TL;DR
Fn
+Q
)Performance Mode and Cooling
To maximize gaming performance, ensure your Lenovo Legion is set to performance mode. This can be done by pressing Fn
+Q
, which allows both the CPU and GPU to run at full power [2:2]. Keeping your laptop cool is crucial as heat can throttle performance significantly. Investing in a good cooling pad like the IETS GT500 can help maintain optimal temperatures
[5].
Software Optimization
Uninstalling unnecessary software can free up system resources. For instance, removing McAfee and GeForce Experience has been suggested, while updating drivers directly through Nvidia can keep your system running smoothly [2:1]. Additionally, using tools like MSI Afterburner and HWInfo can help monitor system temperatures and ensure everything is functioning correctly during gameplay
[2:1].
Hardware Adjustments
Consider overclocking the GPU for enhanced performance, but be cautious as this can increase heat output [1:4]. Some users have found that replacing stock RAM with faster modules can lead to better performance
[4:1]. If you're experiencing performance issues, reverting to older drivers may resolve frame rate problems
[3:2].
General Tips
For those looking to balance performance and longevity, setting the CPU power limit to around 93% can prevent overheating and excessive fan noise while only slightly reducing frame rates [5:3]. Regularly checking for Windows updates and disabling unnecessary background processes like Windows Defender can also improve performance
[3:5].
These steps, along with community resources such as Discord servers dedicated to Lenovo Legion users, can provide additional support and tips for optimizing your gaming experience [1:1]
[3:1].
I just got legion laptop and I want it to perform as good as it can. I know all the basic stuff ( disable/delete all unnecessary startup programs, delete temp folders, process lasso, battery power mode, etc..
Are there any more tweaks that I could do?
Keep it in performance mode. That's about all you can do.
Heat is your biggest performance throttler. Keep your laptop cool.
Yeah I have a laptop cooler to keep it elevated
Overclock
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Hi guys please help me out, This is my first Gaming laptop and I don’t want to mess around with it.
Please need advise on how to optimize gaming performance and productivity.
Thank you!
A good place to start is the pinned post at the top of r/LenovoLegion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LenovoLegion/comments/w2e94l/i_just_got_my_device_what_should_i_do/
Beyond that, if you want gaming performance, use Fn
+Q
to put the laptop into Performance mode. The LED on the power button will turn red when you're in this mode. It will let the CPU and GPU run at full power. If you unplug and use battery, use Fn
+Q
to switch to Quiet mode (blue LED) which uses much less power.
People here advised you to you Lenovo Legion Toolkit instead of Lenovo Vantage but I noticed on the Toolkit webpage under compatibity is says "Generations 6 (MY2021), 7 (MY2022) and 8 (MY2023) are supported, although some features also work on the 5th generation (MY2020)"... so I wasn't sure if your Gen 9 (and mine) were supported...
Did it work out for you?
Toolkit works just fine for my Legion Pro 7i Gen 9.
Forgot to add the picture of the laptop LOL
Its a Legion pro 7i gen 9 with 4090 windows pro 32 gb ram 2 tb ssd
I have the same one and it’s amazing. Have fun and game hard haha
Delete McAfee
Install lenovo legion toolkit (it’s on GitHub just Google it), disable vantage after that. Use toolkit exclusively.
Use Steam to benchmark using timespy and then download cinebench r23 for CPU benchmark.
Use MSI afterburner and hwinfo to monitor temps during gaming to make sure everything is running as it should.
Delete GeForce experience (kinda useless) and just update drivers through Nvidia. Make sure not to install GeForce experience again.
I’d say to invest in a cooler (IETS 500 or Ilano V12). I got the V12 for mine and it’s amazing.
enjoy :)
You still think this is the best options? I just got the same exact legion
Yupp
i feel like the computer is unable to deliver full power (even when plugged and on performance mode) whether it’s on balanced quiet or performance mode with gpu overclocked enabled i get the exact same stats and cpu/gpu usage remain very low any fix?
here is a cs2 benchmark (max settings 1440p resolution) as you can see max fps stays at 135 and usage is very low
Spec of my computer:
Amd ryzen 7 260 rtx 5050 8gb 16gb ram
I think its the drivers you gotta revert em back to old ones everyone been facing frame rate issues in their new laptops and pretty sure reverting nvidia drivers to old ones fixes performance.
i play cs2 a lot but unfortunately this game just isnt optimized even after 2 years after its released. whats your settings like in game?
