I have an HP Omen 16 with a Ryzen 9 8490X and GeForce 5060. Games such as The Witcher Remastered and Cyberpunk 2077 run at around 60–100 FPS on the laptop's built-in 1920×1200, 144 Hz display using ultra settings. However, when I connect a 1920×1080, 60 Hz external monitor through HDMI, the same games and settings drop to roughly 40–60 FPS.
V-Sync is enabled, and I've also tried limiting the frame rate to 60 FPS. Performance-focused settings are already set to prioritize performance. The laptop display also looks noticeably sharper. Could the small resolution difference explain that, or is the HDMI connection possibly using integrated graphics or another less-direct display path? What troubleshooting steps should I try?
3 Answers
A likely cause is how the laptop routes the HDMI output. On some gaming laptops, the external port is connected through the integrated graphics rather than directly to the dedicated GPU. That can add overhead and cause a performance drop even when the game itself is configured to use the GeForce card. Check the laptop’s graphics mode or display multiplexer settings, if available, and see whether the HDMI port is listed as being driven by the dedicated GPU. Updating the NVIDIA and chipset drivers may also help.
On a 60 Hz monitor, V-Sync will already limit the game to 60 FPS. A separate 60 FPS cap usually won’t improve performance, although setting a cap slightly below the refresh rate can sometimes make frame pacing smoother. For troubleshooting, temporarily disable V-Sync and test with an uncapped frame rate; if tearing makes that difficult, try an adaptive-sync mode or a 58–59 FPS cap instead. Also compare GPU usage, clocks, temperatures, and power limits on both displays to see whether the external-monitor setup is triggering throttling.
Turning off V-Sync causes visible tearing, so I didn’t test it for long. I’ll try disabling it while using a frame cap just under 60 FPS and compare the GPU statistics.
The sharper image is probably explained by pixel density. A 16-inch 1920×1200 laptop screen packs far more pixels into each inch than a typical larger 1920×1080 monitor, so it will look cleaner even though the resolutions are fairly close. That difference alone should not normally cause a major FPS loss, though.
There’s only one HDMI port, and I’ve already set the NVIDIA Control Panel to use the dedicated GPU for the games. I’ll check whether the laptop has a separate graphics or display-routing setting.