FPS drops in WoW correspond with low CPU activity

[RuiV92]

Basically I've been experiencing a lot of FPS drops (constantly fluctuating between 20 and 90) in WoW which are really starting to piss me off. I have my graphic settings at really low values for the hardware that I have (i7-8750H & GTX 1070) but they continue to happen.

I am on an Asus-Rog laptop (Zephyrus M GM501GS) and I'm starting to think the issue is related to power management. I have monitored these FPS drops with the task manager window open and everytime the FPS drops so does the CPU usage for WoW. I have set the CPU priority to high for WoW.exe, I'm using best performance power management (set on Windows settings & NVidia GeForce panel), and I have set the minimum processor state for 50% in my power settings (and max to 100%). Nonetheless, this still occurs.

Any ideas on what else I can test? I keep on lowering my graphics settings and it works for a bit until eventually I find the FPS dropping again. Everything is updated (drivers etc), I have tried disabling addons to see if they're causing it, I have closed all other processes running, I just can't figure out why I can't get steady FPS in such a low demanding game.

[kubr0]

Hey RuiV92,

if drops like that occur on laptops, especially if these just started to occur recently and the machine is already being used for quite a while, this sounds like there is some throttling on the CPU going on which might be causing that. I don't believe that lowering your settings will affect it in any other way, than decreasing the frequency of these drops happening. Have you tried to open up the laptop and to clean it up from dust and dirt? How old is the unit? After 2, max 3 years I would also recommend changing the thermal paste on the heatsink.

[RuiV92]

Hey RuiV92,

if drops like that occur on laptops, especially if these just started to occur recently and the machine is already being used for quite a while, this sounds like there is some throttling on the CPU going on which might be causing that. I don't believe that lowering your settings will affect it in any other way, than decreasing the frequency of these drops happening. Have you tried to open up the laptop and to clean it up from dust and dirt? How old is the unit? After 2, max 3 years I would also recommend changing the thermal paste on the heatsink.

Hi, thanks for your reply. I ended up solving this and you’re absolutely right, it was thermal throttling. I opened up my laptop, cleared up all the dust using compressed air and the temperature went down immediately, as well as my performance going up. I was going to re-paste the CPU but the screws around it were a bit complicated so I left it for another time. But yes, all good now

[kubr0]

Hi, thanks for your reply. I ended up solving this and you’re absolutely right, it was thermal throttling. I opened up my laptop, cleared up all the dust using compressed air and the temperature went down immediately, as well as my performance going up. I was going to re-paste the CPU but the screws around it were a bit complicated so I left it for another time. But yes, all good now

glad to hear it was such an easy fix! Applying new thermal paste will improve the performance a bit more and in addition, it will prolong the life of your unit. Definitely put it on your to-do list