RTX 3080 Laptop having trouble smoothly running this game.

[Varkster]

I have all settings maxed out and play in 1920x1080 as I do with most games and at times this game seems to run silky smooth but most other times it's constantly dipping to 30-50. When I first started the game the stutters were quite noticeable but not this bad. I turned VSync on in the game and at first I thought that solved the issue but it seems to be getting worse.

I played around with core settings on the Task Manager as well as setting the process priority higher to no avail. The GPU usage while I play this game is extremely low (30% max) when compared to the CPU usage which is pretty consistently at 70%.

Has anybody ever run into this issue or could give any suggestions to help me out? Thanks.

[AgarthanTerrorist]

Originally posted by Varkster:

I have all settings maxed out and play in 1920x1080 as I do with most games and at times this game seems to run silky smooth but most other times it's constantly dipping to 30-50. When I first started the game the stutters were quite noticeable but not this bad. I turned VSync on in the game and at first I thought that solved the issue but it seems to be getting worse.

I played around with core settings on the Task Manager as well as setting the process priority higher to no avail. The GPU usage while I play this game is extremely low (30% max) when compared to the CPU usage which is pretty consistently at 70%.

Has anybody ever run into this issue or could give any suggestions to help me out? Thanks.

how much ram? have you enabled vsync?

[AgarthanTerrorist]

just realizd you have int enabled

[Maviba]

Whats your memory?
Looks like a heavy CPU bottleneck to me, maybe (caused by) thermal (throddleing) issues too.

70% CPU usage is pretty high so i guess your cooler works very hard.
30% GPU usage is way too low, even for a unity game.

As a comparison I've got about 30-40% CPU + 80% GPU on a R5 1600 & RTX 3050 (desktop).
Running at 1080p at full details, vsync on and a stable 60 FPS

Are you sure your 3080 does the work, or is the game running on your intel graphics?

If so, try switching between those two chips.
If running on 3080 use a higher resolution, maybe try even supersampling via nvidia control panel so your GPUgets some work to do.

And make sure your temperatures are not too high, maybe buy an additional, external cooling pad. Keep it tidy.
Cooling is an issue on most notebooks.

[herbstwerk]

With an 550Ti listed as recommended, a 3080 (even a mobile one) should pull more frames.
At first glance I'd also say it sounds like you're running on the APU / integrated instead of the dedicated GPU. What make/model is you laptop?

[Varkster]

The heat isn't a problem, I've had a cooling pad for a while and my laptop doesn't ever overheat or even seemingly heat up. My CPU is: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H @2.3GHz which goes up to 4.6, my RAM is at 16GB.

I've checked the Nvidia panel to make sure that the game is using my RTX GPU, it was the first thing I did when I wasn't happy with the framerate. I did also check the settings in the panel to see if maybe things like triple buffering would enhance the framerates. Elden Ring and pretty much every other graphically intensive game I own has no issue running at a stable 60fps. This game clearly has something going on which isn't helping.

My laptop is the GIGABYTE Aero '15 3080.

[Varkster]

On a side note, I did turn on Subnautica: Below Zero just to check out if the problem persists there and I couldn't find any frame drops. The sequel is running at a stable framerate but the first game is struggling.

I found a very strange thing though: for some reason the intel built in GPU is working really hard while I'm running these games, like at 80%. As I said all the settings are set so that the games run off the RTX but this is really bizarre because there's no other background processes running.

[herbstwerk]

Seems like there have been issues in the past with this and other Unity games when it comes to this - afaik in many cases the dedicated GPU only kicks in if the system deems the app to be in need of it and it thinks 30-50 fps are just fine... you know, for the cinematic experience. ;)

While I don't have a dual GPU laptop on hand to test if this is still current you could try navigating to the game executable itself. If you right click, there should be a "Run with graphics processor" menu option somewhere near the top. If so, try choosing the high performance option in there.

Second option you could try is to go in your windows settings, search and go into 'graphics settings', in the drop down under the graphics performance settings header select Desktop app, hit browse and point it at subnautica.exe - when it's added below click on it, choose options, change it from 'Let Windows decide' to High performance with you RTX 3080.

Both options are for Windows 10 though, if you're running 11... there's probably a similar option, but no idea if they changed in any way. Hope this helps.

[bongerman85]

make sure that you are plugged into the wall. My computer will destroy performance in an effort to save power and heat. plugging it in can help.

[Ron]

Originally posted by Varkster:

I have all settings maxed out and play in 1920x1080 as I do with most games and at times this game seems to run silky smooth but most other times it's constantly dipping to 30-50. When I first started the game the stutters were quite noticeable but not this bad. I turned VSync on in the game and at first I thought that solved the issue but it seems to be getting worse.

