What I don't understand is that sometimes there is very little lag and today there is a lot.... why the variation?
that sounds like thermal throttling to me. Intel chips on gaming laptops are known to get really hot. most intel cpus will throttle once it reaches the threshold of ~ 80c. it will force the laptop to drop the CPU clock to prevent the laptop from burning / breaking.
this will cause temporary framerate drops and general performance drops to cool it down.
depending on the ambient temp, etc, it may overheat faster than usual.
"Best performance" will make it use more resources, thus make it run hotter if the cooling isn't very good. (this was just to see if there was a hardware bottleneck based on power)
If setting it back to balanced helps, then go for it. at least it should hold on a bit longer per session.
though, as you mentioned, you experience lag on a common basis.
this suggests that the system cannot keep up (there could be various reasons for this). this could cause the connection to lag.
sorry for not being able to help v.v.. it's hard to determine the issue like this.
Run your windows updates, put your old powerplan back, reboot, and see how it behaves.
hopefuilly you find the solution.
I suggest downloading "throttlestop" you can use this to undervolt the CPU (may be a bit too advanced for you, but it comes with the ability to monitor the CPU and GPU temps at any time as well)
If you notice that the laptop is actually overheating; then you can look up how to undervolt the CPU to reduce the heat without any performance impact.
This post was edited by tshockterrarian on Jun 22 2025 02:03pm