In-Game FPS Gets Worse the Longer I Play (RAM Failing?)

[BLOODL3TTERS]

Many games' in-game FPS, especially Dota 2, gets worse the longer I play the game. Is it possible my RAM is failing? I've had it for 5 years - Kingston Hyper X DDR3 1600 MHZ. Here are my full system specs. I think it's also possible I might need to change my processor?

All drivers are up to date.

AMD FX - 6300 3.5 GHz
Kingston HyperX 8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz (Had it for 5 years)
EVGA Geforce GTX 970
1x Samsung 125 GH SSD
2x WD Blue HDD
EVGA 500 W PSU

 

[Gahl1k]

The longer you play, the more stress you put on your GPU and CPU generating more heat. Unless you have an overheating PC, you might consider a GPU upgrade.

 

[159159159]

use CPU-Z and GPU-Z to check out your PC temperatures. PCs gets slower when their components temperature raises more than what they were intended to support.

 

[photonboy]

1) RAM and CPU?
No. These tend to work or not. They don't affect the FPS in any way. If they didn't work you're more likely to have a crash.

2) Overheating CPU or GPU?
Possibly. However, you can get software to monitor the:

a) GPU frequency (i.e. 1250MHz)
b) GPU usage (i.e. 95%)
c) CPU frequency (i.e. 3.8GHz load)
d) GPU temperature (i.e. 85degC)

3) Hardware or just the game?
Some games like DOTA may just have more going and perhaps overload the CPU thus reduce the FPS. Happens in many types of games. I suspect that's what is going on with you.

How to prove?

*Monitor those things I suggested with MSI Afterburner or other suitable tool.
a) If the CPU frequency isn't throttling down it's not the problem (I'm guessing about 3.8GHz under load. could be slightly different but not much)

b) GPU frequency and usage if say 1250MHz at 95% usage means minimal to no CPU bottleneck. It's also likely the temperature would be relatively high. Conversely, if it's a CPU bottleneck then the GPU frequency and/or usage are probably LOWER.

CPU bottleneck for example may cause GPU to show:
70% usage, 1200MHz (or lower frequency).

SUMMARY:
I suspect you'll find the FPS drops correspond to GPU load being reduced. That indicates that the CPU is the bottleneck. You can't use "CPU load" as a guide since software rarely can use all of the cores in CPU's. So we go by the GPU load.

Another indicator is that there are more UNITS on-screen. In DOTA again and similar games it often starts off with less units then ramps up and eventually overloads the CPU.

 

[BLOODL3TTERS]

SUMMARY:
I suspect you'll find the FPS drops correspond to GPU load being reduced. That indicates that the CPU is the bottleneck. You can't use "CPU load" as a guide since software rarely can use all of the cores in CPU's. So we go by the GPU load.

Another indicator is that there are more UNITS on-screen. In DOTA again and similar games it often starts off with less units then ramps up and eventually overloads the CPU.

I will test this tonight and get back to you. If this is true, are you saying I should upgrade my CPU?

 

[photonboy]

SUMMARY:
I suspect you'll find the FPS drops correspond to GPU load being reduced. That indicates that the CPU is the bottleneck. You can't use "CPU load" as a guide since software rarely can use all of the cores in CPU's. So we go by the GPU load.

Another indicator is that there are more UNITS on-screen. In DOTA again and similar games it often starts off with less units then ramps up and eventually overloads the CPU.

I will test this tonight and get back to you. If this is true, are you saying I should upgrade my CPU?

I'm saying it's LIKELY that a better CPU will limit the FPS drops in DOTA. You can probably Google some information about that.

However, the COST of that would be high since you would need:
a) new CPU
b) new motherboard
c) new system memory (newer CPU's use DDR4 memory)
d) Windows 10 64-bit license (you can't transfer, though you may find one fairly cheap at Kinguin (dot net) and people I trust claim it works fine. You would download the actual install media from Microsoft's site. Easy to do but I won't detail that here unless needed (basically "ms media creation tool" go to site, download tool with 8GB USB stick installed, run tool and it will then DOWNLOAD the ISO file and auto configure the USB stick so you can boot from the USB stick).

and
e) reinstall Windows, programs, etc (though you can MOVE your "Steamapps" games folder to another drive if it's on the Windows (C-drive) drive then back again or just run from a separate drive (can explain in detail)

*So it's not cheap nor simple to upgrade your system. Again, assuming the issue is the CPU performance then only YOU can decide on the value of upgrading and find which CPU is recommended though probably an Intel i7, possibly one of the upcoming 4-core Intel 8th gen (may be an i5 as naming is changing but basically a 4-core with hyperthreading which is a SLIGHT upgrade over the i7-7700K).

