Severe In-Game FPS Drop and 16 FPS Hard Lock Issue in FC 26 (PC)
1. System Specifications
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB VRAM)
OS: Windows 11
2. Description of the Bug (Symptoms)
Severe FPS Degradation and Global 16 FPS Lock: The issue triggers abruptly. While a match runs flawlessly at around 70 FPS, entering a subsequent match suddenly causes the in-game frame rate to degrade in real-time, becoming heavily throttled. Once this happens, the entire game—including the Main Menu—becomes completely locked at 16 FPS.
Behavior After PC Reboot (Menu Recovers, In-Game Fails):
First, if I restart the PC and launch the game, the Main Menu FPS recovers to its normal high frame rate.
Second, however, the moment I load into the actual match (in-game gameplay) from that menu, the frame rate instantly plunges right back into the 16 FPS lock.
Time-Dependent Full Recovery: Simply rebooting the PC only fixes the Main Menu. To get the actual match gameplay back to 70 FPS, I have to wait for a prolonged period (such as a full day). Only after several hours have passed does the system fully recover, allowing a few normal matches before the cycle repeats.
Title-Specific Issue: This problem occurs exclusively in EA SPORTS FC 26. Other high-end PC titles run optimally without any thermal throttling or performance drops.
3. Troubleshooting Attempted (Eliminating User-Side Variables)
To isolate the root cause, I have already thoroughly conducted the following optimization protocols:
In-Game Graphics Settings: Adjusted various options within the game's graphics menu to resolve the frame drop, but the 16 FPS lock remains completely unaffected.
NVIDIA Control Panel Optimization: Set Power Management Mode to 'Prefer Maximum Performance', set Low Latency Mode to 'On', and configured a strict Max Frame Rate cap to prevent GPU overhead. Also increased Shader Cache Size to 'Unlimited' or '10GB+' and toggled CUDA - Sysmem Fallback Policy to 'Prefer System Memory Allocation Off' to test VRAM paging issues.
Windows and Hardware Power Management: Reconfigured Windows Virtual Memory (Paging File) sizes. Additionally, utilized external software utilities to strictly throttle and control the GPU's excessive power output/boost behavior.
4. Conclusion and Request for Support
The fact that a PC reboot temporarily restores the Main Menu FPS but instantly breaks upon loading a match indicates a critical flaw in the Frostbite engine's asset de-allocation.
On 4GB VRAM devices, the game appears to hold a corrupted shader or mesh memory handle from the previous glitched session. The reboot clears the UI layer (menu), but loading a match re-engages the corrupted or un-allocated heap space, immediately triggering the 16 FPS throttle. It requires a full server session expiration or an extended downtime to completely flush this persistent state.
Please escalate this to the engineering team to review the memory management and asset clearing pipelines for 4GB GPU configurations.
