Question FPS drops from 160 to 10 in all games, could anybody help?

Liam1306

Commendable
Jul 9, 2021
17
4
1,515
Hi all, like the title says I'm experiencing seemingly random FPS drops. I could be running games at 165fps smoothly or depending on the game 60fps and it will randomly drop to around 10 or 15fps. I cannot figure out why this is happening and would love some help as I am completely stumped. (I might also add that I don't use vsync or anything that could cause this) My temperatures are also fine, GPU idles at around 40 Celsius and around 60 Celsius while gaming. CPU idles around 45 - 50 Celcius and is around 60 while gaming.

Things I've Tried:

- Turning Off Background Apps

- Disabling Game DVR and Game Bar

- Turning Off Full screen Optimisations

- Updating and downgrading all drivers

- Scanned for viruses using multiple different apps

My Rig:

CPU - Ryzen 5 3600 (Cooled With Working AIO)

GPU - MSI GTX 1660 Super 6GB

Storage - 2 x 1TB SSD's (System runs off the C drive, Games run off the D drive)

Memory - 2 x Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR4 3200Mhz

Power - Corsair CX550F

Thanks in advance :)
 
Motherboard model?

BIOS version?

EXACT SSD models?

Case?

Case fan configuration?

Since you say it's not a thermal issue, then you do know what the VRM temperatures are doing at the time you get these drops, yes? No? Well, that would be a good thing to look at because if you have a low end board and are using an AIO cooler which affords no residual cooling over the VRMs, it's highly possible to see thermal throttling due to VRM overheating, which some kind of throttling almost has to be in play for there to be a drop from 165fps to 10.

What are you using to monitor the CPU and GPU temps?

What Windows version are you running and when was the last time a CLEAN install was done?
 
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450m gaming (BIOS is the most recent and before you ask, no it’s not pending update)
SSD: Samsung 970 evo (system is running on this)
And the Samsung 870 evo is running the games.
Case: MSI Mag Forge 100R
Fan Configurations: 2 at the front bring air in, aio fans bring air take air out, 1 fan at the back as an exhaust, and the psu fan is mounted facing down out of the case.
Windows version is the latest (Windows 10 22H2 and the last time a clean install was done was yesterday.
I’ve been using MSI afterburner to measure GPU temps and Coretemp to measure CPU temps.

How would I go about measuring the VRM temps? Thanks

EDIT: I checked the VRM temps and they did not exceed 40 Celsius so now I’m completely stumped. I was hoping that the VRM would be the issue 🙁
 
Last edited:
Have you tried reinstalling the Nvidia drivers using the DDU? If not, I would do that.

I would ALSO try doing a hard reset of the BIOS. If you've updated it previously, which you clearly have, and never did a full hard reset of the BIOS, it's possible some settings from previous BIOS release versions might still be "stuck", and causing issues. It happens, all the time.


If nothing shakes out there, then go through this list and address anything that you haven't already addressed. If it has ALL already been addressed, then it must be a hardware issue and my first thought would be to run Hard disk sentinel or another utility and check the drive health. Maybe also run ASSSD utility and test the drive performance. If the drives are both fine then it's probably down to either a problem with the graphics card or the motherboard, although, you should never rule out potential problems with the power supply because the power supply can mimic problems with ANY other hardware component and contrary to popular belief, when there are problems with the power supply it isn't always either "works or doesn't work". There are MANY ways in which a power supply might have problems aside from outright failure and they can absolutely affect the performance of various hardware components while still actually being at least minimally functional.

How old is that CX550F? As in, how long has it been in service roughly?




If there are any steps listed here that you have not already done, it would be advisable to do so if for no other reason than to be able to say you've already done it and eliminate that possibility.



First,

Make sure your motherboard has the MOST recent BIOS version installed. If it does not, then update. This solves a high number of issues even in cases where the release that is newer than yours makes no mention of improving graphics card or other hardware compatibility. They do not list every change they have made when they post a new BIOS release. In cases where you DO already have the latest BIOS version, simply resetting the BIOS as follows has a fairly high percentage chance of effecting a positive change in some cases so it is ALWAYS worth TRYING, at the very least.


BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for about three to five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes while the CMOS battery is out of the motherboard, press the power button on the case, continuously, for 15-30 seconds, in order to deplete any residual charge that might be present in the CMOS circuit. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

It is probably also worth mentioning that for anything that might require an attempt to DO a hard reset in the first place, IF the problem is related to a lack of video signal, it is a GOOD IDEA to try a different type of display as many systems will not work properly for some reason with displayport configurations. It is worth trying HDMI if you are having no display or lack of visual ability to enter the BIOS, or no signal messages.

Trying a different monitor as well, if possible, is also a good idea if there is a lack of display. It happens.


Second,

Go to the product page for your motherboard on the manufacturer website. Download and install the latest driver versions for the chipset, audio and network adapters. Do not skip installing a newer driver just because you think it is not relevant to the problem you are having. The drivers for one device can often affect ALL other devices and a questionable driver release can cause instability in the OS itself. They don't release new drivers just for fun. If there is a new driver release for a component, there is a good reason for it. The same goes for BIOS updates. When it comes to the chipset drivers, if your motherboard manufacturer lists a chipset driver that is newer than what the chipset developer (Intel or AMD, for our purposes) lists, then use that one. If Intel (Or AMD) shows a chipset driver version that is newer than what is available from the motherboard product page, then use that one. Always use the newest chipset driver that you can get and always use ONLY the chipset drivers available from either the motherboard manufacturer, AMD or Intel.

In ANY case, when it comes to drivers, you do not EVER want to rely on the Microsoft supplied drivers unless there is NO OTHER CHOICE because you are running a newer OS version on much older hardware and no drivers are available from the manufacturer for the OS version you are running. Then, and ONLY then, do you want to rely on the Windows supplied drivers for anything related to your motherboard (Chipset, onboard network adapters, audio, etc.), graphics card, PCIe expansion cards or peripherals like mouse, keyboard, printer, etc.

IF you have other hardware installed or attached to the system that are not a part of the systems covered by the motherboard drivers, then go to the support page for THAT component and check to see if there are newer drivers available for that as well. If there are, install them.


Third,

Make sure your memory is running at the correct advertised speed in the BIOS. This may require that you set the memory to run at the XMP profile settings. Also, make sure you have the memory installed in the correct slots and that they are running in dual channel which you can check by installing CPU-Z and checking the Memory and SPD tabs. For all modern motherboards that are dual channel memory architectures, from the last ten years at least, if you have two sticks installed they should be in the A2 (Called DDR4_1 on some boards) or B2 (Called DDR4_2 on some boards) which are ALWAYS the SECOND and FOURTH slots over from the CPU socket, counting TOWARDS the edge of the motherboard EXCEPT on boards that only have two memory slots total. In that case, if you have two modules it's not rocket science, but if you have only one, then install it in the A1 or DDR4_1 slot.



Fourth (And often tied for most important along with an up-to-date motherboard BIOS),

A clean install of the graphics card drivers. Regardless of whether you "already installed the newest drivers" for your graphics card or not, it is OFTEN a good idea to do a CLEAN install of the graphics card drivers. Just installing over the old drivers OR trying to use what Nvidia and AMD consider a clean install is not good enough and does not usually give the same result as using the Display Driver Uninstaller utility. This has a very high success rate and is always worth a shot.


If you have had both Nvidia and AMD cards installed at any point on that operating system then you will want to run the DDU twice. Once for the old card drivers (ie, Nvidia or AMD) and again for the currently installed graphics card drivers (ie, AMD or Nvidia). So if you had an Nvidia card at some point in the past, run it first for Nvidia and then after that is complete, run it again for AMD if you currently have an AMD card installed.