There are cheaper CPU's but if you're going to upgrade your entire system for a game that depends a lot on the CPU you may want to get the best CPU for that game.

Or will a SOFTWARE update to the game help?
This following is several months old now, but I've heard that the game still has FPS drops that it did not have prior to 2017:
http://www.pcgamer.com/dota-2s-performance-issues-drag-on-in-the-months-following-the-700-update/

I don't play the game, but hopefully that last bit helps and you can find OTHERS who can give you better advice because...

*WITH THE UPDATE TO VULKAN ONE HOPES THAT THE GAME WILL BECOME BETTER MULTI-THREADED AND THUS ACTUALLY RUN WELL ON AN FX-6300 CPU ONCE CODE IMPROVES.

But the game appeared to SLOW DOWN not run better so not sure what happened there.

So perhaps WAITING makes more sense, though I repeat I'm not sure what the exact state of the game is today, and what to expect in the near future.

 

[Mohan_27]

Many games' in-game FPS, especially Dota 2, gets worse the longer I play the game. Is it possible my RAM is failing? I've had it for 5 years - Kingston Hyper X DDR3 1600 MHZ. Here are my full system specs. I think it's also possible I might need to change my processor?

All drivers are up to date.

AMD FX - 6300 3.5 GHz
Kingston HyperX 8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz (Had it for 5 years)
EVGA Geforce GTX 970
1x Samsung 125 GH SSD
2x WD Blue HDD
EVGA 500 W PSU

1. Check for any malware:
https://www.malwarebytes.com/

If there is, remove it instantly.

2. Download Geforce and download drivers from there. You may have installed a wrong driver:
https://www.geforce.co.uk/geforce-experience/download

3. One reason why your performance maybe low is because of your parked cores. Simply, a parked core basically means it's disabled and you do not want that. Here is how to identify if your cores are parked/disabled:

Open up windows task manager > Click on the 'performance tab' at the top > at the bottom click on 'open resource monitor' > click on the 'CPU' tab at the top > On the right you will see graphs. Make sure at the top of each graph where it says at "CPU 0", CPU 1 etc.. and make sure it does NOT say "CPU 0 - Parked".

Look at this video too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fKxZ1mq9KA

If any of the cores state they are parked or greyed out, do this:
Go to control panel > click on 'hardware and sound' > then 'power options' > then select 'high performance'.
If you can't find it then click on the 'hide additional plans' tab and it should be there.

4. Make sure you're Monitor is plugged into your GPU and not motherboard, you don't want to be running on integrated graphics!

5. Uninstall your driver using DDU:
Download: https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uni...

How to use it: hit clean and restart and ensure you download the correct driver after!

6. Download Speccy and see if your all your parts are there and are functional, also check the temperature.
http://filehippo.com/download_speccy/

7. Take out the RAM and play games with each individual one. If the performance is better then you know the RAM taken out is faulty

8. Try this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqBiMhOSd3M

 

[photonboy]

Many games' in-game FPS, especially Dota 2, gets worse the longer I play the game. Is it possible my RAM is failing? I've had it for 5 years - Kingston Hyper X DDR3 1600 MHZ. Here are my full system specs. I think it's also possible I might need to change my processor?

All drivers are up to date.

AMD FX - 6300 3.5 GHz
Kingston HyperX 8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz (Had it for 5 years)
EVGA Geforce GTX 970
1x Samsung 125 GH SSD
2x WD Blue HDD
EVGA 500 W PSU

1. Check for any malware:
https://www.malwarebytes.com/

If there is, remove it instantly.

2. Download Geforce and download drivers from there. You may have installed a wrong driver:
https://www.geforce.co.uk/geforce-experience/download

3. One reason why your performance maybe low is because of your parked cores. Simply, a parked core basically means it's disabled and you do not want that. Here is how to identify if your cores are parked/disabled:

Open up windows task manager > Click on the 'performance tab' at the top > at the bottom click on 'open resource monitor' > click on the 'CPU' tab at the top > On the right you will see graphs. Make sure at the top of each graph where it says at "CPU 0", CPU 1 etc.. and make sure it does NOT say "CPU 0 - Parked".

