I have been having an issue with MSFS 2020 where its runs quite smoothly but speeds up then slows down constantly. Ive looked at plenty of performance troubleshooting videos on youtube but cant seem to find anything similar. Ive updated graphics drivers, debloated them and just reformatted my PC and re insatlled MSFS with the same results. Here is a video of whats happening:
I have an Asus ROG Strix G614JV laptop with an NVidia Geforce RTX4060
I can pinpoint when it started unfortunately so im at a bit of a loss. Any help much appreciated.
There might be a clue in these somewhere - Im not a computer person so can’t otherwise help. You might try messaging one of the guys privately that are good at these issues.
The easy thing to check, are the temperature of your CPU and GPU. They could throttle if they are running too hot, which is a likely scenario with a laptop. But this would result more in stuttering and low framerate.
To diagnose this, it would be helpfull to activate the FPS overlay in developers mode, so we can see if there is a hint in there.
At least it tells us, that it is the main thread slowing you down. That’s good information.
Have you checked your cpu temperatures? You can use HWMonitor to check the temperatures, and the frequency your CPU is running at. Since the Main Thread stumbles periodically it can be throttling behavior. Your CPU suddenly throttling because it hits its temperature limit, recovering, boosting up again und hitting the temperature limit again. You will find that in HWMonitor in a red temperature reading. Most processors throttle around 90 degrees celsius.
Another thing you can do to troubleshoot is to change to DirectX 12. Just to see if it makes a difference.
I’m also seeing that your GPU is very much underwhelmed. For smoother experience you typically want to be in a GPU limited scenario than in an CPU limited scenario. So you can up some graphical settings besides TLOD (Terrain LOD). TLOD in MSFS 2020 is very heavy on your CPU. So can you tell us what settings you use for TLOD? Or better, give a screenshot of your graphics settings overall? Since it seems you can turn up a lot things to get more out of the simulator in general.
Oh, it’s overheating. This is your problem. You can see it in the other parameters. Your CPU is only getting 10 watts of power in the second picture, that should not lead to 86C tempertarure. Also your CPU clockspeeds are way to low.
I haven’t dealt with Intel in a long time, but you can try to undervolt your CPU to get it to run cooler. You can try to turn down the power limits, so it doesn’t change constantly and keeps the frequency of the cpu more stable. And you should really think about a cooling stand for your laptop.
It’s possible, that the power management and cooling is restricted from something like silent mode, where the fans don’t rev up all the way to ensure a quieter experience. But this always limits performance and cooling. You can see it by the frequency and the power consumption in the second screenshot. It limits your CPU Power 10 Watts. And as stated, 10 Watts shouldn’t lead to over 80 degrees on a gaming laptop.
Steps I used to take to ensure proper cooling on a laptop were always having it a bit lifted from the surface it stands on, so that the fans can breathe freely. And undervolting the CPU. A helpfull tool was Intel Extreme Tuning Uitility. I don’t know if it stills exist. But before you do anything, read up on it. Getting something wrong there, can lead to system instability.
How old is the laptop? It is also possible, that the fans and the fins of the heat exchangers are a fair bit dusty and can’t perform right.
In general this laptop is, after reading up on it, not one to be known as overheating. If it is rather new and you still have guarantee I would let it check. Something seems to be off about the cooling.
If you are using it for a long time, what are the surfaces you use it on? Was it used a lot standing on fabric? It’s one of the most common problems that fibers of fabric accumalte on the fans and the heat exchanger surfaces so that they loose effectiness over time.
I purchased the laptop in September 2023. It’s only ever been used on a desk in a clean environment. I took the panel underneath it of and cleaned the grills, there was quite a bit of dust build up. It’s now sitting at between 90 and 95 degrees but not throttling anymore. I have read that that temperature is too be expected. I think I will try replacing the thermal compound on the CPU and GPU though.
I got some kind of a gaming laptop too. Some HP/Omen build.
After 6 months I had to take it apart by myself to clean out heat dissipator and fans and renew thermal paste, which did not look good anymore.
Additionally I had to make some kind of a Air filter under the fans of my laptop stand.
Now in summer as temperatures are never below the 29ÂşC, I had to cap the boost function for CPU/GPU.
And the laptop now is just working as good, even better…, and surely longer in time.
Glad that helped! These temperatures are to be expected in Laptop while gaming, at least somewhat, but with the associated performance. Changing thermal paste is a good idea. 2 years and a lot of heat, there can be some degredation.
I still recommend buying a laptop cooling stand. With my Dell G5 it gave me an substantial uplift in performance because of the better cooling. They look ugly and sometimes they sound like â– â– â– â– , but there are some good ones out there. Rule of thumb: the bigger the fan, the quieter it runs.
Besides limiting the boost or the power limit, I strongly recommend undervolting. Here is a thread in another forum of someone having great results with a similar laptop configuration using the same chassis. There is also a recommondation for a colling stand. The only thing you can loose is some time in getting the voltage offset right, but you gain a lot more perfomance in nearly any application stressing out the cpu.
What helped me with my G5 a lot, was limiting the boost power for short term boost to the power limit of long time boost. This way the cooling system isn’t getting overwhelmed by the processor putting out 150watts of heat instead of the 55watts. Set your P2 power Limit to 55watt and see if it makes a difference. The 157watt P2 power limit is something your system only uses in a period of around 30seconds anyway. So for gaming it is useless.
I’ve ordered a cooling stand. Although it has improved I’m sure it’s not performing as it should. Just for confirmation, when in the sim the fps counter is spiking red in task manager shows the cpu at about 54%. Does that prove it’s overheating? Also is there a recommendation for thermal paste? I’ll try the instructions in the link. Once again, thank you for all the advice!
I haven’t dealt with laptops in a long time. I don’t know what thermal paste works best for laptops. But google should help you. The good thing with thermal paste, as long as you don’t go liquid metal, there is not that much that you can do wrong.
MSFS 2020 is mostly using one core of your CPU for the heavy lifting. One of the limitations of the engine. That is why you won’t see a 100% usage in task manager independet of what the sim is throwing at your CPU. It improved over time, but the way the engine is set up is, that the main thread is single core only.
Proof for overheating are your thermals in combination with power drawn and the boost frequency of your CPU Cores. In a single core scenarion with good cooling your processor cores should boost up to 4,7 GHz. In an all-core scenario like cinebench I think I saw figures around 4,2 GHz. with a power draw of 45 to 55 Watts sustained. Everything significant other than that by around 90degrees celsius you can consider as thermat throttling.
Intel extreme Tuning Utility will tell you what the limiting factor is in it’s inbuild telemetry, which is quite handy. You want to be power limited and not thermal limited.
My cooling stand arrived and I did the undervolting as per the guide. The sim is running much better but the temperature is about the same. Think I will still go ahead with the thermal paste replacement. Very glad the sim is now playable!
