Stuck at 1-10 FPS in Apex Legends while other heavy games run fine
Hi everyone,
I’m facing a strange performance issue with Apex Legends and hope someone here can shed some light on it. I just returned to the game today after about a year of not playing it. However, as soon as I jump into the lobby or the Firing Range, my frame rate plummets to 1–10 FPS, making the game completely unplayable.
Here is what's puzzling:
Other demanding games like Ghost of Tsushima and Far Cry 5 run completely smooth on my laptop with normal frame rates.
My system specs (AMD Ryzen 7 4800H, NVIDIA GTX 1650 Ti, 16GB RAM) easily meet the game's recommended requirements.
I’ve already set all in-game graphic settings to Low/Disabled, forced High Performance GPU in Windows Graphics Settings, and verified game files on Steam, but the 1–10 FPS lock persists.
Could this be a compatibility issue with the latest NVIDIA graphics drivers or DirectX 12 (r5apex_dx12)? Has anyone experienced this specific FPS drop after recent updates, and is there a known fix or driver version rollback that resolves it?
Thanks in advance for any help!
Hi ZYAGHINNA,
Sorry to hear Apex is dropping to 1–10 FPS even though other demanding games are running normally.
Since you’ve already lowered the graphics settings, selected the high-performance NVIDIA GPU, and verified the game files, I wouldn’t ask you to repeat those steps.
Could you please try the following:
- Remove any Steam launch options you currently have, including anything related to r5apex_dx12, CPU priority, thread count, or FPS limits, then launch the game normally.
- Open the Apex installation folder, right-click r5apex.exe and r5apex_dx12.exe, select Properties > Compatibility, and enable Disable fullscreen optimizations.
- Make sure the laptop is connected to power and set Windows and your manufacturer’s control software to its highest-performance mode.
- Temporarily close overlays, monitoring tools, recording software, and background applications.
- Perform a clean boot to check whether another service is limiting the game’s performance.
If the FPS is still locked that low, please attach a DxDiag report as a .txt file and let us know whether CPU and GPU usage also remain unusually low while the issue is happening.
Thanks for listing everything you’ve already tested. Hopefully, these checks will help narrow down what is preventing Apex from using the system normally.