Look at this video too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fKxZ1mq9KA

If any of the cores state they are parked or greyed out, do this:
Go to control panel > click on 'hardware and sound' > then 'power options' > then select 'high performance'.
If you can't find it then click on the 'hide additional plans' tab and it should be there.

4. Make sure you're Monitor is plugged into your GPU and not motherboard, you don't want to be running on integrated graphics!

5. Uninstall your driver using DDU:
Download: https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uni...

How to use it: hit clean and restart and ensure you download the correct driver after!

6. Download Speccy and see if your all your parts are there and are functional, also check the temperature.
http://filehippo.com/download_speccy/

7. Take out the RAM and play games with each individual one. If the performance is better then you know the RAM taken out is faulty

8. Try this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqBiMhOSd3M

1. Maybe, but wouldn't explain why DOTA gets worse the longer played. Also, that's simply a CPU usage issue so you can open TASK MANAGER by closing or alt-tabbing to see if a program is using a big chunk of the CPU other than the game.

2. Maybe, but unlikely.
3. Core Parking is rarely an issue, though a quick way to test rather than messing with that is to go to POWER OPTIONS and change the minimum from (5%?) to 100% which should prevent throttling/parking of CPU cores. I can't confirm but I thought Windows mostly sorted that out and prevents parking when it's a bad idea.

4. I know you're trying to be thorough..
5. Can't HURT, but that would have no affect on his issue.
6. I'm sure his parts are still THERE... and as for THROTTLING you want an in-game OSD (on screen display) to show real-time results. I discussed that.

7. Uh... why? If the RAM was faulty he'd have crashing not low performance. All the RAM does is store the digital data that the CPU processes, but if it was being corrupted the CPU would process gibberish and the game would crash. It won't cause the game to start fine but get slower.

Sure if his memory isn't DUAL CHANNEL he MAY be throttling the CPU slightly. Maybe. (i.e. 2x4GB as per motherboard manual recommendation).

*Do confirm you have 8GB installed and usable though via Task Manager-> Performance. (a clean boot would probably show roughly 3GB/7.9GB used... if it showed close to 4GB then you have a missing memory stick but that's unlikely)

8. aside from the obvious overclocking idea, most of this I don't recommend or won't help much. FPS won't be affected by defragging (which Windows probably is doing automatically BTW), startup doesn't matter unless there's a program hogging your CPU too much (just see Task Manager in idle mode). I'd expect maybe 5% or so idle CPU usage on that CPU but even 10% shouldn't matter since the main game thread probably can use its own processing thread in the CPU.

NVidia driver should be fine, and be careful of software that recommends drivers, and be very careful of the REGISTRY.

*In general, if you see the CPU under 10% or so in IDLE there should be no reason to hunt down ways to improve performance since it's unlikely to happen. Barring some OVERHEATING issue which is easily tested for it's almost certainly a CPU problem... though again as per my above comment in previous post it may be that for DOTA at least:

The new VULKAN BUILD is still problematic and may significantly improve within the next few months?

I do have DOTA installed but never got into it. Point is I see constant UPDATES and since it is VALVE I think they'll get it sorted out unless of course they made changes that are MORE PROCESSING INTENSIVE which need a better CPU and can't be fixed.

 

[photonboy]

*Forgot to ask, what is:
a) the average FPS at start?
b) the FPS later when it dips?

It sounds like maintaining 60FPS all the time is impossible with an FX-6300 but you shouldn't drop much below 30FPS?

apparently the game is now fairly well threaded so curious if your CPU is hitting 80%+ utilization: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dota-2-Reborn-Notebook-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.194972.0.html

I should also mention that if you use VSYNC (to avoid screen tearing) and say lock to 60FPS (60Hz monitor) you will get added STUTTERING if you drop below 60FPS.

One option is to force on Adaptive VSYNC which will auto disable VSYNC if you fall below the target. That means you don't get the added stuttering but do get screen tearing.

NVidia CP-> manage 3d settings-> ... add game-> (vertical sync->adaptive)-> SAVE

There's a "HALF REFRESH" option there too which would be 30FPS VSYNC ON with VSYNC OFF below 30FPS (for 60Hz monitors) which would make the game feel pretty sluggish moving around, though it's useful for 144Hz monitors to synch to 72FPS.