Graphics card driver CLEAN install guide using the Wagnard tools DDU



And last, but not least, if you have never done a CLEAN install of Windows, or have upgraded from an older version to Windows 10, or have been through several spring or fall major Windows updates, it might be a very good idea to consider doing a clean install of Windows if none of these other solutions has helped. IF you are using a Windows installation from a previous system and you didn't do a clean install of Windows after building the new system, then it's 99.99% likely that you NEED to do a CLEAN install before trying any other solutions.


How to do a CLEAN installation of Windows 10, the RIGHT way
 
Random FPS drops can be a real bummer, make sure your power settings are set to high performance, and double-check that your graphics card is properly seated in the slot. Also, have you monitored your CPU and GPU usage during these drops?
 
Random FPS drops can be a real bummer, make sure your power settings are set to high performance, and double-check that your graphics card is properly seated in the slot. Also, have you monitored your CPU and GPU usage during these drops?
This is 100% wrong. You do not set Ryzen platforms to "High performance" unless you want to create real problems for yourself. This has been addressed time and time again by practically every tech rag and reviewer, not to mention all of the well known enthusiasts out there, since the first Gen parts came out.

For Ryzen you absolutely NEED to have "Balanced" or "Ryzen balanced" set as the power plan. This has been handed down directly by AMD and confirmed by practically every known name in the industry as a fact. For Intel platforms, it's mostly ok to enable the performance power plan so long as you also go into the advanced settings and configure the "Min processor state" as either 0% or 5% depending on the generation and platform, but for Ryzen, it's not advisable.
 
Have you tried reinstalling the Nvidia drivers using the DDU? If not, I would do that.

I would ALSO try doing a hard reset of the BIOS. If you've updated it previously, which you clearly have, and never did a full hard reset of the BIOS, it's possible some settings from previous BIOS release versions might still be "stuck", and causing issues. It happens, all the time.


If nothing shakes out there, then go through this list and address anything that you haven't already addressed. If it has ALL already been addressed, then it must be a hardware issue and my first thought would be to run Hard disk sentinel or another utility and check the drive health. Maybe also run ASSSD utility and test the drive performance. If the drives are both fine then it's probably down to either a problem with the graphics card or the motherboard, although, you should never rule out potential problems with the power supply because the power supply can mimic problems with ANY other hardware component and contrary to popular belief, when there are problems with the power supply it isn't always either "works or doesn't work". There are MANY ways in which a power supply might have problems aside from outright failure and they can absolutely affect the performance of various hardware components while still actually being at least minimally functional.

How old is that CX550F? As in, how long has it been in service roughly?




If there are any steps listed here that you have not already done, it would be advisable to do so if for no other reason than to be able to say you've already done it and eliminate that possibility.



First,

Make sure your motherboard has the MOST recent BIOS version installed. If it does not, then update. This solves a high number of issues even in cases where the release that is newer than yours makes no mention of improving graphics card or other hardware compatibility. They do not list every change they have made when they post a new BIOS release. In cases where you DO already have the latest BIOS version, simply resetting the BIOS as follows has a fairly high percentage chance of effecting a positive change in some cases so it is ALWAYS worth TRYING, at the very least.


BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for about three to five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes while the CMOS battery is out of the motherboard, press the power button on the case, continuously, for 15-30 seconds, in order to deplete any residual charge that might be present in the CMOS circuit. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

It is probably also worth mentioning that for anything that might require an attempt to DO a hard reset in the first place, IF the problem is related to a lack of video signal, it is a GOOD IDEA to try a different type of display as many systems will not work properly for some reason with displayport configurations. It is worth trying HDMI if you are having no display or lack of visual ability to enter the BIOS, or no signal messages.

Trying a different monitor as well, if possible, is also a good idea if there is a lack of display. It happens.