Might be Windows doing some shenanigans in the background. Let it finish what it wants to do. It's usually updates and the search indexer uploading your information to Microsoft. Either you turn off the built-in spyware from Microsoft or you wait for it to complete its job.
how to turnoff?
Window key+R Type service.msc
Navigate to search
Properties
Disable
Apply
Then there's also Windows Defender scanning everything, so you might as well just leave it overnight.
its display is 15.3 right ? is it small? are you grateful
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Hijacking the thread... Does anyone get micro stutters in games? I'm on win 10 with ftpm off and in some games I have these occosianal amnoying sttuters (gta v , hunt showdown etc.) I also own the L7 pro 2021 with RTX 3070 Thanks
edit : I play on an external 1080p 144hz monitor connected using dp with freesync on
I have seen many users with a better ram speed had much better performance than my l5 rtx 3070 so I believe the bad stock ram has bad effects on the performance
I have had this laptop for approximately two years now and still going strong! I've spent a lot of time tweaking and messing with different settings for this laptop, and to spare everyone else from all the research, I have put together this guide to make it a little easier. These are the tweaks I have made to ensure the best possible performance on my laptop.
Specs:
Legion 7i 15IMH05
CPU: i7-10750H
GPU: RTX 2060
Before we start off, the importance of a cooling pad is stressed. I am currently using the IETS GT500 cooler, which reduced temperatures by 10 degrees Celcius. If you don't have a cooling pad, even raising the back of the laptop a little bit can do wonders, as these laptops are known to run hot!
1) CPU TWEAKS - Undervolting:
Undervolting decreased my temperatures by about 7 degrees Celcius. Even if you do not see any decrease in temps, your CPU would be able to be more efficient and boost higher for longer periods of time. This leads to increased performance across the board. Before undervolting, my CPU would throttle down to 4000MHz due to thermal throttling. Now, I can run 4300MHz indefinitely, with lower power consumption and heat.
- Software needed - Throttlestop, Cinebench, ISLC
a) You will need to go into advanced BIOS, go under CPU options, scroll all the way to the bottom, and disable CFG lock as well as CPU Overclocking lock (may be different if you are on a different BIOS. Search this up on the internet).
Disclaimer: According to u/kokuryuha34, 12th gen CPUs have voltages locked; only the HK CPUs are capable of this. You may be able to unlock the voltages VIA BIOS flash, but I don't recommend this. Do this at your own risk.
b) Start up Throttlestop, you will get a warning prompt. Do not worry, this is completely safe.
c) Head into Options.
d) Looking at the Throttlestop GUI, check Speed Shift EPP and ensure that the value is 0 (for max performance). Uncheck BD PROCHOT and Speedstep. Do this for the Performance profile, as well as the Downclocked and Failsafe ones.
e) Head on over to FIVR. Follow this guide to undervolt. I was able to get both -131.8 mV stable on CPU Core and Cache. Every laptop will have different values, this is based on trial and error. Uncheck Thermal Velocity Boost (this will throttle your CPU when it is above 70°C.
f) Apply this to all profiles. Head back into FIVR and reduce Turbo Ratio Limits by one or two ticks for the Downclocked Profile. This will reduce your clocks a little bit with little to no performance loss while thermal throttling . If you are still uncomfortable with temperatures after this, you can do this for the Performance profile. I have reduced clocked on my Downclocked profile by 2 ticks, and the Failsafe by 4. Luckily, I do not thermal throttle anymore after undervolting, so I don't have to worry about this. (This will allow your CPU to throttle to the speed you have set under Turbo Ratio Limits for the Downclocked profile when your CPU reaches the DTS under Alarm. In my case, when my CPU reaches 100 °C, it is throttled down to 41 GHz until temps are okay again, then switch back to the performance profile).
g) Follow this guide to have Throttlestop automate and run on startup without you having to open it up every time.
