Hey everyone, I'm facing a persistent issue with my laptop where I'm dealing with micro stuttering across all games, whether they're smaller indie titles like Terraria and Dead Cells, or larger ones such as Where Winds Met. About 6 or 7 months ago, I was able to game without any problems at a smooth 60 fps on titles like Monster Hunter Wilds and Tekken 8. Recently, I had to move and could only bring my laptop with me. Now, I'm stuck waiting until December 19th, and I really want to game!
I've tried a ton of troubleshooting methods like completely uninstalling and reinstalling my GPU drivers, tweaking settings in the Nvidia Control Panel, reinstalling Windows, and even playing around with different versions to see if that resolves the stuttering issue. I've disabled the Nvidia Audio Drivers, scanned for malware, and checked my SSD health with CrystalDiskInfo. Basically, I've exhausted most options except for cleaning the dust inside the computer.
An update: a friend and I discovered that the CPU temperature seems critical in this issue. I managed to get my idle temperature down from 90 to 80 degrees, and temperatures while gaming dropped from around 95 to 90 during Terraria. However, I'm still hitting around 95 degrees playing Where Winds Meet, and the stuttering kicks in at about 92-93 degrees. Any tips on tweaking my fans or adjusting CPU power to help with this?
4 Answers
Have you checked if your version of Armoury Crate is still using WinRing0? If it is, that could be causing issues, as Windows Defender flags that driver as malicious. Plus, Armoury Crate itself isn't the best for performance—consider switching to LibreHardwareMonitor. It's a lighter alternative that doesn't come with exploitable drivers.
Since you mentioned this started after your move, what did you change about your setup? Have you thought about testing by unplugging your laptop and running it on battery power only? That could help isolate the issue.
If you suspect the thermal issues are causing the stuttering, you might want to look into getting some cooling pads or even adjusting your fan settings. Reducing CPU load where possible can also help keep temps down!
I experienced something similar in one of my games when I had Slack running in the background. It caused some odd stuttering! Make sure you close any unnecessary programs to see if that helps improve performance.
Yeah, I’ve tried closing everything down and even minimized what runs at startup, but it didn’t help much.
I didn’t have any malicious pop-ups, and I've tried running the games with and without Armoury Crate installed, but it didn’t change anything.