Frame rate decreases roughly every two minutes during playback
Frame rate decreases roughly every two minutes during playback
Hello everyone, I haven’t played any games in the last 4 to 6 months, though I recently joined my friends on xDefiant. I was surprised to notice this strange issue: every couple of minutes, my frame rate would drop to around 1 fps or less for about 5 to 10 seconds before returning to normal. At first, I assumed it was due to high CPU temperatures—my temps were over 90°C. So I upgraded my CPU cooler, and suddenly things cooled down to about 50°C, which made me think the problem was fixed. But when I started playing again, the same issue kept happening.
I began suspecting a deeper problem, possibly a virus at the kernel level, since I didn’t see any process spikes but heard the fans spinning excessively even when idle. This occurred on Windows 11, so I decided to wipe my SSD and switch to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. I installed xDefiant using Proton Layer, but the problem persisted. Still, every 1 to 2 minutes I experienced another FPS drop.
Based on my findings, it’s not a software issue (unless there’s a BIOS setting I haven’t touched). I ran Netdata and noticed power drops from both CPU and GPU, but oddly enough, my CPU usage increased while GPU usage decreased. I attached some graphs showing these trends, especially the FPS drops at 23:41:50, 23:42:25, and 23:43:13. I also observed inconsistent GPU metrics, possibly due to less frequent polling.
I’m not including temperature readings, but neither my GPU nor CPU exceeded 60°C. My setup is: AMD Ryzen 3600X, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX 3060, 500W PSU (80 Plus Silver).
What do you think? For me, this seems to point to a power or hardware issue—either the PSU or GPU. If it were just a lack of power from the PSU, I’d expect a system crash or BSOD. I’m trying to isolate the problem with limited parts to test, and I don’t want to waste more money until I figure it out.
This might relate to asset loading or streaming, but we can't confirm with the available data. Previously, it was clear you'd notice the disc or drive performance, but now SSDs make it harder to spot issues. Many assume the problem lies with the GPU or monitoring tools, as they only show limited information. It seems like a pattern—occasional silence, page file checks, memory usage, and disk activity.
On the initial post I shared the disk I/O rate, and upon closer inspection, I noticed some spikes in the writing activity. I’ll check for more accurate measurements later today.
So far, I tried Overwatch and faced similar issues during shader compilation, even when using the main menu without playing. Eventually, the game ran smoothly, which is unusual. Now I’m more puzzled—if it worked after some time, it seems unlikely a GPU problem was the cause. I’ll check for disk stress tests and look into other symptoms like slow performance with background tasks or Alt+Tab. This isn’t just about FPS drops; the whole system feels heavily slowed down, even when idle. I also noticed this happening without gaming, while running background processes on Windows, but it didn’t occur again.