Hi everyone - I posted this question on the Windows 8 board, and then as I was looking for answers, it looked like this graphics board would be a better place to ask 
.
About a month ago I upgraded to Windows 8.1 from Windows 7 (formatted the SSD and did a clean install of 8.1) and my gaming FPS has been in the toilet ever since - and I can't figure out why. There have been no hardware changes. I've checked running programs and services, nothing is sucking up resources. I've run diagnostics on all my components, everything is running good. Updated all my drivers, everything is good there - but I can not maintain a framerate in any modern 3D game, even ones that ran at perfectly smooth 60+ before the Windows upgrade. I've even seen slowdowns and stuttering in some low-fi 2D games, like Hotline Miami.
Just to make sure I wasn't imagining things, I loaded my old configuration files from backups for several games, made sure settings were identical, and compared game capture video of both - the Windows 8.1 game is like a slideshow, with framerates getting to around 50 and instantly dropping down to 10 and repeating that cycle constantly. The videos I compared were from Assassin's Creed Revelations, Mass Effect 3, and Payday 2.
The weird thing about it is that the effect stays exactly the same, even when lowering settings and resolutions - I went from High Settings at 1080p down to Low settings at 720p, and performance stayed exactly as bad as it was before. This is making me think there is a software bottleneck or Windows 8 feature that is messing things up for me, but I can't figure out what it is. You would think that lowering the setting so drastically would give some increase in performance, but it did nothing.
I'm not sure if it's related (but I think it is), but my video encoding speeds are way down since the the upgrade, too - videos that would encode in 1-2 hours before are now taking 6 - 8 hours.
Does anybody more familiar with the operating system have any thoughts about what could cause this? I'd like to check everything I can before reverting to Windows 7.
System specs:
Intel Core I5-3570k
Nvidia GeForce Gtx 660
8gb DDR3 @ 1600mhz
Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit
Samsung SSD 840 250GB
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H mobo
Not the fastest gaming system around, but it ran all of these games very smoothly before, especially at lower resolutions and graphics settings.
Thoughts?
.About a month ago I upgraded to Windows 8.1 from Windows 7 (formatted the SSD and did a clean install of 8.1) and my gaming FPS has been in the toilet ever since - and I can't figure out why. There have been no hardware changes. I've checked running programs and services, nothing is sucking up resources. I've run diagnostics on all my components, everything is running good. Updated all my drivers, everything is good there - but I can not maintain a framerate in any modern 3D game, even ones that ran at perfectly smooth 60+ before the Windows upgrade. I've even seen slowdowns and stuttering in some low-fi 2D games, like Hotline Miami.
Just to make sure I wasn't imagining things, I loaded my old configuration files from backups for several games, made sure settings were identical, and compared game capture video of both - the Windows 8.1 game is like a slideshow, with framerates getting to around 50 and instantly dropping down to 10 and repeating that cycle constantly. The videos I compared were from Assassin's Creed Revelations, Mass Effect 3, and Payday 2.
The weird thing about it is that the effect stays exactly the same, even when lowering settings and resolutions - I went from High Settings at 1080p down to Low settings at 720p, and performance stayed exactly as bad as it was before. This is making me think there is a software bottleneck or Windows 8 feature that is messing things up for me, but I can't figure out what it is. You would think that lowering the setting so drastically would give some increase in performance, but it did nothing.
I'm not sure if it's related (but I think it is), but my video encoding speeds are way down since the the upgrade, too - videos that would encode in 1-2 hours before are now taking 6 - 8 hours.
Does anybody more familiar with the operating system have any thoughts about what could cause this? I'd like to check everything I can before reverting to Windows 7.
System specs:
Intel Core I5-3570k
Nvidia GeForce Gtx 660
8gb DDR3 @ 1600mhz
Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit
Samsung SSD 840 250GB
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H mobo
Not the fastest gaming system around, but it ran all of these games very smoothly before, especially at lower resolutions and graphics settings.
Thoughts?
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