DIPS in any game is normal, but if they happen later in a game the reasons are usually:
1) CPU bottleneck (if more units thus more things going on)
2) overheating (check frequency of CPU in particular is still good)
3) VRAM usage too high (not likely with GTX970)
4) main system memory usage too high (not likely with 8GB plus Windows should warn you)
5) GPU usage (less likely the issue in DOTA 2, and you can drop the settings in the game... dropping graphical settings can still raise the FPS if the CPU is the bottleneck since the CPU is still involved with primarily graphical settings but usually it's a small improvement... if it's a notable improvement then you likely had a GPU bottleneck not CPU... for example those extra units have added graphical processing as well as the CPU calculations that their hit points etc produce)

Maybe there's a software issue or hardware issue I've totally missed but for now I can't think of anything else to discuss. Hopefully you have the tools to diagnose if it's a problem with your hardware, software or simply the game getting too demanding.

 

[BLOODL3TTERS]

Many games' in-game FPS, especially Dota 2, gets worse the longer I play the game. Is it possible my RAM is failing? I've had it for 5 years - Kingston Hyper X DDR3 1600 MHZ. Here are my full system specs. I think it's also possible I might need to change my processor?

All drivers are up to date.

AMD FX - 6300 3.5 GHz
Kingston HyperX 8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz (Had it for 5 years)
EVGA Geforce GTX 970
1x Samsung 125 GH SSD
2x WD Blue HDD
EVGA 500 W PSU

1. Check for any malware:
https://www.malwarebytes.com/

If there is, remove it instantly.

2. Download Geforce and download drivers from there. You may have installed a wrong driver:
https://www.geforce.co.uk/geforce-experience/download

3. One reason why your performance maybe low is because of your parked cores. Simply, a parked core basically means it's disabled and you do not want that. Here is how to identify if your cores are parked/disabled:

Open up windows task manager > Click on the 'performance tab' at the top > at the bottom click on 'open resource monitor' > click on the 'CPU' tab at the top > On the right you will see graphs. Make sure at the top of each graph where it says at "CPU 0", CPU 1 etc.. and make sure it does NOT say "CPU 0 - Parked".

Look at this video too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fKxZ1mq9KA

If any of the cores state they are parked or greyed out, do this:
Go to control panel > click on 'hardware and sound' > then 'power options' > then select 'high performance'.
If you can't find it then click on the 'hide additional plans' tab and it should be there.

4. Make sure you're Monitor is plugged into your GPU and not motherboard, you don't want to be running on integrated graphics!

5. Uninstall your driver using DDU:
Download: https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uni...

How to use it: hit clean and restart and ensure you download the correct driver after!

6. Download Speccy and see if your all your parts are there and are functional, also check the temperature.
http://filehippo.com/download_speccy/

7. Take out the RAM and play games with each individual one. If the performance is better then you know the RAM taken out is faulty

8. Try this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqBiMhOSd3M

I will try this, thank you

 

[BLOODL3TTERS]

[/quotemsg]
So perhaps WAITING makes more sense, though I repeat I'm not sure what the exact state of the game is today, and what to expect in the near future.

[/quotemsg]

 

[BLOODL3TTERS]

SUMMARY:
I suspect you'll find the FPS drops correspond to GPU load being reduced. That indicates that the CPU is the bottleneck. You can't use "CPU load" as a guide since software rarely can use all of the cores in CPU's. So we go by the GPU load.

Another indicator is that there are more UNITS on-screen. In DOTA again and similar games it often starts off with less units then ramps up and eventually overloads the CPU.

I will test this tonight and get back to you. If this is true, are you saying I should upgrade my CPU?

I'm saying it's LIKELY that a better CPU will limit the FPS drops in DOTA. You can probably Google some information about that.

