Acer Nitro 5 An515-42 Sudden FPS Drop while gaming

TanmayGangwar · September 2020

Hello and greetings, i hope you guys find this question in your good spirits, i have acer nitro 5 an515-42 .

Specs :-
Ryzen 2500u @ 2.0ghz
RX560x 4 gb
16 gb ram (yes i added one stick of ram)
Windows 10 Home
And a Beautiful slow HDD (Default)

I have owned the laptop for a year now with my fair share of problems well it seems i encountered a new problem i am getting frame drops on games which i could and should be able to play pretty smoothly like witcher 3 and mount and blade bannerlord. it goes something like this 60 fps and bam 15 fps and again bam 60 fps so u can kind of get a picture that its not fun

, now before some of you guys come at at me with your pre-build answers like set ur radeon on high performance and battery on performance i would like to decrease you work and kindly tell you that i have everything set-up correctly (i onwed this laptop for a year ) i have gone through guides from egydiocoelho and andylb. My battery mode set to high performance performance, nitrosense setting high performance, all my Games use rx560x as i can see in the games where it shows vram usage it says in big letters "rx560x" also i have set my games to use rx560x through windows and also through AMD software. Now those of who are going to point out towards my HDD i would tell you tht you i played witcher 3 once on my laptop and it worked Excellent with no drops and yes stored on the same HDD, now after some times i am playing it again and bam drops are there in the game now maybe the free storage left in disk migh be a problem but i am not quite sure,games like rainbow six siege works perfect but now it is also suffering from this

Now for those who are here with a answer of overheating and throttling i would like to bring your attention that today it self like 6 hours ago i had a re-paste of my laptop clean the fans by a technician from Acer itself so it means done by professional.

so let us all wear our problem-solving pants and help a brother out as this brother done everything he could do and find on this forum

"Look how they massacred my boy..." - Don Vito. The Godfather

(PS :- i still have 2 years of warranty left as i extended it ssshhh "pro gamer move"

)

KarstenPH · September 2020

This is a common fault to Windows and all OS's that are the same type as Windows. Your problem is software rot. I have seen my Xbox One have software rot. and according to wikipedia

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot and if not available in your country, here is the article)

Software rot, also known as bit rot, code rot, software erosion, software decay, or software entropy is either a slow deterioration of software quality over time or its diminishing responsiveness that will eventually lead to software becoming faulty, unusable, or in need of upgrade. This is not a physical phenomenon: the software does not actually decay, but rather suffers from a lack of being responsive and updated with respect to the changing environment in which it resides.

so what you are experiencing is common. But if you have MacOS and/or Linux you do not need to worry too much because apparently MacOS and Linux have a different OS type.

Note that i am not a technician and i am only answering on what i know. I am only trying to help.

If this was helpful please click yes as this may be your answer.

hope that answered your question!

GAMING6698 · September 2020

@TanmayGangwar
Did you check if gpu/cpu temperature going more than 90°C or near?

If temperature are normal below 85°C then follow this completely→
windows 10 optimization guide for gaming
https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/612495/windows-10-optimization-guide-for-gaming

Hahaha · September 2020

@TanmayGangwar
When exactly does this happen? Your nitro 5 is not very powerful, remember that. For those specs it's acceptable to face frame drops, occasional freezing etc in witcher 3. Don't know about blade bannerlord so I am going to talk about w3 only.
If you run the game at medium settings and 1080p, locking the fps to 30 should help smooth things out. You can get 60fps for most of the time, but as you said, if you find the occasional stutter annoying, you can do this.
In places like Skellige, there are a lot of places where you can see light shafts(volumetric effects). This effect is moderately resource heavy. Also, the forests of Velen are probably the most demanding areas of the game. Not to mention, frame drops happen sometimes in combat with a group of enemies if more of them come into the frame.
This was my experience with medium settings and unlocked fps. i7-7700 and gtx1050. They are not very different.

TanmayGangwar · September 2020

@KarstenPH
Thanks for bringing in a new insight but if am not sure how to solve software rot so if you can get into a bit more details

@GAMING6698
My Temps stay normal around 75-80 degree while gaming also the guide you have shared i have already followed.

@Hahaha
Yes ik my nitro is not a powerful one but the thing is i played w3 on current settings without any problems so why the sudden drops now ?
but i will try your suggested settings, but the thing is even rainbow six siege used to work just fine but now even it also get sudden spikes, also to tell you that i used to play r6 siege on high preset and it worked and now on custom low settings it gets sudden fps drops

like on high preset my vram usage was 3871 mb but now after my custom low settings the vram usage is 1861mb so why drops ? and no matter what settings i choose now it will get drops

Hahaha · September 2020

My pet theory is that your computer is not drawing/receiving enough power, meaning a fault with the charger or some related component. Game without the charger plugged in for a while and check the consistency of frame rates. If they don't change too much and maintain the expected low fps, then what I said could be a possibility. If you decide to do this, stay in one area(in the game) with minimal movement while monitoring the fps(This is to remove lag caused by loading more objects).

I could be wrong here, but if nothing works, in the end try to do a fresh install on windows.
what version are you on now? Did you update before the problem began?

