Question Troubleshooting massive FPS loss + drop in GPU usage

[FlightSimPilot45]

Hey guys! Recently, I've been getting random FPS drops in Battlefield 1 that I’m struggling to explain. I’ll be cruising along at 120+ FPS and then inexplicably drop to 20 or even 2 FPS. Give it a few seconds and everything’s back to normal again. I thought it was my router (moved homes and changed internet providers about the same time the problem started), but playing plugged directly into my fiber modem brought the same results. Beginning to suspect other hardware inside the PC. Reproduced the error last night and noticed something interesting in Task Manager. Every time that happens, my GPU usage momentarily drops to 0. I’m guessing that means one of two things: My GPU is thermal throttling or it’s waiting for another component to catch up.

I've attached photos of Task Manager taken during 4 different occurrences. See here: View: https://imgur.com/a/Q0NvDPc

What do you guys think? In RivaTuner Monitor, I did notice my GPU temps going to 88C, but no FPS loss occurred. It pretty much always hangs out at 84/85C.

Here's my system specs:

• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
• Intel i7-8700k CPU @ 3.70 GHz
• 32 GB RAM
• 1 TB SSD / 1 TB HDD (Battlefield installed on the SSD)
• NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti GPU
• Not entirely sure on the power supply, but IIRC I think it was 1000W (can open the PC up to see later)
• Alienware Aurora R7 build / tower

 

[rgd1101]

yup. look like cpu/ssd spike when the gpu drop

 

[Ralston18]

You can also use Resource Monitor and Process Explorer (Microsoft, free) to observe system performance.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

 

[FlightSimPilot45]

yup. look like cpu/ssd spike when the gpu drop

Thanks for the quick reply! So it could be the GPU waiting on one or both of these then? Or are they spiking to compensate when my GPU drops out due to thermal throttling? Probably a dumb question, but I'm learning all this on the fly right now lol.

You can also use Resource Monitor and Process Explorer (Microsoft, free) to observe system performance.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

I'll take a look at these; thanks!