slightly lower fps than usual (sometimes) not sure if hardware or software issue

[rezplog]

please read all details as i am fairly experienced and have likely already tried a run-of-the-mill troubleshooting suggestion that you may have off the top of your head.

specs: R9 Fury X, water cooled i7-4790K CPU, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 144hz ASUS monitor.

 

i have benchmarked this PC to hell and back and i know that in battlefield 1 on ultra, my fps never dips below the high 70's - low 80's at it's absolute worst. same exact benchmark with star wars battlefront 2. in battlefield v, the fps never dips below these same numbers on high settings. about a week ago i noticed some subtle issues with my gaming pc. battlefield v, battlefield 1, and star wars battlefront 2 were running dipping 15-20fps lower than usual, and sometimes in graphically busy areas, the fps seemed much lower than what was displayed on the counter (70-80 fps felt more like 40fps). i tried benchmarking GTA V to see if this was happening outside of origin games, and it was. GTA also felt choppier and was hitting 15-20 fps lower than usual in demanding areas. 

 

i have tried every possible software and hardware related fix, EVER. i have:

• rolled back AMD drivers to previous versions
• reinstalled graphics drivers with DDU
• formatted D drive where games were installed
• factory reset the entire PC
• updated mobo BIOS to the latest version
• air dusted all PC internals (got a lot of dust out, too)
• overclocked CPU by 15%
• made sure power settings were set to high performance

 

here's a few strange things i noticed after some experimenting. 

• the fps drops come and go. there have been 3 different times now where i thought i had finally fixed the issue. then the next day or a few hours later, the fps drops would return again.
• i tested my hardware on userbenchmark and all hardware scored a 90% or above.
• both CPU and GPU temps reported via MSI afterburner are excellent. 
• GTA V runs fine after a fresh bootup. however, once BF1, BFV, or battlefront starts having fps issues, GTA also has fps loss upon trying the game afterwards. 
• after shutting down the PC for about 10 minutes, GTA appears to run fine again. however, restarting the computer or shutting down and turning it back on again too quickly does not get rid of fps issues.
• i thought that the fps might be getting worse overtime during each gaming session, but that does not appear to be the case. after leaving GTA on for an hour after a fresh bootup, i came back to still find no fps issues. battlefront was also running butter smooth today, barely dipping below 100fps in a huge map on all high settings. however, upon turning the settings to ultra (my usual setting), the game freaked out and started hitting 50-60fps. this caused GTA's fps to decrease upon launching it after battlefront, and the problems would not reside until i shut the PC down for 10 minutes.

 

i want to say it's a hardware issue but that wouldn't make sense. if hardware was damaged, the games would be performing terribly or not performing at all, instead of underperforming by 15-20fps like mine is. also, it shouldn't be performing fine sometimes and sometimes not, as i've described above. technology should be binary: it either works or it doesn't. however, i don't see how it could possibly be a software issue either, as i've rolled back and reinstalled graphics drivers before nuking the entire PC with a full factory reset (and even updated BIOS) which should solve any software conflicts. if it was an optimization issue specifically with the origin games, then why would it be causing fps loss in GTA, a steam game? i'm completely stumped. i've solved countless performance issues in the past but i actually don't see how this is even possible. 

[Turtle Rig]

21 minutes ago, rezplog said:

please read all details as i am fairly experienced and have likely already tried a run-of-the-mill troubleshooting suggestion that you may have off the top of your head.

specs: R9 Fury X, water cooled i7-4790K CPU, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 144hz ASUS monitor.

 

i have benchmarked this PC to hell and back and i know that in battlefield 1 on ultra, my fps never dips below the high 70's - low 80's at it's absolute worst. same exact benchmark with star wars battlefront 2. in battlefield v, the fps never dips below these same numbers on high settings. about a week ago i noticed some subtle issues with my gaming pc. battlefield v, battlefield 1, and star wars battlefront 2 were running dipping 15-20fps lower than usual, and sometimes in graphically busy areas, the fps seemed much lower than what was displayed on the counter (70-80 fps felt more like 40fps). i tried benchmarking GTA V to see if this was happening outside of origin games, and it was. GTA also felt choppier and was hitting 15-20 fps lower than usual in demanding areas. 

 

i have tried every possible software and hardware related fix, EVER. i have:

• rolled back AMD drivers to previous versions
• reinstalled graphics drivers with DDU
• formatted D drive where games were installed
• factory reset the entire PC
• updated mobo BIOS to the latest version
• air dusted all PC internals (got a lot of dust out, too)
• overclocked CPU by 15%
• made sure power settings were set to high performance

 

here's a few strange things i noticed after some experimenting. 

