Question One specific game (Starcraft 2) has low FPS, can't find bottleneck ?

[Turb007]

Hi all, new to forum but have been searching for an answer for my problem on here for a few days now and couldn't find an answer, hoping someone can help.. So I play Starcraft 2 quite a bit but took about a month-long break. Came back and it seems that my FPS is horrible (1 FPS) once any game starts having a good amount of units on the field. Other games which are much more GPU and CPU intensive (Elden Ring, Cyberpunk, etc.) run just fine, which makes me wonder if something about my settings for SC2 got messed up somehow but I can't seem to figure out what. My in-game settings don't seem to have much of an effect as I have tried putting everything to Low and the problem still persists (I usually play most settings on high with a few on medium and has always worked fine in the past).

Things I have tried and extra info:

• CPU and GPU temps are only 45-55 C, which they were normally 70-80 C in the past (while playing SC2) which I think is rather strange?
• I made sure computer is set for maximum performance in NVIDIA control panel and on windows 10 (and yes my laptop is plugged in)
• My internet connection shows "Excellent" in game, I have not changed my internet plan or location and the internet speed is as good as it always has been
• NVIDIA control panel settings for SC2 look normal (i think?)
• Ran multiple forms of anti-virus to check for malware and nothing turned up
• All drivers are up to date, as is windows 10
• Downloaded Restoro and had it run through my system, no change
• Via task manager, nothing under the performance tab ever shows any signs of stress or high usage during 1FPS gameplay
• Downloaded CPUID HWMonitor and it seems that CPU #2 runs at around 80-95% (rarely but occasionally hits 100%) while others are usually less than 30% (occasionally hits 80%) while playing. SC2 is only a 2 core game so I wonder if this has something to do with this. But if it does, why am I having problems now all of a sudden when I didn't in the past.. ?

About my laptop:
Acer Predator Helios 300

• CPU: Intil i7-8750H @ 2.20GHz 2.21GHz
• RAM: 16 GB
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
• Game location is on the SSD that came with the laptop

If any additional info would be helpful please let me know. I can't for the life of me figure this out and it is quite annoying. Would appreciate any help or ideas. Thanks for your time.

 

[Lutfij]

You state being on Windows 10, what version(not edition) of Windows 10 are you working with? As for your laptop, is it on the latest BIOS version? Might want to try and uninstall, the GPU drivers using DDU then manually reinstalling your GPU drivers with that found of Nvidia's support site. When (re)installing, do so in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator, while disconnected from the www. Then reinstall your afflicted game, see if that helps.

How much free space do you have on your SSD(overall)? Out of curiosity, where did you source the installer for the game?

 

[TerryLaze]

Type graphics into your search bar and go to the settings make sure sc2 is in the list otherwise add it and make sure it is set to high performance, meaning it uses the nvidia card otherwise it uses the igpu.

 

[Turb007]

Thank you for your replies. I will try these tonight and see if they solve my issue.

As for BIOS i have Insyde Corp. V1.19, 7/13/2018 with my System Model of Predator PH315-51. The available BIOS updates don't mention anything about performance so I didn't think that that would be the issue but I certainly will try.

My windows version is windows 10, version 21H1 (OS Build 19043.1645).

My main SSD (where game and installer are located) has 25.4 GB free of 237 GB. The installer is default sourced into x86 program files.

As for the Graphics Settings, I haven't ever messed with those and none of my games are listed in there so I assume the system just listens to the "Let windows decide" which should default to my windows and NVIDIA settings for high performance? Either way, I will try it^^.

 

[Turb007]

I have tried all of the above suggestions and the issue still persists. As for the GPU reinstall, I did not reinstall Geforce Experience, as evidently that can cause issues for many.. I also updated my bios to current version.

Additional info I just found:
I decided to boot up multiple different games to see if there was any performance issues and there was an odd one with Cyberpunk. There is an odd issue where 3 out of 10 boot ups of the game resulted in horrible FPS with no high usage, this appeared immediately as even the loading screen was glitchy and slow. The other 7 boot ups of the game resulted in normal behavior for my computer. I will attach screenshots of MSI Afterburner info in case this helps (hopefully that's okay, haven't found a rules section on this forum).

Cyberpunk normal performance: https://postimg.cc/grJJ58Gs
Cyberpunk strange performance: https://postimg.cc/JyM7QBTb
SC2 low FPS again: https://postimg.cc/q6hp7cRd

 

[Turb007]

So I finally figured out the fix to this. Not sure how to close this thread as "solved" but here is what worked for me:

Step 1:

• Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options
• Removed High Performance Plan, Switched to Balanced Plan and reset to defualt settings

Step 2:
- Device manager, click scan for hardware changes

Step 3:
- Restart computer

Not entirely sure why this worked but it did. Hopefully will work for others if they experience the same issues.