I am having issues with my FPS dropping during gameplay. My FPS goes from 60 to 20 during team fights or around forts. Went through all the trouble shooting available before posting this. Any help is much appreciated.
Assuming that proximity to action means performance issues rather than network connectivity issues…
First thing would be to make sure HotS is running on your discrete GPU. You should be able to see this from task manager by checking GPU usage. Most modern Intel desktop processors come with a very low performance IGPU that is not really suitable for gaming workloads and can end up being accidently used in some cases. Make sure your display is connected to your graphic card and not to the motherboard as that will dictate which GPU is used.
Make sure your CPU and GPU are performing as you would expect. This includes reaching and sustaining appropriate clock speeds. Make sure power profiles are not limiting CPU and GPU performance.
If any part of your system is overclocked, try reverting it to stock performance. Just because numbers are larger and appear stable does not mean it performs better as sometimes error correction masks instability at the cost of performance.
If using a laptop with dual GPUs make sure that HotS is running on the discrete GPU. You should be able to force this in windows power management. If your laptop only has integrated graphics, then it is possible it is just not powerful enough to handle HotS at the specified settings so you may need to lower resolution and graphic quality settings.
If using Windows 11 then try updating the UEFI (BIOS). Some CPUs require UEFI updates to fix performance issues. If using an old/unsupported CPU to run Windows 11 then you may need to disable some of Windows 11 security features due to the CPU lacking appropriate performance optimisations.
If this is caused by an unreliable network connection, then make sure you are connected by a wired network cable such as Ethernet to your router. You might also want to run the recommended winmtr tests to try and verify where the issus is happeing. If it is happenin in your network, try restarting the infrastructure, checking for loose cables, e.t.c. If outside of your infrastructure, the best you can do is contact your ISP and inform them of the issue. For the best experience playing HotS you want less than 100ms latency with very low variance and as good as 0% packet loss.
Here is what I am using. It is a brand new laptop, but not specifically meant for heavy gaming. Figured HoTS wouldn’t be too demanding on the system.
|Processor|AMD Ryzen 7 5825U with Radeon Graphics 2.00 GHz|
|Installed RAM|16.0 GB (15.4 GB usable)|
|GPU|NVIDIA GeForce MX550|
|System type|64-bit operating system, x64-based processor|
|Pen and touch|Touch support with 10 touch points|
| Edition | Windows 11 Home |
|---|---|
| Version | 22H2 |
| Installed on | ‎10/‎8/‎2022 |
| OS build | 22621.819 |
| Experience | Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22636.1000.0 |
I checked power management to make sure the GPU was being used for HoTS and it shows it is. The internal display settings only has 1 option AMD Radeon Graphics, but not sure that can or should be changed? I haven’t messed with any of the system settings regarding overclocking and not sure how to update the UEFI (BIOS). Unfortunately, I don’t have an ethernet port, but don’t think that is the issue. Thought it might be a firewall issue, but I checked to make sure HoTS is allowed through. Again, the latency doesn’t seem to be the issue. Any suggestions on changes to the system setup or is it just a hardware issue (not enough power to run HoTS)?
Thank you!
It cannot be changed as the internal display will be physcially connected to the AMD IGPU due to how laptops with hybrid graphics work.
Use task manager with detailed view enabled to check which GPU HotS is using. If it is using the integrated GPU (the discrete GPU has ~0% utilisation) then that is likely the cause. In this case try updating graphic drivers as that sometimes solves incorrect GPU selection issues. Otherwise, you may need to look up online for people with similar incorrect GPU selection issues, and possibly contact support of your laptop manufacturer in case it requires specific OEM drivers.
If your discrete GPU is being used as expected, then this is unlikely to be the cause.
I would recommend trying to play at 1080p or even 720p in case it is a laptop fallrate issue. Some professional/creator orientated laptops come with very high resolution displays (4k+) which the MX550 may struggle to run at native resolution in games. This would match your described symptoms. An indicator of this being the issue could be if the GPU utilisation or GPU memory subsystem is reporting >90% at a high GPU clock speed.
Wireless is often unreliable and is the cause in a lot of cases of iffy performance. Although wireless maintains guarantees that data will eventually arrive, it does not guarantee that it will arrive timely or in a time consistent way. When HotS step/update packs fail to arrive in time the game pauses (0 FPS) and then fast forwards (low FPS due to dropping frames for faster simulation speed) which can cause erratic and unenjoyable performance.
You can run support recommended path ping and winmtr tests to try and check if this issue is affecting you. Ideally you want the ping with the BattleNet servers to be under 100ms and with very low variance and practically no packet loss. Any sort of significant latency variance or packet loss will impact gameplay as described above.
If this is the issue you can try moving your laptop closer to the wireless router to improve signal to noise ratio and as such hopefully communication reliability.
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