Question SSD bottlenecking laptop?

[hbrc]

I am trying to understand my Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 stuttering problems. After trying other stuff (see comment below) , I did a test where I had a game in windowed mode with task manager opened . I saw an ssd response time of 26 ms shortly after a stutter occurred (I have the update speed in task manager set to normal) . Does this mean the speed of my SSD is causing the stuttering?

 

[hbrc]

Specs:
*AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS
*NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU
* 16 GB of RAM. 2 sticks of Samsung 8GB DDR5 (M425R1GB4BB0)
* Drive: Micron MTFDKCD512QFM SSD. 185 free GB out of 474

Things that I tried :

*Plugging the laptop

*Verifying that it's not a CPU bottleneck. Stutters happen even when CPU and GPU usage is very low. I also checked that CPU parking is disabled and that the game is using multicore rendering.

*I have run the entirety of memtest86 and testmem5 to test if there is something wrong with my RAM and I didn't get any errors. I have 16 GB of RAM dual Channel.

*Making sure integrated graphics are not being used by seeing utilization percentage with msi afterburner

*I ran prim95 for 2 hours and 30 mins and got no errors.

*Updating the BIOS, directX, cpu and chipset drivers.
*Reinstalling NVIDIA drivers without bloat with NVCleanInstall

*Reducing RAM usage significantly by reducing background processes and disabling Windows telemetry.

*Disabling bluetooth.

*Enabling HAGS, Game mode, and disabling MPO and core isolation.

*Changing the Message Signal Interrupt priority of the SSD and graphics card to high.

*Lowering polling rate from 1000hz

*Checking that it's not due to thermal throttling. Cpu temps are allways below 80C

*Scanning with Windows defender and malwarebytes

*Checking that I have drive optimization turned on and that the drive is nowhere near at full capacity.

*Lowering mouse polling rate from 1000hz

*Running sfc /scannow

Things I never did:
Overclocking
Changing the RAM profile since I don't have that option .
*Bypassing optimus by connecting laptop to a monitor.

 

[Brian Boru]

Welcome to the forum

You've done a heck of a lot of troubleshooting there, great job!

What game(s) experience the problem?
Are there other games which run fine?

 

[hbrc]

What game(s) experience the problem?
Are there other games which run fine?

In F0rtnite, it happens more frequently as I keep loading parts of the map. F.EAR. stutters upon opening doors to new areas and whenever a new voice line plays through the radio.

The only game that never stutters for me was Jet Set Radio, which is hardcapped at 30 fps.

I ran crystaldiskinfo and it reported that the drive was in good health. I'm not sure what the issue could be.

 

[Colif]

have you run this on drive?

Storage Executive software

The right software solution is critical to giving your products a true competitive advantage. Download the Storage Executive Software to manage your Micron SSDs and low-level NOR, NAND, and PCM drivers.

www.micron.com

 

[hbrc]

have you run this on drive?

Storage Executive software

The right software solution is critical to giving your products a true competitive advantage. Download the Storage Executive Software to manage your Micron SSDs and low-level NOR, NAND, and PCM drivers.

www.micron.com

Yes. I used it months ago to try to update my ssd firmware but it told me that it's already up to date. I opened it again and ran its extended drive test. After that, it kept telling me that it was in good health and there were no S.M.A.R.T errors.

 

[Colif]

The nvme is hardly slow, 3500mb/s is max speed you get on pcie3 drives.
Nvme are unlikely to be bottlenecks anytime soon.

In F0rtnite, it happens more frequently as I keep loading parts of the map. F.EAR. stutters upon opening doors to new areas and whenever a new voice line plays through the radio.

That behaviour does make it sound like its drive to blame. Its likely the maps load from drive.

how old is drive? Its possible its a physical problem, software can't see those. But they often show up as boot errors, I assume that is your boot drive too?

what model laptop? checked you have latest bios? never know, could help. Might be a driver instead since it happens when it loads off drive.

 

[ZedClampet]

Is your laptop always plugged in while gaming? (sorry, I have to ask)

 

[hbrc]

Is your laptop always plugged in while gaming? (sorry, I have to ask)

Yes

how old is drive? Its possible its a physical problem, software can't see those. But they often show up as boot errors, I assume that is your boot drive too?

Both the laptop and the SSD are only 7 months old. I never got any boot errors.

what model laptop? checked you have latest bios? never know, could help. Might be a driver instead since it happens when it loads off drive.

The exact model is an Ideapad Gaming 3 15ARH7. I just did a fresh reinstall of Windows on it from a USB stick. The issue remains.

I don't know what else could be the issue then. On another forum, someone told me that I pretty much looked at everything that needed attention.

 

[Lutfij]

Can a slow CPU cause an SSD to be a bottleneck in gaming?

Please do not hijack another user's thread. Start a thread of your own and the community will chime in there, accordingly.

 

[JarlBSoD]

Get in touch with the place you bought it and ask them perhaps?