Legion Slim 5-Massive Underperformance in GAMES

[grim crescent]

Model: Legion Slim 5 R7 7840s 4060
Describe the issue: My Slim 5 has been performing really poorly in games. It all started when one of the tech support representatives asked me to reinstall Windows via USB to fix a Wi-Fi issue. Ever since then, I haven’t been able to play a single game.

Despite several complaints and checks, they always come back with the same response: "The device is working as per the design." However, my gaming performance has dropped significantly. For example:

EAFC: Previously 150+ FPS, now barely 60, with huge stuttering issues.
RDR2 - Previously 75+, now doesn't even reach 50.
GTA 5: Previously 140+ FPS at 1440p, now only 70 FPS.
Marvel Rivals: 120 FPS on low settings. (Game optimises it to Low settings)
Even low-end games like Rocket League experience FPS drops.

What have you tried already?: Updating/Reinstalling Drivers, DDU, BIOS update, Resetting windows, contact tech support.
When did it start producing the issue: After Windows reinstallation on October 28th, 2024
Did you install new drivers or software?: Yes
Can you provide images/videos to show us the issue: Yes, I've attach the link of my benchmarks along with gaming clips as well.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZN9qba8liMe6aLwmLlyYEGfx3Q3RsHff?usp=sharing

[zinc nexus]

your benchmarks scores and temperatures are exactly as expected for this model, not sure why games won't perform as expected.
in nvidia control panel, manage display mode, what is the current setting?

[grim crescent]

Auto Select

toggled between all the options, doesn't help

[zinc nexus]

not even NVIDIA GPU only? this forces everything including games onto the GPU

[grim crescent]

yea that too

but like advanced optimus is the same thing but dynamically so doesnt really help much yk

[zinc nexus]

what's your driver version

[grim crescent]

jan 30th, 2025

lemme seet he exact number

[zinc nexus]

those display mode settings are advanced optimus, yeah. not referring to the lenovo dGPU mode that requires a reboot

[grim crescent]

yep, thats what im referring to, i even tried changing all the modes from vantage as well, idk why nothing works

a loq with 4050 performs better at all games than my laptop

by a margin of almost twice

[zinc nexus]

last i tried EAFC24 during the game pass trial i got 120FPS 1440p easy, probably more but i forgot

barely 60 isn't good yeah

which still makes no sense since the benchmarks are spot-on

did you use nvcleaninstall at any point?

[grim crescent]

exactly my point fc24 was running smooth as hell no lag whatsoever but after the windows reinstallation assisted by some lenovo tech support even that game started to lag, bought fc25 to check and its even worse 55 with like 9-10 stutter issues per minute

[grim crescent]

didnt but im planning to

thats the last thing left

[zinc nexus]

do not, no need

[grim crescent]

okay

[zinc nexus]

a misconfigured nvcleaninstall is known to cause performance issues

[grim crescent]

what should i do then

reinstall windows again?

thats what caused the issue in teh first place

[zinc nexus]

did you install nvidia app? is whisper mode on?

[grim crescent]

cause im out of options

i had it installed but it got deleted while DDU

never reinstalled

[grim crescent]

which was like 2 days ago

[zinc nexus]

did you install lenovo's GPU driver, or did you jump straight to the latest nvidia.com driver?

[grim crescent]

yea just the nvidia

[zinc nexus]

get the nvidia VGA driver for your laptop from https://pcsupport.lenovo.com, manual download

and latest nvidia.com driver 571.something or whatever it is

then go offline --> DDU --> lenovo driver --> nvidia driver

[grim crescent]

yea its 572

downloaded that day before yesterday

onto VGA now

[grim crescent]

could just safe mode and prevent from update or is offline unnecessary ?

[zinc nexus]

well when you reinstall the drivers you wanna do that without windows update getting in the way

and you should reboot after DDU, you can reboot back into safe mode if you want but that takes longer imo

[grim crescent]

oh i thought the prevent option just stops that cause thats how i did for the 4060 drivers

[zinc nexus]

extra precaution
also i personally don't use that option

[grim crescent]

sure thing ill try that as well

so should i DDU nvidia driivers as well and purely offline installation for them too or just the VGA

[zinc nexus]

wat?
you DDU the existing nvidia driver to remove it, and then are installing 2 new drivers on top of each other

[grim crescent]

Okay got it

Also when I disable network connections and then boot up in safe mode and it says that I need to reset my pin and Ofcourse I can’t do that without internet connection, so it’ll be fine right if disable the connections after booting in safe mode ?

