Laptop Performance Degradation :(

Hello to all my tech guru friends out there,

I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but I'm at a loss with my laptop and why my overall performance has degraded significantly over the past year.

I purchased my Lenovo ideapad Y560 about a year and a few months ago. It has the i7 Q720, 4gigs of ddr-3 and a Radeon M 5730. I am currently rebuilding my desktop, so this is my gaming machine.

When I first got it running, it had no problem playing any game with little to no framerate loss on med-high graphic settings.

Now I feel like ANY game (League of Legends, World of Tanks, DC universe) gets PITIFUL framerate compared to where I was a year ago. In addition, my video performance, streaming, youtube, some pron, all takes a solid hit and lag as well.

I defrag (Defraggler), reg clean, CCleaner near daily. I have a 6gig page file. I have updated drivers, run Malware Bytes and use Avast for virus. None of my tools ever have problems, and my harddrive stays efficient. Still, I feel like my performance vs a year ago is 20% of where I was and its downright frustrating that I can't figure it out.

Other than a re-install of win7, any suggestions as to what could be hindering my performance? I can post anything that might help, and I appreciate anyone's assistance

Much love to the community.

 

Update to the latest drivers and clean the heatsink. You might be experiencing throttling due to hot temperatures. It is the first that comes to mind, also check how many processes you have running.

 

Go to task manager and check what is getting CPU cycles.

 

You could also try using a program called "slim driver" to update them, and game booster to see if it works... I have seen a few videos of it and seems to be fair enough...

 

Format and reinstall windows with latest drivers.

 

Laptop performance dropping down 80% in 1 year?
That's odd.

Ok... tijo made a good recommendation.
First off, I would open up the laptop and clean it out.
It's possible you have clogged air vents which is increasing temps in your system and of course reducing performance.

Second... uninstall any and all unnecessary programs.
Check your startup entries as well via Ccleaner and remove everything except the touchpad drivers and Avast of course.

In terms of drivers for the gpu for example... I would actually recommend you remove them completely right now, then run ccleaner to clean up the registry thoroughly (rerun it several times just in case) and then reinstall the latest GPU drivers.

One other thing to keep in mind is that the games you mentioned are all MMORPGS.
They could have been updated/modified to be more graphic intensive with certain settings.
WoW for example included some additions to the engine like shadows and other things which heavily reduced FPS on numerous systems.

Also... the 5730M you have is an upper mid-range class gpu.
Which resolution and settings are you using for gaming, and are they different from what you used a year ago?

Finally, check how many services are running on your laptop.
You could have installed programs that added extra services to the OS which are taking valuable resources.

I would also use Avast and Mbam to scan the computer in safe mode (just to make sure you didn't pick up a problem that's bogging you down).
I remember having an Adobe update service which was actually a masqueraded trojan/virus that was taking up majority of my CPU cycles and was severely bogging my system down (of course, I removed it in the meantime and everything stabilized).

Windows XP or even 7 for that matter I hadn't really noticed to have a degraded performance over time if you keep the system clean of dust and needless software.

 

I love all the speculative recommendations that come out of the woodwork when this sort of question is asked. Bullit gave you the right answer if you want to find out why this is happening before you take the shot in the dark approach others have suggested. A little investigation will serve you well to see what you REALLY need to do. The only additional info I would add to Bullit's post is you might want to look at SysInternals Process Explorer. It is task manager on steroids. Even giving you detail on the services as well as processes and their consumption of CPU, RAM and disk i/o.

Gary

 

@OP

DO NOT USE PROGRAMS THAT CLAIM TO UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS AUTOMATICALLY OR SPEED UP YOUR COMPUTER! THEY DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD!

This is in response to giocondrix's recommendation to use "Slim driver" and "Gamebooster". I have advocated against such programs and will continue to do so because they are nothing more than a marketing ploy and offer no real benefit.

Also, do not recommend any solution unless you actually know what the OP's problem is. In this case, we clearly need more information and thank you Bullit for giving a reasonable answer and ScuderiaConchiglia for improving on that.

@ OP

I would suggest doing a spyware/virus since there could be something running the the background that is using up system resources. This is just a precaution to rule out another possibility.

 

Thank you for the responses to date, all have been enlightening. I downloaded and currently running Process Explorer. Nothing seems to be amiss as I can see.

@Bullit - I run task manager a lot, as I'm curious where my performance goes. I As mentioned above, I see nothing amiss.

@Deks - Thank you for taking the time to write a complete suggestion of things to check.

I run all games at max resolution, 1366x768 (15.6in), although at low settings. Still play League of Legends as a year ago, and I get less 30-50% less fps.

I will run virus/mbam in safe mode to see what comes up.

I also noticed on this particular website's ranking that the card is only a few tiers down when it comes to overall performance, which is why I'm so frustrated with my recent lack of ability function properly.

@Metril & Scuderia - To further explore the "why" - I get 10-20 FPS on low settings where people with less impressive systems get at least 30-60 on med settings. When I double click on files in folders on my HD (Single Partition, 5400 500gb) (.exe/.avi through .docx or .xlsx for work) it takes 8-12 seconds to start loading and an additional 4-8 seconds to show texture. I recall when I purchased the machine, docs and spreadsheets, office 10, would open near instantly. My boot time has also increased significantly.

My disinclination to reinstall stems from my work e-mail, and the problems I've experienced when it comes to archiving and unarchiving upon re-install. I have a very custom setup with a large amount of organization which takes literal hours to setup.

Regarding the Processor Explorer, is there a way to export the data that would be reviewable for quick suggestion?

Also, while gaming, I generally run Chrome with a few tabs and avast, that's it.