However, the COST of that would be high since you would need:
a) new CPU
b) new motherboard
c) new system memory (newer CPU's use DDR4 memory)
d) Windows 10 64-bit license (you can't transfer, though you may find one fairly cheap at Kinguin (dot net) and people I trust claim it works fine. You would download the actual install media from Microsoft's site. Easy to do but I won't detail that here unless needed (basically "ms media creation tool" go to site, download tool with 8GB USB stick installed, run tool and it will then DOWNLOAD the ISO file and auto configure the USB stick so you can boot from the USB stick).

and
e) reinstall Windows, programs, etc (though you can MOVE your "Steamapps" games folder to another drive if it's on the Windows (C-drive) drive then back again or just run from a separate drive (can explain in detail)

*So it's not cheap nor simple to upgrade your system. Again, assuming the issue is the CPU performance then only YOU can decide on the value of upgrading and find which CPU is recommended though probably an Intel i7, possibly one of the upcoming 4-core Intel 8th gen (may be an i5 as naming is changing but basically a 4-core with hyperthreading which is a SLIGHT upgrade over the i7-7700K).

There are cheaper CPU's but if you're going to upgrade your entire system for a game that depends a lot on the CPU you may want to get the best CPU for that game.

Or will a SOFTWARE update to the game help?
This following is several months old now, but I've heard that the game still has FPS drops that it did not have prior to 2017:
http://www.pcgamer.com/dota-2s-performance-issues-drag-on-in-the-months-following-the-700-update/

I don't play the game, but hopefully that last bit helps and you can find OTHERS who can give you better advice because...

*WITH THE UPDATE TO VULKAN ONE HOPES THAT THE GAME WILL BECOME BETTER MULTI-THREADED AND THUS ACTUALLY RUN WELL ON AN FX-6300 CPU ONCE CODE IMPROVES.

But the game appeared to SLOW DOWN not run better so not sure what happened there.

So perhaps WAITING makes more sense, though I repeat I'm not sure what the exact state of the game is today, and what to expect in the near future.

*Forgot to ask, what is:
a) the average FPS at start?
b) the FPS later when it dips?

It sounds like maintaining 60FPS all the time is impossible with an FX-6300 but you shouldn't drop much below 30FPS?

apparently the game is now fairly well threaded so curious if your CPU is hitting 80%+ utilization: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dota-2-Reborn-Notebook-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.194972.0.html

I should also mention that if you use VSYNC (to avoid screen tearing) and say lock to 60FPS (60Hz monitor) you will get added STUTTERING if you drop below 60FPS.

One option is to force on Adaptive VSYNC which will auto disable VSYNC if you fall below the target. That means you don't get the added stuttering but do get screen tearing.

NVidia CP-> manage 3d settings-> ... add game-> (vertical sync->adaptive)-> SAVE

There's a "HALF REFRESH" option there too which would be 30FPS VSYNC ON with VSYNC OFF below 30FPS (for 60Hz monitors) which would make the game feel pretty sluggish moving around, though it's useful for 144Hz monitors to synch to 72FPS.

DIPS in any game is normal, but if they happen later in a game the reasons are usually:
1) CPU bottleneck (if more units thus more things going on)
2) overheating (check frequency of CPU in particular is still good)
3) VRAM usage too high (not likely with GTX970)
4) main system memory usage too high (not likely with 8GB plus Windows should warn you)
5) GPU usage (less likely the issue in DOTA 2, and you can drop the settings in the game... dropping graphical settings can still raise the FPS if the CPU is the bottleneck since the CPU is still involved with primarily graphical settings but usually it's a small improvement... if it's a notable improvement then you likely had a GPU bottleneck not CPU... for example those extra units have added graphical processing as well as the CPU calculations that their hit points etc produce)

Maybe there's a software issue or hardware issue I've totally missed but for now I can't think of anything else to discuss. Hopefully you have the tools to diagnose if it's a problem with your hardware, software or simply the game getting too demanding.

I'm considering upgrading to a Ryzen 5 1500x. Also, I upgraded my motherboard recently and did not have to buy a new copy of Windows? It worked fine. Also, can't you link your windows copy to a Microsoft account and activate it again that way?

 

[Mohan_27]

SUMMARY:
I suspect you'll find the FPS drops correspond to GPU load being reduced. That indicates that the CPU is the bottleneck. You can't use "CPU load" as a guide since software rarely can use all of the cores in CPU's. So we go by the GPU load.

Another indicator is that there are more UNITS on-screen. In DOTA again and similar games it often starts off with less units then ramps up and eventually overloads the CPU.

I will test this tonight and get back to you. If this is true, are you saying I should upgrade my CPU?

I'm saying it's LIKELY that a better CPU will limit the FPS drops in DOTA. You can probably Google some information about that.