[zinc nexus]

oh whoops forgot about ms account stuff

uhh yeah it'll probably be fine

[grim crescent]

Mate i I think ill have to go with the prevent from update option cause in safe mode it wont let me sign in back after the deletion of drivers.

Yea I messed up now ugh

I initiated safe boot with minimal option

Now I’m stuck without internet on login page

Welp

[zinc nexus]

are you able to log in with the ms account password?

i didn't set up an ms account so forgot how this works in safe mode sorry

[grim crescent]

No I can’t

[zinc nexus]

ah shoot

[grim crescent]

It only had the hello pin

Dk what to do 😭😭

Do I start up repair or something ?

[zinc nexus]

reboot back to regular windows

[grim crescent]

I can’t

[zinc nexus]

wat how

[grim crescent]

I initiated into safe mood using msconfig 💀

[zinc nexus]

dude why

there's a safe mode prompt in DDU itself

[grim crescent]

I’m sorry

I though I clicked on network but I had minimal selected instead

[zinc nexus]

rebooting at the safe mode logon brings you back to safe mode?

[grim crescent]

Yep

[zinc nexus]

i dunno. try startup repair, try advanced startup settings

[grim crescent]

Trying the startup repair

Couldn’t find anything

Guess I’m doomed now

[reef island]

You are not

[reef island]

Go into that blue manu again and find cmd in it

[zinc nexus]

i gtg good luck

[grim crescent]

Yea and ?

What now

[reef island]

bcdedit /deletevalue {default} safeboot

Exit cmd and reboot

That should untick safe mode option and boot into windows regularly

[grim crescent]

Omg it worked 😭😭

Had me all panicked there for sometime

So now should I just boot into safe mode with network right ?

[reef island]

Or just skip all that. You can use nvidia cleanup tool if you only need to remode nvidias driver

https://developer.nvidia.com/cleanup-tool

[grim crescent]

I’ve already DDUd this morning

Why are we doing it again

I don’t understand

[reef island]

What did you install after ddu?

[grim crescent]

Just the 4060 driver not the VGA

[reef island]

So, latest?

[grim crescent]

Yep

Jan30th

[reef island]

Doing that can bring some oddities. They lack custom code shipped with Lenovos drivers

So Shockdudes idea is to insall Lenovos with custom code then update to the latest

[grim crescent]

Okay okay makes sense

[reef island]

ie skipping Lenovos drivers breaks hybrid-igpu mode

dgpu disconnects but is still powered on

[grim crescent]

Alright so DDU all over again but along with installing vga on top of the 4060 right ?

Or just the cleanup

[reef island]

After either ddu or cleanup install VGA

Then latest on top

[grim crescent]

Got it

[reef island]

tbh, try checking performance before installing latest

Latest in unstable for some people as they described in
https://discord.com/channels/761178912230473768/1334567879278067712

[grim crescent]

But the performance has been poor for past 4-5 months

Idk if that’s due to stability

Cause all it took was a windows reinstall via flash drive to mess up the performance entirely

[reef island]

Oh btw did you disable link state power management in power plan settings?

It was causing a lot of stutter for me since summer iirc

[grim crescent]

It’s in max power settings for both

So should off I suppose for plugged in

[reef island]

Yeah

[grim crescent]

Alright done

Gonna check out the performance now

Still doesn’t fix it

[reef island]

Can you create a log? I want to see power consumption numbers and their disctribution
https://discord.com/channels/761178912230473768/1250790308388667503

Also, some people had a problem with power consumption until they did ec reset

[sage flame]

Legolander The Skelim

__How to perform an ec reset__

Soft EC reset:
Shutdown the laptop, unplug all cables, charger too.
Press and hold power button for 60 seconds, keep holding even if the laptops powers on, release after 60 seconds and then power o...

Result 1 of 2

[reef island]

Try soft one

[grim crescent]

Should I do the ec reset first or create the log ?

[reef island]

Try ec first. Can't hurt

[grim crescent]

done with that

I’ll check the performance once more and then will proceed with the HWinfo

The game apparently runs smooth on 1080p with 100 FPS but as soon as I switch to 1440p it starts to feel jittery and slow

FPS drops from 99to 66 sometimes

[reef island]

Are you using DSR?

[grim crescent]

nope

if this is what you mean

[reef island]

Yeah

[grim crescent]

now what, proceeed with the HWinFO?

[reef island]

Yeah

Oh btw you have nvidia app

Try disabling overlay in it

[grim crescent]

i didnt install after the DDU

Should I put the fan on performance or full custom?