 

@ cedjordan

LoL has a P2P distribution program bundled with it if you download the game from the main site. I consider the P2P program to be malware since the terms of that program are well hidden within the actual user agreement of LoL. Furthermore, the company behind the program is known to tip on the side of "sketchy business". It might be possible that that LoL P2P is running in the background. I only say this since it seems like you still have LoL installed.

Just another possibility.

 

cedjordan

Don't bother with Process Explorer since Task manager can tell you pretty much everything you need to know.

Did you check the laptop for evidence of dust buildup in your system?
Have you opened the back panel (while your laptop was OFF) and then looked at the air vents, heat-sink, etc.?
You might also need to remove the fan and clean out the dust in between it and the air vent (dust has a tendency to buildup severely in that section).

Furthermore... perhaps there's a possibility your HDD is starting to fail, hence the slow response times, etc.
I would recommend a HDTune test and compare the results with other benchmarked hdd's that are identical to yours (I think you can find the necessary info online).

One other thing that I wanted to note is that since you currently have only 1 partition on the HDD, I would also recommend you re-partition the HDD so it has 2 partitions.
One for the OS,programs, installations of games, etc., the other to store your data (and backups), media, etc.
I'd keep the C drive at 100GB and the rest I'd leave for the D partition.

I'm sure you can find a way to backup all of your work email and data beforehand just in case (I personally wouldn't do a repartition of the HDD with a backup)

One other thing you could do is grab a screen shot of task-manager with currently running processes (make sure to instruct Windows to show you all of them).
Do the same with services tab, and post the screenshots here (also, perhaps taking a few of your Programs and Features -installed programs via Control Panel).
Perhaps we could see something that's you might currently be missing (if the fault lies in software and not hardware).

 

@Metril - I haven't heard that, but I'll look into that. LoL was the game I was most referring to within regard to performance and comparing fps a year ago vs now.

@Deks - I removed each bottom panel. There was a good amount of dust buildup in the heatsink, which I removed. It wasn't caked on per se, so I'm not sure how much of an effect it will have.

I just finished the two hour long run of Mbam and virus scan in safe mode, no problems there.

I also downloaded HDTune. Average 50.4 MB/s, 19.3 access time, 30MB Burst. I'll get some screenshots. Should I be playing a graphically intensive game while doing so?

 

Well, regardless of whether dust was a problem or not, it'll still do you some good that it was removed. Even if it doesn't improve performance, it'll at least improve thermals . Next step it to look at processes and services running, having somewhere between 50-70 processes when no program is opened isn't uncommon for a relatively clean install of windows (more towards 50-60 without any
"utilities" installed, but sometimes it'll be between 60-70 if you kept some lenovo software voluntarily). I've seen systems with over 100 processes running and that is one bloated windows installation...

It is true that LoL's P2P client feels sketchy, i have friends playing the game and they wanted me to join them. Installed the game and it also installed some totally not needed crapware called pando media booster. Guess where said program and LoL went right after i saw that...

 

For processes, yes as Deks said Task Manager will tell you pretty much all you need. The reason I suggested Process Explorer over task manager, is Process Explorer makes it a little easier to identify the amount of CPU consumed by an individual service. Task Manager aggregates the CPU usage of all of the Services hosted by a specific instance of SVCHOST.EXE, while Process Explorer lets you see that aggregate as well as the specifics for each individual service. This can be helpful if you find out an instance of SVCHOST.EXE is eating the CPU and then find out that instance is hosting a half dozen or more individual service.

Gary

 

It's a good thing you removed the dust because it's recommended to clean out the laptop once per year at least.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's what was reducing your gaming performance (seeing how you said that there was A LOT of it), but just to be sure, you also need to check the amount of processes running in the background (all in all, it's a good thing you removed the dust).
After you have removed the dust, you can easily try playing those games now to see if there's a difference.

A clean Windows 7 SP1 install results in about 46 to 48 background processes with the AV, Java update and Google update (for Chrome if you use it).

You should NOT be playing a game while running HDD benhcmarks, because obviously, your HDD resources will be taken up by the testing process.

If you have any bloatware from the laptop's manufacturer... remove it ALL (sans the software that has drivers for the hardware).
The Help center, Media, power options, etc... if you have any of those connected to the manufacturer, remove it.

Finally, take a screenshot of your installed programs so we can see if you have anything else on that could be removed.
Oh and... my friend had a piece of software from EA installed on his computer that served as a 'store' where you can buy their products.
It was a severe piece of bloat that added a bunch of background processes and slowed the system down to a crawl.

Any such additional software from game manufacturers, toolbars, etc... REMOVE IT ALL from the system.
It's just a waste of resources.

 

Thanks again for your assistance guys, I really appreciate it.

As a note: I have noticed a small increase in performance since I took the dust out. The vent does not seem to get as hot either.

@Deks - I do have a lot of Lenovo programs on here. I never went through and sorted which ones were required to run the buttons on the system, and which ones were unnecessary. I've attached the processes and programs that are installed.

I removed Pando Media Booster several times. Every time LOL does a major update, it always seems to reinstall itself. Regarding the processes, im at 85 - 100 most of the time, depending on what i'm running. While at work I have Thunderbird adobe open, those are generally closed while gaming.

 

Odd, I have two more .jpgs for the task manager and its telling me that both have invalid file extensions. Even though they were all created the same way...

 

The other attachments...

 

EnhanceMySe7en??? Those sort of "enhancement" programs are just snake oil and often do more harm than good. Trouble is they never tell you what they REALLY are doing, and there is no way to truly undo the damage they have done.

Gary

 

you can also try using compressed air can and clean all your heatsinks.