I played around with core settings on the Task Manager as well as setting the process priority higher to no avail. The GPU usage while I play this game is extremely low (30% max) when compared to the CPU usage which is pretty consistently at 70%.

Has anybody ever run into this issue or could give any suggestions to help me out? Thanks.

Lol, do you have problems with air flow? seems like your laptop is getting rediculously hot...I never understand people wanting to game on a laptop anyway, due to airflow and such, but your m.2. ssd might get so hot that it needs to throttle, and the rest of your system like your cpu as others have mentioned. A gpu alone isn't the only thing that gives high framerate
I have a 5900x and a gtx 1070 8Gb and i still get 115 fps 90% of the time, it sometimes dips below 100 fps but it is unnoticable when playing. Maybe turn off some programs in the background eating up resources.

[MarkJohnson]

Does it play fine when first starting the game?

The longer you play, the more stuff the game needs to track, and it can add a big load on the CPU. Especially with many scanner rooms.

But when you start the game, it is empty of info, until you roam around and rediscover areas again. So the longer you play, it will affect the performance more and more.

To find out if you're overheating, look at your CPU clock speed. It will throttle down when it gets warm, so as to keep it cool. so a slow CPU is an overheating CPU.

Also, if you use Afterburner, enable your Timeframe to be displayed in both text and graph. Keep an eye on it being a flat line. If it starts jumping up and down, the GPU may be throttling. also, the bars should be a thin line, if it is a thick line, then GPU may be throttling.

[Ron]

Originally posted by MarkJohnson:

Does it play fine when first starting the game?

The longer you play, the more stuff the game needs to track, and it can add a big load on the CPU. Especially with many scanner rooms.

But when you start the game, it is empty of info, until you roam around and rediscover areas again. So the longer you play, it will affect the performance more and more.

To find out if you're overheating, look at your CPU clock speed. It will throttle down when it gets warm, so as to keep it cool. so a slow CPU is an overheating CPU.

Also, if you use Afterburner, enable your Timeframe to be displayed in both text and graph. Keep an eye on it being a flat line. If it starts jumping up and down, the GPU may be throttling. also, the bars should be a thin line, if it is a thick line, then GPU may be throttling.

That's not much to go on looking at your cpu lol, you need a program like hwmonitor to see the temps of the cores and the total package, though this might give an indication your system gets too hot if you know the temps of a clean system and clean dust free computer, it still doesn't tell you if you need to tweak your hardware of software to relief the system.

You look at most laptops and the fan in it, it is usually one fan for the whole system that ramps up full speed lol. I have 6 noctua fans on my 360 radiator alone. so you see that cooling your system and airflow is mandatory to getting great framerate. People always choose convience over what is best for gaming and then they still start to complain about bad framerate like this guy...

[bongerman85]

might need a laptop stand if heat is an issue. i use 4 little soap boxes for my travel stand, and i have a metal mesh stand at home for desk use. lifting the laptop off the surface by a few inches makes a huge difference.

[dreamrider]

I use two 1.25cm Dice, and just lift the back of the laptop. Since that is where the intake grills are, that seems to be enough, as long as i keep the grills clean, and blow out the air system about twice a year.

[deepdive0777]

Just my preference but laptops and gaming don't do it for me. Video card aside they tend to overheat.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by deepdive0777:

Just my preference but laptops and gaming don't do it for me. Video card aside they tend to overheat.

That's because the manufacturer wants the fastest possible laptop, so they literally set them to run at 100C in most cases and they always run hot.

There's a program called Throttlestop that lets you go in and change the max temp to something more manageable like 75C and lets you manually set the turbo mode to a speed that doesn't throttle the CPU back as often. You can go higher than 75C if you want. But know that desktop CPUs typically max out around 85-90c before they throttle.

Gaming laptops can be easily handled by manually adjusting them. Otherwise the manufactures want the fastest possible, so they can sell the most. It is really sad on how they abuse the laptop market. You can make a decent high tier laptop perform like better than a mid tier desktop and game very well.

The only problem I run into is my laptops are always using more power that the power brick can handle, as the laptop's power becomes optimized and not throttling all of the time. Plus the manufacturer's rarely makes the power bricks large enough.

Throttlestop website:
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/

You can likely find a YouTube video for your card and gpu setup. You may need to tweak the settings a bit, depending on your laptop's manufacturer.

You'll be amazed at how much better the laptop performs once you optimize the power, speed, and temps of your laptop.