Re: FPS drops on highway (High End Rig)

I've tried disabling Origin in-game, didn't help. Would closing MSI afterburner before launching Need for Speed still keep my overclock and fan curve?

@Hutchie91

It would probably revert to the default settings. It is however worth closing it just for testing purposes.

Let me know if you were able to see improvements in-game.

I tried it out and unfortunately it has made no difference. Is there any some sort of text file I can upload for you to go over and check? Just in case there is something wrong with my Windows install or my drivers. I've seen people post them before when trying to troubleshoot but can't remember what they were called sorry.

@Hutchie91

Yeah, I can take a look for you. Such a file is called a dxdiag - you can upload it to me via Reply -> Choose File.

https://help.ea.com/en/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information

@Straatford87 I just want to say thank you for continuing to help us even after some time after release. It's great to get some sort of support from the developers, unlike what's going on with the Forza Horizon 3 forums and Playground games.

Anyways, I ran DxDiag, however some error message popped up saying about being unable to access DirectShadow and asked me if I wanted to Bypass it, which I did, so not sure if that will change anything, anyways, here is the txt file. Also, if it helps, all my games are installed on a separate SSD, a 520GB Crucial MX300, known as the E: Drive in Windows.

@Hutchie91

Hi again,

No problem, glad that I can try to help you out. Hopefully we will be able to find the cause of the FPS drops.. 🙂

Even though you have your games installed on separate SSD's, I do see that your C: drive is very low on available space. I am not sure how you've set up your SSD, but such devices need additional space allocated to read and write data. Low available storage could potentially negatively impact your gaming performance or lead to system crashes.

Another thing that I noticed was that your GPU drivers missed the latest update of somewhere in December. You could do a clean installation by downloading and installing the latest drivers and selecting Custom Installation -> Clean Installation. Depending on the changes in the driver release, this could make you see fps improvements. Though I cannot guarantee that this is the cause.

I also found reference to ASGT.exe crashing (Asus GPU Tweak) in your dxdiag, so if you were still running that program next to MSI Afterburner, then also try disabling or turning of any remaining similar apps.

Do note that it is normal to see at least some FPS drops in-game, though these occurrences should be short and you should not see major dips.

And lastly, try lowering your in-game settings somewhat to see if that resolves the FPS drops on the highway. Your system is (I run the same system, except different mobo and GPU brand) powerful enough to run the game on Ultra, but I would still like to test it. 

Thanks for the detailed response. My C drive is just a 120GB Kingston SSD that is just for Windows, system apps and my engineering software like Catia and ANSYS (engineering student), then my all of my games are on the E drive which is a separate SSD that usually has around 50GB - 100GB free. The low space left on the C drive is a temporary thing as I have yet to move some files to my 2TB HDD (D: drive) and/or my USB external drives. I usually have around 30GB free on the C drive and still had the performance hits.

As for my GPU drivers, I only tend to update them when necessary, as plenty of times I've updated my drivers to the latest ones only to get odd behavior/performance on other titles or, get some weird bugs on Windows etc. Although my current drivers are more up to date than the game ready drivers Nvidia released for this title so I doubt it will change things much, I'll download the latest drivers available now with a clean install using DDU.

Thank you for spotting that, I have ASUS Tweak installed but it's never used as Afterburner is my OC/monitoring software. However, when I ran this game on my old rig (FX-8350 and a Zotac 970), I didnt have GPUTweaker installed and got the same fps drops but I assumed it was just down to my old FX 8350 being a bottleneck. Anyways, I've uninstalled GPUTweak and will give it another try.

The only thing I can think of maybe is out of date chipset drivers or realtek audio drivers? I also just have one stick of 16GB RAM as opposed to two sticks of 8GB, but Ive seen plenty of benchmarks that show that dual channel vs single channel has negligible impact on gaming. Anyways, I'll give it another try and report back to you, cheers.

@Hutchie91

From my experience the latest updates for Realtek audio are always several years old. But it couldn't hurt looking at it.

I don't think the difference between one 16GB or two 8GB sticks should matter, as you still have the appropriate amount of available memory.

Let me know how the tests turn out 🙂

@Straatford87

Hi, unfortunately, after uninstalling GPU Tweak and clearing space from my C and E drive, it made no difference. Still suffering from those framedrops. After experimenting with the settings, it seemed that turning down the Shadows down to High has nearly eliminated the fps drops. There is still the odd occasion where for a split second it will drop down to like 58fps but thats it, when I have the MSI Afterburner OSD off I'll never be able to notice it unlike how it was when Shadows were set to Ultra where there would be drops down to the low 50's high 40's and some parts of the motorway it would easily last for a good 5 seconds and therefore very very noticeable without the OSD up. I even tried loading up the game after a clean boot but that made no difference, especially when the only programs that  boot up with Windows is Steam, Origin, MSI Afterburner, Discord and Corsair Utility Engine.

It is slightly disheartening knowing I still have to turn down the Shadows, given the rig I have, luckily it makes very little difference to the overall visuals, but still annoying given that people with similar rigs are able to run everything Ultra even at 1440p. I saw someone post on reddit with the same problem as me with a pretty much identical rig (OC 980ti trades blows with the 1070) but it seems he never found a solution.

The only thing I can think of is my motherboard or the fact my RAM is only 2113Mhz, but I was always under the impression that the faster your CPU, the little the benefits will be in terms of minimum framerates from using faster RAM (3000Hz), and it's not as if my 6700k is exactly a weak CPU lol.

@Hutchie91

Thanks for the update.

Good to hear that you've managed to minimize the drops by turning down the shadows. However, I do understand that you are disappointed with turning down the settings as you would like to play everything on Ultra.

I don't think the drops could be caused by your memory, but then again with PC gaming anything is a possibility. What you could also double-check is the settings in your Nvidia Control Panel - I know that there are some settings in there that take an insane amount of power from your GPU without really offering any real visual benefits.

At this point I don't think there's a lot more we can do. But if you do ever find the cause, then I would be very curious to know!

Enjoy the game,