Desktop Windows Manager causes severe game lag

I have a Dell Inspiron 7501 with the following specifications:

OS: Windows 10

Processor: intel core i7-10750

Memory: 16 GB RAM

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650

For the past few months I have been facing some problems while playing a 3D game called SpaceEngine on my computer. The game lags severely and the FPS drops to as low as 6. To pinpoint the issue I opened up Task Manager and found something weird.

In the rare instance that the game does NOT lag which does happen sometimes, the Task Manager showed the following stats,

The GPU usage of the game was around 80-83% and the Desktop Windows Manager's (DWM) GPU usage was around 13.5%. However when the game DOES lag, the Task Manager is as follows,

Now the game has a spiked GPU usage of 100% and the Desktop Windows Manager is only using 0.8% of the GPU. I have seen this correlation between the game's FPS drop and this change in the GPU usage of the game and the DWM several times.

Why is this happening? Why does DWM's GPU usage suddenly drop while simultaneously spiking the game's GPU usage and causing massive lags and FPS drops in the game? What should I do to fix this?

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Why is desktop window manager using so much of my GPU?

Graphics hardware is responsible for visual representations on your computer. If the drivers are outdated or corrupted, they can be causing the high CPU usage. In this case, you can update, roll back, or reinstall the GPU driver to solve the problem.

Why is my game suddenly so laggy?

Texture-related settings are known to cause stutter lag if set too high for your system to cope with. Textures are everywhere in a game, and the more detailed they are, the larger the amount of data that has to be transferred back and forward on your system, and the more hitching and stuttering you're likely to get.

Why is my PC so laggy when I play games?

One of the most common causes of lag is other programs running in the background. These programs can use up system resources and make it difficult for your game to run smoothly. Google Chrome is known to be a big resource hog, so try closing it if you're experiencing lag.

How do I fix my high end PC game lag?

Some games might have a frame limit set, restricting your maximum FPS. If v-sync is turned on, this too can limit your maximum FPS and interfere with your gaming sessions. Check the game's graphics settings to see if there's a frame rate cap applied. Other settings can also help smooth out performance too.

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Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Images: Andrea Piacquadio, Andri, Ketut Subiyanto, Andrea Piacquadio