If you are still thermal throttling and/or unhappy with your temperatures, and are okay with opening up your laptop, you can look into repasting with Honeywell PTM 7950 (the best thermal paste for this laptop).
OPTIONAL:
>!This process yielded an increase in Cinebench R23 from 7350 to 7830 in Multi-Core, and Single Core from 1174 to 1245.!<
h) Download ISLC (This will remove stutters in game by cleaning your ram)
We are now done with tweaking our CPU for better performance and reduced temperatures!
2) GPU TWEAKS - Overclocking
For max performance, ensure that the Discrete Graphics option is selected in BIOS! (u/EVH4N)
Unfortunately, MSI OC Scanner doesn't work with these GPU chips. If it does, go ahead and use Afterburner instead! Luckily, there is another software that does if Afterburner's OC scan doesn't work, and the profiles transfer over to MSI Afterburner. On laptops, overclocking is basically undervolting due to the GPU being power limited. I suggest always updating to the latest drivers, and using DDU to ensure a clean installation of new drivers.
Software needed - ASUS GPU TWEAK III, MSI Afterburner, 3DMark
a) Download ASUS GPU Tweak, go ahead and click on OC Scanner. Max out Voltage Limit, Power Limit, as well as Temp Limit. MSI Afterburner will not allow you to do this, but the settings will transfer over. Start the scan, it should take about 30 minutes to complete.
>!I was able to get an average of +206MHz overclock on the core and +900MHz on the memory. This process increased my 3DMark Time Spy score from 6592 to 7543, and my Fire Strike score from 16037 to 17517. Like the CPU undervolt, these overclock values will be different for everybody. All trial and error!!<
TIP: If you are on the new Nvidia Game Ready Driver (527.56), you might be able to adjust the Power Limit %. If you are, slide it all the way up to the max! (In my case, it was 137%, which allows the power limit to be 110W). At 100% with my overclock, my average GPU clock ran between 1500-1750MHz, but with the increased power limit, I was able to push my card to run around 1800-2000MHz. (Proven to be a visual bug by u/Legion070Gaming. Regardless, don't be afraid to push it all the way up to the max if it is available. The default value should already be maxed out).
Although this whole process requires a lot of time in terms of stress testing to ensure stability, it was incredibly worth it! My 0.1% and 0.01% lows as well as framerates have increased by a noticeable amount, and my CPU and GPU are both running more efficiently (not to mention, more quietly), and my laptop is running much better and stutter-free. These machines are absolute beasts.
FINAL TIPS (Legion Specific):
Hopefully, this guide helps someone out. Let me know if I missed anything! If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. Enjoy the extra free performance!
[THIS POST WILL BE EDITED AND REVISED FOR CLARIFICATION AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION]
Does this apply to 12th gen intel? The article doesnt seem to cover p/e core/cache
Hey there! This should also be applicable to 12th gen Intel CPUs. My specific CPU doesn’t have specified Performance and Efficiency cores, but from my knowledge, all of these should be undervolted the same. If you would like more performance in terms of CPU using AVX instructions, you can undervolt the core more than the cache. In my case, I found that it made my system more unstable (TS Bench started spewing out errors) and I had to lower the cache undervolt, by a considerable amount so I just left them the same. In some laptops, you can undervolt the core about -100mv more than the cache, in some cases, I've seen people able to double their core undervolt when reducing cache undervolt. I found that the cache undervolt did more than core to mitigate temps, so my goal here was the max stable cache undervolt; I just set core to be the same. If core undervolt was increased in my case, I started getting errors and crashes. Do this at your own risk! (I will edit this into the guide as well). I hope this helps!
