Asus ROG terrible for gaming

Hi all, newbie here.

So i have the Asus ROG gx501, specs are:

-Intel i7-8750H (12) @ 4.100GHz
-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile
-16GB ram
-512GB SSD

i’m running KDE X11 for reference and i have tried multiple other distros.

so its a great laptop for gaming, but for some reason it does not use the GPU at 100% or even close, its more like 30% max which makes games run under 30fps with constant stutter.

Now, I have done alot of troubleshooting, i have the latest drivers, nvidia-smi shows its active.
i have used:
-gamemode
-proton
-ran every command in steam i could find online
-used Asus-Linuxs website to follow their procedure but still nothing

I assume its not switching to dGPU and still stuck in integrated graphics. I have looked into optimus and hybrid switching but “apparently” this laptop does not have that feature and is super strict with customizing the fan profiles so i cannot switch fan speed, etc.

I am at a loss, i cannot game and im dreading going back to windows as windows will keep putting my laptop in hibernate or sleep mode at random times (not throttling as itll be at idle and still going into sleep mode).

Yes laptop is in a well ventilated place and i’ve had cpu re-pasted a few years ago just for peace of mind. Does anyone have any other ideas? maybe even the same laptop model as mine and has successfully got the dgpu to do its job.

Cheers!

This looks like a power profile issue. It seems like your computer operates in power saving mode. This can happen if for example you are powering the computer over a USB hub that is plugged in into a USB-C port on the laptop.

Use some power monitoring tools to see which profile is in use at any time.

Use the nvidia-smi command to find out the power draw and the power state of the nvidia card. The nvidia card should be in power state P0 and power draw should be significant when graphics are intense on screen.
The last lines of the nvidia-smi command show the processes that are currently using the GPU:

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A      1002      G   /usr/lib/Xorg                       4MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Also glmark2 should show which GPU is being used. Example:

╰─$ glmark2 --size 1920x1080
=======================================================
    glmark2 2021.12
=======================================================
    OpenGL Information
    GL_VENDOR:     Intel
    GL_RENDERER:   Mesa Intel(R) UHD Graphics (CML GT2)
    GL_VERSION:    4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 22.0.3

Try using prime-run [command] to launch an executable using the dedicated GPU.
Example: prime-run glmark2