Laptop performance issues, the woes of integrated graphics....

[Oxika]

Oki doki,

First off, this is my first post on this forum... actually this is my first post on any forum, ever. I generally lurk and try and find answers on my own so having said that I have done quite a bit of research on my own and am still struggling with this issue. Also if there is any improper forum etiquette I apologize let me know and ill do my best to fix it.

My issue: I have performance drops while playing warframe. I can play fine sometimes but on larger missions with lots of spawns (ie: stofler on lua) my frame rates can get so bad it's impossible to aim well enough to get a kill with even the tonkor or the penta.

My rig: okay I know a laptop isn't a rig and many people may rest their case with laptops are not made to game, me... well I say maybe but I’ll be damned if I don't give it my best shot.

TOSHIBA Satellite S55-C5364 15.6" Intel Core i7 6th Gen 6500U (2.50 GHz) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M 12 GB Memory 1 TB HDD Windows 10 Home Laptop https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834217156

• NVIDIA Geforce GTX 950M 4 GB GDDR3
• Intel Core i7 6th Gen 6500U (2.50 GHz)
• 12 GB Memory 1 TB HDD
• 15.6" 1920 x 1080

I also upgraded to an SSD and moved the 1tb HDD to a hard drive caddy in the optical bay slot. Warframe is on my SSD

I feel like with these specs I should at least be able to get decent 50~60 FPS on even somewhat heavy game play.

What I have tried: My attempts to achieve a smooth 50~60 FPS consistently have included

• Uninstalling and reinstalling NVIDIA graphics drivers
• Using GFORCE EXPERICNCES suggested graphics settings (No change in FPS positive or negative)
• Manually setting all graphics settings to low or off (No change)
• The above as well as setting 800x600 resolution (No change)
• Enabling Laptop mode in in-game settings
• Unparking my CPU cores (Change? Can’t tell, but I did have multi-threading enabled FYI)
• Toggling 64 bit mode, DirectX 10 and DirectX11
• Making sure My GPU is selected in NVIDIA control panel for both Global and Warframe specifically
• Setting PhsX to the GPU
• Trying to disable integrated graphics in the BIOS (not supported by my laptop)
• Lots of other little tweaks I can't remember...

My concern is that my GPU is not working or engaging fully for whatever reason. I am hoping someone can help me figure out if I am just hitting the physical limitations of my laptop or if there is some issue I haven’t addressed.

Edited May 2, 2017 by Oxika
Got rid of the extra lines I left at the bottom XP

[AEP8FlyBoy]

The only thing I can think of with the information you noted about your setup and your configuration is that you are experiencing something called "Thermal Throttling".

This event can happen when a CPU, GPU or any other PCB chip becomes too hot while under load, causing your BIOS to automatically clock it down to nearly an idle state so that it doesn't get too hot and cause damage to itself or any nearby electronic components. Before I moved to my new baby, I had to deal with this very thing myself, which would happen infrequently, and required a complete system restart to fix. (The entire reason I decided to move to a Desktop Gaming PC, best choice I ever made.)

My recommendation, if you haven't found a solution already. Is to download a CPU/GPU temperature monitoring software suite, and check to make sure they aren't getting too hot. Laptop CPUs such as the one you have listed for your Toshiba Satellite, typically don't like getting above 90-95 C. Your GPU won't like getting above about 80-85C, but its theoretical maximum temp is about ~95C.

If the problem stems from thermal throttling, may I suggest investing in an external cooling solution. Such as a Gaming Chill mat from Targus, that's the one I used back in the day and it helped to a point. Other than that, make sure that there isn't too much buildup inside the laptop itself (dust and other debris that can intrude into a system over time and can impede or completely limit internal cooling from your CPU's main fan.)

That's all I got. Hope that helps a bit.  :D

Spoiler

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/  -  Link for GPU-Z
https://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/  -  Link for RealTemp (for your CPU)

 

Edited June 28, 2017 by AEP8FlyBoy

[are2dude]

I have had the same issue with performance with my laptop.Sudden fps drops from 60 to 5-9 fps out of nowhere in missions and even in liset. These issues started just a couple of weeks ago and I have had no such issues with this laptop for months and before that I used to play with even older laptop without any issues. 

I did some testing with corpus.outbreak and the results seem to suggest something thermal related but the but it still doesn't make much sense. It feels like the fans don't seem to react as agressively as they should. (The laptop fan settings are set to increase fan speed before throttling) Judging by the sound I'd guess the fans only go to 60% when the fps drops to single digits, at which point the fans slow down even more. After 10 seconds or so it got back to 60 fps and stayed there until CPU and motherboard hit about 75C and the whole thing happened again.

Seems logical enough so far but during the same test on another "lag cycle" the fans actually ramped up to what sounded like 100%, fps was around 50-60 and temperatures were about 80C. Someone smarter than me figure this out....

EDIT:

I also tested Dragon's Dogma and Salt and Sanctuary. SaS ran smoothly as expected. DD, however showed similar fps drop once but after that the fans kept running at 100% and the temperatures were about 80C.

Have some screenshots:http://imgur.com/a/n7xKR

When the frames start to drop

Shortly after the drop

The last case

Edited July 2, 2017 by are2dude

[Garmelon]

I have the same issue here, almost exactly the same I hope digital extremes has an fix for this or else they are gonna lose a portion of their players