680M Performance Problem Sager NP9150EM

Since I updated my drivers in August I have had poor gaming performance. I used to run the 320.49 drivers, with no problems. Then I upgraded to the 326.19 Beta Driver or one of those series drivers.
After that I noticed right away that in Crysis 3 the gpu utilization was poor despite setting the performance mode in the driver settings to "max performance." With 320.49 I was getting 90-99% gpu usage in all games and getting
nice consistent frame rates. Now gpu utilization spikes so badly that games are unplayable. Just standing in place in Crysis 1 or Crysis 3 or BF3, frame rates jump from 60fps down to 15fps up to 30fps down to 5fps etc. Completely laggy. Doesn't matter if I change the settings to the max possible with all post processing effects enabled, or to the lowest settings. Frame rate stays unplayable. Funny thing is actually changing everything to low settings causes gpu usage to decrease. Instead of averaging 50-60percent usage with spikes, the average drops to 30-40 percent. In most games the graphics card used to heat up to 87C, now I never seen it pass 65C. I have tried fixing the problem numerous times. I have done multiple driver wipes and re installs. To do this, I first uninstalled both the Nvidia driver and the intel graphics drivers. Then, booted into safemode and ran a program called driver sweeper to wipe the registry clean for all remaining driver files. After which I rebooted, then logged into windows. I made a system restore point, then installed the factory intel driver for my NP9150 off of sagers web site. I installed it, rebooted then installed the latest Nvidia driver and then restarted one last time. Despite doing this numerous times over the last three months as new WHQL drivers have been released by Nvidia my problem still persists. I am literally pulling my hair out because of this. A lot of my favorite games are unplayable. Even a simple game like Call of Duty Black Ops 2 has serious frame rate spikes due to the utilization issue or glitch now present on my system. For some weird reason some single player games don't have this issue, such as both Metro Games. However in Dead Space 3 SP and COOP I notice low frame rate and GPU usage on Ultra Settings when in some indoor environments (strange because with less rendering to do, frame rate should be higher). I have attached some pictures of Afterburner taken while I was playing Crysis 1 & 3 campaign as well as BF3 Multilayer (Narshar Canal 64 man server with 54 people playing). I really hope someone has some advice on this, this situation reminds me of when I first got the laptop in June of 2012 when I had the 7970m and literally no games were playable *cries*

List of Games That Experience GPU Utilization Issues:
All Crysis Series Games
Battlefield 3
Battlefield 4 Beta (when it tried it in October)
Call of Duty Black Ops 2 And other COD games (high frame rate but laggy stuttering).

Games Without Issues:
Metro 2033
Metro Last Light
Dead Space
Boarderlands 2 SP & COOP

 

For me , its look like driver issue try :

1) clean install Windows 8.1 then update all your drivers

2) or , update all your drivers to latest versions! can find it here https://mega.co.nz/#F!thtjkbIR!ApLL-XH2SXENZpoRH7n51w and here https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sgcixs0sh44loqf/JWRdB_Yj-U

 

you can find the last 15 drivers released here on one page NVIDIA Driver Downloads - Advanced Search

beta drivers can be touch and go and you load as always at your own risk.

how did you update your driver. auto update or a manual update in safe mode.
as your having problems i would follow the manual walkthrough in my signature below.

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys! Currently I am running Windows 7. MrDJ thanks for the driver guide, I followed something like your guide that except for your step after driver sweeper. I will try to wipe my machine and do completely fresh driver instals tonight, frustrating because I have done this numerous times over the last 3 months with no success The only other thing I can possibly think of is a fresh install of windows 7. Something tells me it is a registry error of some sort with the intel driver, thats causing me the problems.

 

you will get performance boost on fresh Windows 8.1 with latest drivers

 

So, looks like I fixed the performance problems for the most part. At first I did a clean wipe of the nvidia and intel drivers. Used driver sweeper to eliminate any remaining files while booted to safe mode. Then I installed the original intel driver from sagers website for the NP9150 (my model). After which I tried installing driver version 320.49, which had worked beautifully for me last August before I tried one of the beta drivers. I was shocked to see that the performance problem was still there with the horrid gpu utilization. So I uninstalled the entire driver and used driver sweeper again. Next I installed the latest driver 331.82 and guess what? The driver utilization problem was still present. Soo then I uninstalled that driver, looked at the list of Nvidia drivers from the last 8 months or so and downloaded 310.90 and then did a clean install. To my surprise the utilization problems are gone for the most part :O I don't understand at all. This is just soo weird. Anyway check out these screen shots. The first is of the 331.82 driver playing "Operation Metro" on BF3 and the second screen shot is also "Operation Metro" but this time with the 310.90 driver. Both are on 64 player servers that are full, notice the utilization difference! Averaging 50% utilization on Ultra Settings with 331.82 and averaging 65-75% with the 310.90. With the 331.82 driver I was getting a laggy 20-50fps. After trying the 310.90 driver I am now getting 45-80fps with no frame rate spikes and it runs smooth. All of a sudden the game is now playable.

331.82 Driver: BF3 "Operation Metro" Ultra Settings



310.90 Driver: BF3 "Operation Metro" Ultra Settings

 

That utilisation is still not great. What is your CPU up to?

 

In the future, abstain from Driver Sweeper or anything of the like. It can cause more harm than good.

I may have missed this, but: did you also uninstall and install the most current driver for your Intel graphics?

 

me used driver cleaner pro and sweeper and never had a problem. i must be lucky. time to buy a scratchcard

 

Piece of advice, don't install Beta driver. I too, ran into a lot of problems with them.

As for reinstalling drivers, I agree with Prostar regarding not using driver sweeper. I was also advised by my other friends not to use it too. Personally, I'm not even sure if driver sweeper ever helped at all. I just can't tell.

Actually, just do a clean installation option from Nvidia. I get all my drivers directly from GeForce.com. Choose custom installation, and then choose clean installation. Basically, it will wipe out all old driver files.


Sometimes, you can't really understanding the glitches you get. There was a time when my computer suddenly don't recognized my vid card anymore. In fact, the system don't even see the card. After multiple tries, I gave up and had to reformat my whole hard drive and reinstall everything from scratch to fix the problem.

Hope your problems don't come back.