Hey, my gaming laptop isn't using its graphics card enough!
Hey, my gaming laptop isn't using its graphics card enough!
MSI GP66 Leopard Gaming Laptop Specs: Intel i7 11800H Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU 16GB RAM 1TB SSD I have owned this computer for about a year. I never had any problems playing games on it and can run all AAA titles at high or ultra settings. Suddenly, in the past week, all games feel completely unplayable. There is very low frame rate and a lot of lag. So I downloaded the latest drivers for my graphics card hoping that was causing the issue, but nothing changed. I tried using Windows recovery to go back to an earlier state, but it didn't work anymore and now it says there are no more restore points available. So I started troubleshooting by searching on Google which always gives the same answer: update your drivers. Then I thought about trying ChatGPT to get some help. This led me to opening Task Manager while playing a game to see what resources might be holding things back. The game I have been using is Ready or Not. While in the game, when I switch to Task Manager under Performance, it says my RTX 3070 is only using about 30% of the time and sometimes even lower. Meanwhile, my Intel UHD graphics is running at 98%. This makes me think that for some reason, the computer is using my older Intel graphics as the main GPU instead of the new RTX 3070. So I tried using Nvidia Control Panel to force the computer to make my RTX 3070 the main GPU. But now it seems this doesn't work anymore and says Windows decides which GPU to use on its own. Then I used the Graphics Settings in Windows to try forcing it to use my RTX 3070 while playing Ready or Not, but that also made no changes. Then I tried installing an older Nvidia driver, which had no effect either. So I gave up and did a clean reinstall of the latest Nvidia driver and started working on fixing things. When I got home, I tried playing Ready or Not and it was running great. I opened Task Manager and my RTX3070 was showing around 85% usage, so I thought that issue had somehow resolved itself. Then I played other games and they all ran just as well as before. But this morning when I woke up, my screen went black. This happens often every time I leave the computer running and the only way to get it working again is to restart the whole thing. So I restarted and everything was back to playing poorly right away. Then I tried doing another clean install of drivers but nothing helped me today either. I just can't figure out what's really causing this problem at all. My GPU isn't even getting hot, my temperatures are actually quite low if anything. I don't understand how computers work or why they suddenly behave so differently when you leave them alone. I thought maybe an Windows update ruined it, but honestly I still don't know how to troubleshoot this myself. I really am not sure enough about computers to figure out what is going on. Maybe the PC was fine for almost a year and then all of a sudden decided to act up? Maybe a Windows update broke something? Any advice or help from anyone would be very appreciated
Did you remove all GPU driver software from your machine using DDU? We recommend installing the newest drivers manually, by right-clicking the installer and choosing Run as Administrator. Also, look for pending BIOS or operating system updates on your laptop and computer.
Hey computer dummy, I really don't know what DDU is. Before I installed it, I used add remove programs to fix drivers. But I didn't click 'run as administrator' when setting up those drivers. Now that's something I'll do next time. Also sorry—I should have told you way back in my original post that I checked and fixed all the Windows updates, even the little ones that aren't essential.
So after digging deeper, my computer has two ways to show pictures. One way uses both the old part and the new card (RTX 3070) together. The other way only uses the RTX 3070 by itself. I tried switching to use the RTX 3070 all on its own hoping it would use 100% of my power, but the game was still running slowly and using less than half of my GPU. It looks like the problem isn't with the card not working right, but rather that the old graphics chip is hogging up too much power and making the new one feel weak.