12th gen cpu have voltages locked, it's now unfortunately only a part of the HK CPU's. The TS author has confirmed that its an unwritable register.
you have an upvote from me too, however, for me personally, this falls under the category of "stressing/maxing out" a laptop. what i usually do is always set the max power limit of the CPU to about 93% and on a balanced profile. couple of reasons: laptop never gets too hot, fans never go max, and longevity without wearing out the (cheap) components. you might lose 3 to 5 frames in games.
anyway, good guide nevertheless for those who choose to play more with their laptop!
Thank you, and I agree! I didn't really know how to word the title, but I'm hoping that this guide will help someone out there looking for this information and spare them from the research...
Limiting the Power Limit and the boost definitely helps to mitigate temps when games are more GPU bound! I'm glad you found a solution that works out for you, and again, thank you!
guide looks really good. I was planning on doing all these tweaks over the next few days so I'll be sure to use this and comment on its usefulness
at the start though i think you meant 4300mhz not 43000mhz
Didn't see the typo... Corrected now, thank you! I look forward to hearing your results. Hopefully, this was of some use!
I gave you a upvote for the effort but didn't really read the whole thing.
Too many details and technical things for a lower gamer like me playing just when I have free time.
Understandable! With my laptop slowly going out of date, I'm just trying to increase performance to keep up with demanding games. Thanks for the upvote anyway, I appreciate it!
Battery life can be extended by capping the CPU limit's for different power plans. You can also use the steps given here to extend battery life further on any Legion laptop: https://laptopwiki.eu/index.php/docs/extend-battery-life/
Thank you! Edited the post to add this!
Hey everyone,
I recently got a Lenovo Legion laptop and expected a smooth, high-performance experience — especially for the price and the specs it came with. But to be honest, it's been underwhelming so far. The system just feels sluggish.
Even during basic use like web browsing, watching YouTube, or working with a few apps, things aren’t as snappy as I expected. Sometimes apps take longer to load, multitasking gets choppy, and games don't perform nearly as well as they should given the hardware. I’ve checked temps and they’re within normal range — no signs of thermal throttling.
What’s even more frustrating is that I can't update anything through the Lenovo Vantage app. Every time I try to update drivers or firmware from there, it simply fails.
Things I’ve already tried:
Specs (for reference):
Ryzen 7 8745H, RTX 4060, 16 GB DDR5 5600 MHz ram and 512 GB nvme gen 4 storage.
At this point, I’m not sure if this is just how these laptops behave out of the box or if something’s wrong on the software/hardware side. Any Legion users out there face something similar? Or anyone have a fix for the Vantage update issue?
Thanks in advance!
Anything related to the web can be an internet issue.
Mine is the intel with 32gb ram, gotta say it performs splendidly, literally runs any game at max graphics. Try swithcing to hybrid i gpu
just reinstall windows. if vantage isnt even working correctly maybe u have corrupt install. reinstall windows, download the updated drivers from lenovo. then run windows updates again. after that you dont need to use vantage to check for updates. windows will update everything for you except the dedicated gpu driver, u need to update that from nvidia urself every month or so. as long as ur keeping up with windows updates, the only thing vantage will update is bios, dolby vision, and nvidia geforce experience which is a outdated and dead app so do not download it thru vantage. no idea why they still keep pushing it on vantage.
edit like others said check to see if u only have 1 16gb stick, if you do add another 16gb stick, but since ur having software issues i would just reinstall windows anyway since ur getting even weird updated errors. it takes like 20 mins. just reinstall windows first from a USB media, format the drive, and do a true clean install to make sure ur 100% good on the software side
You might only have one stick of ram. If So that would limit performance.
I had the same issue on my when I just got it, just did a windows reset and everything is working as should be. The unit I bought was a display unit in store though so they had a bunch of stuff loaded on it.
Also brother this app which you showed is not for legion.. Its a lenovo software bug which loads the normal app randomly instead of the legion one
You can uninstall Vantage service..it will be inside program file x86 / Lenovo / VantageService
Dont uninstall lenovo Vantage app
Then just relaunch the lenovo Vantage app
All full except from max CPU temp + undervolting over Throttlestop + optionally a cooling pad or at least elevating your laptop.
