Apex Legends using way too much CPU - Stutter + Framedrops

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Darko 

I have an i7 9900k and this still happens

I also have the same problem and I have a Ryzen 5 3600x and a MSI Gaming X rx 5700xt

After struggling with low FPS in Apex Legends, spending a lot of time researching for ideas to improve my game experience I've found one time a really interesting post when searching for an issue I was having with another application (GamingOSD). I've found that uninstalling ALL versions of Microsoft Visual C++ YEAR(s) Redistributable .... (I had installed like 6 different versions) restarting and reinstalling the latest one (just google for Microsoft Visual C++  Redistributable) my FPS increased so much that I now can play, I have gained a boost of at least 30%.

Hope this helps. It helped me a lot.

I advice anyone to ignore the angry guy, and not just because he is rude.

The tip of the above person about uninstalling all the old c++ versions could help tho, i guess it depends per system how much.

There are a few things that might help that I can suggest you try, but that's assuming you have your windows set up correctly for gaming. If not, do that first. google is your friend.

- Do NOT run apex in high priority, on most systems it seems to have an averse effect, best case scenario, it does nothing because windows already should be prioritizing foreground programs anyway. so remove the -high start up command. in fact, remove every start up command if you have others, then go to C:\Users\yourusername\Saved Games\Respawn\Apex and delete your videoconfig.txt file.

now you go and start up apex and go to the settings, set up the whole thing to lowest settings (atleast as low as u can bare to play) but even if you wanna leave everything on the default settings, go and change every setting and apply after each, this is to ensure that any settings you might have changed using a .cfg will be reset do default.. after this you can go and close apex.

go back to the location i mention above and open the videoconfig.txt file and adjust the following lines:

"setting.cl_gib_allow" "0"
"setting.cl_particle_fallback_base" "-1"
"setting.cl_particle_fallback_multiplier" "-1"
"setting.cl_ragdoll_maxcount" "0"
"setting.cl_ragdoll_self_collision" "1"
"setting.mat_mip_linear" "0"

"setting.mat_picmip" "4" (but u can also just leave it if u wanna keep a bit of non patato graphics)
"setting.particle_cpu_level" "0"
"setting.r_createmodeldecals" "0"
"setting.r_decals" "0"
"setting.r_lod_switch_scale" "0.500000" (but u can also just leave it if u wanna keep a bit of non patato graphics)
"setting.shadow_enable" "0"
"setting.shadow_depth_dimen_min" "0"
"setting.shadow_depth_upres_factor_max" "0"
"setting.shadow_maxdynamic" "0"
"setting.ssao_enabled" "0"
"setting.ssao_downsample" "3"
 "setting.volumetric_lighting" "0"
"setting.mat_vsync_mode" "0"
"setting.mat_backbuffer_count" "1"
 "setting.csm_enabled" "0"
"setting.csm_coverage" "0"
"setting.csm_cascade_res" "64"

after you have done this, save the txt file and close it, right click on it > properties > tick the "read only" box  ( if you don't apex will just reset it automatically, so if you want to undo this, just untick the read only box again and done)  its important to note that if you now make any changes in your ingame video settings, it should not save these, so u wanna make those changes in the txt or follow the same procedure again.

ensure that you start your search with ensuring you set everything to default ( like your nvidia panel program settings for apex, make sure you are not using a (often incorrect) ,cfg file etc etc. whatever you once did to the game, remove it or set it to default again. you can tweak it to your preferences after you ensured the game runs normal again.

now press your windows key and type "graphic" so that the option "graphic settings" pops up... if your win10 is entirely up to date there should be a hardware accelerated GPU scheduling option there and if its off you should turn it on ( don't ask my why windows seems convinced they should start to get involved so much more with gaming performance.. im just making you aware of this new option 🙂 )

below it is "graphics performance preference" and you want to add r5apex.exe to this list ( with browse) and set it to high performance.

u need a reboot at this point.

If you are for some reason not happy with nvidia's new reflex feature (which i cannot imagine because its awesome, thanks battlenonsense for pushing them to make this) you could disable 
it with the following startup command: +gfx_nvnUseLowLatency 0  ( change the 0 to 1 means its enabled)

go to your nvidia panel and program settings where you should choose "highest refreshrate" and "prefer maximum performance" for apex legends.

try again and see if you feel its running significantly better... if not you can always reverse everything i wrote here very easily if you want 🙂

Is this all there is to it? no, there are a ton of things you can do to ensure your pc is working better when gaming, but this is already a long enough post.

It should be noted aswell that the servers are very bad so serverside a lot of performance degradation can happen but this is not something you can help ( though u could make the problem slightly smaller for your client depending on your system)

If you wanna run apex at a higher fps then your refreshrate, unlock it with the start up command but I highly advice to lock your fps to the highest stable fps you can get ( sure it will dip in massive multi airstrike fights etc unless you have a super pc but ensuring a fps cap will decrease your input lag significantly)

If you wanna have a go at cpu optimising, project lasso has all you need, but im not gonna get into that except that just installing the free version and keeping it on default with performance mode and probalance enabled will always be a good thing.

Hope this helps! also stop shooting me in the head with the wingman, its annoying! <3

The i5 has 4 cores and 4 threads which bottlenecks the gtx 1080 ti, its just that your cpu is not able to keep up with the 1080 ti, therefore is always sitting at 100% usage. 

Maybe try turning off the hyperthreading specifically for apex legends in nvidia control panel. I run on even lower specs than you and had issues like this too. But once I turn off hyperthreading, now the cpu usage is very less and also more constant fps with less stuttering. Hope this helps