Demanding games are leading to abrupt frame drops.
Demanding games are leading to abrupt frame drops.
Hello everyone,
I recently acquired a new PC a few years back for gaming purposes. Just like with the first monster PC I bought, I initially played older games for a while before moving on to more demanding titles. Recently, I encountered a similar problem with three open-world games I had purchased: Red Dead Redemption 2, Death Stranding, and Ghosts of Tsushima. At first, everything worked smoothly, but over time the screen would briefly go black before returning at a much slower frame rate. In Death Stranding, this issue also appeared at lower resolutions, possibly due to a widescreen mod in that game. I can usually fix the graphics settings by adjusting the resolution, which restores the game to normal performance. However, sometimes the game crashes entirely (especially RDR2).
Here are my system details:
- Case: Phanteks Enthoo 719 Super Tower
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
- Cooler: Corsair H115i 280mm Liquid Cooler
- Motherboard: ASUS Prime X570-Pro
- RAM: 32GB DDR4-3600
- Graphics Card: AMD RX 6800XT
- OS Drive: 500GB NVME SSD
- Storage: 4TB Mechanical Hard Drive
- Power Supply: 850W Gold
- OS: Windows 10 Home
- Monitor: Samsung Odyssey G9 5120x1440p
As the monitor shows, even at 1440p, the resolution is close to 4K due to pixel scaling. I checked temperatures and load during gameplay, and I was able to maintain around 70 FPS with the graphics card at about 70°C and CPU around 60°C. The CPU usage stayed low, around 30-40%, so it doesn’t seem like a bottleneck.
I initially thought it might be due to one or two buggy games, but now that Ghosts of Tsushima experienced this issue recently, I’m more convinced there’s a hardware problem at work—though I still don’t know exactly what it is!
I've attempted various methods before, but they didn't help. Fortunately, exploring alternative fixes revealed the problem. It seems one of the drivers was likely installed incorrectly—since I performed a clean install of the newest AMD drivers instead of just upgrading—that resolved the issue!
Thanks for that helpful tip; it not only fixed my problems with all three games but also improved performance by 5-10 frames in each!
Other approaches you might consider
Windows high-performance settings can be adjusted. Adrenaline doesn’t offer power modes like Nvidia does; it seems Windows controls the power mode for AMD graphics cards, which could help stabilize the card if the refresh rate is causing problems. You might also test different refresh rates to see if the issue persists.
Check the graphics driver and consider using an older version. It’s also useful to look at which driver versions users prefer most.
In Bios, enable or disable Sam (Smart Access Memory) – ReBar/Resizable Bar – as needed. Disabling it at the driver level is possible but will require a restart.
Adjust the pagefile settings to a smaller limit, such as 1024MB initially and up to 2048MB maximum. This can prevent the pagefile from expanding too much after prolonged use, which is especially helpful if your operating system has limited disk space (like 100GB or less) and you have ReBar enabled with plenty of RAM.
I've attempted various methods before, but they didn't help. Fortunately, exploring alternative solutions revealed the problem. It seems one of the drivers was likely installed incorrectly—since I performed a clean install of the newest AMD drivers instead of just upgrading—that fixed the issue!
Thanks for that helpful tip; it resolved my problems with all three games and even improved performance by 5-10 frames in each!