GTA + 970 = Frame Drops (Please help...)

Flashie · November 25, 2016

Hi

My GTA has always run perfectly on my current config without drops. It started two to three months ago with my frames constantly dipping, freezing and resulting in frames as low as 1 fps.

My current in-game settings ( Hasnt changed since the last year ):

Ignore Suggested Limits: On

DirectX Version: DirectX11

Screen Type: Windowed Borderless

Resolution: 1920x1080

Aspect Ratio: Auto

Refresh Rate: Auto

Output Monitor: 1

FXAA: On

MSAA: X2

NVidia TXAA: Off

VSync: On

Pause game on focus Loss: On

Population density: Max

Population Variety: Max

Distance Scaling: Max

Texture Quality: Very High

Shader Quality: Very high

Shadow quality: High

Reflection quality: Very high

Reflection MSAA: Off

Water Quality: High

Particles Quality: Very High

Grass Quality: High

Soft Shadows: Nvidia PCSS
Post FX: Very High

Motion Blur Strength: None

In-Game Depth of Field Effects: On

Anisotropic Filtering: X16
Ambient Occlusion: High

Tessellation: High

Need I state this for any tl;dr commenters - All my settings are the Default settings.

My systems specs:

Motherboard: MSI Z87-G43 Gaming

CPU: i7-4790K (4.0GHz)

GPU: MSI GTX 970 Armour 4GB GDDR5

Memory: Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer 1866MHz 8GB (Dual channel 2x4GB)

PSU: Antec Edge Silence 750

x2 SSD's (One for Windows; One for GTA)

x2 HDD's (One for Steam; One for backups)

When I play GTA - as previously shown in this forum - GPU usage drastically spikes down to 1 or evens 0% usage.

Memory usage chills around 85% to evens 97% usage when playing GTA - But has no correlation to when drops/spikes occurred such as the GPU which had a direct correlation.

What i've tested sofar:

Verifying integrity of game cache (No effect)

Reinstalling Steam (No effect)

Redownloading GTA V Clean (No effect)

Transferring GTA V to my SSD (No effect)

Updating and Rolling back of GPU Drivers (No effect)

Reinstalling Windows (No effect)

Popping in a clients 4GB 1333MHz memory sticks (No more spikes occured - But before you go and comment "Buy more memory" Tell me why it would suddenly be spiking and dropping because of memory; if it hasnt for the past 2 years?)

Replaced thermal paste on GPU and CPU - Non coductive: Added a 120mm fan to case for better air flow

If you've read up to here - Thanks

Appreciate any help

Edited November 25, 2016 by Flashie
Forgot to add the cleaning to the list of fixes completed