Horribly Inconsistent Gaming Framerates Since Upgrading to Windows 8.1

[Ghensler]

Hi everyone,

About a month ago I upgraded to Windows 8.1 from Windows 7, 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 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.

I'm not sure if it's related, 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

Not the fastest gaming system around, but it ran all of these games very smoothly before, especially at lower resolutions and graphics settings.

Thoughts?

 

[aolish]

This is just my opinion and from personal experience and obviously won't apply to everybody, I always try and avoid "upgrades" of any OS. There are a lot of factors that go into how upgrades turn out but in general anytime you do a os upgrade always do a fresh install. I just find that upgrading an os over another os degrades performance and leaves things a mess. Especially when you have other files stored into that existing install like your personal data, game install files, temp files or any other files that existed over your last install. I just think always starting fresh and new with a completely formatted HDD or SSD is the way to go.

 

[Ghensler]

You're right - I misspoke when I said I had "upgraded Windows." This Windows install WAS to a cleanly formatted Samsung 840 SSD from scratch, not an actual upgrade.

 

[aolish]

Just to make sure, your also using steam right? If so did you redownload all your games and not just restore from a backup? I wouldn't see how this would cause a problem but just incase u should redownload a game from scratch and see if that solves your problem. But I honestly wouldn't have a clue on whats causing your problems, for some reason this sounds more like a driver issue somewhere. The only other suggestion that I can give is to try and see if disabling superfetch improves things.

EDIT: I just thought of this, you never specified what board your using. But incase you haven't already, make sure you update your chipset drivers also.

 

[Ghensler]

The mobo is a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H, with the BIOS and chipset drivers all updated.

The game's are all fresh installs from Steam, GOG.Com, or retail disks. The only file I loaded from the old installs was my configs from a backup, so I could confirm that my settings were identical between Windows 7 and Windows 8 (and these were not loaded until after all the performance problems showed up).

And I'm out of ideas.

 

[aolish]

I'm also out of ideas to, however I think the fact that you say things are perfectly normal on 7 as opposed to 8.1 points towards a possible driver issue somewhere. I'm looking more towards the chipset than anything else really because you say video encoding is so much slower than when you were on 7. You can always start from absolute scratch again, reinstall Win8.1 and do the old fashion "process of elimination" method with drivers. Starting with your chipset. Just use your system as is with video card drivers installed and see if you get the same problem. Particulary test out that video encoding with each driver you install. Infact, you should video encode with the bare win8.1 no drivers at all (well maybe install your GPU drivers) and see if the problem presist. Yeah I know its a hassle doing all this again LOL, but its the only other idea I have unless someone else comes in with a better idea.

I'm actually using Win8 (haven't even upgraded to 8.1) and haven't had any problems. Granted I've had some weird issues with some games performing slower after I shutdown a game than restarting another game, but the problem was solved by a restart. Also there are other games that perform just really slow on higher settings but I'm guessing thats because I run an HD 7850.