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Forums - Gaming - Looking for a gaming laptop

EricHiggin on 28 February 2019
Conina said:
EricHiggin said:

 With the game being paused in the background, it makes sense that it's still heavily using the CPU since it needs to be ready to fire back up and go in an instant. No different than for consoles. Before my PS4 fan mod, when I paused a game and jumped into the UI, typically the fan would ramp up to some degree, because it was now dealing with the game and UI.

No, most PC games reduce their CPU load to ~1% the second you "tab out of them".

You can have a dozen other active games in the background and don't have any relevant performance loss for the game in the foreground... as long as the memory doesn't run out.

I was talking about FH4 but yes, most PC games shouldn't keep the system stressed when in the background.



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SvennoJ on 28 February 2019
Pemalite said:

If the CPU utilization is lower, then the fan speed is probably going to be reduced so your temperatures will continue to sit in a similar range.
There is the noise and power consumption to keep in mind with cooling as well.

You could also have been thermal throttled prior, so it seems like the CPU was 100% utilized but the throttling was keeping temperatures in that same temperature range.

Yes.
In saying that, it varies from game to game. Some games will have hard syncs to 30/60/120hz on a 144hz and other games will have a clean division of the refresh rate so there are no pacing issues.

I would personally just set v-sync to adaptive in the nVidia control panel and turn it off entirely within your games.

Odd, I only have the option of on or off for v-sync (next to let the app decide)
I also can't find how to update it. It's supposed to be in the help menu yet the option is not there. GeForce experience is up to date as well as the drivers, however that control panel is missing any update option. It says it's version 8.1.940.0 (Checking online I guess GeForce Experience is what does the driver updates now)

Ugh what's going on, GeForce experience is now re-installing itself. PCs are so much fun lol. Got to reboot now.

Everything seems to be up to date still, except now a debug mode option has appeared in the nvidia control panel help menu. And now it's gone again. I'm not drunk, I swear I saw it there a minute ago. I better stop touching things lol.


As fot the fans, theu get exponentially louder at higher rpms. Not that I notice with headphones on, but understandable why the laptop would like to keep them at a lower pace. Anyway this was Forza in action a bit ago

The game did get throttled a couple times while playing (some slowdown a few times) likely as the cpu temp exceeded the max. GPU is fine.

Now I know what the H stands for in I7-8750H, hot!

Last edited by SvennoJ - on 28 February 2019

SvennoJ on 01 March 2019

I was looking into ways to reduce cpu temps. Throttlestop seems a good app if you know what you are doing. If you don't you can seriously screw things up, so I'm hesitant to go that far into settings. The idea is to undervolt the cpu so it uses less power, thus less heat. It should still run fine, yet undervolt too much and things start crashing randomly. If you accidentally overvolt and/or disable auto throttling you can melt your cpu...

There is a much easier way. In Windows power & sleep settings -> additional power settings -> balanced -> change plan settings -> change advanced power settings -> processor power management -> maximum processor state. Set to 99% to disable boost to 3.9 ghz, keeping the gpu at max 2.2 ghz. (make sure minimum processor state is also set to 99% or below)

I ran the benchmark of FH4 again, yep CPU limited, this time it suggested to go with unlocked frame rate, average of 76fps yet it hit a minimum of 61 fps during the test. I locked it to 72 anyway with v-sync, dynamic balancing, preset high instead of ultra and no motion blur (hate that). The result, no more throttling during the game, cpu sits at 70c instead of bouncing off 100c, fans run at 4200 rpm instead of 5500 rpm, much less noise, and I don't even notice the 'downgrade' in graphical quality. The difference a minor tweak can make.


FH4 is a weird one though. It keeps the CPU and GPU fully utilized in the background, then crashes after a few minutes when I try to browse the internet (looking up barn find locations, me cheating) While input messes up completely when a DS4 is charging on the laptop. 3 decades of Windows, still no good at multi tasking.



SvennoJ on 01 March 2019

I went to play some more, fans were loud again, cpu back to 97c with occasional throttling in game. what's going on. Turns out somehow Win 10 reverted the power plan back to high performance turning cpu boost back on. Why does win 10 keep changing things behind my back! I guess I'll delete the other plan so it can't switch and I'll change things manually when I need to.

Forza Horizon 4 is stuck in winter this week, it locks the season to the server I guess and winter adds a lot of extra processing, as well as making it harder to complete challenges. Pretty annoying. I'm already stuck in winter in real life!



Conina on 02 March 2019
SvennoJ said:
Forza Horizon 4 is stuck in winter this week, it locks the season to the server I guess and winter adds a lot of extra processing, as well as making it harder to complete challenges. Pretty annoying. I'm already stuck in winter in real life!

For a few exra bucks you can leave winter to rainy weather on fortune island.



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SvennoJ on 02 March 2019
Conina said:
SvennoJ said:
Forza Horizon 4 is stuck in winter this week, it locks the season to the server I guess and winter adds a lot of extra processing, as well as making it harder to complete challenges. Pretty annoying. I'm already stuck in winter in real life!

For a few exra bucks you can leave winter to rainy weather on fortune island.

You can change the season by changing the date in windows and staying offline. Trick the game into thinking it's a different season :) Everything else in Windows starts complaining though, virus crap out of date etc. So much easier to do the speed traps without snow on the roads!



Cobretti2 on 05 March 2019

Interest temperature results.

I am having similar issues with mine and also a 3DMark score that should probably be quicker.

From what i gather, i need to add another stick of ram to get it to dual channel mode, that is meant to help significantly.

People suggested I undervolt it by 100mV and maybe add better thermal paste as manufacturers generally go cheap.