m15 R5, massive slowdown at high performance

Question

M15R5

I tend to play hearthstone while I listen to prerecorded lectures. I had YouTube and hearthstone playing, as usual, and my screen became extremely saturated and gameplay slowed down. It then got dimmer and the gameplay smoothed out,only for it to become saturated and slow again.

I thought it might be an Nvidia issue so I manually designated my graphics card for hearthstone, but it didn't help. Restarting and shutting down the laptop also doesn't help.

I have had a few instances where the backflight flickers on and off when I put the laptop to sleep. I can tell it wakes itself up repeatedly bevlcause my Bluetooth speakers, which are connected to only the laptop, will come on and off. My keyboard backlight also goes off when the laptop wakes from sleep. I'm not sure if it's a related issue to the one I have above, but if it is, it might be a power issue.

Please help. I bought this laptop in July 2021, really hoping it will last throughout my graduate studies.

faintflicker · Answer

Hello, u/crimsom was spot on. The surge protector I was using was not providing constant powerflow. Plugged directly into the wall and the problems disappeared.

crimsom · Answer

Hi @faintflicker welcome to this user to user discussion forum. This is not Dell Support.

All the Alienware m15 laptops have Hybrid Power Design. The design intent of Hybrid Power is to allow the Alienware m15 systems to maintain full system performance under extreme heavy loading conditions. Hybrid Power will draw power from both ac adapter and battery. Without hybrid design, when the system power needs more than just ac adapter power, then the system will throttle due to lack of power. With hybrid design, it prevents system throttling, by drawing more power from the battery to support additional power needs by the system. Battery capacity will drop during heavy loading. When the battery capacity is low, then system throttling can be encountered.

Please click on Kudos to say thank you for response from user that is not employed by Dell. Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.

crimsom · Answer

Yes. Hybrid Power will draw power from both ac adapter and battery.

faintflicker · Answer

Not sure if that applies, as my laptop was plugged into a wall socket. Does the hybrid system kick in even when the PC is plugged in?

fhill · Answer

You'll be able to tell when it's in operation because the alien head start button will flash while it's charging. And, you can get a status by hovering the mouse over the battery icon in the tray. Happens all the time for me when I'm playing MSFS 2020.

faintflicker · Answer

Thank you. I will check on this tonight.

Alienware

m15 R5, massive slowdown at high performance

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