Gaming Issues with Alienware 17

I got my Alienware 17 about 3 months ago, made sure all drivers were up to date and got it set up properly. Up until about 2 weeks ago, I had no issues with this computer.

Now, whenever I try to play a game it lags horribly at the start. Here are scenarios where it happens:
League of Legends: Summoning screen takes significantly longer than usual (tested in a custom game with only myself and a bot), when I load into the map initially, I start with 0-6 frames per second which recovers very quickly after to 58-61 fps, and when the very first kill of the match (first blood) happens, I lag for about 2 seconds. This happens consistently.
Dota 2: I'm new to Dota 2 so haven't played much, but on the character select screen when a character is selected the game lags for a few seconds, and then plays catch up and everything happens simultaneously.
Diablo 3: When choosing my characters initially (right after loading the game) every character change lags horribly, the first time I connect to someones game, I will disconnect because the load time is enormous. All character changes and game loads after this are perfectly fine
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: The initial load into the game (zoning in after character select) is long, and all area changes beyond that take a good amount of time as well. All NPCs and PCs take a long time to load if I have just entered that area.
Skyrim: My average load screen time was 5 seconds, I waited 2-3 minutes for the initial loading. After loading the game I walked in a straight line for a while, and eventually had a wall spawn directly behind me. I was able to walk through the wall because it hadn't actually loaded yet.

None of these issues rose until 2 weeks ago, where nothing has been installed since March 21st. Anyone have any ideas on how to debug the issues, or fix them?

Edit: The most confusing part about all of this, is that after my initial lag and slow loading times, everything returns to normal for basic game play, the issue is only when loading. However, with League of Legends my ping is generally 100ms, but recently it's been fairly consistently around 200-250.

 

Have you tried restoring it to before you started experiencing these issues? Try:

1. Running a virus scan/malware scan
2. Uninstall/Re-install graphics drivers
3. Uninstall/Re-install WiFi drivers

Use a utility like CC Cleaner to get rid of the dirt.

 

Do you have the same lag on offline games?

 

I am experiencing issues on Skyrim, which if you are unfamiliar with the game, is an offline game.

Edit: Skyrim is my only offline game that I have right now, and I feel like it would almost be counterproductive to install more offline games to test the issue.

 

That's fine, I just didn't see Skyrim among the examples you gave. It does sound like an issue with the GFX card, it's drivers or Optimus. Have you tried the 1st suggestion that you were given?

 

I have done all 3 (virus scan, GFX Card update, Wireless/Ethernet update) and everything is up to date and I have no viruses and the problem so far persists with Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and Skyrim as they are the only ones I can check right now, since I am in class. Dota 2, League of Legends and Diablo 3 are firewalled at my school, but the behaviour on the two games I have tested is still the same.

 

I saw the same on some games a while ago. I watched my GPU speed and saw it was dropping to it's slowest clock and would then kick in once the game had fully (slowly) loaded.

You can see if this is happening by using MSIAfterburner and setting the items you want to see on-screen while gaming. In the options, under monitoring, select the GPU clock and the frame rate at a minimum and see if it shows anything?

More recent video drivers have removed it almost completely for me (only happens on old openGL games now) but if it IS happening for you then setting 'maximum preferred' under power management mode in the nvidia control panel may fix it.

Good luck.

 

I did this and it made no difference, unfotunately.

As a side note, I tried running another game called Path of Exile, it literally never loaded after 20 minutes of waiting.

 

That's just madness! For me it was like going from the SSD to a DVD load. Did you check out the in-game clock speed, it's that sudden way it comes back I'm wondering about, if the clock speed is not slowed down then ramps up then you're into something else altogether maybe?

Sometimes it's a case of giving up on the current installation and factory restoring. It could be so many things and you might hit it, but start thinking of what you have installed (IMO). Hopefully someone will come up with some suggestions

 

So I downloaded MSI Afterburner and ran the log while I loaded up a game of League of Legends, there was a spike at the last 5 seconds where it was loading everything. When the "match" started (only me vs. a bot) I hit the usual lag, I noticed when I actually got into the match, the match had already been going for 20 seconds.

I ran a second test, there was no spike this time and there was also no issue loading the game itself. It seems to be a first time loading issue for every game I play.

Edit: I'm noticing as I play through this match, everything has a delay the first time. Sounds, animations and loading additional champions. First match was against one type of enemy and the second was against another.

 

What GPU do you have?

Have you tried using NVIDIA Inspector to raise the GPU's temperature limitation?

Have you updated the system BIOS?

Have you tried rolling back your driver to see if performance improves? Or have you tried using AlienRespawn to put it back to "factory state?"

Last but not least, is your system plugged in while gaming? (This may seem like a dumb question, but a lot of people think these systems can support gaming on the battery, which isn't entirely true.)

 

Hmmm, It was similar for me and I put it down to windows caching the second time around, like the disk access is slowing everything down.

Did you turn on the on-screen display so you could see the clock speeds in realtime?

I think you may have to consider starting from a factory restore .

 

I have a GTX 770M, after monitoring using MSI Afterburner, the GPU's temperature only fluctuates by 1 or 2 degrees (48-50 generally). No I have not updated the system BIOS and I haven't tried rolling back my driver to see for performance improvements. Generally every time I update something, be it a driver or just an application I keep note of it, I hadn't updated any drivers for at least a month, the most recent was my wireless/ethernet card, this driver update fixed latency issues I was having with my card and didn't affect my game play in any way but make it better from latency.

I haven't used AlienRespawn to put it back to "factory state" because I'm a student, and this PC was part of my tuition to use for my class (to clarify; this laptop was provided by the school), and therefore I don't really have the time to reinstall everything with projects and homework to do.

To answer your last question, yes my system is plugged in while gaming. The only time my system is unplugged is when it isn't on and I'm taking it somewhere.

 

Your school gave you an Alienware 17? That's nice.

The 770M is known to have a GPU temperature limit of 63C during gaming. When it hits this temperature, it creates huge lag and downclocks the card until the temperature goes below 63C. I believe you need to remove this limitation by using NVIDIA Inspector.

 

Pardon my ignorance but where do I do that inside of the NVIDIA Inspector? Do I go to "Show Overclocking -> Power and Temperature Target" and move the slider toward the right side? If this is the case, upon opening the application the second slider (what I can only conclude to be the temperature) was already set to 95.

 

If it was already set to that, then you're fine on that front.

I think you should try to rollback the video driver. It's very simple. You go into the device manager, click the "display adapters" tab, right click on the 770M, click on "Properties" and navigate to the "Driver" tab. You should then see a "Rollback Driver" option.

EDIT: Have you installed any Windows updates lately?

 

Glad I didn't get the 770m!

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