My Lenovo Legion gaming laptop used to run games like Cyberpunk 2077 smoothly, but it suddenly dropped to around 4 FPS in every game I launch. I tried rolling back my graphics drivers, but that did not help. The laptop is running Windows 11 and has received some recent Windows and graphics-driver updates. I am not knowingly using monitoring software. Task Manager shows about 6 GB of RAM in use before launching Cyberpunk and roughly 10 GB afterward, with around 3 GB still available. The system has a Ryzen 7 5800H, 16 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU with 6 GB of VRAM. What could be causing this sudden performance problem?
3 Answers
A sudden drop across every game often points to a power, temperature, or GPU-detection problem rather than game settings. Look at GPU usage, clock speed, temperature, and power draw while a game is running. If the RTX 3060 is sitting near idle or running at very low clocks, check for an incorrect power profile, overheating, or a driver problem.
Since this started after updates, try a clean installation of the NVIDIA driver instead of only rolling it back. It is also worth installing the latest Lenovo chipset and graphics drivers, then rebooting. Make sure the NVIDIA GPU appears correctly in Device Manager and that there is no warning icon.
The RAM usage you described is normal and is very unlikely to cause a consistent 4 FPS result. Check whether the laptop is plugged in and set to Performance mode in Lenovo Vantage or Windows power settings. Also confirm that the game is using the RTX 3060 rather than the integrated Radeon graphics. You can verify this in Task Manager while the game is running or set the preferred GPU in NVIDIA settings.
I’ll check the GPU being selected and the Lenovo power mode first. I hadn’t realized the integrated graphics could be used instead.