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Solved ASUS ROG Strix Laptop grossly under-performing *HELP NEEDED*

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So I bought this ASUS ROG Strix used laptop a few days ago, and It's pretty snappy when it comes to daily tasks such as browsing and watching HD/4K video, rocking a GTX 1050 (4 GB of VRAM) and an i7-7700 HQ, 16 GB of RAM, a 256 GB SSD accompanied with a 1 TB hard drive.

It's the 17-inch ROG Strix GL753VD laptop. Now, I understand that a GTX 1050 is not particularly the be all and end all of graphics card, and is in fact slowly degrading in performance as game developers lean in towards higher resolutions and textures in games, but it's still a decent-enough graphics card, decent enough to play last-gen games such as Just Cause 3 and Grand Theft Auto V.

But oddly, the laptop runs quite badly on games, even 2014-era stuff. And, though in its fairness it's 'used', it should still be capable of managing stable frame-rates. The games I run on it run fine at the beginning, but after a few seconds quickly start to massively drop. And its almost as if these frame drops are calculated, weirdly enough. It goes like this: Runs fine for like 80 milliseconds, drops for 40 milliseconds, runs fine for 80 milliseconds..etc. And it keeps going this way, unlike regular "frame drops", you'd expect to see them every time the game displays too much stuff on screen or when you've been running the game for a while, but here, it just stutters right off the start and DOES NOT STOP, not even for a second.

I updated all my drivers and I tried to optimize the game's settings, but even LOW SETTINGS manage to make the FPS drop massively.
I ran SFC to check for corrupted files, I lowered my background tasks even though there was like 2 or 3 whom barely utilized the CPU.
I factory reset the computer and updated everything on Windows 10. I turned off game-mode and made sure the games run on the dedicated GPU not Intel's integrated one.
I re-installed the games and made sure I met the recommended hardware for each game but bizarrely enough, the game still stuttered even when running at XP-like resolutions.
I made sure the temperatures of the CPU and the GPU stayed cool during playing. And I even checked the PC for viruses and ran a dozen-so virus scans on multiple anti-viruses.
AND I EVEN tried over-clocking the GTX 1050, but that just seemed to make matters worse.

I beg any one for help, this laptop hasn't even been used a ton by the previous owner, and I really want to be able to play on it normally.
 
Welcome to PCHF Nizar Lahmar,

Are you playing these games online or offline.

Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here, this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s.

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:

In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.

In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.

Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.
 
There is nothing wrong with the hardware that would explain what you describe so nothing to fix there.

Two things of note in Speccy, the RAM is only running at 50% of what it is capable of 1200MHz as opposed to 2400MHz.

RAM
16.0GB Single-Channel Unknown @ 1197MHz

Avast the once highly recommended free AV has become that much of a monster/resource hog that not many folk recommend it any more, one of its biggest faults is the browser plug ins that it foists on folk which as a consequence causes problems with the internet connection when you do game online, as you are running Windows 10 you do not need a third party AV as you have Windows Defender and Firewall which are better so could do with getting rid of Avast in any event.

Firewall
Firewall: Enabled
Display Name: Avast Antivirus
Antivirus
Avast Antivirus
Antivirus: Enabled
Virus Signature Database: Up to date
 
I actually installed Avast because Windows Defender failed to catch a crypto-currency mining virus known as 'Cloud Net'.
But for this purpose, I deleted Avast completely, yet the games still stutter. Even Mirror's Edge drops frames, and that's a decade old game, significant tearing as well. It's like the computer isn't even supposed to play games.
 
I`m at a loss at what else to suggest, you have taken care of almost every check yourself before even posting here.

Is it possible that the previous owner already had this issue so decided to sell on the notebook, other than adding more RAM to enable dual channel mode there is no other performance improvement that can be made I`m afraid.
 
I know right! Because it was my last hope :(
But just a few minutes ago, I noticed that the performance on games got significantly better when my computer isn't plugged in.
Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Like games should run better when the computer is plugged-in as oppose to not plugged-in? Is my charging adapter influencing the computer's stability?
It's quite a weird occurrence, but I'm going to test if frame-times really improve from 'charging' to 'not charging' before declaring that as the 'real' issue here.
 
I know right! Because it was my last hope :(
But just a few minutes ago, I noticed that the performance on games got significantly better when my computer isn't plugged in.
Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Like games should run better when the computer is plugged-in as oppose to not plugged-in? Is my charging adapter influencing the computer's stability?
It's quite a weird occurrence, but I'm going to test if frame-times really improve from 'charging' to 'not charging' before declaring that as the 'real' issue here.

Yes, I can definitely confirm this, the computer's charger causes this weird stuttering. I knew it wasn't normal to see the game lagging consistently, and that it had to be something effecting it other than the 'game' itself.
Turns out whenever I plug-in the computer, the game starts to lag incredibly, and even more so if I unplug it while I already plugged it, and to stop it I need to restart the game with the computer unplugged.
It was running at 30-35 fps on HIGH SETTINGS in Just Cause 3, no stuttering at all, the most stable 30 FPS frame-time I have seen in my life, and right as I plug-in the charger, it starts to lag slightly, even if i turn down the settings. It actually started going up to 45-50 FPS but would go down back to 34-ish quickly, and come back, AKA starts to drop frames significantly.

I'm happy I found the source of the problem, maybe I'll buy a new charger soon, but at least now I can play games as they're intended to be, and just charge the computer whilst taking a break.

Anyways, what do you think of this? And thank you for giving me your time!
 
Apologies for the delay getting back to you Nizar Lahmar, wasn't around yesterday I`m afraid :(

Thanks for the comprehensive update/s (y)

Couple of questions for you;

What happens if you remove the notebooks main battery and power the notebook using just the charger via the mains power.

How long does the battery last for when the charger is not plugged in and also powering the notebook.

Asking the above in case it is the battery causing the problem as in interfering with the AC adaptor/chargers performance.
 
It's okay! :)

I'm afraid the laptop doesn't have a removable battery :(
The battery-life is actually quite bad, around 1 to 3 hours, depending of course on what I'm doing with the PC, the reason for this is the optical drive taking too much space inside the computer which means the battery has to be significantly smaller.
And the 'time remaining' Windows measurement is way off, it keeps jumping between different values as if it's unsure all the time, but generally the computer doesn't last much.
It takes about 1.5 ~2 hours to fully charge from 0% to 100%
 
That`s a shame as it would have been a helpful test being able to quickly remove the battery.

Should you ever decide to replace it, the battery I got via Google here

It might be an idea to ask around to see if anybody that you know has a universal notebook charger that you could borrow to test on your notebook.
 
That`s a shame as it would have been a helpful test being able to quickly remove the battery.

Should you ever decide to replace it, the battery I got via Google here

It might be an idea to ask around to see if anybody that you know has a universal notebook charger that you could borrow to test on your notebook.

Um, all my friends use desktops as far as I know.
And even if someone had a notebook, it'll be an old HP laptop of some sort, so definitely not applying to this computer.
I also noticed that the laptop gets charged quite quicker if I'm not using it, I think that's logical but I just came to notice haha..

Anyways, I guess I'll have to deal with this until I either buy a new charger or decide to replace the battery some time soon.
But as of now, I think I'm fine with the way it behaves even if it's generally inconvenient.

Thanks a ton for your help man! Wouldn't have identified the problem without you guys :)
 
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