Game unable to run smoothly after Laptop repair

[Euzio]

On my gaming laptop, I've been able to run 7DtD smoothly even in High/Ultra settings with decent FPS all this time. However, a few days ago, my laptop faced issues with its battery bloating and the plugged in charger getting cut off mid-way while running the game. This caused the laptop to run in battery power saving mode mid-game. I then shut it down but the battery bloat had caused my laptop screen to crack. As such, I had my laptop screen replaced and removed the bloated battery to enable it to run just plugged in. 

However, ever since I've gotten my laptop back, 7DtD has been unable to run as smoothly as before. It feels like the game is running in a state of power saving mode with all the smoothness of normal gameplay gone. The fps has also dropped considerably. Even after tuning as much as I can, it can only reach as high as maybe 20fps and usually hovers around the single digits making the game almost unplayable. I've tried several methods including validating game files, uninstalling the game and reinstalling the game, reinstalling my graphics driver, and even upgrading my windows OS from 10 to 11 just to see if I can get it to run smoothly once again. As a comparison, I've tried running other games like Football Manager 2024 and Assassin's Creed Black Flag and those games were able to run smoothly without issue. 

Attached 2 log files for comparison (1 is in Navezgane and another is a RanGen World I generated)

https://pastebin.com/tP9sN0sy

https://pastebin.com/rvgcswRK

Specs for my Laptop are as follows

CPU Info:
12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900H   2.50 GHz
16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable)
64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Windows 11 Home

GPU Info:

Nvidia GeForce RTX3070 Ti Laptop GPU

Inter (R) Iris (R) Xe Graphics

Memory Info:

15.7GB DDR RAM

Storage Devices:

Samsung MZVL21T0HCLR-00B00
CT1000P2SSD8

Hope someone is able to help me figure out what exactly is wrong as it does not seem to make sense how come other games are able to run smoothly but 7DtD is just unable to go back to before. I've also done a BurninTest to see if there was any issue with any of the hardware but the test cleared all the hardware of any errors. So its simply isolated to something with 7DtD solely from what it seems. 
 

 

[Fox]

- Are you 100% sure the laptop isn't defaulting to the Intel integrated graphics while playing the game? This would also explain why other games work fine but not this one.

- What are the temperatures while playing the game? Maybe the bloated battery had other effects such as separated the thermal compound from the cpu / gpu and therefore no longer has a good connection to dissipate the heat.

- Have you tried Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU)? This can sometimes fix issues relating to corrupted drivers caused by crashes. The usual uninstaller doesn't ever uninstall everything, so DDU is a way to get a properly clean driver re-install with all new default settings and whatnot.

- Do you have the power control options set to Performance mode and not battery saving mode or balanced?

 

[Euzio]

- Are you 100% sure the laptop isn't defaulting to the Intel integrated graphics while playing the game? This would also explain why other games work fine but not this one.

- What are the temperatures while playing the game? Maybe the bloated battery had other effects such as separated the thermal compound from the cpu / gpu and therefore no longer has a good connection to dissipate the heat.

- Have you tried Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU)? This can sometimes fix issues relating to corrupted drivers caused by crashes. The usual uninstaller doesn't ever uninstall everything, so DDU is a way to get a properly clean driver re-install with all new default settings and whatnot.

- Do you have the power control options set to Performance mode and not battery saving mode or balanced?

- Honestly, I'm not sure if the laptop has been defaulting to the integrated graphics while playing the game. It does kinda feel like it? But when I check task manager, its indicating that the game is using the Nvidia GPU as opposed to the Integrated graphics. I've also manually had the game run using the Nvidia GPU through the Nvidia Control Panel but it did not seem to make a difference. 

- Temperature wise seems to be fine. In fact, in the past, the game did cause the temperature to be high but the laptop does compensate with the increase turbo fan speed (which does make the laptop a little noisy) and I do use a cooling pad as well. However, currently, when I run the game, the laptop seems quieter. 

- I haven't tried DDU. I'll give it a shot and see if it hopefully works

- Power Control options have been set to peak performance at all time already. No change though. 

 

[Euzio]

- Have you tried Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU)? This can sometimes fix issues relating to corrupted drivers caused by crashes. The usual uninstaller doesn't ever uninstall everything, so DDU is a way to get a properly clean driver re-install with all new default settings and whatnot.