TanmayGangwar · September 2020

@Hahaha
If i game without a charger the Rx560x GPU closes down that means without the charger games uses vega 8 as for standing in one place it still happens if i keep standing in one place the fps will still drop from 60 to 15-20

Hahaha · September 2020

TanmayGangwar said:

@Hahaha
If i game without a charger the Rx560x GPU closes down that means without the charger games uses vega 8 as for standing in one place it still happens if i keep standing in one place the fps will still drop from 60 to 15-20

I always assumed that once a GPU started a game it would keep using it until the game closed. Guess I was wrong.
If it's still happening on battery, I don't know what it is. Sorry.

TanmayGangwar · September 2020

Hahaha said:

show previous quotes

TanmayGangwar said:

@Hahaha
If i game without a charger the Rx560x GPU closes down that means without the charger games uses vega 8 as for standing in one place it still happens if i keep standing in one place the fps will still drop from 60 to 15-20

I always assumed that once a GPU started a game it would keep using it until the game closed. Guess I was wrong.
If it's still happening on battery, I don't know what it is. Sorry.

I appreciate your help

TanmayGangwar · September 2020

@GAMING6698 @Hahaha @KarstenPH
alright i did a temp check with nitro sense so either my nitrosense is broken or something weird is happening the gpu temps are jumping from 77 to 88 in one seconds and the graph too looks very weird here is the screenshot please note at the point where i have put my cursor i closed the game (i.e at 20:48:23 i quit the game). The Game i was playing was "FOR HONOR" you can see the gpu max temp reached 90. if u want i can post other SS too with cursor being placed behind but for ur knowledge generally the GPU temp was jumping from anywhere between 70 to 88 that to in seconds like bam also GPU usage never risen more than 20 percent

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/n7/9dpswrn0uvgs.png

KarstenPH · September 2020

TanmayGangwar said:

@GAMING6698 @Hahaha @KarstenPH
alright i did a temp check with nitro sense so either my nitrosense is broken or something weird is happening the gpu temps are jumping from 77 to 88 in one seconds and the graph too looks very weird here is the screenshot please note at the point where i have put my cursor i closed the game (i.e at 20:48:23 i quit the game). The Game i was playing was "FOR HONOR" you can see the gpu max temp reached 90. if u want i can post other SS too with cursor being placed behind but for ur knowledge generally the GPU temp was jumping from anywhere between 70 to 88 that to in seconds like bam also GPU usage never risen more than 20 percent

Im so sorry but you may have faulty or loose hardware. Please contact customer support.
Potentially loose hardware: GPU.

! CRITICAL HARDWARE COMPONENT !

TanmayGangwar · September 2020

KarstenPH said:

show previous quotes

TanmayGangwar said:

@GAMING6698 @Hahaha @KarstenPH
alright i did a temp check with nitro sense so either my nitrosense is broken or something weird is happening the gpu temps are jumping from 77 to 88 in one seconds and the graph too looks very weird here is the screenshot please note at the point where i have put my cursor i closed the game (i.e at 20:48:23 i quit the game). The Game i was playing was "FOR HONOR" you can see the gpu max temp reached 90. if u want i can post other SS too with cursor being placed behind but for ur knowledge generally the GPU temp was jumping from anywhere between 70 to 88 that to in seconds like bam also GPU usage never risen more than 20 percent

Im so sorry but you may have faulty or loose hardware. Please contact customer support.
Potentially loose hardware: GPU.

! CRITICAL HARDWARE COMPONENT !

i need more context

mate as Task manager showed that GPU usage is 100% i am confused right now

GAMING6698 · September 2020

@TanmayGangwar
Nothing wrong!!

100% gpu all time means that you don't have enough ram to play that game in this case system takes power from HHD or GPU cause 100% usage.

Solution→
Apply new thermal paste your problem will be solve
Are you still under warranty?

TanmayGangwar · September 2020

GAMING6698 said:

@TanmayGangwar
Nothing wrong!!

100% gpu all time means that you don't have enough ram to play that game in this case system takes power from HHD or GPU cause 100% usage.

Solution→
Apply new thermal paste your problem will be solve
Are you still under warranty?

Mate first of all i clearly said in my question that i just had a re-paste and fan cleaning like two day's ago alright so a re-paste did not helped as i just had it 2 days ago and i have 16 gb of ram (yes two sticks 8+8) which i think is enough for most of the games, also in nitrosense app the GPU usage is not more than 15 % (see the screenshot above) but in task manager it says GPU usage 100% (two different numbers) and yes i am covered in warranty i extended my warranty from 1 year to 3 years and i got this laptop last year near june or july. I contacted ACER support for this FPS issue (as i just had a re-paste and fan cleaning service) they said to upgrade BIOS and VGA driver, but i already have the latest BIOS and VGA driver. so i think something is wrong, maybe you can give me some more insight ?

KarstenPH · September 2020

It may be a loose or broken GPU and since the more powerful GPU gets disconnected (The Nvidia GPU) so the other GPU (In this case the AMD RYZEN GPU in the CPU chip) becomes the main GPU so you experience less FPS

KarstenPH · September 2020

im sorry i mean that your GPU is not functioning properly as this model does not have an 2nd GPU so it switches to use the CPU for the graphics so you experience lag. Oops

TanmayGangwar · September 2020

@KarstenPH
so you are saying that games use Rx560 x for a few seconds and then because of being lose or faulty the GPU stops working and the laptop tries to switch the GPU to vega 8 which is in CPU but then rx560x again comes back online again before this whole cycles repeat ?. well i have booked/contacted acer for a service lets wait and see.