Game performance degradation in Windows

[ashish18]

Hi.

I am a gamer with a GTX 970.
I was using Windows 8.1 and was not getting enough fps in games which made my GPU feel weaker than it is.

For example, I was getting 93 fps overall average score in game Bioshock Infinite's benchmark app (ultra preset).
I did a clean installation of Windows 10, installed same version of GPU drivers and antivirus and ran the game benchmark again. My score was 130 fps this time which is 40℅ more than before. That is good part.

Then I went online, installed apps that I needed, Windows Update ran and installed some new updates and in mere 3 days I find myself back at 90's fps range. It sucks.

How do I avoid this? Anyone know anything about this?

I tried uninstalling everything (apps+updates) and I ran CCleaner but it didn't solve it. Still in the 90's.

Now I clean installed Windows 10 again. I am trying to run benchmark after anything new I install and am avoiding Windows updates. I would like to know what causes this.

Can anybody help?
Thanks.

PS: Yes, I restarted my pc several times in the process like after uninstalling apps and updates etc. And I also ran benchmark many many times to find these undesired results.

 

[jasonkaler]

It sounds like somewhere along the line you're installing something that's running in the background, using cpu.

What I do to see what it is, is go to windows task manager
got to the view menu, select columns, turn on "CPU Time"
This gives you a total each app uses your cpu
You can sort by that column to see the biggest offenders.

It might be something like windows telemetry reporter (or something similar) - you can just "end task" that.
Otherwise things like skype or app updaters might be updating or checking stuff in the background.

 

[ashish18]

It sounds like somewhere along the line you're installing something that's running in the background, using cpu.

What I do to see what it is, is go to windows task manager
got to the view menu, select columns, turn on "CPU Time"
This gives you a total each app uses your cpu
You can sort by that column to see the biggest offenders.

It might be something like windows telemetry reporter (or something similar) - you can just "end task" that.
Otherwise things like skype or app updaters might be updating or checking stuff in the background.

Before I reinstalled Windows 10 again, I uninstalled every app and updates except for gpu drivers and it still couldn't get me my rig's true performance back. I did keep my eyes on processes that were running through task manager. It is as if once this problem occurs, it does't go away.

But right, I can look for processes that consume the most CPU while game is running. That could be a useful tip.

Currently its running fine after the fresh install. I will monitor it for a week then report back if I find the culprit.

 

[ashish18]

It sounds like somewhere along the line you're installing something that's running in the background, using cpu.

What I do to see what it is, is go to windows task manager
got to the view menu, select columns, turn on "CPU Time"
This gives you a total each app uses your cpu
You can sort by that column to see the biggest offenders.

It might be something like windows telemetry reporter (or something similar) - you can just "end task" that.
Otherwise things like skype or app updaters might be updating or checking stuff in the background.

After installing more apps it happened again. Same fps drop from 130 to 94. After trying all that I could think of, I went for disk defragment app.

It solved it! It was a mere case of fragmented partition (C: Windows drive). Just 8% of fragmented disk can cause that problem and I was amazed to witness that.

Windows had always kept it scheduled for weekly run so I never bothered with it before.
(Its a little embarrassing given how basic the problem turned out to be.)

Thanks.

 

[ashish18]

Disk partition was fragmented. Just used disk defrag app and everything is back to OK now.