ME1 Citadel FPS Drops
Hi, I started ME1 earlier and was having a blast...until I got to the Citadel. Now I'm just frustrated. Essentially, the game has been running pretty much perfectly at 144 FPS. However, if I walk o...
Forum Discussion
Yeah this is happening to me, too. It was worst inside the Normandy but awful in the Citadel too. I get about 4K 120-150 FPS normally but the minute I pan my camera I get huge FPS drops and horrendous stuttering. It makes the game unplayable with a mouse and keyboard. I actually tried the game with an xbox one controller and it runs perfectly smoothly when I pan the camera. I wondered if it's linked to all the PC mouse acceleration stuff people have been talking about but none of the fixes anyone else suggested has worked for me.
Running: ME-LE via Steam
CPU: Intel 9600K
GPU: RTX 3080
EA_AticDICE Team
Hey @SageBalance @PilotGW @Crookedpinkies Can you add a Dxdiag so we can see what hardware and drivers you have?
You can also try to do a clean boot to see if there any programs messing with Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and turn off any overlay programs for example Discord or Nvidia experience.
/Atic
Hi @EA_Atic
Thank you for your reply!
Dxdiag attached, as well as pictures of what I'm seeing.
I tried the clean boot process, but it didn't make a difference unfortunately. I also made sure to disable all overlays that I'm aware of, including Xbox Game Bar, Origin, NVIDIA and RTSS, and although because of this I couldn't see the exact FPS figure, there is definately still a big drop when looking in certain directions.
I played a little more this morning and while other areas of the Citadel are better, I'm still getting drops when panning the camera or looking in certain directions (it's usually worse when looking out towards the majority of a given map).
It just feels very jittery overall. I could be wrong, but I don't remember the original being this bad, and I had vastly inferior hardware back when I last played it.
Hi @PilotGW @EA_Atic @SageBalance @Crookedpinkies
I'm facing the exact same problem. First I thought it was because of my older Hardware (I7 2600k and GTX 970), but now I'm finding more and more reports of people with much better hardware facing the exact same problem.
Suspected V-Sync which is lacking Triple Buffering, but the same result happens with V-Sync off: As soon I exit the embassy and face towards Avina, the performance drops from 120 down to around 45 - 50. Worst point is between Avina and the embassy Fast Travel location while facing towards Citadel Tower. Similar results in the wards, coming from the Med Clinic and walking towards Flux/Markets.
Before that, the performance was great, 120 FPS with V-Sync on my 120 hz Monitor (almost) all the time during Eden Prime. No overlays activated, no controlers etc. plugged in.
Thanks @EA_Atic
My dxdiag is attached. I think I've managed to turn off every overlay I could think of, but not sure. I'll look into that and the clean boot, and if I notice anything fixes it, I'll post them later today.
@holger1405 Yes I've tried both of those but thanks for the suggestion.
EDIT UPDATE: A clean boot results in good performance. Now to try to figure out what's causing the problem.
EDIT UPDATE 2: I seem to have fixed my problem!!! (For now?) For me the culprit was Corsair's iCUE app that i manages my AIO CPU cooler.
How I did it: After confirming that a clean boot resolved the issue, I would minimise my game and close apps in Task Manager until the game stabilised. After closing iCue the game ran smoothly in the Citadel Presidum (which I found to be one of the easiest spots for replicating the issue). I restarted my PC with everything running again, started the game, and then force shutdown ONLY iCUE. Lo and behold - stable at 100-120fps and even stable with VSYNC on. I even had the nvidia overlay running without issue.
I'll play for a couple hours later today. If I get the issue coming up again I'll post it here.
EDIT UPDATE 3: Well I played for three or for hours today, mostly in the Citadel. The game was much, much smoother without iCUE but there were still a few instances of stuttering, especially once I got back onto the Normandy, but it's much more tolerable. However, moving the mouse around the galactic map is a bit of a painful exercise. Must be the mouse acceleration in action. Hopefully this is fixed soon but at least it's not ME3 where you actually need real-time control of your ship.
Good luck everyone. Keelah se'lai.
Hey everyone. Just wanted to provide an update on my progress in case it helps anyone else.
After I uninstalled iCUE I thought the game was running better but I soon ran into more of the same stuttering issues. A clean boot seemed to fix things but despite SEVERAL HOURS of trying to figure out which program (or programs) was causing the issues, I wasn't able to isolate it. Blocking some programs had more of performance impact than for others, but I could never get rid of the stuttering entirely.
In the end I thought to check my BIOS - I thought I had disabled CPU overclocking a while back but it turned out I hadn't. After switching off overclocking, the game runs perfectly smoothly. I've since played the rest of ME1 without seeing the stuttering again.
I have an intel i5 9600K in case that's relevant information for anyone.