I reckon latter right

[reef island]

Game shoudn't stutter like this regardless

So, doesn't matter

[grim crescent]

Okay I had set the fan to full and idk how but two minutes into logging and the game is running pretty smooth at 1440p

[reef island]

Try switching to performance while keep the log recording

We can see wha't diffrent then

[grim crescent]

will this be an appropriate channel to upload the file?

also i would like to tell that the performance has definitely improved, much more than what was in the videos i uploaded to the drive folder as provided in the link(from 55 to 90 fps), but there are still stuttering issues(significant) here and there

[reef island]

Log is small and has no personal data. You can send it here

[grim crescent]

also the resolution was 2560x1600 not 1440p

[reef island]

I'll take a look in the morning

Did it stutter btw?

[grim crescent]

A bit

Also I ran gta benchmark again

It’s back to 140-150fps

😭

Thank you guys

Still dk why fc25 is lagging so much

[reef island]

Do try ddu, into Lenovos, might help with the rest

[grim crescent]

The whole 4060 on top VGA THING RIGHT ?

There are still fps drop issues in gta as well but atleast I have the peak fps back

[reef island]

Yeah. Lenovos vga, check for stutters, install latest, check for stutter

[grim crescent]

Okay okay

Lemme know if I’m wrong

this and check

then this and check

[reef island]

btw in the log. You started with performance mode and then switched to custom right?

[grim crescent]

no i started with custom-FULL then around 4 or 5 minutes mark i switched to performance

[reef island]

By full you mean you maxed out fans or all of the sliders?

Because you gpu is pulling more power after you switched

[grim crescent]

this is what i mean

this was before i switched

i switched again right now and i can see the drastic change in the fanspeed

but a thing to mentioned didnt get no stutter whatsoever while on fan speed: full mode

[reef island]

I take you you left performance tab untouched? iirc it uses balanced mode parameters as base

[grim crescent]

wait omg my bad

yea i didnt move any sliders

ill give u a fresh log in the morning

sorry

[reef island]

cpu is pulling more too after the switch

[grim crescent]

didnt check that my bad

[reef island]

No problem, I just wanted to know what I am looking at

[grim crescent]

default ig

[reef island]

I see, so that might be why

Check windows power mode, try setting it to balanced

[grim crescent]

done

[reef island]

Check for stutters in performance mode

[grim crescent]

no custom righ t

?

[reef island]

Yeah. That's where you had more stutters, right?

[grim crescent]

yep

the fan speed goes down a bit too much, didnt know performance speed and full speed had that big of a difference

[reef island]

Default custom mode has far lower power limits. CPU and GPU generate less heat too

[grim crescent]

I’m confused, the default custom mode with fan speed to full had higher speed than the performance mode even with lower power

[reef island]

Because max speed wear out fans faster

On my model performance mode caps out at 4500 rpm while max possible fan speed is 5300 rpm

[grim crescent]

Okay makes sense. Thanks

Opened the game again, kinda feels choppy instead of stutter

Consider I am only trying out in offline mode, it would increase up to 1.5x in online mode

[reef island]

So it does need the extra cpu power, unfortunate

[grim crescent]

So I would need to run this game on max speed ?

[reef island]

change windows power mode back to best performance

[grim crescent]

Cause I used my friends loq 4050 i513450, it got 160 fps or something. While I’m out here struggling to touch 100

[reef island]

Either that or use balance

btw instead of max fans you can set custom curve

Make custom mode based on perfomance and lower cpu power limit by like 5w

[reef island]

I think stutters happen because cpu is stepping over thermal limit

Might be time to clean the vents
#chat message

btw did you try lifting the back of your laptop to give fans more access to air?

[grim crescent]

Yea I have a stand

What kind of custom mode are we looking for

Like the optima numbers on the sliders ?

[reef island]

Just load performance as base and lower cpu power limit a bit

Should prevent cpu from dropping clocks

[grim crescent]

Which one peak, long term or short term ?

Or the total power

[reef island]

Crossloading one

[grim crescent]

It’s 45

So around

40?

Also I was running the game at default custom with full speed, although not stutters but less fps even than the performance mode ie around 83-86😭

[reef island]

Well, yeah, default custom mode had gpu power cut by like 30w as well as cut cpu power

[grim crescent]

So what do I do ?

Ddu and installation and then check

Or change the custom mode settings

[reef island]

Neither of them can hurt

Up to you

[grim crescent]

will try the first and let you know

thanks a lot though

[zinc nexus]

weird that custom mode is required, stock legion performance mode should be enough imo

(+ windows balanced best performance power mode)~~

[reef island]

Some games don't play well with it and stutter a lot unless you give cpu some extra watts