EA FC 26 on PC — severe and intermittent FPS drops to 1–2 FPS - 1st October

Hello everyone,

I’m posting a full, chronological bug report because I can reproduce a very serious performance issue in EA FC 26 and I’ve exhausted all reasonable local fixes. This is long but I want to be precise.

My system (exact):

Laptop: Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3
CPU: Intel Core i5 (11th Gen)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti 
iGPU: Intel Iris 
RAM: 16 GB (observed used ~12–13 GB during tests)
OS: Windows 11 Home
Game: EA FC 26 (bought via EA Play / EA App)5

Short summary of the problem

Game is sometimes (rarely) completely smooth (I had one single session of 6 hours with no problems, that makes me think that once the game is launched well it keeps working well). If i close the game or reboot pc after a good session it still keeps having problems.
Intermittently, the game’s UI (especially FUT menus, pack-opening animations, halftime menus, and sometimes cutscenes) will drop to 1–2 FPS and become completely unplayable. This can also happen immediately on match start or during gameplay in some sessions.
In many cases the FPS values seen in menus are exact halves of configured caps: e.g. 45 FPS (half of 90) or 30 FPS (half of 60), even when I have set “full frame rate” in the game. Sometimes the game stays in the ~65–75 FPS range in-match despite cap = 90.
The crash / freeze is triggered very reliably by opening packs or certain menu animations for me. It is intermittent overall (sometimes no issues at all for hours).

What Task Manager / monitoring shows

GPU (NVIDIA) spikes to 100% utilization while the menu/animation is happening. Temperatures normal (≈66–70°C).
CPU usage is moderate (≈25–45%) — CPU is not the bottleneck.
RAM usage often around 12–13 GB / 16 GB (≈77–83% usage). When memory gets high, system may start paging which could worsen symptoms.
The game sometimes forces the GPU to render even in menus (GPU 100% and engine shows 3D render activity while UI should be lightweight).

Immediate reproducible steps (how to reproduce reliably on my PC)

Start PC and EA App. Launch EA FC 26.
Enter Ultimate Team (FUT).
Enter FUT OR open a pack (pack opening animation) OR wait for start/halftime/post-match menu.
As soon as animation/menu shows, FPS collapse to 1–2 FPS and the game becomes unplayable.
(Notes: as i said sometimes this happens immediately after restarting PC; sometimes I can play many matches with no problem and it only happens after a later launch.)

What I have tried so far (list of attempted fixes and concrete observations):