• the fps drops come and go. there have been 3 different times now where i thought i had finally fixed the issue. then the next day or a few hours later, the fps drops would return again.
• i tested my hardware on userbenchmark and all hardware scored a 90% or above.
• both CPU and GPU temps reported via MSI afterburner are excellent. 
• GTA V runs fine after a fresh bootup. however, once BF1, BFV, or battlefront starts having fps issues, GTA also has fps loss upon trying the game afterwards. 
• after shutting down the PC for about 10 minutes, GTA appears to run fine again. however, restarting the computer or shutting down and turning it back on again too quickly does not get rid of fps issues.
• i thought that the fps might be getting worse overtime during each gaming session, but that does not appear to be the case. after leaving GTA on for an hour after a fresh bootup, i came back to still find no fps issues. battlefront was also running butter smooth today, barely dipping below 100fps in a huge map on all high settings. however, upon turning the settings to ultra (my usual setting), the game freaked out and started hitting 50-60fps. this caused GTA's fps to decrease upon launching it after battlefront, and the problems would not reside until i shut the PC down for 10 minutes.

 

i want to say it's a hardware issue but that wouldn't make sense. if hardware was damaged, the games would be performing terribly or not performing at all, instead of underperforming by 15-20fps like mine is. also, it shouldn't be performing fine sometimes and sometimes not, as i've described above. technology should be binary: it either works or it doesn't. however, i don't see how it could possibly be a software issue either, as i've rolled back and reinstalled graphics drivers before nuking the entire PC with a full factory reset (and even updated BIOS) which should solve any software conflicts. if it was an optimization issue specifically with the origin games, then why would it be causing fps loss in GTA, a steam game? i'm completely stumped. i've solved countless performance issues in the past but i actually don't see how this is even possible. 

You stumped me my friend.  Nice story post there lol.  See if you can try the Fury equivalent on nVidia platform.  There is some tangling going on with drivers and the OS.  Not a AMD first,  coughs.  Did you run DDU in safe mode ?  Also after doing that and install latest AMD drivers then put your BIOS to optimal and don't overclock and tell us what fps you gettings.  Also make sure vsync is set to off.

[rezplog]

24 minutes ago, Turtle Rig said:

You stumped me my friend.  Nice story post there lol.  See if you can try the Fury equivalent on nVidia platform.  There is some tangling going on with drivers and the OS.  Not a AMD first,  coughs.  Did you run DDU in safe mode ?  Also after doing that and install latest AMD drivers then put your BIOS to optimal and don't overclock and tell us what fps you gettings.  Also make sure vsync is set to off.

Thank you for the quick response. Vsync has always been off. I did DDU twice and both times have been in safe mode. I will try what you suggest next.

 

Also I did some more experimenting. After a fresh boot, I launched GTA and the fps was completely normal and smooth. I then launched battlefront 2 in high settings (since the last time i switched them to ultra the fps bugged out) and i was getting 90-100fps with absolutely no dips, which was fantastic. then after some playing i launched battlefield 1 on my defaulted ultra settings and things started bugging again. i was hitting 50-60fps in busy areas (when i usually get no less than 80). i tried lowering the settings to high and the fps improved a bit but still seemed choppy and abnormally lower than usual, then i turned the settings to medium, relatively same result, then low, which was better (but ridiculous when you consider it. i used to get constant 80+ on all ultra). then i quit bf1 and launched GTA again and the fps sure enough was horrible, around 50-60 in somewhat busy areas. 

 

one thing i noticed is that the fps does not decrease overtime during the session of a game. if i launch a game, then the fps will be the same for as long as i play that game, whether good or bad fps. when i close out of one game and launch another, however, the next game appears to have fps issues, but ONLY when the previously opened game had fps issues (e.g. GTA --> battlefront 2 was fine because both games were smooth, but then bf1 had fps issues which then caused GTA to have fps issues upon launching it again) 

 

my system appears to have built a sudden intolerance to the ultra setting of both bf1 and battlefront, as fps issues immediately arise (and continue to prevail in other games until shutting the PC down) when played in ultra graphics. this is odd because A.) my PC was running all of these games in ultra with no issues a week prior and B.) battlefront was running at 100fps on high, which should not cause such drastic problems upon turning up the settings to ultra.

[Turtle Rig]

11 minutes ago, rezplog said:

Thank you for the quick response. Vsync has always been off. I did DDU twice and both times have been in safe mode. I will try what you suggest next.

 

Also I did some more experimenting. After a fresh boot, I launched GTA and the fps was completely normal and smooth. I then launched battlefront 2 in high settings (since the last time i switched them to ultra the fps bugged out) and i was getting 90-100fps with absolutely no dips, which was fantastic. then after some playing i launched battlefield 1 on my defaulted ultra settings and things started bugging again. i was hitting 50-60fps in busy areas (when i usually get no less than 80). i tried lowering the settings to high and the fps improved a bit but still seemed choppy and abnormally lower than usual, then i turned the settings to medium, relatively same result, then low, which was better (but ridiculous when you consider it. i used to get constant 80+ on all ultra). then i quit bf1 and launched GTA again and the fps sure enough was horrible, around 50-60 in somewhat busy areas. 

 

one thing i noticed is that the fps does not decrease overtime during the session of a game. if i launch a game, then the fps will be the same for as long as i play that game, whether good or bad fps. when i close out of one game and launch another, however, the next game appears to have fps issues, but ONLY when the previously opened game had fps issues (e.g. GTA --> battlefront 2 was fine because both games were smooth, but then bf1 had fps issues which then caused GTA to have fps issues upon launching it again) 

 

my system appears to have built a sudden intolerance to the ultra setting of both bf1 and battlefront, as fps issues immediately arise (and continue to prevail in other games until shutting the PC down) when played in ultra graphics. this is odd because A.) my PC was running all of these games in ultra with no issues a week prior and B.) battlefront was running at 100fps on high, which should not cause such drastic problems upon turning up the settings to ultra.

