Crisis:3 experienced unexpected FPS fluctuations.
Crisis:3 experienced unexpected FPS fluctuations.
So far I've experimented with the issue a bit. I ran the game with the MSI afterburner overlay. I noticed it consumes around 3560MB of RAM, which isn't the concern here. CPU cores never went over 80%, and the GPU stays between 83-94%. When the frame rate drops, CPU usage quickly falls to about 30% and GPU to 25-30%, then it spikes again until the next drop. The GPU and CPU never hit the maximum temperatures I see in other titles (GPU maxes at 68°C, CPU at 44°C). In Crysis 3 the GPU reaches a max of 58°C and CPU 38°C, which suggests the game isn't heavily taxing the system.
Solution revealed in a video from PCGamingFTW. It appears Nvidia introduced a driver bug causing Crysis 3 to stutter and severe frame drops. The fix involves turning on Ultra low latency mode in the Nvidia control panel. You'll notice significant stabilization in the frame rate graph once this setting is activated. Note that enabling it as "on" alone isn't enough—select "ultra" for the effect.