Performance in games is reduced by half for gaming laptops.
Performance in games is reduced by half for gaming laptops.
I own a Lenovo Legion 5 15ACH6H with an RTX3060 and AMD 5600H APU, paired with a 120Hz monitor. Over the last month my gaming frame rates have dropped significantly—about half of what they used to be—and crashes have become more frequent. I play Forza Horizon 5, BeamNG Drive, and Rocket League, but now I’m averaging around 40 FPS in FH5 and BeamNG, and it’s much lower in RL as well. No changes have been made to game settings; everything remains the same. The laptop is still connected to the OEM charger and has Performance Power Profile enabled in Lenovo Vantage. Hybrid graphics are active because I need better battery life, but that didn’t help either. I’ve disabled it for troubleshooting without success. I updated and rolled back the Nvidia drivers, checked the BIOS, and even tried restarting multiple times. The only recent change is using a 60Hz external monitor for multitasking; I unplug it before games and rebooted, but performance didn’t improve. My display stays at 120Hz in Windows 11. I also installed Logi G Hub for a BT keyboard I rarely use. My main theory is that the dedicated GPU is still being routed through the APU and getting throttled, even though it shouldn’t. I noticed once in Task Manager that the 3060 only showed 2GB of dedicated GPU memory (should be 6GB), but now it reports the full amount. There’s also 6.9GB of shared GPU memory that isn’t being utilized much. Performance remains consistent whether Power Plan is set to Performance or Quiet mode in Lenovo Vantage. Any suggestions? Thanks!
You probably have a mux switch on your laptop and want to verify that idea. Have you looked at the temperatures? This model was released about four years ago. Since it hasn’t been opened for cleaning, it’s possible the fans and exhausts are starting to block. I own a Legion 5 Pro 16ACH6 and need to clean it annually. The frequency really depends on usage—how many hours it runs daily, how dusty the surroundings are, and whether you have pets, among other factors.
Thank you for your feedback. It seems the mux switch was used during testing, but it didn’t resolve the issue. For the laptop, turning off hybrid mode and rebooting enabled the mux switch, though results weren’t satisfactory. Temperatures are within normal ranges—CPU around 85°C, GPU in the 50s–60s, which is typical. The laptop was opened recently, and dust accumulation on the coolers appears minimal.
You're wondering about the Lenovo Vantage App. It seems to have some issues; I haven't used it for my Legion 5 Pro 16ACH6 laptop lately. Checking the BIOS settings should match yours. Try booting from there just to confirm. Performance under load or while gaming looks normal—about 23°C ambient, stable boosts, not throttling. Your GPU is likely in the 70s unless a CPU-heavy game is running. I haven't seen problems with my 30 series cards (RTX 3060 laptop and RTX 3080 desktop), though that's just a small sample of two.
Good to know. I just updated Windows and the Nvidia Spetember 30 driver but the issue persists. I'll look into rolling back drivers to one a few months old and see if that helps. For now here's a screenshot of the performace stats while running FH5. The 3060 is GPU2. It seems to be limited to only 4GB of VRAM even though it has 6GB. This is so weird.
Your profile appears comparable, yet it lacks the ability to choose a graphics device. The option was hidden under the "more settings" menu as well.
I'm still facing this problem. I attempted to use the Display Driver Uninstaller from Guru3D and manually fetched the NVIDIA driver from over six months ago when it worked. I also tried the AMD APU driver, but it didn't resolve the issue. Additionally, uninstalling Lenovo Vantage and its related applications in favor of the open-source Lenovo Legion Toolkit didn't help either, even when using only the discrete GPU.
I fixed the problem. All GeForce drivers that were accessible from Nvidia between March and October 2025 seemed to cause issues. Using the Studio driver resolved it, as it's designed for professionals requiring dependable performance.