My laptop experiences a severe lag spike about every 30 seconds while gaming. During each spike, the frame rate drops to roughly 10 FPS for around five seconds, then returns to normal. This only happens in games. I'm not very familiar with computer troubleshooting, but the laptop uses an AMD Ryzen 7 5825U with Radeon Graphics running at 2.00 GHz and integrated AMD Radeon graphics with 496 MB of dedicated video memory. What could be causing this, and what should I check or change to fix it?
3 Answers
Because this laptop uses integrated Radeon graphics, it shares system RAM instead of having much dedicated VRAM. A game may briefly pause while loading or swapping graphical assets, especially if the graphics settings are too high or available memory is limited. Try lowering texture quality and resolution, closing other programs, and checking Task Manager during a spike to see whether memory, disk, CPU, or GPU usage suddenly reaches 100%.
The pauses could also come from heat throttling or a background process. Make sure the laptop is on a hard surface, check its temperatures while gaming, and update the AMD graphics driver. Also look for antivirus scans, game launchers, cloud-sync programs, or Windows updates running in the background. If temperatures are high, cleaning the vents may help, though replacing thermal paste is usually something to consider only after simpler checks.
A useful test is to run the game after closing unnecessary startup and background apps, rather than creating another user account. If the stutters disappear, an installed program or service is likely interfering. You can also try a clean boot, but first monitor RAM usage, temperatures, and disk activity during one of the lag spikes so the cause is easier to identify.
Is there anything specific I can do to stop the swapping or improve the performance?