anyone know why my laptop lags via steam but not manual launch?

[soljj82]

yo whats up guys. As a laptop gamer, War Thunder lags A LOT when my pc is unplugged. Thats normal for playing most games on a laptop with the charger unplugged, and plays smoothly like a desktop when plugged into a charger. But recently ive been opening WT through manual launch to get around the anticheat not causing WT to open, and I notice war thunder runs super smoothly with no lag spikes at all when I launch it that way. Anyone know why this is? Because it feels so flipping fantastic not hearing my pc fan run like an apache helicopter trying to get away from a MIG fighter.

[50Fathoms]

First of all, have you considered adjusting your laptop's power settings so that it doesn’t switch to eco mode when you unplug it? That might help reduce the stuttering.

Secondly, any anti-cheat software puts a significant load on the CPU. War Thunder itself isn’t that demanding, but software like BattleEye can easily increase CPU usage by 10 to 20%, sometimes even more, depending on the hardware that you are using.

edit: I forgot the third point: You can reduce heat and therefore fan noise by setting the cpu max state in the power options or by undervolting your cpu with 3rd party tools.
Personally I keep them running at full speed. That helps keep the cat away while I´m playing.

[KnightoftheAbyss]

Everything Fifty Fathoms said. And I would use a rack to elevate the laptop to get the air under it to assist in heat dissipation. Otherwise, have it plugged into mains when gaming.

[soljj82]

Originally posted by Fifty Fathoms:

First of all, have you considered adjusting your laptop's power settings so that it doesn’t switch to eco mode when you unplug it? That might help reduce the stuttering.

Secondly, any anti-cheat software puts a significant load on the CPU. War Thunder itself isn’t that demanding, but software like BattleEye can easily increase CPU usage by 10 to 20%, sometimes even more, depending on the hardware that you are using.

edit: I forgot the third point: You can reduce heat and therefore fan noise by setting the cpu max state in the power options or by undervolting your cpu with 3rd party tools.
Personally I keep them running at full speed. That helps keep the cat away while I´m playing.

I have a "silent mode" which i toggle by pressing ctrl+Q, which lowers the battery consumtion of the cpu n stuff, and normally for some reason that helps most of my games completely erase lag at the small cost of general framerate drop (better to be running 30 fps smoothly compared to running 60 fps with the screen freezing for 5 seconds every few moments lmao). For some reason it doesn't work with war thunder, as the time between freezes is just a little longer. Thanks for the info, though, especially about the anticheat increasing CPU usage.

[KnightoftheAbyss]

How much RAM in the laptop? What processor?

[soljj82]

Originally posted by KnightoftheAbyss:

How much RAM in the laptop? What processor?

I have 32 GB of ram. Normally with discord, spotify, and war thunder open all at once, i think up 20 gb of it is used up. I could be wrong though, because the day after I made this post, i stopped gaming a lot and picked up some hobbies that im going to probably drop by next week lol

[50Fathoms]

Oh, I just read two magical words here: Discord and Spotify.

I think you already know but Discord is notorious for consuming a ridiculous amount of CPU time. If you're still having issues and don't absolutely need it, you should definitely shut it down completely. The same goes for Spotify.

Or at least tweak them.

https://softwarekeep.com/blogs/how-to/fix-discord-high-cpu-usage

https://www.viwizard.com/spotify-music-tips/fix-spotify-high-cpu-usage.html

[KnightoftheAbyss]

As is in the first line of my posts about these issues:
"Can you please stop any other external applications that use bandwidth. ie: social media, streaming platforms like YouTube, Discord or similar. Have only War Thunder running.
Can you please first try the options below and see if these fix the issue." War Thunder is NOT like other games. It is not a "health bar" operating under the game. Every movement, angle, penetration value, armour value, every movement of a wing or turning a turret. All of this is modelled in 'real time'. Not only that, but there are 31 other players all in the same game. This takes bandwidth. This is WHY Gaijin indicates that you need a GOOD Internet connection to play War Thunder. It is NOT like 'other games'. It is a near Sim.