PC performance drop on a good PC

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Muzzlebeard

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Jun 10, 2016
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Built my first PC about 3 months ago. Not very familiar with PC hardware and such.
I used to be able to run games excellently, but recently (maybe 3 / 4 weeks ago) I tried to run Skyrim with a load of mods and such (which I could run Ultra + Mods 60fps no problem) but found massive fps drops (mostly around populated cities if that helps). So, I deleted all my mods, reinstalled my game, hoping it would do something, and then tried to run it at low.
Couldn't even hit 60fps.
The performance isn't terrible, at low it's around 45fps, but for my specs I know I should definitely be able to run this game maxed + mods, like I used to.
Also, I bought Cities: Skylines after the time my performance dropped (which is when I first noticed it). Feel like I should be able to run this with my specs too? (I get ~20fps) I wish I could tell you more. I've updated my drivers, so that's not the problem. At one point I thought maybe I've deleted some sort of program I needed (idk) so I reinstalled drivers from the CDs I got with my hardware.

So, here are the specs:
CPU: Intel i5-4460
MOBO: ASRock H97 Anniversary ATX LGA1150
RAM: 8GB DDR3 Kingston HyperX fury black
GPU: MSI R9 390
PSU: GA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold

Any help is appreciated. I really don't know what I'm doing.
 
Solution
cdrkf


Possibly, either that or a setting somewhere in something not changed by clean boot (so a windows power setting, or a setting the the graphics driver as both those things should still get loaded after a clean boot).

What that does rule out is an issue caused by a 3rd party application.

I would have thought cities skylines would run faster than 20fps on a machine like that (unless your trying to run it at 4k!). That's all pretty high performance hardware.

I would have a look at the power management settings in windows, just to make sure everything is set sensibly (especially for the cpu, which you can get to...
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cdrkf

cdrkf

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Mar 18, 2013
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I've seen a few of these threads lately where people are getting unexpected performance drops, and it's on a mix of different hardware too.

I think there must be some sort of Windows update / bug / bad combo of software causing this... As a quick experiment it might be worth trying a clean boot. This will allow you to disable almost all the software on star-up so it's like booting with a fresh install.

instructions:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/929135

If that fixes the issue then you'll need to figure out what has been installed since the problem started to narrow down the culprit, and then remove it.
 
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Muzzlebeard

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Jun 10, 2016
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Thank you kindly for your quick response. I'll check it out now.
 
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cdrkf

cdrkf

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Mar 18, 2013
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Possibly, either that or a setting somewhere in something not changed by clean boot (so a windows power setting, or a setting the the graphics driver as both those things should still get loaded after a clean boot).

What that does rule out is an issue caused by a 3rd party application.

I would have thought cities skylines would run faster than 20fps on a machine like that (unless your trying to run it at 4k!). That's all pretty high performance hardware.

I would have a look at the power management settings in windows, just to make sure everything is set sensibly (especially for the cpu, which you can get to under the advanced settings). If you have dual screens, have you tried running a game with the resource monitor open? For the game to be running correctly, either the gpu should be running maxed out (assuming you've got vsync turned off) or at least one cpu core should be running at max (more likely for something like Cities: Skylines as simulation games tend to be bottlenecked by cpu). If your only getting partial usage on both then something is throttling the hardware.
 
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Solution
synphul

synphul

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Mar 11, 2011
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What are your cpu and gpu temps? What version of windows are you running?

I'd agree it's likely software related or windows related rather than hardware. I play modded skyrim on a similar i5 (4690k) but with an hd 7850 which isn't even half as powerful as your r9 390 and able to keep solid 60fps. The fact that you went to low quality settings and nothing changed means it's likely not your graphics card, even if it were underperforming due to heat or something dropping quality down would shift more of the load to the cpu and fps should have increased.

cdrkf makes a good point, a lot of people lately have been complaining of sudden performance loss and fps dropping on the same hardware they've been running. If I had to guess I'd look at windows. What else changed between the time games were running fine until they started running poorly? Had you installed a windows update? Update a driver? Up to date drivers don't always mean the best performance, sometimes a new driver release can be a bad one and cause performance to get worse where people have to uninstall and reinstall an older set of drivers.
 
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Millz123

Commendable
Jun 10, 2016
12
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1,520
You said that you reverted your drivers back to the ones that came with your gpu. I'd definitely update that to the latest. Might solve the issue.

Maybe it's overheating and throttling download core temps and gpu-z or something similar and monitor your temperature and core speeds maybe to see if they throttle down
 
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Muzzlebeard

Commendable
Jun 10, 2016
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Thank you so much! I had the power settings on High Performance, but under Processor Power in advanced settings, for whatever reason (I'm probably being stupid), the max processor state was 5%. Idk why, but I just put that up to 100% and I was sorted. Before I did this, I had never changed any settings, until my performance dropped, then I put it to high performance, but that didn't help. Guess I just needed to dig into power options a little deeper. Now Skyrim is running that silky smooth 60fps on Ultra. Can't thank you enough! It's been bugging me for a while. Thanks for everyone who helped me out.
 
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cdrkf

cdrkf

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Mar 18, 2013
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Glad I could help :)
 
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