While playing games, mostly titles installed through a game launcher, my laptop usually runs around 80 FPS but suddenly falls to about 1 FPS for several seconds. This happens repeatedly throughout the minute and makes the games nearly unplayable. I've tried closing applications through Task Manager and keeping the laptop cool, but the problem continues. Could the CPU be failing, and what hardware or system information should I check first?
2 Answers
Try reproducing the issue in one specific game while monitoring temperatures and usage with a hardware monitor. Make sure the laptop is using its high-performance power mode and the dedicated GPU rather than integrated graphics, then update or clean-install the graphics driver. If temperatures are high, inspect the vents and fans, but more system details are needed before changing BIOS or other low-level settings.
There isn’t enough information to diagnose this yet. Please include the laptop model, CPU, GPU, amount of RAM, storage type, the specific games affected, temperatures, and whether the laptop is plugged in. Also check whether CPU, GPU, memory, or disk usage spikes when the stutter happens. A CPU that briefly causes an FPS drop is not necessarily damaged; overheating, power limits, drivers, background tasks, or thermal throttling are more common causes.

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