Hi, I’m looking for some advice please. For the last 3 months or so, I’ve been having issues with FPS drops/frame stuttering while playing. I removed all addons, repaired my game files, updated every driver I could find, adjusted my game settings to DirectX 11 etc. Nothing fixed it.
Today, I decided to connect my partner’s monitor to my laptop to play on a bigger screen and the problem disappeared. I get a steady 80fps everywhere, even in the AH at SW. I’m not very tech savvy and have no idea why this would make a difference. The display resolution is still 1920 x 1080 but now the monitor makes the game nice and smooth.
Any advice/suggestions as to why this has fixed the fps issue please?
I have been fighting with this…it seem that for some reason the game switches to the Intel card instead of using the NVIDIA GTX 1050. I have turned all possible switches to it from Auto setting and tried all kinds of fixes from just driver updates to using older nvidia drivers. It seems to happen a lot when switching ‘zones’ for example going to instances…which is super annoying. There doesn’t seem to be any common reason to it just all of a sudden frame rate drops to < 10 from 60.
From the sounds of the symptom, I am thinking Windows is not switching to your more powerful Nivdia graphics in the laptop. You can force that though with 2 different settings and a restart.
3D settings
1) Right click on the desktop and open the Nvidia Control Panel
2) Click on Manage 3D Settings on the left
3) Go to the Program Settings Tab
4) Browse and select the Blizzard game.
- If there is a drop-down menu called Select Preferred Graphics Processor, choose High Performance Nvidia Processor. This drop-down may not always be present
5) Click Add and close the Control Panel
PhysX physics engine
1) Right click on the desktop and open the Nvidia Control Panel
2) Click on Configure Surround PhysX on the left
3) On the PhysX Settings drop-down select the Nvidia card
4) Click Apply and close the Control Panel
Restart the computer after configuring the options in Nvidia Control Panel
Hopefully that helps get things running smoother for you both. Cheers!
It’s fine at start (usually mine starts at 50-60 fps) but then at random times it just tanks and is awful for a bit (< 15 fps) and then starts back up after a while. Maybe something in the background runs and makes it switch it.
I’ll have to check I get home that it’s not something as silly as sliding background or something like that. Only thing I might not have tried is that PhysX but I think I did change it but will check that once I get home. I know that DirectX version change doesn’t affect it.
I did check it last night and PhysX was not set up the way instructed so I did that but it the issue still happened. When I did zone to Maw FPS dropped to 7-15 fps but then once I entered Torgast I was able to do the whole run without any hickups. I have even tried running WOW is low resolutions with lower settings but still experienced the issue.
I’ll check on the cooling but if that is the issue then there isn’t much I can do since the room is already cool (I have animals so the house is cool already:) ) and adding extra cooling to my Dell XPS 15 isn’t really much of an option. I did check the air intake slots and they seem to be clear (can’t really tell about the inside). I’ll see if hwmonitor can give me readings from the inside. I didn’t run to any issues playing games on this laptop before but of course something might have broken down.
EDIT: I found a reddit post about somebody’s ‘journey’ to cool down their XPS. The turbo boost disable seems like a safe bet to try:)
Brocketts - google “Dell Laptop Overheating” on YouTube. There’s a fix by the Dell Support Team which works. I had this issue some time ago and fixed it but it had no effect on the FPS issue whatsoever.
Thank you for letting me know:) I did turn off ‘Turbo Boost’ and ‘Hyperthreating?’ in my bios and last night I had zero < 30 fps moments which was refreshing. I will check out the video and thank you again for letting me know.
UPDATE 6/14/2021 (don’t want to over reply this chain): So it’s still happening but not as much. I ended up renaming/removing all my (only 3) addins because my character got stuck and that seems to have helped a little too. I also went back to drivers from Dec 2020 (45…something;) just to see if something in the newer drivers bugs my laptop out.
Most often it happens when I change zones but goes away soon enough so at least I was able to do instance runs. My computer specs should be able to handle it just fine i7/16 GB/GTX 1050 but ‘something’ makes it think Intel should take over since at least the Nvidia is not running hot (70s F).
Hi Ironthorne. I had a quick run around after following your instructions and it seems to be fixed for now. I don’t have time to do dungeons or anything this week so I’ll have to test that next week sometime.