Big sudden drop in performance

[fabio.baldanh]

Hi.

I have a Dell entry level gaming laptop:
16Gb Ram
Core I7 7700HQ 2.80 Ghz
GTX 1050 Ti.

2 days ago I notice a considerable drop in gaming performance which basically came out of nowhere. Everything was fine one day and then the next day I started noticing big drops in framerates. Games I used to run at 30fps are now all over the place with frequent drops to the mid 20's, games I used to run at locked 60fps are now running a very unstable 40-60 fps.

I have no idea what is causing this or how to troubleshoot this.

Things I've tried:
- Restarting (duh)
- Updating all the drivers
- Using the Dell tool to "check" the hardware
- Cleaning the device

I thought it could be something related to temperature, but generally those issues come over time (performance dropping the longer you play). In my case I can turn on the laptop, go straight to a game and it will be running poorly from the first moment.

The only other change I can remember was a Windows 10 Update. But I've been looking around and no one is reporting performance drops from the latest updates.

Thanks in advance.

 

[helpstar]

restart windows to load everything freshly
if this won´t work:

update the BIOS of the laptop

reinstall the drivers from the Dell support site, Windows likes to update drivers itself and could be responsible for such a behaviour

run 3dmark basic edition , click on compare result online after that and post the address from your upcoming browser
https/www.techspot.com/downloads/5775-3dmark.html

 

[fabio.baldanh]

restart windows to load everything freshly
if this won´t work:

update the BIOS of the laptop

reinstall the drivers from the Dell support site, Windows likes to update drivers itself and could be responsible for such a behaviour

run 3dmark basic edition , click on compare result online after that and post the address from your upcoming browser
https/www.techspot.com/downloads/5775-3dmark.html

Thanks for answering:

- I used the Support Assist tool from Dell and downloaded and installed the latest Bios (and there was also a new driver for the Wifi adapter). But it didn't help

I've downloaded and used 3dMark. This is the results I got:
https/www.3dmark.com/3dm/27510025

 

[jsmithepa]

Worn battery?

Failing HD can slow things down.

Running out of ram/hd swapping would surely slow things.

 

[helpstar]

be sure the high performance graphics accelerator GTX1050TI is used while gaming and not the HD630

Which Dell model is it? Is it the Dell Inspiron 7567 ?
use DDU uninstaller and reintall Intel and nvidia graphics driver from the Dell website:
https/www.dell.com/support/home/en/us/dedhs1/product-support/product/inspiron-15-7567-laptop/drivers

It´s an older driver than your current installed, but could solve your problem. Laptop drivers are sometimes special

 

[fabio.baldanh]

Worn battery?

Failing HD can slow things down.

Running out of ram/hd swapping would surely slow things.

Any way to check the storage? it's an SSD and I haven't noticed other storge related issues.

be sure the high performance graphics accelerator GTX1050TI is used while gaming and not the HD630

Which Dell model is it? Is it the Dell Inspiron 7567 ?
use DDU uninstaller and reintall Intel and nvidia graphics driver from the Dell website:
https/www.dell.com/support/home/en/us/dedhs1/product-support/product/inspiron-15-7567-laptop/drivers

It´s an older driver than your current installed, but could solve your problem. Laptop drivers are sometimes special

Yep, it's the Inspiron 7567
I checked and all games are recognising the 1050TI

I'll try your idea and report back.
Thx

 

[helpstar]

You can check the SSD as well with the manufacturer´s tool of it. Like Sandisk, Samsung,...

Check the heat of the GPU and CPU while gaming. How hot are these?

reset Windows and/or uninstall the update of Windows

 

[jhone.herbertmc]

You can check the SSD as well with the manufacturer´s tool of it. Like Sandisk, Samsung,...

Check the heat of the GPU and CPU while gaming. How hot are these?

reset Windows and/or uninstall the update of Windows

I have the same laptop and a couple days ago it started having the same issue. Before I used to play a game with the fps locked on 60, now it jumps to 170, drops to 24 and freezes every time. I realize that it's not related with what is happening on the game.

 

[helpstar]

Update of windows uninstalled?

drivers reinstalled?

windows restarted?

 

[fabio.baldanh]

So, I don't know if it's relevant but.

One thing I did the night before the issues started connecting the laptop to the TV via HDMI to watch Netflix (it's an older non Smart TV).

Some days ago, after updating reinstalling a bunch of drivers performance seemed to be back to normal (though I'm not sure if it was because of anything I did). Then yesterday I connected it again to the TV over HDMI and now it's back to crappy performance.
Might just be a coincidence but I wanted to bring it up in case it makes sense to anyone

(I have tried reinstalling the graphics drivers for both the integrated and dedicated GPU but that hasn't helped)

be sure the high performance graphics accelerator GTX1050TI is used while gaming and not the HD630

Which Dell model is it? Is it the Dell Inspiron 7567 ?
use DDU uninstaller and reintall Intel and nvidia graphics driver from the Dell website:
https/www.dell.com/support/home/en/us/dedhs1/product-support/product/inspiron-15-7567-laptop/drivers

It´s an older driver than your current installed, but could solve your problem. Laptop drivers are sometimes special

So I tried this but it didn't seem to help

You can check the SSD as well with the manufacturer´s tool of it. Like Sandisk, Samsung,...

Check the heat of the GPU and CPU while gaming. How hot are these?

reset Windows and/or uninstall the update of Windows

Will try this out.

As for GPU and CPU, during a graphically intensive game like Assassins Creed origins the GPU sits at slightly below 60C and the CPU at 80.
From what I've read those seem to be pretty standard temperatures for a laptop during gaming

You can check the SSD as well with the manufacturer´s tool of it. Like Sandisk, Samsung,...

Check the heat of the GPU and CPU while gaming. How hot are these?

reset Windows and/or uninstall the update of Windows

I have the same laptop and a couple days ago it started having the same issue. Before I used to play a game with the fps locked on 60, now it jumps to 170, drops to 24 and freezes every time. I realize that it's not related with what is happening on the game.

Did you manage to solve it?

Don't take this wrong but I'm glad other people with the same model seem to have issues. Means it might be some software related thing and not a hardware piece that's dying

Update of windows uninstalled?

drivers reinstalled?

windows restarted?

yep

 

[fabio.baldanh]

Just wanted to let everyone know that I solved the issue.

In the task manager I saw "rivet networks dynamic bandwidth manager" using a bit more CPU than other processes. Until now I had ignored it because it wasn't a lot (like 5%) but it was still more than other background processes so I decided to google it.

Turns out it's part of this "smartbytes" software that Dell has preinstalled in its devices and I found other people having issues with it. I'm too ignorant to know exactly what caused the issue but apparently it has to do with this Smartbytes software not liking it when you are on 2.4Ghz network (which is what I'm currently on).

I disabled Wifi and it did indeed solve all the issues. So I went and uninstalled everything Smartbyte related from the Laptop and now it's running well even when I'm online.


Anyway, thanks for your help and hopefully this can help other people with the same issue

 

[helpstar]

Thank you for the feedback and I´m glad you could solve your issue