What is making those minor frame rate drops so obvious?
What is making those minor frame rate drops so obvious?
So I know dips from 60 fps to 59, 58 and even 57 are normal and they shouldn't bother me. And they don't. What bothers me is that those dips you can see on the graphs in fps and frametime, while they don't look like much on video, they are extremely distracting and annoying during live gameplay. And this is a tame example, during online races, i get constant jumps between 60 and 57 fps and it almost feels like stuttering. I have those dips in most of my other games as well and I do notice them if I concentrate, but it's not nearly as distracting.
My specs:
Nvidia Geforce RTX 3050Ti, 4 gigs of VRAM (yes, it's a laptop)
Intel i5 11400H
16 gigs of RAM running @3200Mhz
1TB Samsung 970 evo SSD
Windows 11
I figured I might be bottlenecked by VRAM, but i never had this problem until recently. Also I know VRAM bottlenecks cause much more violent stutters. (Not to mention my game went from detecting 3.6 gigs to now only detecting 3.3 for whatever reason).
I tried all kinds of things. I limited the fps through the game, through RTSS, through Nvidia Control Panel.
I also left it unlocked (important mention, those dips translate into dips from 90-something to about 70 when unlocked)
I reinstalled the game, reinstalled windows, i keep my fans clean, and I don't think thermal paste is due yet, since i've had the laptop for less than a year and temps seem pretty stable anyways imo.
All profiles and settings are set to max performance, all drivers and updates to date, no system or disk errors either, so everything around my computer is pretty much tidied up. No word of malware either, since I just reinstalled windows a couple days back.
I am absolutely stumped at this point, anyone got any extra tips? I know the game isn't the best optimized, but i find everything pretty ridiculous already.
Thanks!
Edit: changed the video source from imgur to youtube because of quality
Edit 2: In case I expressed myself wrong, I don't have a problem with the actual fps values or the graph, my problem is that those small variations and dips feel like a microstutter or a frame skip even while not monitoring anything and it's really distracting during normal gameplay.
Ok, fair enough, but why didn't i have this problem in the past? Without vsync i either get screen tearing or I lag out other things that are hardware accelerated and i use in parallel. And what solutions do I have?
Take into account that the dips might be minor inaccuracies. FPS plus or minus a few frames is typical. The same applies to the other parameters shown. Simply disable it. If issues arise, you can re-enable monitoring to explore further. Also, familiarize yourself with additional tools like Task Manager, Resource Monitor, and Process Explorer (Microsoft, free).
Perhaps I misunderstood the situation, sorry. I’m not concerned with the graph or the actual fps numbers—I always keep them off. What I’m dealing with is tracking those minor drops that become clear during regular gameplay. Without all the counters and visuals, they’re more noticeable and seem to cause a microstutter or constant frame skipping. That’s the real issue, not the graph or the monitoring process itself.