6 Reasons why your Gaming Laptop is considerably slower and how can you fix the same

Planning to purchase a gaming laptop today! Hold the thought till you know the factors that might slow down an ill-equipped system. Plus, there can be many reasons why a standard laptop feels sluggish at times but when it comes to gaming behemoths, there are only a handful of reasons for the overall slowness.

In the subsequent sections, we shall take a closer look at the 6 reasons why your gaming laptop, despite being purchased after weeks of research, feels slothful.

Reason 1: Ill-Equipped Processor

But then, you must have already invested in a laptop with a good processor if gaming were one of your priorities. Not exactly!

A processor is only as good as the game you throw at it. While most 9^th and 10^th gen i7 H-series mobile SoCs are capable of managing almost every game, the same doesn’t hold true for G-series and U-series processors. These units are more like power-efficient inclusions, which aren’t exactly great at processing threads with speedy resolve.

Plus, the likes of G7-series chipsets are mostly graphics-optimized and work best for creative tasks like designing and more. The turbo clock speeds are slower, showing up as the major bottleneck for most gamers. Therefore, even if you have a good GPU to work with, the processor is the limiting factor and causes lagging, especially as most NPCs and gaming environments are processed by the chipset itself.

Fix: Firstly, there isn’t an immediate fix to this issue if you are more concerned about persisting with the same issue. However, you can always resort to low-end games or even high-end games at lower resolutions to minimize the stress on the processor. Or, upgrading to a new laptop with an Intel Core i7 H-series chipset is also an option.

Reason 2: RAM Shortage

RAM or volatile memory is one of the handiest game-playing resources, provided you know how to make the best use of the same. Nevertheless, gamers, in haste, often end up purchasing laptops with restricted system memory, i.e. something in the 8GB range.

While this allotment makes sense of basic entry-level to mid-range games, things start becoming trickier when you keep adding skins, resources, and mods to the titles. For instance, open-world games require you to continuously add maps for expanding the troops and coverage. However, if you have lesser system memory at your disposal, processing tasks puts massive stress on the processor and even the next available storage i.e. the SSD or HDD.

However, nothing can fill the void created by the lack of system memory, which is one of the primary reasons for system slowdowns.

Fix: Almost every top-shelf gaming machine supports RAM upgrades. Therefore, if you identify the laptop slowing reasons as lack of system memory, upgrading the same via pre-existing slots is the best possible option. Also, you need to consider dual-socketed laptops that are better equipped when it comes to upgrading the existing RAM storage,

Reason 3: Thermal Throttling

Gaming laptops tend to get hot and there is no other way around the same. Still, we can always try to keep the surface temperature within the permissible limits to ensure proper performance.

Overheating is one of the primary reasons for the gaming sluggishness as protected by certain laptops. What causes the heat build-up is the erratic ventilation that is neither compact nor heat-dissipating enough. Plus, dust accumulation is also an issue, unless you persist with something as effective as the ADC cooling setup, seen with some top ROG-series laptops.

The combined result of overheating and dust accumulation leads to thermal throttling, which eventually results in system slowdowns.

Fix: A good way to fix this issue is to place the laptop in an elevated position. This way, the vents get enough breathing space and are better positioned to dissipate and circulate hot air. For keeping dust accumulation at bay, regular laptop cleaning, especially via air pressure cans, is a good approach.

why your laptop slower 6 Reasons why your Gaming Laptop is considerably slower and how can you fix the same

Reason 4: Hard Drive Fragmentation

Games are extremely demanding programs, which are processed animatedly across the hard drive. However, the excessive processing leads to disk fragmentation, which in turn scatters the game-playing elements and resources across the hard drive. This approach is better-termed disk fragmentation, which readily slows downloading times.

Fix: You can always run hard drive defragmentation programs and commands to bring the scattered files under the same roof, so as to speed up the R&W times. While the fix seems like a pretty straightforward one, the results are pretty exemplary and quicker than any other mentioned fix.

Reason 5: No SSD

While most modern-day gaming laptops feature solid-state drives as the go-to storage module, there are a few with dedicated HDDs. Most SATA hard disk drives are way slower at processing temporary files and retrieving games as compared to the SSD. Plus, even if the RAM starts getting used up rapidly, only an SSD can help you keep up the speeds, temporarily.

Fix: A good way is to upgrade the storage with an SSD, even if the laptop offers a hard drive right out of the box. You can be on the lookout for M.2 slots for upgrading the storage if you have tried to get an affordable gaming machine in and now looking to speed it up.

Reason 6: Malware

If your laptop still feels slow after getting in the best set of specifications and features into the mix, it is advisable to get it checked for any malware or virus. A corrupted program, if and when injected into the machine, can slow down the processes. Plus, security compromises are always there to worry about.

Not just that, malware often comes into the mix if you are playing online multiplayer games on an unsecured network. Also, this issue can also lead to throttling and cause further slowdowns.

Fix: If you think malware or virus is the reason for system slowdowns, it is advisable to rely on a professional who can check out the device and get rid of the impending issues. Also, thorough system scans are necessary to free the laptop of malware remnants.

Bottom-Line

As mentioned, a gaming laptop slows down primarily for the aforementioned reasons. However, you can always resort to the mentioned fixes to speed the game loading and other aligned processes. Still, if you want to avoid system slowdowns in the first place, we would recommend getting a powerful gaming laptop that has all the bases covered.