Extreme stuttering in Division with XPS 15

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Ryan930

n00b
Joined
Jul 30, 2012
Messages
23
Hi everyone,
I put in about 2.5 hours of gameplay before today without any issues. However today after about 10 minutes of playing, my fps drops from the 50s/60s down to the 30s. I did notice that my CPU gradually drops from its normal 2.6GHz to 0.7GHz, despite 'normal' temps in the low 70s. What gives? Here are my specs:

i7 6700HQ
GTX 960M
16GB DDR4 RAM
256GB NVME SSD

I should add that I noticed that if I don't move the mouse, the FPS goes to normal, but once I start moving around, the FPS starts going crazy, fluctuating between 30-60fps.

Could by GPU be the problem? I've seen other videos of people playing without any issues. And I played fine before this.
 
I tried setting my "Maximum processor state" to 70% in the battery settings and that seemed to fix it. But I'm hoping for a real solution that doesn't require manually bottlenecking my computer.

EDIT: Nevermind, stopped working.
 
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Is this with the laptop plugged in while playing or is it running of the battery? Laptops will usually switch to a performance power profile when it is plugged in. If it doesn't work by altering the power profile in software, try disabling the C1/C1E state and/or Intel Enhanced SpeedStep in the BIOS. Note that by doing this you'll also lose the CPU power saving features even when the laptop is running on the battery.
 
I'm plugged in and I'm using performance mode in the battery settings, but unfortunately it's not helping.

Armenius if I disable C1/C1E would I risk overheating and frying my CPU? I know that the throttling feature is meant to prevent overheating of the laptop, but I think we can all agree that it's going a little extreme in my case (and maybe others too with this laptop).

Also why would CPU throttling lower the performance of my GPU? When the CPU starts going down in clock speed, so does my GPU usage.
 
Ryan930 said:
I'm plugged in and I'm using performance mode in the battery settings, but unfortunately it's not helping.

Armenius if I disable C1/C1E would I risk overheating and frying my CPU? I know that the throttling feature is meant to prevent overheating of the laptop, but I think we can all agree that it's going a little extreme in my case (and maybe others too with this laptop).

Also why would CPU throttling lower the performance of my GPU? When the CPU starts going down in clock speed, so does my GPU usage.
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If you say it is peaking in the low 70s then I don't think it's an overheating issue. Besides that, C1E only adjusts the clock speed based on the demand of the applications being run. The thermal protection on the CPU is separate from this C-state as far as I'm aware. All that it will do is keep the processor at full clock speed even when idling. Temperature is going to be based on the workload, though, not the clock speed. Throttling down in this case is to save power.

The GPU and CPU are not separate entities in the PC ecosystem. The CPU has to send instructions to the GPU over the API layer to let it know what to do. If the CPU is slowing down then that means instructions won't be getting to the GPU as fast, which you would see as low utilization (the GPU is waiting on the CPU).
 
Armenius said:
If you say it is peaking in the low 70s then I don't think it's an overheating issue. Besides that, C1E only adjusts the clock speed based on the demand of the applications being run. The thermal protection on the CPU is separate from this C-state as far as I'm aware. All that it will do is keep the processor at full clock speed even when idling. Temperature is going to be based on the workload, though, not the clock speed. Throttling down in this case is to save power.

The GPU and CPU are not separate entities in the PC ecosystem. The CPU has to send instructions to the GPU over the API layer to let it know what to do. If the CPU is slowing down then that means instructions won't be getting to the GPU as fast, which you would see as low utilization (the GPU is waiting on the CPU).
Click to expand...
When I'm idling I can see my CPU at 3+ GHz anyway. I wonder if there's a problem with the CPU management then? Maybe I'll try turning it off next time and see if it fixes it. Unfortunate that I have to sacrifice that feature though since the battery life while in class is already poor as it is with the 4K screen.
 
Try using lower in game settings. Particularly view distance and geometry detail. But start with low and crank up from there. The 960M in there is a 2gb GPU.

There are some great ways to trim the fat with The Division and still have a pretty good looking game. It also depends what your standards are. Is staying at 60 FPS more important than eye candy, etc. There's a great Nvidia guide on tweaking The Division here:

Tom Clancy's The Division Graphics & Performance Guide


Some people have reported framerate issues with the latest patch.

Keep in mind that drivers for this game nor the game itself are very mature.

I don't think that you're running into a glitch. I think that you're mostly running into limitations of the 2gb 960M in there.
 
I can't remember my settings exactly but I used the Low preset and then lowered a few things even further. I'm playing at 1600x900 resolution.

I think I've come to the conclusion that it's a problem with the cooling of my laptop. I turned the AC in my room to 68 rather than 75 and it seemed to help a little. Think it's a little ridiculous though that I have to worry about my room temp just to play games on this laptop. I don't think 75F is even that hot but maybe I'm wrong. I'm also using a laptop cooling pad.
 
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