My Acer Nitro laptop has started having occasional performance problems in games since yesterday. The games become laggy or stutter, while the cursor, Windows interface, and web browser remain smooth. Restarting the laptop usually fixes it, but that no longer helps. I've already updated the drivers and set the games to use the better-performance option in Windows settings. What else should I check to find and fix the problem?
1 Answer
Check the laptop’s temperatures and clock speeds while a game is running, preferably with a hardware monitor such as HWiNFO. Even if the system feels normal, the CPU or GPU could be throttling, or the game might be using the integrated graphics instead of the dedicated GPU. Also check Windows Task Manager for unusual CPU, GPU, memory, or disk usage and make sure the laptop is plugged in with its performance mode enabled.

The temperatures look normal in NitroSense, so overheating doesn’t seem to be the cause. I’ll check whether the games are using the dedicated GPU and look for other processes consuming system resources.