difference.

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 45,092 Trailblazer

    I started playing some newer titles with my friends (which I have previously ran perfectly) when I INSTANTLY noticed something was wrong, > > I was getting very choppy low framerates in the 30-50's

    So do you notice this the INSTANT game is up & running. Meaning not 5 or more seconds later?

    used to be 90 without the pad

    Can you guess about how many times the dGPU reached 90*C?

    Jack E/NJ

  • ArthurL
    ArthurL Member Posts: 1 New User

    God, I love you so much! I meet the same issue and tried to disable and enable the gpu driver which make it run smoothly as before. Hope my laptop won't go as far as yours.