However, the COST of that would be high since you would need:
a) new CPU
b) new motherboard
c) new system memory (newer CPU's use DDR4 memory)
d) Windows 10 64-bit license (you can't transfer, though you may find one fairly cheap at Kinguin (dot net) and people I trust claim it works fine. You would download the actual install media from Microsoft's site. Easy to do but I won't detail that here unless needed (basically "ms media creation tool" go to site, download tool with 8GB USB stick installed, run tool and it will then DOWNLOAD the ISO file and auto configure the USB stick so you can boot from the USB stick).

and
e) reinstall Windows, programs, etc (though you can MOVE your "Steamapps" games folder to another drive if it's on the Windows (C-drive) drive then back again or just run from a separate drive (can explain in detail)

*So it's not cheap nor simple to upgrade your system. Again, assuming the issue is the CPU performance then only YOU can decide on the value of upgrading and find which CPU is recommended though probably an Intel i7, possibly one of the upcoming 4-core Intel 8th gen (may be an i5 as naming is changing but basically a 4-core with hyperthreading which is a SLIGHT upgrade over the i7-7700K).

There are cheaper CPU's but if you're going to upgrade your entire system for a game that depends a lot on the CPU you may want to get the best CPU for that game.

Or will a SOFTWARE update to the game help?
This following is several months old now, but I've heard that the game still has FPS drops that it did not have prior to 2017:
http://www.pcgamer.com/dota-2s-performance-issues-drag-on-in-the-months-following-the-700-update/

I don't play the game, but hopefully that last bit helps and you can find OTHERS who can give you better advice because...

*WITH THE UPDATE TO VULKAN ONE HOPES THAT THE GAME WILL BECOME BETTER MULTI-THREADED AND THUS ACTUALLY RUN WELL ON AN FX-6300 CPU ONCE CODE IMPROVES.

But the game appeared to SLOW DOWN not run better so not sure what happened there.

So perhaps WAITING makes more sense, though I repeat I'm not sure what the exact state of the game is today, and what to expect in the near future.

*Forgot to ask, what is:
a) the average FPS at start?
b) the FPS later when it dips?

It sounds like maintaining 60FPS all the time is impossible with an FX-6300 but you shouldn't drop much below 30FPS?

apparently the game is now fairly well threaded so curious if your CPU is hitting 80%+ utilization: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dota-2-Reborn-Notebook-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.194972.0.html

I should also mention that if you use VSYNC (to avoid screen tearing) and say lock to 60FPS (60Hz monitor) you will get added STUTTERING if you drop below 60FPS.

One option is to force on Adaptive VSYNC which will auto disable VSYNC if you fall below the target. That means you don't get the added stuttering but do get screen tearing.

NVidia CP-> manage 3d settings-> ... add game-> (vertical sync->adaptive)-> SAVE

There's a "HALF REFRESH" option there too which would be 30FPS VSYNC ON with VSYNC OFF below 30FPS (for 60Hz monitors) which would make the game feel pretty sluggish moving around, though it's useful for 144Hz monitors to synch to 72FPS.

DIPS in any game is normal, but if they happen later in a game the reasons are usually:
1) CPU bottleneck (if more units thus more things going on)
2) overheating (check frequency of CPU in particular is still good)
3) VRAM usage too high (not likely with GTX970)
4) main system memory usage too high (not likely with 8GB plus Windows should warn you)
5) GPU usage (less likely the issue in DOTA 2, and you can drop the settings in the game... dropping graphical settings can still raise the FPS if the CPU is the bottleneck since the CPU is still involved with primarily graphical settings but usually it's a small improvement... if it's a notable improvement then you likely had a GPU bottleneck not CPU... for example those extra units have added graphical processing as well as the CPU calculations that their hit points etc produce)

Maybe there's a software issue or hardware issue I've totally missed but for now I can't think of anything else to discuss. Hopefully you have the tools to diagnose if it's a problem with your hardware, software or simply the game getting too demanding.

I'm considering upgrading to a Ryzen 5 1500x. Also, I upgraded my motherboard recently and did not have to buy a new copy of Windows? It worked fine. Also, can't you link your windows copy to a Microsoft account and activate it again that way?

Yes you can:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-link-your-windows-10-product-key-microsoft-account

 

[BLOODL3TTERS]

Thank you!