[PC] EA FC 26 Persistent Stuttering After Last Patch. Please help!

Hi everyone,

I am losing my mind trying to fix the micro-stutters and random frame drops in EA FC 26 on PC. I’ve gone as far as logging my hardware performance (CPU, GPU, NVMe) second-by-second via CSV during matches, and while I managed to fix my thermal throttling, the core gameplay stutters are still there and driving me crazy.

The Symptoms: During actual gameplay (not just cutscenes), my FPS will randomly tank from a stable 120/165 down to 60-90 FPS for a split second. Looking at my logs, during these exact drops, my GPU usage falls off a cliff (down to 10-40%), and my NVMe SSD activity spikes to 100% with sudden read requests of over 300 MB/s i don't know why.

My Specs:

• GPU: RTX 5060
• Storage: Crucial P3 NVMe SSD 2TB
• Monitor: 165Hz
• Ram: 32GB DDR4
• Processor: i5 12400F

What I have ALREADY tried (Please don't suggest these):

1. Capped FPS: Tried locking to 120 FPS via NVIDIA Control Panel to give the CPU headroom.
2. Shader Cache: Set NVIDIA Shader Cache to 10 GB (and tried Unlimited). Cleared DirectX cache via Windows Disk Cleanup.
3. Strand Based Hair: Turned OFF completely (I know this usually causes huge SSD read spikes, but turning it off didn't fix my issue).
4. Cutscene Quality: Set to Full Frame Rate to stop the engine from halving the refresh rate during replays.
5. HAGS: Turned OFF Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in Windows.
6. Dynamic Resolution: Turned OFF.
7. Background Recording: Lowered my replay recording software to 1080p/60FPS/25Mbps. This completely fixed my drive overheating/thermal throttling, but the random read spikes during matches still happen. even truned of recording