Laggy Game Play

hi guys, i have the i am having a fluctuate on my GPU usage and as well as a fluctuating frame rate per second during game play. frame rates fluctuate around 20 -40 fps on modern warfare 2 with ultra settings. apparently i have even done a clean reformat and yet it does not change anything. games that aren't laggy before are now laggy. can you tell me what's wrong? i have tried Throttle Stop but it only improves a tiny fraction, still cant play in Ultra or even High. Have to off shadows in medium to play smoothly.

These are my specs ASUS RoG G53SX-IX042V | i7 2670QM-2.2GHz | 16GB DDR3 ram | 640GB HDD 5400rpm | NV GTX 560M 2GB DDR5 128 bit

 

How old is your laptop? What are the temperature readings you get for your GPU while playing? Use hwinfo64 to get the readings. I can play mw2 on ultra settings with very high fps without having to overclock my GPU.

Edit: Dust might have collected within your laptop. Buy a can of compressed air and blow out your vents and see if that helps.

 

hmm best part of the story, my laptop is just 1 month old :/ my temperature is good, always around 70+ hardly reaches 80 . weird thing is, it was all good, i could play on ultra settings and suddenly this happened.even clean reinstall of window7 would not help. would reinstalling bios help?

 

Try running ThrottleStop.

Also, it may help to set PhysX to run through the CPU only instead of Auto. This is done throgh the Nvidia Control Panel.

 

i have already tried Throttle Stop, had improvement but not much. it baffles me that i could not even play modern warfare 2 without lag in high settings where i was able to to do it when i first got my laptop. the only time where i could get 100 fps constantly (still had some drops) is on low settings and all others (shadows etc) off. by the way, is it normal for fps to drop/ fluctuate all the time?

 

With your setup, no, it definitely shouldn't be doing that.

You may be in the same boat as me, I am getting some issues with games like the Witcher 2 and Skyrim running like total crap even on lowest settings. However, MW3 runs very smooth, so I am still unsure as to my issue.

 

Make sure you are plugged into the wall while gaming as well as on high performace mode. Also use GPU-Z to find our if the GPU is throttling

 

how do i know if the GPU is being throttled?

 

Can you post a screen shot of how you have ThrottleStop set up? When set up correctly, it can make a big difference to cure the known throttling problems in many Asus laptops.

When you are gaming, leave ThrottleStop running in the background, minimized to the System Tray and check off the Log File option. Also make sure the Nvidia temperature monitoring option is checked in the Options window. When you are done gaming, exit ThrottleStop and uploaded the ThrottleStopLog.txt file somewhere convenient like MediaFire so I can have a look. The bigger the log file is the better. Monitoring the CPU and GPU temperature in the same log file is a good way to spot a throttling issue.

You can also log your GPU speed by using the GPU-Z program. You need to do some testing and data logging to get to the bottom of your problems.

 

hi unclewebb, thanks for helping. anyway, this is my TS log : ThrottleStopLog.txt . I started gaming at around 2:57, modern warfare 2 with ultra settings, all on except for AA.

This is the log for GPU-Z (dint log at the same time with TS, but same settings for MW2) GPU-Z Sensor Log2.txt

at 3:12 i think i alt-tab out.

TS settings:

 

Did you remember to do that step? Did you have a look in the log file before exiting? If you have the log file open, ThrottleStop won't be able to write data to it. The reason I ask is because your ThrottleStop log file ends at 3:00:00.

You need to play for long enough to experience this throttling you are talking about and preferably several times. You also need to keep track of at what time your laptop suddenly slows down.

Most of the data in the log file was while there was hardly any load on your CPU at all. Why not run ThrottleStop and GPU-Z at the same time and get at least half an hour of data.

 

hmm weird, fact is it lags the moment i play, unless settings are set at low. ok, ill try again.

 

GPU-Z Sensor Log.txt
ThrottleStopLog.txt
Latest logs.

This is the log for MSI Afterburner. I dont do any OC or DC and you can see the moment i enter the game, the fps drops like mad on ULTRA settings.
http://www.mediafire.com/?ypdazavl210ico1

 

Even MW 3 Maxed right?

 

HardwareMonitoring.hml
this is my latest log playing modern warfare 2 on ultra settings, even though i hardly get 15-20 fps rates, it still feels laggy, like something is trying to slow down the graphics. sigh, a new laptop and yet so many problems.

 

I also wonder what is the proper framerate in MW3 on a system like G73sw ?
I got ~45fps, sometimes low as 35, sometimes high as 60 (fullhd, max all), wonder if I am in the throttle issue like you

 

Check your power state. Make sure its high performance. This fixes the Lag 99% of the time, people get there new laptop and do not even think about this for some reason. If that does not help sorry..

 

nope, already at high performance

 

After about an hour of game play, how hot does your gpu get? Or is there any way you can monitor gpu load during gameplay? I think NvidiaInspector has a graph feature or something.

 

you can download my hardwaremonitoring.hml file from HardwareMonitoring.hml, its the log from afterburner. shows temp, gpu load, fps etc. just updated to nvidia beta driver 290.36, no luck as well. damn, feels like i bought a ferrari just to drive it at 30mph.