This worked for me Fox! It seems that what happened was that my graphics drivers (both the integrated and the Nvidia) were corrupted somehow. The game was not recognizing the Nvidia GPU as the primary during running and was defaulting to the integrated. I followed your advice and used DDU to uninstall both my integrated and Nvidia graphics drivers. Did a full reinstall of them both and upon running the game, the FPS shot back up and its no longer running like its in power saving mode. 

Thanks so much for this~ I'll continue running the game and monitoring but it should be good now~ 

 

[Fox]

Awesome. Always nice to see a suggestion worked. 

 

[Euzio]

Awesome. Always nice to see a suggestion worked. 

Yeah~ I've searched all over the internet for the last 2 days but nobody had suggested using DDU to do a clean wipe.

Anyway after an hour of testing or so the game is back to normal for me now~ Never thought I'd welcome back the noisy sounds of my laptop fans once again. 

 

[Fox]

Never thought I'd welcome back the noisy sounds of my laptop fans once again. 

You mentioned a cooling pad earlier, but unless something new has been invented that I'm not aware of, those things don't actually do anything other than allow slightly better path for airflow into the laptop providing at best 1 or 2 degrees difference. If you really want better cooling / airflow with the added benefit of less noise... they're a bit difficult to find in stores now, but they're still available on eBay, there's something called an Opolar LC-06, which is a turbine fan that attaches to the exhaust of the laptop sucking out all the hot air through it at a much higher speed, but because it's a large turbine fan, it's also much quieter (allowing the laptop's annoying fan to spin slower). This isn't compatible with all laptops out there, so maybe verify that your laptop's exhaust is small enough to fit one (or tape the excess part shut so the air only flows from within the laptop and not do a detour).

 

[Euzio]

You mentioned a cooling pad earlier, but unless something new has been invented that I'm not aware of, those things don't actually do anything other than allow slightly better path for airflow into the laptop providing at best 1 or 2 degrees difference. If you really want better cooling / airflow with the added benefit of less noise... they're a bit difficult to find in stores now, but they're still available on eBay, there's something called an Opolar LC-06, which is a turbine fan that attaches to the exhaust of the laptop sucking out all the hot air through it at a much higher speed, but because it's a large turbine fan, it's also much quieter (allowing the laptop's annoying fan to spin slower). This isn't compatible with all laptops out there, so maybe verify that your laptop's exhaust is small enough to fit one (or tape the excess part shut so the air only flows from within the laptop and not do a detour).

Ah that sounds useful. My wife complains about my laptop fans being rather noisy (i play with headphones so I don't notice that much ) whenever I'm gaming. I'll check up on it~

 

[Euzio]

On further update regarding the initial issue I was facing. When I tested it earlier, I realised that I was using an external monitor plugged in to my laptop to run it. As such, the monitor was actually connected directly to my laptop's GPU and thus after updating the drivers, the game was forced to run through it. That thereby "solved" the issue of the game utilizing the GPU instead of the integrated graphics to run.

However, not long ago, I was trying to run 7DtD on my laptop but this time running through the laptop screen with no external displays connected. The same issue cropped up in that the game was running on the Integrated graphics instead of the GPU. After reading up further a little online, it seems that there was an issue with the laptop not being able to automatically switch between the integrated graphics and GPU. In the initial fix, when I used the DDU to uninstall all the graphic drivers, I made the mistake of letting Windows Update automatically download the drivers necessary. 

So the final fix I did was that I downloaded the Nvidia graphics driver directly from Nvidia itself. Its also imperative to know exactly what graphics driver to get. In my case, I had to download the Nvidia Geforce 3070 Ti for Notebooks graphics driver. What it does come with as I just found out is that for laptop GPUs, Nvidia uses this program called Nvidia Optimus which allows for the program to optimize the necessary graphics performance as required for my laptop. Prior to that, the windows update had just defaulted to a normal Nvidia graphics driver which did not have Optimus in it. Either that or the optimizing software that Microsoft uses itself was pretty crap. Hence why the game was running on the integrated graphics instead of the GPU. Now that I've gotten Nvidia Optimus installed and managing the optimization instead, the game is running fully on the GPU now. 

