Question Help! FPS Drops Every 60 Seconds - Path of Exile

[Lithidx]

Please watch the video linked below of me running path of exile just for an example of what I'm experiencing. The beginning shows my graphics settings, which was recommended to me to use via Nvidia GeForce Experience. In the video you'll see the FPS and MS graphs near the top right of the screen.

Here are my PC specs:

MB - MSI Z370 Pro
CPU - Intel Core i7-8700K
GPU - Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080
PSU - Corsair RM1000X Gold
RAM - 48gb DDR4 2400
Storage - Samsung NVMe 980 2TB

Video Link:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYa834TIW8Q


I have gone through many different troubleshooting methods on my own from various other posters online which include the following:

• Changed Renderer to Vulcan
• Changed Renderer to DX12
• Turning VSync ON and OFF
• Lowered all of my graphic settings to minimums
• Changed networking mode to Lockstep
• Changed networking mode to Predictive
• Disable Engine Multithreading
• Disable Threaded optimization in Nvidia Control Panel
• Updated all drivers with CCleaner & GPU driver with Nvidia GeForce Experience
• Ran SFC System File Check
• Checked Disk Health
• Reset TCP/IP
• Updated BIOS
• Ran CCleaner Professionals Health Check, Performance Optimizer, Driver Updater and Registry Check

None of the above options have fixed my FPS drops. If you watch the video you'll notice as my FPS drops, Shader is spiking, my CPU MS rises and the MS above the FPS rises (I'm not sure what this MS represents) as FPS drops. It's also very interesting that it is happening exactly 1 minute apart from each other.

I saw a reddit post talking about this sort of thing possibly being an audio issue. They recommended running a software called 'LatencyMon' to test if your computer has issues handling real-time audio. I fail this test with my PC set up. It says it could be a power management problem, or my drivers need to be upgraded or my BIOS needs to be updated... however I am not sure because all my drivers are up to date and I double checked my BIOS is up to date as well and my PSU is brand new. I bought and installed a Sound Card as well as this was suggested as a fix in this particular reddit thread. The sound card did not fix the issue for me and I still fail the LatencyMon software test.

Any thoughts? I am at a loss as I don't see how my system should be dropping frames with this game...

I'd be happy to share my DxDiag as well but it's over 100,000 characters and doesn't let me post it under spoiler, is there another way to share that info?

 

[Colif]

Try a clean boot and see if it changes anything - make sure to read instructions and make sure NOT to disable any microsoft services or windows won't load right - https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

It doesn’t delete anything, it just stops non Microsoft programs running with start. Easy to reverse.

if clean boot fixes it, it shows its likely a startup program. You should, over a number of startups. restart the programs you stopped to isolate the one that is to blame.

Updated all drivers with CCleaner

it updates drivers now? You better off going to motherboard makers website and downloading from there than to rely on 3rd party driver updaters getting it right.

latencymon is a lot of fun. can you share screenshots of the report and all the tabs at time of you ending the run

often the problem is drivers. Just working out which

this might help

Can you download and run Driverview - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html

All it does is looks at drivers installed; it won't install any (this is intentional as 3rd party driver updaters often get it wrong)

When you run it, go into view tab and set it to hide all Microsoft drivers, will make list shorter.

Now its up to you, you can look through the drivers and try to find old drivers, or you can take a screenshot from (and including)Driver name to (and including)Creation date.

upload it to an image sharing website and show link here

I'd be happy to share my DxDiag as well but it's over 100,000 characters and doesn't let me post it under spoiler, is there another way to share that info?

on the system tab of DXDiag there is a button - Save all information - clicking it opens file explorer. Name it something obvious and upload the resulting text file to a file sharing website and show link here.

 

[kerberos_20]

shader is gpu computing, cpu did spike before shader, it could be compiling shaders, that takes cpu load before gpu takes over

https://imgur.com/SVKAifO

View: https://i.imgur.com/SVKAifO.png


here you can see 54ms on CPU, for 60fps you need 16.6ms, longer delay you have, lower fps youll have
in this case where you had 60fps, it took 3 seconds (54/16.6 = 3.2sec) for CPU to process it

 

[Lithidx]

Try a clean boot and see if it changes anything - make sure to read instructions and make sure NOT to disable any microsoft services or windows won't load right - https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

It doesn’t delete anything, it just stops non Microsoft programs running with start. Easy to reverse.

if clean boot fixes it, it shows its likely a startup program. You should, over a number of startups. restart the programs you stopped to isolate the one that is to blame.

So this is the first thing I did when I got home from work. As soon as I disabled everything besides microsoft services, I no longer had spikes every minute. I proceeded to turn on non-microsoft services 1 by 1 to see which one is causing it and it appears to be an NVIDIA service that is causing this issue. As soon as I turned on NVIDIA LocalSystem Container I got my FPS drops every 1 minute. This is shocking to me that it would be an NVIDIA service as the culprit. I'm curious to know what to do about this or if this service is required or if I can remove it from my computer somehow given that I am running an NVIDIA GPU I'm just not sure if I need this or not? Obviously I don't want it if it's causing my FPS spikes every 60 seconds... I could just leave it unchecked moving forward but will that cause me issues with other NVIDIA services by leaving it off?

I am still restarting my PC and testing other services just to make sure it is the only one causing the problem so I will respond / edit my post again once I am done running through all of your suggestions and thank you so much, it was so relieving to know that I didn't experience an FPS spike purely from a hardware issue... I was ready to install a fresh windows if I couldn't figure this out soon which would have sucked because I have some legacy programs I wouldn't be able to install and activate again.

 

[Lithidx]

Here's my DriverView list after hiding the Microsoft drivers. Some of these I am not sure what they are for.

https://imgur.com/QF2QZw1

View: https://imgur.com/QF2QZw1

 

[Lithidx]

So I googled NVIDIA LocalSystem Container to see why it might be causing me these FPS drops and found this post with a comment suggesting to remove NVIDIA GeForce Experience.

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

I uninstalled GeForce Experience and reactivated the NVIDIA LocalSystem Container service and I have not experienced anymore FPS drops every 60 seconds... This completely boggles my mind... why would GeForce Experience be causing these spikes? That's what I use to keep my GPU driver up to date so I really didn't want to uninstall it but it definitely seems to have been the problem for some reason...

UPDATE: Also after uninstalling GeForce Experience my LatencyMon test has also not run into any issues. I did a 7 minute test while playing path of exile and it stayed in the green the entire time and says my system is handling real-time audio without dropouts. Prior to tonight it would go red and have errors within the first minute no matter what I was doing while the test ran.

 

[Lithidx]

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/geforce-experience/14/215272/nvidia-geforce-experience-causes-framerate-stutter/

Apparently this has been an issue for over 8 years for some people. Does anyone know why? I imagine some people get to use GeForce Experience without this issue. I'm just glad I was able to fix it for now...

Thank you so much for your help Colif, your steps led me to the problem, would have been so frustrated for so long without your troubleshooting advice.