 

Ur GPU temp is really low/cool @ 63-65'c even when the GPU is "almost" fully utilized.
A normal GTX 560M would actually hit 75-80'c when its on game mode, its just weird ur temp is low unless the fan is 100% all time.

May i know what is the game ur playing during the afterburner logging?

 

You know by defaulting max settings in MW3 the image quality is not all too much different than if you fiddle with the settings.

 

im playing modern warfare 2, with ultra settings and all on except for AA.

apparently, i have found a temporary solution, changing the NVIDIA preference to balanced instead of Quality.

another thing that i found buggy was the shadow and soften dust option in Modern Warfare 2, whenever i off these 2 options it will be smoother. anyway, i don't think this is the solution since i believe this laptop is able to play in Quality preference for an old game like MW2.

 

Did you try my suggestion to set PhysX Configuration to CPU?

Also, under Manage 3D Settings, set Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration to "Single Display Performance mode" and Power Management Mode to "Prefer Maximum Performance"

Edit: Yeah after a couple hours of gaming, my 460m usually reaches ~80 deg C.

 

hmm funny thing, i tried to follow your settings, i can even play with Highest Settings on GTA 4 without Throttle Stop On. i also changed my NVDIA Preference to quality lol, but now another new problem appeared, when i play on Modern Warfare, there are artifacts on the whole screen -.- , unless i turn off all the options (most of the time shadow and smooth dust option). There is no artifact when i play GTA4 though. ahhh, could it be faulty graphic card?

 

Most likely u need a RMA, ur GPU is at fault.

 

What the eff lol. Did you say you updated the drivers to the most recent?

I would go ahead and call in the RMA but maybe try a few more things before going through with it. It's weird that it's only on one game; I would think a faulty GPU would have the artifacts on any game.

You're not overclocking are you? Some games run fine at a certain clock while others will artifact.

Have the max temps changed at all since making the changes?

 

Well then if u says so.... Shall we ask Kalist0 to try 3DMark, Furmark, MSI Kombuster to check if Artifacts will appear?

 

ahh, im goin crazy with all these crap happening. anyway, these are the screen shotsfor the 'artifact'.



heres the video on what's happening. oh god.
iw4mp 2011 12 19 15 00 24 95 - YouTube

 

i think i will revert back my nvidia to 285.62 first.


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appears that if i change any options in nvidia, the artifacts will appear in MW2 unless i turn off the smooth dust and depth of field option.

 

Its official. Your laptop wants battlefield 3 instead.

 

Modern Warfare 2 is kinda old now. Poeple don't realize that updated don't always increase performance and fix bugs. Sometimes in older games the latest drivers can have the opposite effect. Before you RMA I would try googling to find an old driver that was known to work really well with Modern Warfare 2.

 

To me the type of artifacts you're getting seem to be more like those you get for software incompatibilities than from faulty hardware or a bad OC.

Artifacts from bad hardware or overclocking usually look like random flickering small white dots, ie snow. Also there are random flat shaded polygons and streaks.
Yours is most likely an incompatility between the game engine and graphics driver or perhaps a memory leak.

One of the problems is that devs need to start using 64bit apps that can take advantage of more memory.

 

Edit: This article, though old, gives a nice explanation of different artifacts due to faulty hardware.

Diagnose video card problems by comparing with example corrupted screens

If reverting to an older driver doesn't work then try underclocking different parts of the GPU and see if that helps. If underclocing lessens the problem then it probably is faulty hardware.

 

should be the drivers. anyway i attempted another clean install but no luck . the 'artifacts' are no longer there and i can play on ultra settings BUT with all the options off (AA,shadow,depth of field etc in MW2) anyone else plays MW2? mind to share if you are able to play with ULTRA and all settings on? i remembered that i could when i first got the laptop.

OK, question is now are there any thing that i can check if my gpu or cpu is faulty without using a game as the benchmark, for example Furmark, or whatsoever that i see people testing on their laptops?

 

Oh My God hahaha, i've solved the problem. i had this problem before where my screen would go blank after waking up from hibernation, thus needing to reset the bios. today, i was strucked again by that problem and after reset, my MW2 gives me a near constant 110 fps but then my local reseller told me before this is a BIOS problem which is pretty infamous if u search in the internet.
are there any BIOS that i can flash to since the version i have now is 205.

 

Edit: please disregard this post. the latest bios for the g53sx is 205

 

constant 110 fps I feel jealous, what is your settings ? on my G53sw, MW2 is quite inconsistent, sometimes fps drops to >30 or >20 (stand near an exploding truck or in smoke-dense area and you can tell that )

 

is it suitable for my model? G53sx-IX042V?

all max and options turned on lol. of course 'near constant' sometimes it would drop to 40-50 but just once in a while.

 

Wow, congrats! Thats a pretty huge difference. When choosing a BIOS, how do you know which one is compatible with your system? The latest one on the official site seems to be 203.

 

Oops, I was wrong. I was thinking of the bios for my laptop, the g73jh.

The latest bios for the g53sx is indeed the 205

sorry about the confusion

 

ah ok thanks for clearing that up!