It all comes down to one thing, cooling. The more you provide the higher the headroom for your GPU and CPU to boost/overclock. From there I personally would push the GPU since that is typically the bottleneck for what I play.
Gpu ctgp 115w and cpu to gpu dynamic boost 25w in order to reach 140w for your 4060
Use extreme mode instead
For me changing these settings didnt do too much, instead i did a cpu undervolt over vantage and disabled the efficiency cores in BIOS. Performance is the same as the standard Extreme Temperature Mode but the temps rarely go over 80 and stay around 70
So if you have battery life of about 2-3 hours with normal usage on your Lenovo Legion laptop, this guide is for you. Nothing is wrong with your laptop, there's no hardware defect etc. This is all due to.... misconfiguration. By following these steps I was able to get around 4-5hrs runtime. FYI I have the non RGB AMD 4800H/GTX1660ti version
So on to the instructions.
Step 1: Disable page file, install Intelligent Standby List Cleaner (ISLC), and make sure it runs on startup AND on battery power. This is because NVMe drives do use a fair amount of power (as much as 7 watts) when they're active, so no page file, less NVMe use, more battery. Once you're using at least 16GB of RAM, you shouldn't really need a pagefile unless you're doing crazy things like several browsers and games open at the same time. ISLC is there to make sure that the standby memory in Windows (which grows without auto cleaning) doesn't fill your system memory and cause crashes.
Step 2: Enable hybrid graphics. This will save about 3-5W on regular usage.
Step 3: Install Radeon Settings Lite from the windows App Store, go the the display section, and turn OFF Vari-Bright. This has an annoying habit of tweaking the screen colors in the name of saving battery, but making it less legible, and then you increase screen brightness to avoid that, and yup, battery is wasted.
Step 4: When on battery, try to not have your backlight on or USB devices you're not using plugged in. Those increase power draw by a little.
Step 5 (the big one): Go to Power options in control panel, and we're going to modify the advanced options for the Balanced power profile with the following settings.
Wireless Adapter Settings: Battery- Max power saving / Plugged in - max performance
USB selective Suspend: enabled on both
PCI Express Link State Power Management: Battery - Max power savings, Plugged in - off
Processor Power management (min/cooling policy/max): Battery - 5/passive/80, Plugged in - 80/active/100)
AMD Power Slider: Battery - battery saver, plugged in - better performance
Swiitchable dynamic graphics: Battery - optmize power savings, plugged in - optimize performance
AMD graphics power settings: Battery - optimize battery, plugged in - maximize performance
Also remember to set the Windows Power slider (click on battery icon in taskbar when on battery) to the 'Better Battery' mode at least)
Thanks for reading and I hope this helped. Upvote it like mad, I really want other people to see this because it took me a long time to figure out all of this.
Additional suggestions: Disable iCue/uninstall as it reduces battery life... at the cost of losing RGB customization I guess?
...you could add disabling ryzens cpu boost
setting the max CPU state to 80% prevents it from boosting
Does it effect performance much. Also why adjust in balanced rather than quiet mode. Quiet/low power is what I use on the go, balanced for everything else, such as when I got usb-c charging or casual work at home, and IDK if performance boosts performance for gaming more than balanced based on what I heard
Personally, I doubt the negligible power difference between 80% and the max non-boost clock is worth the performance hit.
Makes sense to me to leave it at 100%, then disable boost with the 'Processor performance boost mode' power option.
Did not know that. That is so much easier to advice than regedit :D
Disabling the page file will haunt you in games such as warzone.
Can you do an Intel version? Thank you! Also add disable iCue for the people that have it ..kills a good 50% of battery lol .
Oh sorry I wouldn’t have hands on experience to tell you what works and what doesn’t on intel. Sure I’ll add a section for that.
Upvoting because a guide that doesn't turn down the brightness down to unusable levels.
You can also get more control over your Ryzen APU using the AMD APU Tuning Utility. I set mine to 25 W absolute max, and still boost over 4 GHz. Runs cool and quiet even on a Legion S7.
