Re: [Bug Report] GPU/CPU Throttling Mid Gameplay

@holger1405 Just so you have some comparative data, I took the liberty of running another analysis while playing Outriders, which I've attached.  I've also attached 2 screenshots of the Task Manager readouts for GPU/CPU Usage for 2 games (Outriders and Sniper Elite 4).  Sniper Elite 4 shows very erratic behaviour of the GPU, however, the CPU experiences no throttling, and there is no issue from an FPS perspective while playing.  Outriders runs smooth and the readouts show consistent usage with no throttling as well.

Hopefully, this can help determine the cause.

@bdcovington 

The First planet you are send to as is in Feros or Noveria?

In general, the MELE has performance issues in specific places that afaik effecting about anyone.

I have a i5 10600k overclocked to 5Ghz meaning a CPU with a relatively high single core performance, and I experience FPS drops on specific places at the Citadel from 165FPS (Vsync) to around 90 at worst 80 FPS.

In some places, such as the Citadel, this happens because the MELE still use a thread (not core, a single thread) and this thread is simply maxed out, i.e. a classic CPU bottleneck occurs where the CPU simply cannot drive the GPU anymore.

But in other places the problems seems to be different.

What I see in your HWInfo log is that your CPU is not taxed at all.

You did al lot of troubleshooting, I would suggest you disable the energy saving features of your INTEL CPU in the BIOS and test afterwards.

(That are EIST, CPU C State Control, CPU P-States Control and so on.)

Edit: Thanks for the additional files, and yes I don't think your GPU is the problem here.

@holger1405 By first planet, I meant the first mission in ME:1 where you start the game on the Normandy, then meet with Captain Anderson, then go down to the planet where

As far as the power settings go, unfortunately, it doesn't look like I have any options in the BIOS that have anything to do with power saving, the closest I can do is manage the processor power settings via the windows power plan advanced interface (screenshot for current settings attached).

If you're playing OUTRIDERS fine, that probably rules out thermal issues.

There have been rare reports where performance dives off a cliff after a short amount of time in the games. This could be that.

You'll have to search around and see if anybody found any solution (if it turns out to be the same problem).

@bdcovington 

That would be Eden Prime.

I guess this also made no difference?

I can't say why your system is not utilized by he game. If it would be a third party service or application the clean boot should have taken care of that.

There are some things you could try:

• Disconnect the additional Monitors > Reboot > Test.
• Disconnect all additional hardware (Cameras, external HDDs controlers and so on) > Reboot > Test.
• Disable the Realtek sound driver > reboot > test.
• I might be wrong about the reason for this problem, so a clean reinstallation of your graphic drivers might be a good idea.
  Use DDU for that.
  Follow this manual to the letter to cleanly uninstall all NVIDIA components.
  Install the graphics driver > Go online.
  Test.
• Updating Windows to the current build 19043.

@holger1405  All steps taken, no peripherals or monitors, disabled audio driver, went through DDU process to completely uninstall and reinstall latest NVIDIA driver, and unfortunately, still not having any effect on the throttling.

@bdcovington 

All as well as the Audio driver and the Windows suggestion?

@holger1405 every step, including windows version and audio driver.

@bdcovington 

Than I am out of ideas as well.

@holger1405 well I have to say thank you, regardless.of whether we fixed it or not, you have been an absolutely hero, never had a better experience trying to troubleshoot something on the internet.  I think at this point the blame for this problem needs to fall on EA/BIO, which hopefully they can take care of.

I appreciate all the assistance!

@sweetpoison0011 I had not tried that yet, so I just did now, and unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the issue.  Overall, the issue doesn't seem to be that of my system not being able to play the game at a high framerate, the problem seems to center more around my CPU/GPU being throttled in the middle of playing.  When I start the game, I can easily get 144FPS or better, but every time I play, without exception, by the time I hit 1 minute, my CPU and GPU will have been throttled.  It doesn't happen with any other games I own, regardless of what games they are, or how taxing they are (it doesn't even happen with the stand-alone versions of ME1, 2, and 3 that I already own), leading me to believe this is an issue with ME:L itself, and how it's communicating with my CPU and GPU.  Maybe it has something to do with my CPU/GPU models, I'm not sure, but as you can see from this thread, we've run every test short of asking a witch doctor to intervene with no success.

@bdcovington I understand your frustrations. Still after looking closely to this image I keep asking myself if the problem is not related to communication with Origin. For CPU/GPU drops while WI-FI is at peak is too much to be a coincidence. From my experience, I always close Origin right after launching the game (minimize to systray) because in my case force some hiccups while playing. Also long time ago I switched from WI-FI to ETH (at that time I was playing MMO's and the difference was noticeable in terms of lag and hiccups). I don't try to suggest anything here, just sharing the experience. Since I never had a top of the line computer I was forced to extract as much possible from my crappy machine and what works for me in that order, I keep my SSD with lower than 75% occupied space, cap all games` FPS, never used overclock because by changing the balance also change the stability and finally, where is possible I play the games in borderless window instead of full screen (keeping that way all windows apps hold by indel video card while the game is held by the dedicated one). Aside that, every time when a background internet traffic occurs (except for MMO's) I can notice hiccups. 

I hope you can fix the problems and enjoy the game.

Did you get your issue fixed after the patch?
For me it solved nothing. After playing for a while, everything starts stuttering, dropping fps and eventually becomes unplayable.

The only short-term "solution" I found is to reboot the PC and hope I can get a nice chunk of game time without the throttling...

Just updating to say that, so far, no updates to the game have made any difference in this issue.