I have a budget gaming laptop with an RTX 3050, 16GB of RAM, and a 12th-generation Intel Core i5-12450H. It has always been able to run games like League of Legends smoothly, but recently every game has started stuttering and repeatedly dropping to around 10 FPS every 20 seconds or so. Lowering the graphics settings does not help. The laptop is plugged in while gaming, drivers and software are up to date, and the internal dust has recently been cleaned out. What could be causing these sudden, regular FPS drops?
4 Answers
Check whether the RAM is running in dual-channel mode and whether anything is consuming most of it in the background. Sixteen gigabytes should generally be enough, but single-channel memory, high memory usage, or a nearly full VRAM allocation can cause stutters.
Make sure the laptop is actually using its plugged-in performance mode. Gaming laptops can heavily throttle the CPU and GPU when running on battery, even if they appear to be charging.
The charger is always connected while I play, and the laptop shows that it is charging.
Since the drops happen at regular intervals, try a full restart and see whether the behavior changes. A driver, background process, or game-specific power-management issue can sometimes cause periodic frame-time spikes.
I have already restarted after updating everything, and I normally shut the laptop down every night, so a simple restart does not seem to have fixed it.
Thermal throttling is still worth checking with a monitoring tool. Look at CPU and GPU temperatures, clock speeds, and usage while the stutter happens. Clean vents do not rule out an aging thermal paste issue or a fan that is not working properly.
The vents and components were cleaned recently, and it does not feel overheated. If anything, the laptop has been unusually cool lately, so I may need to check the temperatures and clocks directly.
I have 16GB of RAM. I am not sure whether it is running in dual-channel mode, so I will check the memory configuration and usage.