SIM spikes and high CPU usage for ~4 minutes after starting the game

Technical Support
1

Good day to you all,
I have a really weird problem - sometimes then I lunch the game I’m getting 10-40 fps, even in menu. While this happens my CPU usage goes straight to 100% all cores (specs below), SIM goes all over the place and the game becoming literal slideshow.
The weird part is - it all goes away in about 3-5 minutes. I tried almost all graphic settings, even rebooting PC does not help with that.
So I’m pretty much forced to wait for this to end before playing the game.

But it doesn’t end there - this doesn’t happen all the time. Sometimes the game is fine right a way.

Once again - I checked every graphic preset possible, I didn’t change any hardware recently, only mandatory windows updates and got latest GPU driver AFTER that begun.

The only problem I use to have - my monitor is old enough that it doesn’t support HDMI\Display Port, so I’m using DP->Dvi cabel. I had a few problems with it in the past and I have HDCP disabled.

OW2 use to work fine, but this exact problem did happen once - at the first start of the game release. Nothing like that in ow1, and nothing like that prior to march.
I don’t even know where to start troubleshooting this o.o

System:
CPU: Ryzen 5 3500x (6 cores), no OC, temps fine (<80 at stress tests)
RAM: 32, ddr4, 3000 16\20\20\38\60
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6000, Adrenalin v23.3.1 (apparently they just dropped newer version few days ago, gonna install it later and post if it would help), stock operation mode
OC: Windows 10 22h2, build 19045.2728

DPC Latency 9-70, with spikes up to 999, never goes above 1000

Video demo (yes, I CAN record the game with no problem - GPU usage never goes above 40 while this happening): Overwatch 2 Sim spikes\High CPU usage demo - YouTube
—EDIT—
Just notice that it doesn’t look as bad in the recording, like more frames being recorded there. In real life it looks way more laggy

2

My system is a lot worse but I’m facing the exact same issue.
When I start the game the cpu usage rises to 50% while the gpu remains at 25%.
I have to play a few quick play games before the game stabilizes and I can play competitive normally.
Then the cpu usage falls below 30%.
I play on everything low and frames set at 60.
Cpu is fx-6300
Ram is ddr3 16GB @ 1600mhz it goes up to like 5GB of usage
Gpu is gtx1650.
The weird part is that it does this every time and after a few matches it becomes normal, runs at 60 fps without problems.
I haven’t managed to solve this of course.

3

Blizzard Tech Support won’t know/help you.

The game is compiling GPU shaders probably. However, usually this should only happen ONCE (after each driver update, at least), and then shaders should be cached. Seems caching fails so it compiles them everytime again, which typically takes a couple minutes. Can’t say why though, sorry.

4

If the game is compiling shaders why can I play?
Hogwarts Legacy did this too but I was not allowed to play until it finished.
I think it has to do with the ingame shop, for some reason it uses lots of cpu upon launch, this isn’t very noticeable maybe on stronger cpus but it renders the game nigh unplayable for weaker ones.

5

You can always play while shaders are being compiled, the FPS will just tank greatly, that’s how it works. In Overwatch it says at the bottom left corner “compiling shaders…” for a few minutes whenever I update the graphics driver, and I play at like 30 jerkily fluctuating fps instead of 144, until it finishes a few minutes later and fps return to stable 144.
Many games do pre-compiling of shaders, but it’s not needed, if you don’t want to wait.
Hogwarts probably just disallowed it to make sure you had a “good experience”, ie they took away your option of playing while compiling just so nobody would complain about low fps.
Compiling shaders has nothing to do with in-game shops per se. But of course if there are additional UI layers to be displayed or web interfaces to be called it can greatly impact overall performance.

1 Like
6

Dam… it said that my post got removed by the anti-spam bot and I didn’t even realize the support brought it back up.

So long story short - support suggested disabling all non-microsoft services, no luck so far
And no - game does not says that it “compiling shaders…” at any point. I just got latest drivers and I don’t think I ever say this message before

And so far I’ve yet to find any solutions for this.
Only one thing changed - it use to happen once per day, now - every single game starts with this

I even reinstalled it to the main m.2 ssd, same drive as OS

Now that I noticed this thread is up I would try to keep updating it with anything I’ll managed to gather about this issue

===UPDATE===

I think I managed to fix it.
No idea what exactly did the trick, but here is step-by-step what I did:

  1. Updated to the latest GPU driver and AMD software (Adrenalin 23.4.2)
  2. Windows disk cleanup → System files → DirectX Cache
  3. Manually cleared AMD DirectX Cache, folders
  • %localappdata%\AMD\DX9Cache
  • %localappdata%\AMD\DxCache
  • %localappdata%\AMD\DxcCache
  • %localappdata%\AMD\OglCache

Ran the game in windowed mode once

So far so good - looks like it did the trick.
For the reference - CPU usage was high from amdxx64.dll!boost::serialization::singleton thread.

1 Like
7

Clearing the cache solved the problem for me too, thanks!
I would never imagine that it was something so simple.