CPU running at better speed when Idle than playing games
In Fortnite (lowest settings in DX12)
Acer Nitro V 15 with rtx 4050 + i5 13420H
Really don't know why this is happening, it used to happen in valorant and marvel rivals too but setting both of them to maximum performance in nvidia app fixed it. For some reason, no matter whichever setting I choose the game always runs at 50-100 fps in the lowest and maximum settings with basically no change when switching from epic settings with no nanite to nanite, even in performance mode. It used to give me over 200 fps in performance mode at times with averaging around 185 while now im lucky if it goes over 180 fps.
Things I've tried:
- Roll back and update graphics drivers
- Delete cache from both the game and shaders
- Turn off memory integrity
- Run the game on only the 8 performance cores using performance lasso
- Run in maximum performance mode and stick to only Nvidia gpu using nvidia app, nvidia control panel and windows settings.
- Disabled overlays (turned them on for the screenshot)
- Reinstalling the game.
- Uninstalled NitroSense to see if it could have anything to undermine the gp.
and many many more. I don't think its thermal throttling since CPU temps seem normal for a laptop and also repasted it 1.5 months ago. Also have to mention that GPU utilization is almost always at less than 40 percent if I dont turn on performance mode in NitroSense (which pushes it to under 80, NOTE: only happens in fortnite and other games, espescially single players utilize 90 percent of both GPU and CPU).
Posted Sep 13, 2026, 6:07 AM UTC