Sudden Low FPS in Steam Games

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Hey everyone,

First post here, and these are my specs:

Processor (CPU):
AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX 8 Core(s) 16 Logical Processor(s) (3.3GHz, 4.6GHz Turbo)

Graphics Card (GPU):
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (Laptop) - 16.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM, 165W - DirectX® 12.1

Memory (RAM):
32GB Corsair 3200MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)

1st M.2 SSD Drive:
1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)

2nd M.2 SSD Drive:
2TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (same as above)

I am the type to spend days searching through all corners of the internet and trying all solutions, and that usually works so I have never really felt the need to post for help on forums. However, this issue is extremely baffling, please save me. Also, I will try to be as descriptive as possible, seeing that other related discussions suffered from lack of details. I am hoping this can help pinpoint the problem for anyone patient enough to read through.

Roughly 3 weeks ago I installed the game Black Myth: Wukong, it had a wonderful performance after some tweaking of the settings, and I played the game on and off throughout the day (shutting it off in between sessions). In the following day (I use Hibernate mode every night) the performance had dropped from 60fps to between 9 and 13fps (this range is strangely recurring with my following experiences in other titles). I was so confused and tried shifting all settings to minimum at some point (made sure no ray tracing was ever on which solved most other related discussions on Steam), restarted the machine multiple times in between setting changes, but I would still barely reach 20fps, which for my specs is stupidly low. I then tried another game I was often playing Endless Dungeon. It is not as demanding but was running equally bad between 9 and 13fps (while usually running at 70-80fps with those settings, without issues, for 3 months). In between these days I had made exactly 0 changes to anything on my laptop, had no windows or driver updates (I block updates through the registry editor so no sneaky ones either), and I made sure my charging cable is plugged in, my battery settings are on performance mode, every possible NVIDIA setting is also on performance mode, and the dedicated 3080 GPU is the one that is rendering the game. At the end nothing worked but after a few days the game was running just like new without any input from me. The issue reappeared after another 2 days and at the end I uninstalled the game. I reinstalled it after another week and the issue seemed to have gone away. Endless Dungeon had also miraculously fixed itself and was running smooth without any setting changes or re-installations.

Fast forward to this week, I tried the game Lost Judgement for the first time. I ran the game and bumped the settings to Max after a few minutes. Just like with Wukong, I could tell that changing the settings was also making the game look much better (I use a big monitor so it is fairly noticeable). I then proceeded to play for an hour, after which I refunded it, and bought the whole Judgement bundle. I then reinstalled it, the settings were saved from my previous session. I continued playing on max with no issues throughout a few sessions that day (again switching the game off in between sessions). I went to sleep, put the laptop on hibernate mode like every night, and in the next day the game was running between 9 and 13fps, and up to 20fps on all settings at minimum. This game is far from graphically demanding and my SteamDeck is able to play it at maximum settings with comfortable 55-60 fps, while boasting far inferior specs. When I tried running Wukong instead, that game is now running between 9 and 13fps as well. I uninstalled both games, restarted everything reinstalled all drivers, updated windows, checked all settings everywhere, and have been unsuccessful at running any demanding game above 20 fps for the past 2 days. Even Stardew Valley plays choppy at the moment. I tested Call of Duty Black Ops 3 (torrented), Borderlands 3 (Epic Games Launcher), and a few Yuzu emulated games (like Sonic Colors and Mario Odyssey) cranked up at 2k resolution and unlocked fps, and those comfortably reach 60-100fps, performing as usual and as expected for my specs.

My conclusions so far have been:

• Since games outside of steam in multiple launchers run as usual, it is not a fault of my laptop or any settings in Windows and Nvidia. It is something related to Steam.
  
  
• Since it doesn't affect my Steam Deck and I haven't seen any Steam Updates consistent with my troubles, it is not just a Steam problem it is an interaction between my laptop specifically and Steam.
  
  
• Since in the past this issue resolved itself overnight, or was resolved after a game uninstall, then it could be something related to corrupted files retained in my laptop's memory?

Other things I have tried or noticed:

• Using Task Manager shows unusually low CPU and GPU usage at times while other times only the CPU is at 10% and the GPU is at a 100% (within same game, within same gameplay scenes)
  
  
• Reinstalled older GPU drivers from before noticing the issue for the first time (have been using this laptop for the past 3 years, trying countless demanding games and playing 1000s of hours without a problem until installing Black Myth: Wukong). This also makes me wonder if this game comes with some viruses or spyware knowing how China operates and having seen the amount of discussions of other people having similar issues with it.
  
  
• Resetting all settings to default, manually removing all steam folder files I could find, and deleting local save files after uninstalling each game, has had no effect. Oppositely, doing absolutely nothing, not even closing Steam did result in the problem fixing itself once after Hibernation. I am suspicious Hibernation may be a main culprit but am confused why throughout all these years this never happened, and on night one after installing Black Myth: Wukong it did.
  
  
• I also tried running Steam Beta as it could be a Steam update problem, however, there is no change.

Anyway, enough rambling

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Forgot to mention that the machine comes with a Control Center program, that allows extensive control of the voltages for the CPU, GPU, and RAM (under-clocking and over-clocking). However, none of the settings or presets make a difference to any of the mentioned Steam games while the problem is occurring (not even a single fps difference). They do make a massive difference in these same games otherwise (40-50 fps), when the problem is not present, and they continue to make a difference for any non-Steam games and applications at all times. It can feel like the Steam games get stuck at minimum voltage performance no matter what I do. I have cleaned all fans and the laptop is not overheating. If anything, the fans are slowing down the more I move inside the games, past the initial loading. I have even tried some Steam Launch codes to force the games to use dx12 and maximum refresh rate, which I found in another post's answer, but to no avail.

[AustrAlien2010]

Last time I had this it was a cooling issue. Had to dust off the fans a little bit. But then again, my computer is older than most people on this forum.