Most common causes for fps drops?

[Oscarmk]

Hello,

I am having some huge fps drops for the first game of the day in Starcraft II, however this only happens on the first game I play after that I have no more fps drops. It will sometimes drop to 20 fps for 1.5 second, or 30 for split second and it is noticeable, but it never happens again on subsequent games. This will also only occur for the first 5-8 minutes of the first game, not the whole first game of the day, watching the replay does not present this fps drop.

This are my specs:

Saphire HD 7850 OC (at default OC)
i5 2500k (turbo enabled, i.e. 3.7 ghz while gaming)
16 GB Corsair Vegeance @ 1333 CML16GX3M4A1600C9B (but can activate XPM for 1600)
Maximus IV Gene-z/Gen 3 Motherboard BIOS - 0402 (first released BIOS)
Blue Caviar WD 500 GB
Seasonic Semi Modular 620 W PSU

My temps are fine during the whole time I am playing, so I was wondering what could be the cause?, seems to me like it is probably the HDD loading textures etc?, is that accurate?, my hard drive is new and is almost empty. It is a 7200 rpm wd caviar blue 6gb/s SATA.

Is this normal?, is the only solution to buy more HDD in raid or go SSD?. Again this only happens on the first game I play, after that I guess everything is loaded to RAM and VRam.

What would you suggest?.

Thank you,

Oscar

 

[may1]

Hello,

I am having some huge fps drops for the first game of the day in Starcraft II, however this only happens on the first game I play after that I have no more fps drops. It will sometimes drop to 20 fps for 1.5 second, or 30 for split second and it is noticeable, but it never happens again on subsequent games. This will also only occur for the first 5-8 minutes of the first game, not the whole first game of the day, watching the replay does not present this fps drop.

This are my specs:

Saphire HD 7850 OC (at default OC)
i5 2500k (turbo enabled, i.e. 3.7 ghz while gaming)
16 GB Corsair Vegeance @ 1333 CML16GX3M4A1600C9B (but can activate XPM for 1600)
Maximus IV Gene-z/Gen 3 Motherboard BIOS - 0402 (first released BIOS)
Blue Caviar WD 500 GB
Seasonic Semi Modular 620 W PSU

My temps are fine during the whole time I am playing, so I was wondering what could be the cause?, seems to me like it is probably the HDD loading textures etc?, is that accurate?, my hard drive is new and is almost empty. It is a 7200 rpm wd caviar blue 6gb/s SATA.

Is this normal?, is the only solution to buy more HDD in raid or go SSD?. Again this only happens on the first game I play, after that I guess everything is loaded to RAM and VRam.

What would you suggest?.

Thank you,

Oscar

Try underclocking the gpu to stock level - ie. reference card clocks

 

[Oscarmk]

Try underclocking the gpu to stock level - ie. reference card clocks

Mmm i can try that, why do you think that is the cause? I am curious

 

[RyQril]

i dont think its a hardware problems, might be background apps like AV, try to defrag your drive and close the unnecessary programs, update your drivers and scan your computer for a possible viruses/trojans/malware.....

 

[Oscarmk]

i dont think its a hardware problems, might be background apps like AV, try to defrag your drive and close the unnecessary programs, update your drivers and scan your computer for a possible viruses/trojans/malware.....

Thank you for your reply, I do have Karpersky antivirus running in the background so I will try closing it. I have not defrag my HDD although it is almost empty, bit i will do that too, I have however scanned for possible viruses/malware/trojans but found none.

My drivers are up to date.

 

[RyQril]

-did you experiment the frame drops on other games than SCII?

-might kaspersky giving you the trouble, try active game mode on full screen or deactivate it temporary...

-try OC the rams to 1600, you got 16GB.. how many pieces? ,might be the game is trying to access to all of those at the beginning then settle down

 

[Oscarmk]

I do not experience this frame drops in other games

I will try to disable Karpersky when I get back home, i got 4 x 4 GB of Ram I will set it to the 1600 spec.

 

[RyQril]

try that if nothing changed then its a problem with the game, open a problem ticket to blizzard might help you with it

 

[HEXiT]

try setting your pc to high performance rather than ballanced in power mangment settings. its supposed to only work when your using a lappy but for some reason it affects desktops 2.

 

[RyQril]

@HEXiT he needs only to put PCIE setting to OFF, high performance shuts down the CPU cooling system on IDLE which is not good for heating

 

[Oscarmk]

@HEXiT he needs only to put PCIE setting to OFF, high performance shuts down the CPU cooling system on IDLE which is not good for heating

What does that do?

 

[HEXiT]

@HEXiT he needs only to put PCIE setting to OFF, high performance shuts down the CPU cooling system on IDLE which is not good for heating

not sure what you mean by that... the cpu cooler i have still works at idle. it doesnt get turned off. it also speeds up and slows down with cpu temp... as its controlled from bios...

 

[RyQril]

What does that do?

this only can be for laptops, if you turned it on on desktops your card goes blackouts during the idle and sometimes while gaming, i had this problem with my GTX470 and fixed it by disabling it

not sure what you mean by that... the cpu cooler i have still works at idle. it doesnt get turned off. it also speeds up and slows down with cpu temp... as its controlled from bios...

i mean this > Process power management > Minimum process state/System cooling policy/Maximum process state < ... when you active the performance state it turning off the System cooling policy on idle to go down with volts and clock HZ on a specific percentage of minimum process state, and the volts go in default volts and clock HZ (as is it set in bios) on maximum process state and this can save power and low the heat, this option can only be on if the cooling system is enabled in bios, if not this option in windows wont work.

 

[HEXiT]

high performance turns everything up m8 it sounds like you have it backwards...
ballanced used medium settings. and power saver turns everything down to minimum to prolong battery life. this mode will reduce fan speeds and cpu usage... while high performance will turn up your cpu usage and increase the fan speed if needs be.

feel free to check it for yourself because i just did to make sure i was correct.
it may be that you have turned everything down in your high performance thinking its ment for high battery performance which it isnt.
reset it to default if you have...

 

[RyQril]

@HEXiT, the System cooling policy is still on active ofc but it changes the Minimum process state to 100% (default 5%) which that can make your cpu on max volt/clocks and wont go down for IDLE state and that increase the temps and power reqs.

 

[Jeff B]

This is a REAL common issue with HD 7850s, I have the issue and countless others have it to.