FPS Drops in the last days

Hey,
These past days I seem to have huge fps drops out of the blue. Run Latencymon and got this " Your system seems to be having difficulty handling real-time audio and other tasks. You may experience drop outs, clicks or pops due to buffer underruns. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates. " Any thoughts ?

Latencymon should show what is causing that latency drop - if you have an Nvidia driver it can conflict with onboard audio driver - you would have to DDU the Nvidia driver, update onboard drivers if available and then do a clean reinstall of the Nvidia driver.

The thing is Latencymon didn’t give me an error the next time I run it and now I don’t have the report. Can you please explain to me what exactly do you mean with what you said because some words are ahrd to define for me since I am not that much of a PC expert :smiley:

This app: https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

is used to completely remove a GPU driver. Usage: fixing un-clean install of such drivers, which can happen when it self-updates.

So for Nvidia problems with latency - DDU remove the driver, update other drivers (audio) if available, install Nvidia driver from scratch.

I did and the problem persists. Tried going back to my old driver and the problem persists. This sh***y problem won’t go away. It came out of the blue one day and now I don’t know how to fix it. It’s driving me crazy.

Ok, so we can debug it further.

  • Is latencymon listing what DLL/app is causing most problems?
  • Check temperatures and clocks of your components when the slowdown happens (GPU, CPU)
  • Is your SSD getting close to full?
  • does it happen in other games? Does it persist if you re-launch the game? (did you tried without addons?)

I have tried it without addons and the problem persists yes. It also persists in old games like AC 2 which I should be running smooth af. My SSD isnt getting close to full. I noticed that the CPU usage goes up to 100 % sometimes, temperature is fine though. GPU’s temperature reaches 65-66 Celcius at most. This is my Latencymon report, I don’t know if it helps.
CONCLUSION


Your system appears to be suitable for handling real-time audio and other tasks without dropouts.
LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for 0:07:40 (h:mm:ss) on all processors.


SYSTEM INFORMATION


Computer name: DESKTOP-C3A1DFB
OS version: Windows 10, 10.0, version 2009, build: 19042 (x64)
Hardware: To Be Filled By O.E.M., To Be Filled By O.E.M.
CPU: GenuineIntel Intel® Core™ i5-8400 CPU @ 2.80GHz
Logical processors: 6
Processor groups: 1
RAM: 16313 MB total


CPU SPEED


Reported CPU speed: 2808 MHz

Note: reported execution times may be calculated based on a fixed reported CPU speed. Disable variable speed settings like Intel Speed Step and AMD Cool N Quiet in the BIOS setup for more accurate results.


MEASURED INTERRUPT TO USER PROCESS LATENCIES


The interrupt to process latency reflects the measured interval that a usermode process needed to respond to a hardware request from the moment the interrupt service routine started execution. This includes the scheduling and execution of a DPC routine, the signaling of an event and the waking up of a usermode thread from an idle wait state in response to that event.

Highest measured interrupt to process latency (µs): 113,70
Average measured interrupt to process latency (µs): 4,21760

Highest measured interrupt to DPC latency (µs): 107,80
Average measured interrupt to DPC latency (µs): 1,291299


REPORTED ISRs


Interrupt service routines are routines installed by the OS and device drivers that execute in response to a hardware interrupt signal.

Highest ISR routine execution time (µs): 137,869302
Driver with highest ISR routine execution time: dxgkrnl.sys - DirectX Graphics Kernel, Microsoft Corporation

Highest reported total ISR routine time (%): 0,145014
Driver with highest ISR total time: dxgkrnl.sys - DirectX Graphics Kernel, Microsoft Corporation

Total time spent in ISRs (%) 0,173958

ISR count (execution time <250 µs): 434968
ISR count (execution time 250-500 µs): 0
ISR count (execution time 500-1000 µs): 0
ISR count (execution time 1000-2000 µs): 0
ISR count (execution time 2000-4000 µs): 0
ISR count (execution time >=4000 µs): 0


REPORTED DPCs


DPC routines are part of the interrupt servicing dispatch mechanism and disable the possibility for a process to utilize the CPU while it is interrupted until the DPC has finished execution.

Highest DPC routine execution time (µs): 260,132123
Driver with highest DPC routine execution time: nvlddmkm.sys - NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 457.30 , NVIDIA Corporation

Highest reported total DPC routine time (%): 0,082440
Driver with highest DPC total execution time: dxgkrnl.sys - DirectX Graphics Kernel, Microsoft Corporation

Total time spent in DPCs (%) 0,164819

DPC count (execution time <250 µs): 791566
DPC count (execution time 250-500 µs): 0
DPC count (execution time 500-10000 µs): 2
DPC count (execution time 1000-2000 µs): 0
DPC count (execution time 2000-4000 µs): 0
DPC count (execution time >=4000 µs): 0


REPORTED HARD PAGEFAULTS


Hard pagefaults are events that get triggered by making use of virtual memory that is not resident in RAM but backed by a memory mapped file on disk. The process of resolving the hard pagefault requires reading in the memory from disk while the process is interrupted and blocked from execution.

NOTE: some processes were hit by hard pagefaults. If these were programs producing audio, they are likely to interrupt the audio stream resulting in dropouts, clicks and pops. Check the Processes tab to see which programs were hit.

Process with highest pagefault count: chrome.exe

Total number of hard pagefaults 868
Hard pagefault count of hardest hit process: 211
Number of processes hit: 16

It looks like Nvidia driver is in conflict. The question is with what. You could try disabling the audio device in Windows devices list and then checking if the FPS problem will show up.

Disabled both input and output devices from windows settings and device manager but fps drops persist unfortunately. Does Direct X have anything to do with btw?

DX is part of the Nvidia driver stack. It’s rather unlikely to have a conflict within the DX stack, but maybe Windows did try to install base driver while Nvidia driver was installing…

If the conflict is not so obvious then… Windows full reinstall :smiley: or you could try one more time with DDU removing Nvidia driver and then installing it fresh after a reboot. Also check beforehand if there are any motherboard drivers update for the motherboard you have (if not on the motherboard vendor page then try googling driver name they list to see if newer version is on the web).

This seems rather a promising answer :smiley: Should I just move everything I need to my HDD and do a clean install of windows in my SSD again? I think Windows do install the Nvidia drivers while I am trying to reinstall them after a reboot, my graphics change before I finish with the whole installtion thing? You think thats why I didnt get any differences after doing the DDU ? Also can you maybe provide me with a step by step tutorial so that I don’t mess up again ? Either for the DDU process or the Windows installation process. I would appreciate it.

Yes, Window will try to install a base driver. So remove with DDU, reboot if needed, let Windows install what it wants (let it idle for some minutes), reboot just in case and then install Nvidia driver so that so those two actions don’t run concurrently.

And if you will be reinstalling then yes, you can move thing to HDD and then during Windows installation force new partitions so that so everything on SSD gets wiped.

Should I install the newest drivers though or the old ones ?

latest drivers.

Yeah, latest as the WoW client usually checks for that.

Alright, so I did the DDU but fps drops persist. I monitored CPU today while I am standing still on WOW and whenever I have a drop the CPU usage goes up but the temperatures don’t go higher than 45 Celcius. Any comments on that ?

In Task Manager check if there is an app that uses that CPU. If it’s a driver conflict it’s less likely to see some app suddenly jump up. But it looks that if it can’t be cleaned then only reinstall will remain.

explorer.exe seems to be going up in CPU usage every time fps drops. Higher even than WoW.

I terminated it and I have no drops now whatsoever!

I got it, finally! To everyone who is experiencing this problem, Automated change of Wallpapers caused this. That was the problem !

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