I've been experiencing significant slowdowns with my $2000 gaming laptop for the past month. Initially, it handled games like Marvel Rivals without any problems, but now I'm struggling to get over 20 fps. Even basic applications like Discord lag while I'm streaming or gaming. Interestingly, my task manager shows that my system resources are only at 50% or less during these slowdowns, so there should be capacity for better performance. My laptop has a single SSD and no HDD.
Here are my laptop specs:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 8940HX with Radeon Graphics
- RAM: 32GB
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 5070ti Laptop GPU
I've already checked for malware, confirmed that it isn't overheating, ensured my C drive isn't full, defragmented my drive, disabled search indexing, and updated all my drivers. I'm not sure what's causing these performance issues, so any advice would be greatly appreciated!
4 Answers
Go into Task Manager and check your memory speed while the laptop is under load. Sometimes the RAM speed can impact gaming performance, and if it’s not running as expected, that could be part of the issue.
Have you tried uninstalling the recent Windows update, KB5074109? That update has been known to cause performance issues for a lot of users lately. It's worth a shot to see if that resolves your problem!
It sounds like you might be dealing with a problematic Windows patch. I had the same issue with my desktop a couple of weeks ago. I had to wipe and reinstall Windows eventually but switched to Linux and haven't dealt with performance issues since. Just an idea if you're open to it!
This might sound silly, but check if you accidentally switched your laptop to silent mode in the settings. I’ve done that before and it dramatically affected performance. Make sure it’s switched back to turbo or performance mode.
How do I go about uninstalling that update?