Serious frame drop in EVERY large titles on my MX150 powered laptop

[Surprised Pikachu]

Hi guys, recently bought this Acer Swift 3. It's of great value for $4000 HKD when I bought it second hand, with 8th Gen i5-8250U and Nvidia MX150 on board.

However, as I tried to run some large titles, such as Battlefield 1, GTA V, or even Payday 2, gameplay gets laggy every few seconds, come back to normal for a few seconds, and repeat. Did a thermal test with AIDA64 and didn't find any thermal throttling. Latest driver installed with MX150 set as default graphics card. Other lighter titles like League of Legends and Minecraft worked perfectly.

I am wondering if it could be not sufficient power supply from the power strip that I was using. Any ideas of what could be the possible reason for such frame drop?

Thanks in advance!

[Sapph]

No, that is definitely normal.
MX150 is simply just mobile version of GT 1030, and has about same limitations as it.
You just need to lower the quality more.

[Surprised Pikachu]

Originally posted by Sapph:

No, that is definitely normal.
MX150 is simply just mobile version of GT 1030, and has about same limitations as it.
You just need to lower the quality more.

Thank you Sapph for the prompt reply. However MX150 benchmarks in various YouTube videos said otherwise. In those videos, GTA V can run at 90+ fps at lowest settings without any visible stuttering or lags. But in my case, no matter how much I lower the settings, I get lower fps in average as well as frequent frame drops for 2-3 seconds everytime it occurs. I've confirmed that my MX150 is in 1D10 rather than lower-powered 1D12 version, and the frequent frame drops and lags only happen in some AAA titles and that's why I began to wonder. The frame drop, or lag, takes place every few seconds, and that's not very normal for an MX150, as it doesn't even happen much on a mobile HD620 graphics.

[⛧EyMi Mayhem⛧]

Originally posted by ViscaCatalunya:

Thank you Sapph for the prompt reply. However MX150 benchmarks in various YouTube videos said otherwise. In those videos, GTA V can run at 90+ fps at lowest settings without any visible stuttering or lags. But in my case, no matter how much I lower the settings, I get lower fps in average as well as frequent frame drops for 2-3 seconds everytime it occurs. I've confirmed that my MX150 is in 1D10 rather than lower-powered 1D12 version, and the frequent frame drops and lags only happen in some AAA titles and that's why I began to wonder.

Dont rely on youtube videos..

Lower the settings, maybe resolution too and make sure everything is up2date.
All u can do.

You can also try to tweak some stuff via the nvidia control panel.

Also make sure, your laptop is using the mx, not the intelhd graphics.

[Surprised Pikachu]

Originally posted by ⛧EyMi Mayhem⛧:

Originally posted by ViscaCatalunya:

Thank you Sapph for the prompt reply. However MX150 benchmarks in various YouTube videos said otherwise. In those videos, GTA V can run at 90+ fps at lowest settings without any visible stuttering or lags. But in my case, no matter how much I lower the settings, I get lower fps in average as well as frequent frame drops for 2-3 seconds everytime it occurs. I've confirmed that my MX150 is in 1D10 rather than lower-powered 1D12 version, and the frequent frame drops and lags only happen in some AAA titles and that's why I began to wonder.

Dont rely on youtube videos..

Lower the settings, maybe resolution too and make sure everything is up2date.
All u can do.

You can also try to tweak some stuff via the nvidia control panel.

Also make sure, your laptop is using the mx, not the intelhd graphics.

Thanks for your reply. I understand your point, but many of these benchmarks showed the same or similar results. Under same 1366x768 low settings, others get at least 60+ fps without lag or frame drops, but under same case scenario I could only manage to get around 30-40 fps with lags every few seconds. I am 100% sure Nvidia MX150 was active and power setting was at max performance. Trust me, the game is more playable on an HD620 than on my MX150 laptop.

[humboldt]

what about antivirus software? i can imagine that if you disable it, the framdrops leave, because the antivirussoftware works every few seconds. a different antivirussoftware may help. just an idea.
kind regards

[Sapph]

Have you done fresh install of Windows on that laptop? If not, might be worth it.

[Surprised Pikachu]

Originally posted by professor pilz:

what about antivirus software? i can imagine that if you disable it, the framdrops leave, because the antivirussoftware works every few seconds. a different antivirussoftware may help. just an idea.
kind regards

Thanks for the idea. I thought about it and disabled all antivirus and firewall on my pc, didn't help though :p

Originally posted by Sapph:

Have you done fresh install of Windows on that laptop? If not, might be worth it.