Decided to just share my experience just in case there are others who might encounter this issue when gaming on a laptop. 

 

[Gamida]

Decided to just share my experience just in case there are others who might encounter this issue when gaming on a laptop. 

That is good. You would not believe how many ask for help. Get a ton of advice from others and then post, "Never mind, I got if fixed."

And that is last we hear of it.

 

[Euzio]

Sigh.... Unfortunately, I don't think I can safely say that I've resolved it. It seems that the game somehow is struggling to recognize in which scenario it should be using the GPU instead of Integrated graphics. I plugged back in my external monitors again and on running the game, it doesn't utilize the GPU once more. At this point, the only way I managed to get it to utilize the GPU again is to reinstall the Nvidia Graphics driver. However, upon further testing, if I were to unplug my external monitors, and use the laptop's internal monitor, the game will revert back to using the Integrated Graphics. 

So right now, the only way I can get the game to run utilizing the GPU is that depending on the situation, if I happen to be running my External Display, I'll need to reinstall the Nvidia Graphics driver before running the game. If sometime later, if I happen to be running on my laptop's internal display, I will need to reinstall the Nvidia Graphics Driver again before running the game..... definitely not the most ideal but it seems to be the only way....

Though I do wonder if its possible that Nvidia's Geforce Experience program is causing it to conflict. I will try installing just the Nvidia Graphics Driver without the Geforce Experience and see how it goes. 

Update 1: Geforce Experience is not a determining factor it seems. Doesn't matter if its installed or not. Right now, I'm starting to think that it might be something to do with the game itself rather than the Graphics Driver. Because it just doesn't seem to make any sense that the game won't switch over by itself. I'm gonna just try an attempt a complete wipe of the game from my system and reinstall it.... Hopefully that would make it work as per normal once more... 

Update 2: Reinstalling the game did not work. And I discovered that basically, each time I restarted my laptop, the game would fail to run smoothly unless I reinstalled the graphics driver.... So basically, it means that each time I want to run the game, I'd have to reinstall the graphics driver on restart. Honestly can't figure it out at all. The only upside is that it doesn't take me all that long to reinstall the graphics driver, approx 3 mins or so, but is rather troublesome having to do so each time I want to run the game....  

 

[Fox]

Sounds to me like maybe that bloated battery may have caused some other internal damage. But, have you tried an older Nvidia driver yet? Have you also looked in the BIOS yet to see if there's any option to disable the integrated graphics or default to the main one? Sometimes you get lucky and get a decent BIOS with actual options on a laptop.

This is one of the reasons why I hate APUs (and Intel) though. Multi-graphics options just always manage to get in the way at some point.

 

[Euzio]

Sounds to me like maybe that bloated battery may have caused some other internal damage. But, have you tried an older Nvidia driver yet? Have you also looked in the BIOS yet to see if there's any option to disable the integrated graphics or default to the main one? Sometimes you get lucky and get a decent BIOS with actual options on a laptop.

This is one of the reasons why I hate APUs (and Intel) though. Multi-graphics options just always manage to get in the way at some point.

Not really sure if there was internal damage done. But it it seems odd that a physical damage can stop the GPU from running on each restart. I did go into the Bios to see and tried adjusting but it did not seem to work. 

I have a feeling it might actually be Windows related somehow because its on each time I restart the laptop itself that this error crops up. Which means somehow someway, Windows might be causing my entire rig to throttle itself and limit the GPU. The only way I can probably truly test it out would be to do a factory reset of my entire laptop and reinstall the entire OS. But I'm extremely reluctant to do so as it would be a ton of work and I'll need to spend significant time and effort to backup everything... 

 

[Fox]

Well, if a clean install of Windows doesn't fix it, then it'd for sure be internal damage. But I can understand the reluctance of doing that, especially if you don't have a 2nd computer or backup drives.

As I mentioned before though, battery swelling could have dislodged the heatsink causing thermal issues which you wouldn't be able to feel, only see the numbers go up on screen.

Are you familiar with Event Viewer in computer management? It's very likely that it would show any errors or driver failures in there and may give some clues as to what's going on.

 

[Euzio]

I did go through the Event Viewer a little. But I'm not an expert in that area so I don't really know what I'm looking for. But a browse through of the errors don't seem to indicate anything that might be related? Though I'm not too sure...