Why Is My Gaming Laptop Lagging?

The worst scenario is when you are playing your favorite game on a laptop and all of a sudden, your gameplay starts to lag. That’s when the real frustrating phase begins and your mind starts to look for the fix. That’s where the PCWIRE247’s team plays their move to handle the lagging issue.

What exactly is a laptop lagging?

In simple words, when your laptop delays responding or your games start to get stuck from time to time because of fewer frames delivery is what we call lagging. You may have noticed it during the normal use of a gaming laptop when it freezes with the input from the touchpad and keyboard. There are many reasons involved for causing a laggy gaming experience.

That’s why we must identify what’s actually making our gaming laptop lag most of the time. After that, we’ll do what’s required to make our notebook faster than ever.

Here are some of the main causes that may be the root of the issue:

Overheating of CPU and GPU

Most of the time, you may find immense heat coming from the CPU or GPU which causes them to throttle. This is because you may have a gaming laptop with a compact nature having restricted airflow which won’t allow the heat to escape. As a result, you may experience problems with gaming performance or heavy software.

Whereas the purpose of CPU and GPU is to cope with the heaviest of tasks thrown at them and intensive heat is always expected under pressure. That’s when your gaming laptop activates the throttling process which lowers your gaming laptop’s performance to give your CPU and GPU some time to cool down.

The benefit of CPU and GPU throttling is to prevent any permanent damages that may be caused by immense heat. However, the lag, tearing, and stuttering on your gaming laptops are always experienced when the CPU and GPU are throttled.

Solution: There are certain software like the MSI afterburner that will help you find out if your gaming laptop is overheated or not. After that, you can do what is necessary to overcome the heating problem on your laptop.

More RAM and CPU consumption

Sometimes you push the limits on your gaming laptop and open up tons of chrome tabs and programs in the background not knowing that it’s consuming your CPU and RAM. Even if this is not the case, your device automatically runs some updates in the background on its own and you won’t be aware of it.

This is one of the reasons your gaming notebook lags in all aspects. That’s when it’s important to identify those unwanted running programs and eliminate those for good.

Solution: Hope over to your keyboard and press “ctrl+shift+Esc” which will pop up the task-manager window on your screen. Move on to the “Startup” tab and you’ll find all the running programs list there. Simply right-click on the unnecessary programs and disable them to free up more space for gaming on the RAM and processor. Running anti-malware on your device can also help in the performance if you feel like the programs on task manager isn’t the cause of slow performance.

Internet speed issue for online games

You may be playing games on online streaming platforms like steam, Cloud, and Google stadia where the internet is required. If you face lag only during online gaming, it’s because of the slow internet issue.

In online gaming, the interaction between your laptop and the server is a continuous process. When your internet connection or Wifi is slow, your laptop sends the delayed request to the online server. The same is the case for receiving the data to your device which results in lag and stuttering of your gameplay.

Solution: This isn’t actually related to the hardware of your gaming laptop, you need to check your internet speed or Wifi connection and take mandatory steps to fix it.

Below average system requirements

People who are not exposed to the latest technology may sometime push some really graphics complex games on whatever laptop they have. Whereas, not knowing that their minimum requirements for games on the device are not up to the mark.

That’s where the game crashes begin and sometimes your game launches but there’s no escape from the immersive lag.

Solution: You can search for the minimum system requirements of a specific game by typing simple queries like Elden rings system requirements or any other title on google. You’ll find out the answer to your question and compare it with your gaming laptop hardware. Next, you can simply upgrade your device if it doesn’t meet your gaming needs or get a new one that can actually run the toughest of games.

Outdated drivers

Keeping your drivers up to the mark is another key to a smooth performance on a gaming laptop. The drivers for a laptop keep on evolving with time, especially, the graphics drivers from Nvidia and AMD are always on the verge of new updates. The same is the case for other laptop drivers and you need to keep them working smoothly by upgrading them constantly.

Whereas, DirectX is as important as the graphics drivers as it keeps the perfect sync of your audio and games. It’s simple, make sure your drivers are updated and you’re good to go with the smooth performance on a gaming laptop.

High graphics settings

It’s obvious that when your hardware is not made for games with intense graphics requirements.

That’s where you make the mistake of putting your games on high settings which results in lagging, stuttering, and tearing of your performance. You can either go with the low or medium settings to make your gaming smooth to upgrade your hardware to feed the hunger for AAA titles.

This way, you may lose some picture quality but your overall gaming laptop performance will be up to the mark.

Playing games without plugging in the charger

It’s common in all laptops that when you unplug the charger, your laptop automatically enables the power-saving mode. This means that you now got less power supply to the components like CPU, GPU, RAM, etc.

Whereas, this isn’t good at all for laying games as most of the games these days are more complex than the older ones and eats more power on the hardware. Whereas, you may find your games lagging when you unplug the charger. It’s recommended to always put your gaming laptop on charging when you intend to play your favorite title on your notebook. This will result in no lag at all and you’ll continue enjoying your gameplay.

Final Verdict

If any of the above explained are causing your gaming laptop to lag, you can find the solution to each of them at the end of each problem. Gaming laptop lagging is no big deal if you know what is causing it to be. Plus you need to try each of the solutions and any one of them is actually causing the issue.

Extra Note: If you find any other factor that is causing your laptop to lag, stutter, and tear, you can simply leave a comment about that issue to help other people with the same issue.

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