W520 sometimes has poor framerate and performance in games

[automation]

Hello,

My W520 is about 8 months old at this point and I've been happy with it for the most part.

One thing I cannot stand, however, is how every time I turn the computer on it seems random whether or not I will get good performance running applications.

The most noticeable change is when I am playing video games.

When everything is normal, my computer runs League of Legends at a constant 60 FPS (even when there are all 10 players on screen using abilities and such). However sometimes I will turn on the computer and play a game and I have a measly 25 FPS and it drops down to 5 FPS when every player is on screen using abilities. This basically makes the game unplayable. It seems that after restarting the computer it will randomly decide whether or not it wants to give me a good framerate while gaming or not.

I am generally a computer literate person but I am at a loss here as to even how to detect what the problem is or how to fix this. I've tried everything, updating drivers, fiddling around with the advanced graphics settings, turning off all processes from msconfig->startup, ending processes in device manager, running every virus/spyware scanner known to man. At this point I think I might reformat to see if it is a hardware problem (I did buy the 3 year warranty, so they would need to replace it). I want to avoid sending in my computer though, I use it for classwork.

During times when it is acting up, other things are noticeably sluggish as well, such as the interface in games or other applications have a slight delay (maybe a 1/10 ~ 3/10 of a second more than usual delay after clicking a button). This delay is not present when the computer is running fine and I have a high framerate in games.

Here are the specs of my computer:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2720QM CPU @ 2.20GHz 2.20 GHz
6.00 GB RAM
64-bit Windows 7 Operating System
NVIDIA Quadro 1000M

Thank you.

[Q-Ball]

Have you updated the video drivers (specifically, the nVidia ones)?
If you haven't, do that; it may fix those problems.

Also, try designating the applications you want to run with the 1000M specifically instead of letting the system decide for itself.
To do that, you'll need to open the nVidia control panel>3D settings>Manage 3D settings, and follow the instructions there.

[jdrou]

A problem I've had often with high-performance laptops like this is heat.
The CPU (or more likely the GPU) may be overheating and clocking itself down.
Or (with some "no-name replacement" power supplies from ebay) the power supply may overheat and shut down, putting you into battery mode which will also slow things down. (I won't be buying any more of those. )
I would strongly recommend using a cooling pad whenever possible.

[automation]

Have you updated the video drivers (specifically, the nVidia ones)?

The drivers are up to date.

Also, try designating the applications you want to run with the 1000M specifically instead of letting the system decide for itself.

Whenever I do this, it causes higher framerate but the applications crash a lot and act weird, I'm not sure why (it seems to cause similar errors that appear when forcing a process to be high priority in task manager).

A problem I've had often with high-performance laptops like this is heat.

The temperature thing was my first guess when I noticed this problem a few months back but the laptop is never really hot, whenever I feel the bottom of it it is at room temperature or just slightly warm. There are no problems with the battery/power source and it is always in the "Plugged in" mode whenever I check the taskbar, so that can't be it...

Anyway if anyone could give me any advice on how to monitor the clock speed of the graphics card and the CPU it would be greatly appreciated.

[Kaze22]

Quadro 1000m is not really a powerful gaming card to begin with.

But have you tried this? This would have been my first option before any of the things you did.

Go to BIOS, go to Video Settings, turn OFF Optimus, then set GPU to be descrete ONLY at all times. This will disable Intel's HD card and make the Quadro 1000m the only card recognized by the system. Literally the Intel Card will vanish from your hardware manager, you won't even be able to access it anymore. This is what I do for all my Descrete GPU Laptops. I don't buy into the whole GPU switching nonsense, it always leads to bad things.

[automation]

Kaze22, this seems like it will fix the problem. I'll change that BIOS option now and I'll report back with my findings (if it resolved the problem or not).

I know the 1000M isn't meant to be a gaming card, I don't really play many games and when I do I usually use medium settings. A constant 60 FPS is so nice compared to 25 FPS with laggy inputs though, and I thought others might be having this problem too, which is why I made the thread.

As usual, all of the responses have been extremely informative. Thank you.

[Kaze22]

It should fix your problem. I think it has something to do with dynamic video switching that brings your FPS down.
I don't understand all these stupid ways that PCs come up with to save battery, the sensible thing is just to create a longer lasting battery.
Next thing you know, they'll be figuring out a way to turn off the LCD when you're not looking.
"Optimus LCD technology using the integrated camera to track your head and eye movement so as to disable the LCD everytime you look away from your laptop." LOL

[automation]

Okay, after two days and two different start-ups, the fix Kaze22 proposed seems to have solved the problem for good.

Playing league now is a much better experience, at 1600x900 resolution 60 FPS is constant. I've also noticed that I can increase the game to 1080p and the framerate barely suffers. Additionally, I can alt-tab from the game in 1 second (in full screen mode!) when usually it takes up to 5 seconds to do this.

I'll look out for overheating and power consumption differences.

[automation]

Just an update here, the fix posted earlier did actually make the quality much better, but a few days later I experienced the same problem (25 FPS / unplayable conditions).

This is really bugging me, I do have the 3 year warranty but I would like to believe it's not a hardware issue...

Is there any diagnostic tool I can run to determine the problem?

[Kaze22]

Try PC Doctor System Toolbox.
It usually comes with the system

[automation]

Going to run a full system test on all the hardware then reformat if I find no hardware errors and the problem persists. I'll post the findings here.