I'm experiencing significant frame drops in GTA V
I'm experiencing significant frame drops in GTA V
so i own a prebuilt pc (hp desktop pro g2) that comes with an i3 8100 (4 cores, 4 threads) running at 3.6 ghz. it has intel uhd 630 and 8gb ram (dual channel). when playing gta v in story mode or online at 720p, i get around 30-40 fps without any frame drops or stuttering, but after about 10 or 15 minutes of play, i notice significant drops to 5-3 fps without any explanation. when i check the msi afterburner during gameplay, everything looks normal—around 40-60% cpu usage and 7 gb consumption with no unusual heat. i've tried adjusting graphics settings, using 800x600 resolution, no shadows, and 50% render scale, but the issue persists. i’m hoping someone can assist me with this problem.
When you observe your RAM diminishing after heavy use, it indicates that GTA V is switching to the pagefile stored on your hard drive as a substitute for RAM. In other words, the game is accessing memory from your HDD, which is significantly slower, leading the HDD to operate at full capacity. This results in stutters. I experience the same problem too.
It seems to be related to RAM or storage—possibly both. The game could consume up to 8GBs or more at times. It's best not to utilize all available RAM, ideally keeping it around 6 to 6.5GB, or else the system performance will degrade as the OS uses some memory itself. Storage matters too: when the RAM cache is full, especially with slower drives like 5400rpm HDDs and low-capacity solid-state drives, the issue arises. A short restart clears the cache temporarily, but it quickly fills again within 10 to 15 minutes, requiring another restart.
Thanks for getting back to me. I believe the issue isn’t with the HDD since it runs at 7200 RPM, and my friend’s slower HDD works just fine for him. Regarding RAM, I’ve noticed someone using 8GB with an integrated graphics card (Intel UHD 620) doesn’t experience any drops or stutters—unlike my own setup that causes playback problems. Appreciate your help again.
Based on what you've mentioned, it seemed like the hardware might be the problem, especially with the steady 'slowdown after 10-15 minutes'. Power and thermal concerns usually appear sooner than this. When checking CPU usage, it's important to look at each core individually—overall numbers can be misleading. Most games are limited to a single core or thread, even if they seem capable of using multiple threads. That one core is in charge of processing every command from the game code. If it reaches its limit, that's all the CPU can handle.
I replay the game using MSI after burner to verify each core's speed and utilization, and everything looks fine. I observe that before a few minutes of dropping frames, RAM usage is near full capacity, but once it drops back to normal, I start seeing drop frames again. Do you think this is related to RAM? Since some users run it with 8GB RAM without issues, it might be a concern.
So there were no cores at 85% or above? You'll have to check with those people about their configurations. I'm not sure why the RAM usage drops after it gets high. I do understand that RAM usage increases over time in the game, though not without limit, and certain parts of the game consume more memory than others.
When you observe your RAM diminishing after heavy use, it indicates that GTA V is switching to the pagefile stored on your hard drive as a substitute for RAM. In other words, the game is accessing memory from your HDD, which is significantly slower, leading the HDD to operate at full capacity. This results in stutters. I experience the same problem too.