GPU utilization drops below 10% when using an external monitor

[u/AltSkz]

So, I've been using a second monitor for over a year now, and I've never had any issues with it, even when gaming. However, recently, my GPU utilization has been randomly dropping below 10% every few minutes while playing games, causing massive stutters and lag.

Right now, I'm mostly playing Monster Hunter: World, which should run just fine on my laptop. I've tried several things because I initially thought it was a driver or Windows issue. I've even reinstalled Windows and used DDU to completely uninstall and reinstall the GPU drivers, but nothing worked.

Then I tried unplugging my external monitor, and suddenly the game ran smoothly again, even on high graphics settings. My CPU and GPU temperatures are also fine, and I recently repasted them.

Has anyone experienced something similar or knows what might be causing this? Could the HDMI cable be the problem, or is there something else I should check?

Laptop: HP Victus 15 (RTX 2050)
Monitor: Lenovo R24e

Any help would be greatly appreciated!