I did yesterday, didn't work :P

[stuntzwerg]

Hey guys, just to keep this alive: I got the same Notebook, same specs + same problems!
comparable laptops with the exact same specs dont seem to have these framedrops...

Has there been any solutions so far? Any updates by VisaCatalunya?

Cheers guys!

[Viper]

Sorry but Sapph is correct. AN MX 150 is is a dedicated entry level GPU and is the mobile version of the GT 1030. Your not going to get very good performance and certainlly not GTA 5 at 90 FPS.. Start by turning your settings to low.

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+MX150&id=3789

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Also most people could be using very low resolutions for those games, you cant directly compare performance. MX 150 is by no means good graphics card for latest AAA games, minimum you would want from laptop is GTX 1050.

[Sapph]

There's also the cpu to take in consideration. Games like GTA V and BF4/BF1 are very heavy on cpu. And while 8250U is a good 4-core mobile cpu with hyperthreading, it's still just a low power mobile cpu. It has an all-core clockspeed of just 2.5Ghz. To put it in perspective:

This makes it just very slightly more powerful than a Pentium G4560.
A desktop dual-core cpu with hyperthreading.
So in games which are heavily multi-threaded, there will be similar limitations.

[Sir Gigachad of Thundercock]

Originally posted by ViscaCatalunya:

Originally posted by Sapph:

No, that is definitely normal.
MX150 is simply just mobile version of GT 1030, and has about same limitations as it.
You just need to lower the quality more.

Thank you Sapph for the prompt reply. However MX150 benchmarks in various YouTube videos said otherwise. In those videos, GTA V can run at 90+ fps at lowest settings without any visible stuttering or lags. But in my case, no matter how much I lower the settings, I get lower fps in average as well as frequent frame drops for 2-3 seconds everytime it occurs. I've confirmed that my MX150 is in 1D10 rather than lower-powered 1D12 version, and the frequent frame drops and lags only happen in some AAA titles and that's why I began to wonder. The frame drop, or lag, takes place every few seconds, and that's not very normal for an MX150, as it doesn't even happen much on a mobile HD620 graphics.

There are also youtube videos in which people say to have seen ovnis my dude, go by the numbers, the MX150 is just as good as a 1030.

[Arya]

Originally posted by Awpii:

There are also youtube videos in which people say to have seen ovnis my dude, go by the numbers, the MX150 is just as good as a 1030.

Exactly. Youtubers will claim literally anything if they think it'll make them money. Especially the younger hardware tubers. Ignore them, pick based on real testbench data.

[stuntzwerg]

Originally posted by Wolfey:

Originally posted by Awpii:

There are also youtube videos in which people say to have seen ovnis my dude, go by the numbers, the MX150 is just as good as a 1030.

Exactly. Youtubers will claim literally anything if they think it'll make them money. Especially the younger hardware tubers. Ignore them, pick based on real testbench data.

Well actually you´ll find lots of testbench data on mx150 laptops, all saying that running even lots of up-to-date AAA games (not open world like witcher or GTA though) like BF4, BF1, COD WW2 on low settings with 60-80fps and some games even on medium settings.

In general several reasons for the microstutters seem to exist:
- Nvidia also ships a lower clocked mx150 - if you got one of those you´ll get significantly lower fps. The acer however is eqipped with the faster version
- some people have reported that they get fps drops due to power limitations (some solved it by plugging in directly into a wall socket, not via extension, some solved it by changing energy settings, some solved it thhrough bios updates and setting the power limit higher)
- there are several more reasons and fixes out there (e.g. dealing with thermals)...none of them worked for me so far

The microstutters with the mx150 seems to be a well known issue and WE ARE VERY MUCH AWARE THAT IT IS AN ENTRY LEVEL GPU however, based on TONS of benchmarks, youtube videos, tests, and even company statements, you should be able to reach sufficient fps in lots of AAA games (on low settings, sometimes HD instead of native res.)

But it seems there has been no solution so far....if you find any, keep me updated folks! :D

[Rnaf]

It seems that MX150 comes in two "hidden" shapes: 10W and 25W.
Check this post[www.windowscentral.com]. Ultrabooks come with the 10W version, which has 25% less performance than the 25W one. That sucks, specially because my card is also this one lol. I knew I wasn't buying a gaming PC, but I expected that a GeForce would at least perform better than an integrated Intel graphics. Indeed, I have no idea why they put an MX150 in this laptop, if the integrated graphics clearly ourperforms it.

I can play Don't Starve Together on max resolution capped at 60 fps with my Intel UHD 620 graphics, but whenever I choose the MX150, fps starts at 52, and can drop to 30 fps on max resolution, snowy days and insanity.

Regards,
R.