huge fps drops (150 to 30) while playing games, could it be my graphics card? Sometimes laptop crashes. more info inside!

Nielss

Estimable
Oct 9, 2015
3
0
4,510
Hello everyone!

After looking for solutions to my problem for a while I have decided to make my own thread. If the thread belongs to another place on the forum please let me know! I'll explain my problem now:

For a while now I have been experiencing fps drops. They appear when I have been playing a game for a few minutes(an example is CS:GO). I get around 150 fps on CSGO and it has always been like that until some day I start getting these spikes where my fps falls back to 30-40 for about 10-20 seconds. After the spike it goes back up to 150ish fps, and about 30 seconds later it spikes again. This happens all the time during the game and recently I have even experienced my laptop freezing, followed by a crash, during the lag spikes.
I have to note: My laptop makes quite a lot of sound when I have high fps, and is fairly quiet during the lag spikes. Could it be my graphics card shutting down for a second and running on the intel HD graphics for some reason?

Solutions I have tried:
- Cleaning all software I do not need/trust from my laptop
- Cleaning the fan of my graphics card with a can of compressed air(as much as I could, I'm afraid to break things)
- Reinstalled and updated nividia drivers, also reverted to old drivers
- Set the power management for these games to not be adaptive, this caused freezes followed by my laptop crashing.

About temperatures:
A while ago my graphics card & cpu have hit around 90 degrees(celcius)
Atm they both usually hit 80-85 MAX after playing for a while, but more 75ish.

Does anyone know what could possibly be the problem and does anyone have some solutions I could try? I feel like it's my GPU, but I could be completely wrong.

Laptop: Lenovo Ideapad Y510p
GPU: Nvidia Geforce GT 755M
CPU: Intel Core i7 - 4700MQ @ 2.40 GHz

If anyone needs any more information to help me, please let me know as I am sure I probably forgot to add some info!
 
Hi,

Yes it could be your graphics card overheating while you're using it which causes the frame drops and crashing. Please do try this troubleshooting steps that might help.
- Uninstall the graphics card driver from Device Manager
- Do the same in Programs and Features look for anything related to NVIDIA and uninstall it as well.
- Download and install the graphics card driver from NVIDIA support site
- Here's the link: nvidia.com/download/index.aspx
- Reboot the laptop once driver has been installed.
- After the reboot make sure that your games are set to use NVIDIA graphics card.
- Open NVIDIA Control Panel and select Manage 3D settings.
- Under 3D settings click on the Program Settings tab then select the program you wanto to choose a graphics card from the drop down list. In your case your games.
- Lastly, Select the "preferred graphics processor" to High-performance NVIDIA processor.

(Note: If it continue to happen make sure that your laptop is getting enough air in it, make sure the vents are not blocked.)
 

Nielss

Estimable
Oct 9, 2015
3
0
4,510


Thank you for your answer, Laptop_Nerd , I have to say I have already tried these things before, but it has been a while since I did. I will make sure to follow your steps and see how that goes, tomorrow(2AM here atm). I have opened my laptop and used a can of compressed air to clear the dust from everywhere I could reach(without removing any hardware though, I am afraid to break things).

I have one question though, my laptop gets around 85 degrees celcius max while playing games. Is this warm enough to overheat the way it does like my laptop? Back when my laptop worked perfectly fine it reached these temperatures aswell. Thank you for your answer and I will let you know if it worked or if it didn't!