Massive FPS drops on external monitor

So, this had never happened before. In fact, I'd never even noticed an FPS difference in games when running them only on my laptop screen or outputting to my second monitor via HDMI.

However, after installing the last Nvidia driver, I get massive lag spikes, both in games and in VLC media player whenever my second monitor is hooked up.

I rolled back to the previous driver but this changed nothing. Any idea what's up? Most games will now suffer a 50% FPS drop once every few seconds which never used to happen. The FPS will then increase again but it will keep going up and down like crazy.

Any idea what's up?

 

That sounds very very weird to me. Did you try completely removing nVidia drivers off your system before rolling back? If this doesn't fix it, you might need to try flashing your video card BIOS. It might help with a problem like that, but use that as a last resort as it may void your warranty (contact your seller before you try it).

 

I'll have to do a completely fresh reinstall of the drivers and wipe them thoroughly. Like I said, I rolled back but something clearly stayed stuck so it's worth a shot.

 

That's the ideal method to avoid conflicts. You don't necessarily need to use something like Driver Sweeper, as with NVidia installer, you can opt in for a "clean installation".

 

Yeah, it's just a real shame that the newest Nvidia drivers actually massively increased the FPS in a bunch of games that I play frequently. Really don't want to roll back but seems like I don't have much of a choice.

Weirdly, it also affects VLC media player. But NOT Windows Media Player. I get choppy video when hooked up via HDMI too. Bizarre.

 

Sometimes new drivers cause more problems than they fix.

 

Are you sure you're not on dual display mode?

Sent from a Galaxy far, far away

 

Do you suffer any audio loss/stutter ?probably having latency issues cause from a driver, download latency mon, and see whats causing it to spike, mine is the ACPI.sys however can't seem to fix it .

 

Don't think so - would that have an effect?

 

It would have an enormous effect as the gpu would be drawing two images instead of one.

Sent from a Galaxy far, far away

 

TRAVELBUG! You're alive. I thought you vanished into a void.

 

The weird thing is though, the FPS drops are intermittent. It works fine for a few seconds then the FPS halves then it goes back up again. I'd imagine that having it set to dual monitor mode would be a more consistent performance drain.

Still, it could be the issue. I'll google how to check and turn off the dual monitor mode just in case though.

 

I changed all the Nvidia monitor performance settings and nothing. Also reverted to a previous driver and also nothing. What the hell is wrong with my laptop?

I never had issues with multiple displays until the last Nvidia driver update. It's clearly changed something but I don't know what.

 

I may have missed it, but did you try a clean installation of the driver? Updating over an existing can cause conflicts. Had a system BSOD on me not so long ago after an update. Uninstalled, installed in Safe Mode, and then it worked fine.

 

Maybe a long shot - but if you have KB2778344 installed you may want to uninstall it and see if the problem persists. This update has brought many of my and my client's computers to their knees...

 

I have not tried that- will give it a shot and see if it helps.

 

/knock on wood

Hope it works!