GPU selection / drivers
Ensured game is forced to use NVIDIA GPU in Windows Graphics settings and in NVIDIA Control Panel. (Confirmed GPU 0 = NVIDIA in Task Manager.) → Did not fix the issue.
Updated NVIDIA drivers to the latest. → Issue persisted.
Did NOT perform a DDU clean reinstall of NVIDIA drivers yet.
Intel iGPU
Updated Intel GPU drivers via Intel Driver & Support Assistant. → No stable fix; problem remains.
Overlays
Disabled EA overlay, GeForce Experience overlay, Discord overlay, Xbox Game Bar. → No consistent fix.
EA App cache + game cache
Cleared EA App cache folders (the cache, offline cache, igocache, logs folders in AppData). → Sometimes helps for a session but issue can return after restart.
Anti-cheat / EA App
I have done a full uninstall/reinstall of EA AntiCheat. I tried launching as admin and direct launch from EASPORTSFC26.exe vs launcher. → No consistent fix.
In-game settings / INI editing
I manually edited fcsetup.ini with conservative, stable values (lowered rendering quality, disabled motion blur, strand-based hair off, MSAA=0, dynamic resolution off, TARGET_FRAME_RATE=90, etc.).
After editing I set the file to Read-only to prevent the game from overwriting settings. Initially this made the game use my values.
But: when I open a pack or certain menus the game sometimes resets all settings back to Ultra (hair strands on, motion blur on, etc.) — even though the fcsetup.ini remained read-only. This could triggers the GPU spike and 1–2 FPS.
Conclusion: the game appears to be forcibly overriding/pushing presets for some UI/animation code path.
Fullscreen / Borderless combos
I tried different combinations: FULLSCREEN=1 + WINDOWED_BORDERLESS=1 (Frostbite’s known combo for borderless), FULLSCREEN=0 + WINDOWED_BORDERLESS=1, and exclusive fullscreen. → No stable fix. The game behaviour can still switch/push settings mid-game.
Frame cap / V-Sync / NVIDIA CP
Set FPS cap to 90 in-game and also set cap in NVIDIA Control Panel.
Installed RTSS (RivaTuner) and tried to lock FPS to 90 via RTSS (and also tried 60). RTSS shows FPS but does not prevent the game from entering a 1–2 FPS state during pack animations / menus in my case. Sometimes menus show exact halves of my caps (45 or 30), sometimes weird 65–75 in-match.
Turned V-Sync on/off, changed low-latency mode (off), power mode to “Optimal” (not “Prefer maximum performance”). → No stable fix.
DX11 / DX12
Launched with -dx11 parameter (and tried dx12) to test DirectX runtimes. DX11 sometimes produced different behaviour but pack animation still produced 1 FPS in many tests. (Usually with dx11 i have imput lag in game but i think it's not important in this case)
MSI Afterburner / RTSS
Installed Afterburner + RTSS to monitor FPS overlay. I can see FPS drop (RTSS shows frames), and Task Manager confirmed GPU hitting 100% during menus. RTSS cap sometimes ignored by the game when the UI is forcibly switched.
Memory considerations
RAM often around 12–13 GB used. I closed background apps (Discord, browsers, etc.) to free RAM — that helps a bit for stability but does not remove the pack→1fps issue.
Repair game
I have repaired the game, uninstalled/reinstalled the game. I have tried cache deletes and re-launches multiple times. Nothing chanched.

Observed patterns / important notes

The problem is not consistent with a broken GPU: the same hardware can run 6 hours straight with zero issues in some sessions and then drop to 1–2 FPS on pack animation in another session. Plus i have ZERO issues with any other games, including Ea Fc 25.
When the explosion to 1–2 FPS happens, Task Manager shows the RTX at very high 3D utilization (often 100%). CPU remains relatively low; temps are OK (not thermal throttling).
Pack opening / FUT menus / game start animation / halftime menus / post-match menus are the most common triggers — i've read these use Chromium/CEF UI code internally, so it may be related to how the UI renderer switches graphics presets or spawns a rendering pass.
When the game “resets” my settings to Ultra and forces strand hair + motion blur, GPU immediately spikes and framerate collapses to 1–2.
Rarely when i'm on fut menus and i come back to Main Menu (the one with all the game modes) the Fps starts growing till 45. If i start a game after this happens, my fps won't be more than 50 anyways.

What I still have NOT tried (and am willing to do if requested)

Full DDU clean uninstall + clean reinstall of NVIDIA drivers.

Full reinstall of EA App and/or moving the game to C:\ to test same-drive behavior (I have it installed on D:).

Uploading full logs / attaching DXDIAG / MSInfo reports (I can provide these if requested).

Request / ask

Please escalate this to the FC 26 engineers. This looks like an engine/UI bug (CEF/Chromium or Frostbite UI path) that forcibly changes graphics presets or triggers an abnormal render pass in menus/pack animations.
If there is a hotfix or a reliable workaround (exact registry key, .ini override, or folder/file to make read-only that actually prevents the game from overriding user settings), please tell me.
If you need logs / fcsetup.ini / dxdiag / Task Manager screenshots, please list exactly which files and how to collect them; I will upload them.
If you want me to try a DDU driver reinstall or full AntiCheat reinstall and collect post-action logs, I will do it — but I’d like EA devs to confirm the next best step before I wipe drivers.

Thanks in advance for looking into this. I can provide any additional logs you request. Please let me know the exact filenames you want attached and I’ll upload them.

— Valerio