Second,

Go to the product page for your motherboard on the manufacturer website. Download and install the latest driver versions for the chipset, audio and network adapters. Do not skip installing a newer driver just because you think it is not relevant to the problem you are having. The drivers for one device can often affect ALL other devices and a questionable driver release can cause instability in the OS itself. They don't release new drivers just for fun. If there is a new driver release for a component, there is a good reason for it. The same goes for BIOS updates. When it comes to the chipset drivers, if your motherboard manufacturer lists a chipset driver that is newer than what the chipset developer (Intel or AMD, for our purposes) lists, then use that one. If Intel (Or AMD) shows a chipset driver version that is newer than what is available from the motherboard product page, then use that one. Always use the newest chipset driver that you can get and always use ONLY the chipset drivers available from either the motherboard manufacturer, AMD or Intel.

In ANY case, when it comes to drivers, you do not EVER want to rely on the Microsoft supplied drivers unless there is NO OTHER CHOICE because you are running a newer OS version on much older hardware and no drivers are available from the manufacturer for the OS version you are running. Then, and ONLY then, do you want to rely on the Windows supplied drivers for anything related to your motherboard (Chipset, onboard network adapters, audio, etc.), graphics card, PCIe expansion cards or peripherals like mouse, keyboard, printer, etc.

IF you have other hardware installed or attached to the system that are not a part of the systems covered by the motherboard drivers, then go to the support page for THAT component and check to see if there are newer drivers available for that as well. If there are, install them.


Third,

Make sure your memory is running at the correct advertised speed in the BIOS. This may require that you set the memory to run at the XMP profile settings. Also, make sure you have the memory installed in the correct slots and that they are running in dual channel which you can check by installing CPU-Z and checking the Memory and SPD tabs. For all modern motherboards that are dual channel memory architectures, from the last ten years at least, if you have two sticks installed they should be in the A2 (Called DDR4_1 on some boards) or B2 (Called DDR4_2 on some boards) which are ALWAYS the SECOND and FOURTH slots over from the CPU socket, counting TOWARDS the edge of the motherboard EXCEPT on boards that only have two memory slots total. In that case, if you have two modules it's not rocket science, but if you have only one, then install it in the A1 or DDR4_1 slot.



Fourth (And often tied for most important along with an up-to-date motherboard BIOS),

A clean install of the graphics card drivers. Regardless of whether you "already installed the newest drivers" for your graphics card or not, it is OFTEN a good idea to do a CLEAN install of the graphics card drivers. Just installing over the old drivers OR trying to use what Nvidia and AMD consider a clean install is not good enough and does not usually give the same result as using the Display Driver Uninstaller utility. This has a very high success rate and is always worth a shot.


If you have had both Nvidia and AMD cards installed at any point on that operating system then you will want to run the DDU twice. Once for the old card drivers (ie, Nvidia or AMD) and again for the currently installed graphics card drivers (ie, AMD or Nvidia). So if you had an Nvidia card at some point in the past, run it first for Nvidia and then after that is complete, run it again for AMD if you currently have an AMD card installed.


Graphics card driver CLEAN install guide using the Wagnard tools DDU



And last, but not least, if you have never done a CLEAN install of Windows, or have upgraded from an older version to Windows 10, or have been through several spring or fall major Windows updates, it might be a very good idea to consider doing a clean install of Windows if none of these other solutions has helped. IF you are using a Windows installation from a previous system and you didn't do a clean install of Windows after building the new system, then it's 99.99% likely that you NEED to do a CLEAN install before trying any other solutions.


How to do a CLEAN installation of Windows 10, the RIGHT wa
Yeah I’ve tried uninstalling drivers and reinstalling new ones with DDU, even gone as far as trying older, more stable drivers.

The PSU has been used for roughly a year now so I don’t think that is the issue however, I won’t rule out the possibility that it could be the problem.

I’ll try to do a completely fresh BIOS update and if that doesn’t work then I can only assume that the issue is the motherboard. It’s fairly old, and not exactly a high end one. Hell, it doesn’t even have heat sinks on the VRM’s so it needs an upgrade anyway.
 
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