how can I help my PC to not LAG?

[edaw]

Hi all,

I bought a computer from Dell two years ago and have been using it for basic games (Fortnite, Minecraft) but it lags, badly and the graphics load in very slow.

I don't have much money. If you had to improve something and had, say, only $200 to spend, what would you improve?

Here are the specs:
Computer: Inspiron Gaming Desktop 5675
Processor: 7th Generation AMD A10-9700 Quad-Core APU with Radeon(TM) R7 Graphics
RAM: 8GB DDR4 2400MHz
OS: Windows 10 - 64 bit
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon (TM) RX 560 with 2GB GDDR5
Hard Drive: 3.5" 1TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive

Thanks

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

Laggy feeling in games or just using PC in general may have multiple reasons. And one of the most common ones is... HDD. At least in my experience.

First of all, check S.M.A.R.T. values for your drive - you can use DHE DriveInfo. It's simple: just run it (no installation), select your HDD and check SMART tab to see if any record is in red. If no, then you can think about other options. If anything is in red, backup everything and get new HDD ASAP.

Did you ever reinstalled your OS? Did you update drivers or left everything "as is"? Did you check for malware or anything similar?

 

[Zoid]

@OsaX Nymloth is right with (in my experience as well) the number one reason for old computers feeling slow is because they have a slow or (worst case) failing mechanical hard drive. In general, I would say the best way to update that PC is to replace the hard drive with a solid state drive.

Before you do that, you should figure out exactly what is making the game feel laggy. The term "lag" is thrown around a lot and can mean different things to different people. Online connection lag, for instance, might have nothing to do with your computer and everything to do with your internet connection.

I would recommend downloading MSI Afterburner and enabling the on-screen overlay. Here is a tutorial on how to do that. This will allow you to monitor system performance in-game and will help determine what is slowing you down. To start with, you can just monitor CPU usage, GPU usage, RAM, usage, and storage (or HDD) usage. These will show as a percentage. You should also monitor framerate.

What you're looking for by monitoring those values is which of your components are spending a lot of time at or near 100% utilization. That will give you an idea of what component in your system is coming up short.

If you let us know what you find, we can offer more informed recommendations.

 

[edaw]

Thank you both. I figured out how to run the DHE DriveInfo and I ran MSI Afterburner. The Afterburner showed all of these things, a GPU temp of around 45 degrees celsius and a GPU usage of around 39% and memory was 1186MB and the GPU was 1200MHz and all of my CPUs were always around 100% (there are 4) and my framerate was anywhere from 30 fps at bad times to 100 fps at good times but on average it was around 45fps. There are many more things I can show if that is necessary. For the DHE DriveInfo there were no values in red and all the statuses were in green I have no idea what any of the titles mean. ( thresh hold, Data, Data Hex, Worst, Value Flags).Does that help? Any ideas for me?

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

Ok that means your drive is ok - which is good obviously. The fps seems to be kinda all over the place.

What about second part of my post - drivers. Did you ever update them? Or did you ever reinstalled your system?

 

[Inspireless Llama]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're CPU usage is at 100% all the time that might be an issue. Not necessarily for overheating, but I think it could be that sometimes things need to calculated faster than your CPU can handle and then causing lag.

Also just verifying, did you set your graphics to use the RX rather than the integraded graphics?

 

[Oussebon]

+1 to the point about CPU usage. Though before rushing out to buy new hardware, there are things to try first (e.g. clean Windows reinstall)

 

[edaw]

I have never reinstalled the system but I have updated my graphics driver that is the only one though. How would you set your graphics to RX? I haven't changed it ever. How would you reinstall windows?

 

[Oussebon]

To clean install Windows:

How to Perform a Clean Install of Windows 10

A while ago we showed you how to get a Windows 10 ISO for a clean install. Today we'll show how to clean install Windows 10 from beginning to end.

www.groovypost.com

Note, during the process you will delete every partition on your hard drive. That will make you lose the data that's on there, so be sure to back up anything you don't want to lose to an external drive / cloud storage first.

Once you've clean installated Windows, don't install anything. Let Windows handle driver installation. Use Windows Defender for antivirus protection Only download a game client and game to test performance.

