Game(ultimate team) is unplayable due to lags, stutter and input delays
My game has been unplayable since the day I bought it. I've tried to fix it with technical support but they've been unhelpful and adviced me to refund the game. Even tough my system looked enough to play the game (and had no problem with fc25) technical support simply brushed me off by saying its not compatible. So I've tried to handle it with ChatGPT and thats the summary so far (rest is generated by ai):
System
I’m playing on an HP Victus 15-fa0008NT laptop.
CPU: Intel i5-12450H
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050
RAM: 16 GB
OS: Windows 11
Issue
I get heavy stutters and short freezes during matches, especially starting in the second half. FPS stays high, but the image freezes for about half a second and input feels delayed.
This also happens in offline modes (for example Squad Battles), so it is not related to online connection or ping. Sometimes the problem appears already in menus, sometimes the first match is fine and later matches are worse.
What I have already tried
Drivers and BIOS
I updated the BIOS to the latest version from HP.
I clean installed Intel drivers from HP’s support page: chipset, Intel Management Engine (ME), Serial IO, IO or SMBus, Intel UHD graphics.
I used DDU in Safe Mode to completely remove display drivers.
I then clean installed NVIDIA drivers (tested 577.03 and 536.67) with the clean install option.
Windows, power and services
I disabled hibernation and Fast Startup.
Game Mode and Xbox Game Bar are off. All capture or recording features are disabled.
I removed or disabled almost all HP background apps and services.
I use a high performance style power plan, CPU minimum and maximum are at 100 percent, and I disabled core parking via registry.
I tested Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling on and off, optimizations for windowed games on and off, and VRR on and off.
I performed a clean boot with only Microsoft services enabled.
Graphics and NVIDIA settings
In NVIDIA Control Panel, per game profile for FC 26:
Low Latency Mode = On
Power Management Mode = Prefer maximum performance
V Sync = Off
Shader Cache size = 10 GB
Threaded Optimization = On
In Windows graphics settings, FC26.exe is set to High Performance so it always uses the RTX 3050.
I always run the game in true fullscreen, not borderless.
Game and files
I deleted FC 26 cache folders under AppData and cleared the DirectX shader cache.
I used Repair in the EA app.
I completely uninstalled and reinstalled the game.
I tried lower graphics settings such as 1080p, medium or low textures, crowd, shadows, etc.
DX11 test
I forced the game to run with -dx11 in EA app launch options or shortcut.
Running in DX11 makes things a little bit more stable, but the stutter and short freezes still happen, especially later in matches.
Monitoring and latency results
I used LatencyMon and Task Manager while playing.
The same drivers always show up as the main DPC or ISR contributors: dxgkrnl.sys, ACPI.sys and Wdf01000.sys.
Reported DPC latency is often between about 5000 and 9000 microseconds.
This pattern looks almost the same in moments with visible stutter and in moments without visible stutter.
During matches (with and without stutter) I see roughly:
GPU usage around 75 to 85 percent.
CPU usage around 40 to 60 percent.
GPU temperature around 60 degrees.
System RAM usage very high, about 14 to 15.7 GB used out of 16 GB.
Other notes
On this same laptop I do not see this kind of heavy stuttering in other games I play. The issue seems specific to FC26.
Conclusion
From my side I have already tried BIOS and driver updates, multiple clean installs of Intel and NVIDIA drivers, Windows power and GPU settings, disabling background services, repairing and reinstalling the game, and forcing DX11. The issue still appears.