If you’re doing basic tasks to save battery 25W is a bit too high
Most of the time it stays around 10-15, but if I'm gonna be away from the plug for a while I set it to max out at either 10 or 15.
Hey y'all,
I am a recent owner of the Lenovo Legion 5, I was wondering if there is an optimization guide for this laptop for both gaming and work i.e expanding battery life? Also, are there any programs I should install for fan noise, monitoring fps/temps, etc? Any how thanks in advance!
If you have an intel (like I do), just MSI afterburner. Monitor the thermals, performance, fan speed, etc. and bask in your own glory of making the right buying choice.
Real talk: Nothing. Just use the Mux switch in Lenovo vantage to enhance battery backup. For enhancing battery life, again use Lenovo vantage and select the battery mode which doesn’t charge beyond 60% (forgot name, sorry).
Heyo,
I actually have the AMD version, I should have mentioned that my apologies. I'll get MSI afterburner as I have heard good things about it! Any guide on how to setup that? The Mux switch is turning on/off hybrid mode right? If you ever remember the battery mode please let me know! I typically get two hours uncharged which might be due to the 165 hz display.
Download and explore the software. On the monitoring tab, you should see many metrics. Just select the ones you wanna see and add them by selecting checkbox.
Mux: Yes. Hybrid mode off: Nvidia GPU. Hybrid mode on: iGPU.
Battery: There are only 2 settings I think. Select the bottom one. Sorry should’ve mentioned - select bottom only if you plan on using AC power most of the times (for gaming, anyway need to). Lenovo won’t charge battery beyond 60% ever. This enhances life of battery over the years.
Explore Lenovo vantage software fully. I game on performance mode on (Fn+Q) and use Auto mode for other stuff.
To my knowledge, intel is cooler than Ryzen in Legion. But it is still cooler than competitors. You made the right choice. It even has the high quality thermal paste. Worst case, you’ll need undervolting - but that should come in the future.
Enjoy your laptop.
Put in performance mode (in vantage) when gaming. Turn on battery conservation in vantage. Watch temps and fps with msi afterburner. Game on and have fun ! It’s a great laptop!
Cool beans, I appreciate the advice!
Depending on the kind of games (and if you have Nvidia) there are a few things to boost FPS if you do not care about fan noise. Not sure if you have Nvidia though.
Heyo,
I've got Nvidia! I believe it is Geforce Experience to boost FPS, I'll go ahead and check it ou!
It is. So in the Geforce experience turn Whisper mode completely off, and any battery saving mode off.
It is. So in the Geforce experience turn Whisper mode completely off, and any battery-saving mode off.
formance under Global, and under PhysX settings make sure your GPU is selected. Should get pretty decent FPS
I don't own a Legion but I have seen video of a Legion optimization before here
hope it help
Thanks! I'll have to check it out!
I just bought a new laptop and my expectations of it was pretty high. After testing some games, I've noticed that it does not perform as good as I thought it would, giving even specs to some of my friends' laptops whose specs are relatively lower compared to mine (legion has 7640hs and a 4060 140watt). Are there tweaks that I can do? Or is it really just like this?
And what is that relatively "underperforming" compare to your friend's ? Can you be more specific?
Also 4060 isn't that good compare to previous gen like 3060 it's like 15% improvement because 140watt power scaling for 4060 is a scam - pumping 140 watt you probably getting 2% performance improvement from 100 watt. The card is way more power efficient at lower wattage than 3060 tho
how to improve gaming performance on Lenovo Legion
Here are some key considerations to improve gaming performance on your Lenovo Legion:
Update Drivers:
Optimize Game Settings:
Adjust Power Settings:
Cooling and Ventilation:
Manage Background Processes:
Upgrade Hardware:
Use Game Mode:
Network Optimization:
Recommendation: Start with software optimizations like updating drivers and adjusting game settings, as these are the easiest and most cost-effective methods. If performance issues persist, consider hardware upgrades like adding more RAM or switching to an SSD for a noticeable improvement in load times and overall responsiveness.
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