Yes my friend we want to rule out your OS your mobo your cpu and ram.  Best way is try another video card on your machine.  I don't know where you live but you should be near a best buys or frys.  Grab a card equivalent of what you have now and preferably nVidia and report back to us.

[rezplog]

21 minutes ago, Turtle Rig said:

Yes my friend we want to rule out your OS your mobo your cpu and ram.  Best way is try another video card on your machine.  I don't know where you live but you should be near a best buys or frys.  Grab a card equivalent of what you have now and preferably nVidia and report back to us.

the problem is i have a major budget crunch right now (i'm a college student) and i can't afford a new card. is there any other method you suggest to rule out OS, mobo, cpu, and ram?

[rezplog]

i just noticed the RAM on userbenchmark tested "good" and not great like everything else. maybe that has something to do with it? 

 

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/16202407

 

especially considering the fps drops occur when looking at busy areas in game. 

[Turtle Rig]

24 minutes ago, rezplog said:

i just noticed the RAM on userbenchmark tested "good" and not great like everything else. maybe that has something to do with it? 

 

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/16202407

 

especially considering the fps drops occur when looking at busy areas in game. 

Your fine 2600Mhz kit would suffice.  When you look at a busy area of the game everyones frame rate drops.  So are you saying they used to be good but recently they dropped ?

[rezplog]

7 minutes ago, Turtle Rig said:

Your fine 2600Mhz kit would suffice.  When you look at a busy area of the game everyones frame rate drops.  So are you saying they used to be good but recently they dropped ?

yep that is exactly what i meant. before when i looked at the same busy area on a particular map it would dip into 80's maaaybe 78-79 tops. now it dips into the low 60's and even 50's. 

[Turtle Rig]

Just now, rezplog said:

yep that is exactly what i meant. before when i looked at the same busy area on a particular map it would dip into 80's maaaybe 78-79 tops. now it dips into the low 60's and even 50's. 

Hmmmm.  Can I ask what you have done from the time it was a high fps to the time the fps gets botched down to 50's.  You must have done something.  Like install a driver perhaps or install some stupid app or something lol.

[rezplog]

4 minutes ago, Turtle Rig said:

Hmmmm.  Can I ask what you have done from the time it was a high fps to the time the fps gets botched down to 50's.  You must have done something.  Like install a driver perhaps or install some stupid app or something lol.

this is why this problem is so puzzling to me. i have done absolutely nothing both software or physical (hardware) wise in between. even if it was a software issue, it would have been fixed during the factory reset, but i never download any suspicious programs and i always run malwarebytes to be safe. as far as possible hardware damage, i have not touched, transported, or modified the pc in any way (apart from dusting the PC after fps was already low). it has sat in the same spot since january. very strange. 

[LogicalDrm]

Question is, do you notice drops without looking at the counter? If not, then it's more about how frames are calculated and games still running smooth.

[rezplog]

Quote

 

so in case anyone was wondering i finally found the fix, and it was the most obscure thing i could imagine. entering "dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth" into command prompt somehow fixed the issue, permanently. i can't imagine how that it's even possible because i factory reset the PC and upgraded my BIOS but somehow it worked. been getting my normal fps again with absolutely no issues. out of curiosity though, if anyone knows exactly why that command line fixed something that a factory reset couldn't, i'd love to hear it.

[Ruckledge]

On 4/14/2019 at 2:08 AM, rezplog said:

so in case anyone was wondering i finally found the fix, and it was the most obscure thing i could imagine. entering "dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth" into command prompt somehow fixed the issue, permanently. i can't imagine how that it's even possible because i factory reset the PC and upgraded my BIOS but somehow it worked. been getting my normal fps again with absolutely no issues. out of curiosity though, if anyone knows exactly why that command line fixed something that a factory reset couldn't, i'd love to hear it.

Yea bro this helped me too

But i have to do it everytime and restart my pc

[LogicalDrm]

10 hours ago, Ruckledge said:

Yea bro this helped me too

But i have to do it everytime and restart my pc

You could make that to run automatically at startup. Using scheduled tasks.

[Goschpi]

I think i have kind of the same issue, sometimes i get worse fps (25-45% lower) until i restart my system. No drops, just steady worse performance. This never happens during gaming, most of the time after i switch to another game or start a game after browsing, then it's bad from the start of the game until i restart the system. Restarting the game doesn't help. I have gone through all the usually recommende stuff, like updating drivers, reinstalled windows, updated bios, ..

Your solution doesn't help in my case, so do you have any other hint what i could try?
System:

• CPU: Ryzen 3700x
• MB : MSI B450 gaming pro carbon ac
• RAM: 2x16gb corsair vengaence 3200mhz
• GPU: MSI 2070Super
• Drives : 1x M.2 SSD (Win10), 3x sata SSD (Games, etc.), 1x sata HDD