The idea is to minimise as much as possible the chance for anything software-related to cause an issue.

 

[edaw]

I clean installed windows and only installed my game and MSI Afterburner to test performance and I immediately noticed that the game was less laggy but there still was an issue with stuff like buildings in the game rendering in. what should I do?

 

[Oussebon]

Well that's a good start

What is the issue exactly?

Is it that you can see the buildings but the textures look very bad / take a long time to load in properly?

Or do they not show up at all and then suddenly pop in really close to you, while other things further away are already loaded in?

Or something else?

Does Task Manager show high HDD usage when this issue is happening?

 

[edaw]

firstly thank you all of you for the help i have gotten so far!

the problem is that the buildings are a mesh of textures and I cannot see what is in front of me until about 30 seconds after I am close to them. And it is definitely still laggy. The disk (that is what HDD is right) is not that different when the buildings aren't loaded in. but the CPU is at 99% when the buildings aren't loaded in. Does that mean that I should buy a new and better CPU or should I Buy a better graphics card? Or something else?

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

Hm.... even with that CPU you shouldn't have such problems :?
Did you:
1. install drivers for your GPU?
2. you sure are using the GPU not the iGPU? Monitor cable connected to GPU not to the motherboard?

You can also check Speccy and post the raport: https://www.ccleaner.com/docs/speccy/using-speccy/publishing-a-speccy-profile-to-the-web

Maybe something else will show up.

 

[edaw]

Thank you.

I installed drivers for GPU and I was trying to figure out how to change it so that I use the GPU and not the iGPU but I could not figure out how to do it. Could you direct me to a video of how to do that? my monitor is connected to my GPU.

 

[Oussebon]

It should be using the dGPU if it's plugged into it

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

@edaw if your monitor cable is connected with the dedicated GPU then it's fine and 100% you are using your GPU. Just had to be sure.

If your issue persist then maybe it actually is the CPU being the limiting factor. Potentially you should be free to upgrade up to Zen+ CPU's like Ryzen 2600 for example, which are quite better than your current CPU - but better ask around too, don't take my word alone for granted.

You can get one for around 130$ it seems

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

That would be the upgrade route. If it's applicable (since it's Dell, it's have it's own motherboard, but it's still AM4 socket and from quick glance it seems it's possible to upgrade). For sure this CPU would work just better because it's generally faster in every possible way than your A10-9700.

You could ask a nearby PC repair shop to get one for you and install it/test it especially if you don't feel confident in doing it yourself.

I would still expect somehow better performance on your current CPU, but if even after clean installation your issue persists then there isn't really much else software-wise we can even try. Unless I forget something and maybe somebody else will suggest a different option.

 

[spvtnik1]

I'll say this. The AMD APUs are good, but they are not really what you want for a "full" experience. I would start there, and with an SSD upgrade as mentioned in the start of the thread.

An SSD over an HDD, for the last couple years, has been told to be more a "quality-of-life" upgrade over a performance upgrade, but now, we're entering the all-SSD age. The textures being loaded in to VRAM are coming from the drive, so it makes sense that a faster drive will deliver better performance. Whether the game you're playing is loading more textures more often, or bigger textures than in the last generation, the SSD is pretty much king now for gaming. That being the case, we're of course now only a short time away from the on-board drive era (M2 Nvme).

 

[Oussebon]

I'll say this. The AMD APUs are good, but they are not really what you want for a "full" experience.

At the risk of quibbling, while the modern APUs are interesting, AMD's Bristol Rridge APUs (the A10 9700 that the OP has) really are not good.

They aren't built on any form of Zen, but rather Excavator, and as CPUs are.. well.. pretty trashy.

AMD A12-9800 Review: Infecting the AM4 Platform

Gaming Performance. While we wait for Zen-based APUs, AMD released Bristol Ridge through OEMs late last year, it recently became available on the retail market and this caught the...

www.techspot.com

With a dedicated GPU they still bottleneck a number of modern titles to below 60fps

So rather than say they are good, I'd say 'you can sometimes get away with one' - and ofc I do agree the CPU will likely want an upgrade.