Periodic Frame Pacing Anomaly Every ~5 Minutes in Apex Legends

same issue. experiencing fps drops from 150 to 60 every few minutes, no matter what situation im in. runied so many games for me and i have no idea how to fix it. my pc is alright, been playing with no problems for years. reinstalling the game, drivers, etc doesnt help. this issue started only after the latest update and i dont see respawn adressing it

I have this issue too. I5 14600k 5060ti 16gb 32gb ddr5 

Additional ETW/WPA tracing shows a strong and reproducible time correlation between the recurring Apex Transition-fault bursts and working-set-related activity associated with Easy Anti-Cheat.

I recorded an approximately 856-second xperf trace with CPU sampled stacks and page-fault stack walking enabled. REFSET/reference-set profiling was not used.

The anomaly reproduced three times, approximately 315 seconds apart:

Across the full trace, there were 1,001 matching sampled stacks, and all 1,001 occurred within these same three Transition-fault burst periods.

The three intervals also contained 6,239,455 of 6,324,114 total Apex Transition faults (~98.66%) recorded in the trace.

This does not establish causation or identify the exact virtual-address ranges involved. However, the timing correlation reproduced across all three recurrences and appears strong.

These are the same periodic events in which my CapFrameX measurements show severe frame-time instability, even when average FPS remains close to the cap.

The attached WPA screenshots show the full trace and each affected interval using the same filters.

The approximately 5-minute periodic frame-pacing anomaly itself also continues to occur and remains reproducible.

I tested several different FPS caps, and the same approximately 64 Hz frame-time modulation is still present in every case.

During these affected periods, Adaptive STDEV in CapFrameX deteriorates significantly. Even when the average FPS remains close to the cap and there is no obvious FPS drop, the unstable frame pacing can still noticeably worsen input feel and handling. On sufficiently fast displays, it may also be perceived visually as periodic judder.

The attached figure shows that the visible frame pattern changes depending on the FPS cap, while the underlying modulation remains consistently around 64 Hz (~15.6 ms).

One additional observation is that the measured ~64 Hz period (~15.6 ms) is very close to the well-known 15.625 ms timing interval in Windows, although I do not know whether this is causally related or merely coincidental.

Yes I’ve had this too since September 3rd update I will randomly drop to 130-150 for around 5-10 secconds I’m usually stable 180 always (capped) I have 3070

Update – Frame limiter comparison

I also tested the issue using the in-game limiter, NVIDIA Control Panel limiter, and RTSS, all capped at 270 FPS.

The same ~16-second disturbance still occurs at the same highly regular ~5-minute intervals with all three limiters, and the ~63–64 Hz frame-time modulation remains. This further suggests that the limiter itself is not the cause.

During the affected interval:

NVIDIA limiter: Adaptive STDEV ~1.1 ms, 1% Low ~173 FPS, PCL ~3.8 ms

RTSS: Adaptive STDEV ~0.3 ms, 1% Low ~226 FPS, PCL ~6.7 ms

RTSS greatly reduced the frame-time oscillation and preserved much higher 1% lows, making the visible judder significantly less severe. However, this comes at the cost of higher PC Latency.

One result that surprised me was that the NVIDIA limiter actually produced lower PCL than the in-game limiter in my testing. I had expected the in-game limiter to have the lowest latency.

So, while RTSS does not eliminate the underlying periodic event, it may be a useful temporary workaround for affected players who prefer smoother frame pacing and higher lows and are willing to accept a few milliseconds of additional latency.

I’ve attached screenshots of the affected interval with both the NVIDIA limiter and RTSS for comparison.

Isolated graph of an abnormal sequence / RTSS limitter

Isolated graph of an abnormal sequence / Nvidia limitter

Additional clarification / observation:

To clarify the ~64 Hz component: during each 15–20 second abnormal window, the long/short frame-time deviation itself repeats with a period of approximately 15.7 ms (~63–64 cycles per second), while the average framerate remains around 270 FPS. This does not mean the game is running at 64 FPS; it is a periodic modulation of frame delivery.

I have also seen reports from other PC configurations showing a similarly timed recurring event, but with a substantial FPS drop rather than only frame-time instability. This suggests that the visible severity may depend on available frame-time headroom. Systems running close to their FPS ceiling may show a large FPS drop, while systems with substantial headroom may maintain the FPS cap but still exhibit severe frame-time variance.

Therefore, the absence of an obvious FPS drop does not necessarily mean the issue is absent. On higher-headroom systems, it may primarily appear as abnormal frame pacing instead.