Recurring FPS Drops in FC27 and FC26

Hello,

I would like to report a recurring performance issue that I have experienced in both EA SPORTS FC 26 and the FC 27 Closed Beta on my PC.

My laptop specifications are:

Lenovo laptop

CPU: Intel Core i5 13th Gen

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2050 Laptop GPU, 4 GB VRAM

RAM: 16 GB

OS: Windows 11 Home 64-bit

NVIDIA GPU driver: GeForce Game Ready Driver 610.88

FC27 Closed Beta issue

In FC27 Closed Beta, I sometimes experience a severe FPS drop during a match.

The problem does not usually happen immediately when entering the pitch. It happens more frequently when I pause the match or open the squad/team management screen or other in-game menus.

When the issue occurs, the FPS drops significantly and the game becomes extremely choppy. However, unlike FC26, the FPS usually recovers automatically after approximately 20–30 seconds.

Similar issue in FC26

I experienced a very similar issue in FC26.

In FC26, the FPS could drop to around 6 FPS after entering a match and sometimes would remain extremely low for the rest of the match.

I discovered a workaround using Heaven Benchmark 4.0.

Heaven Benchmark 4.0 is a relatively lightweight GPU benchmarking application. When I ran it before playing FC26, the FPS issue would be resolved and the game would remain smooth for the rest of the match.

I previously had to launch another full game to trigger similar GPU activity, but Heaven Benchmark 4.0 provided a much easier solution because it is lightweight and does not require another large game to be installed.

FC27 test

I tested the exact same workaround with the FC27 Closed Beta.

After experiencing the FPS issue in FC27, I ran Heaven Benchmark 4.0 using high/highest quality settings.

After running the benchmark, FC27 became smooth again and the FPS drops stopped occurring during my subsequent gameplay.

This is particularly interesting because the same workaround also worked for me in FC26.

I cannot confirm the exact technical cause, but the fact that running a GPU benchmark can consistently resolve the issue in both FC26 and FC27 makes me wonder whether there could be an issue involving GPU initialization, GPU power-state behavior, driver interaction, shader compilation, or another interaction between the game and the NVIDIA GPU.

Difference between FC26 and FC27

The issue is less severe in FC27.

In FC26, the FPS could become stuck at extremely low levels and remain that way.

In FC27, the FPS drop is usually temporary and the game generally recovers after approximately 20–30 seconds.

However, the fact that the same Heaven Benchmark 4.0 workaround appears to resolve the problem in both games makes me believe this may be worth investigating.

I wanted to report this in case the development team can identify a common underlying cause between the two versions.

Thank you for investigating this issue.