FPS consistently fluctuates between 20 and 40.. GTX 1060

I never really get great FPS in this game and I don't really understand why. I've followed various different guides and tweaked graphics settings, which helps a little but not very much. I feel like it should really be performing better. The CPU/GPU usage never really goes above 40%. I have noticed a pattern where when the usage goes up, the FPS goes up, and when the usage goes down, the FPS goes down. This kind of makes sense. And, as I've been watching the resource monitor, there's a pattern. 25 seconds of a spike and higher fps.. then 25 seconds of low. Over and over. What gives? How do I fix it? https://imgur.com/a/ZFCdC56

With it being cyclical like that, I am curious about your power supply. Is it old, or is it under the recommend 400 w.

Another possibility could be thermal issues if you don't have sufficient cooling on your CPU.

@"BigBragg.8354" said:With it being cyclical like that, I am curious about your power supply. Is it old, or is it under the recommend 400 w.

Another possibility could be thermal issues if you don't have sufficient cooling on your CPU.

I double checked and my power supply is "Zephyr MX 750W".

It isn't running too hot either, I don't think:

I notice on your screenshot that during the time you have low fps your CPU is only clocked to 1.4GHz. The base clock for your CPU is 3.5Ghz (which you can see in the upper screenshot). So your CPU is throttling. As BigBragg said the cyclical nature of the throttling makes it look like a thermal issue, but first I would check that OS power management is in high performance mode and see if it still happens. If that doesn't help then you will have to try and diagnose where the problem is. Could be a CPU thermal issue, or a motherboard thermal issue (the VRMs), or a PSU fault. There might be other causes I'm not aware of.

Mate, you need better CPU, this game does not properly utilize multicore and it's mainly dependent on single CPU core.This is where Intel CPU shines. You won't get better fps unless you get Intel i5-6400 or i5-8400 (even i5-2500/3770 get better results then your CPU).AMD Ryzen would be option too, but it's not that fast as Intel CPUs, at least NOT in this game.

@"Kvasimil.5146" said:Mate, you need better CPU, this game does not properly utilize multicore and it's mainly dependent on single CPU core.This is where Intel CPU shines. You won't get better fps unless you get Intel i5-6400 or i5-8400 (even i5-2500/3770 get better results then your CPU).AMD Ryzen would be option too, but it's not that fast as Intel CPUs, at least NOT in this game.

Are you crazy? His cpu goes up to 4.0 ghz on turbo.https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113285Its clear you have no clue what youre talking about, why are you doing this?

To OP:It depends on where are you getting these low FPS rates.Its considered normal for this game for a gtx 1060 to be around 40 in the hot/pof zones.You might wanna try and remove reflections/shadows and see how you feel about that.The game is probably very badly optimized. If other games perform fine then your machine is fine and there aint much you can do.

@munster.2749 said:I notice on your screenshot that during the time you have low fps your CPU is only clocked to 1.4GHz. The base clock for your CPU is 3.5Ghz (which you can see in the upper screenshot). So your CPU is throttling. As BigBragg said the cyclical nature of the throttling makes it look like a thermal issue, but first I would check that OS power management is in high performance mode and see if it still happens. If that doesn't help then you will have to try and diagnose where the problem is. Could be a CPU thermal issue, or a motherboard thermal issue (the VRMs), or a PSU fault. There might be other causes I'm not aware of.

This makes sense to me, though obviously I'm not a hardware person. The pattern definitely feels like it's throttling, like once it gets up in the 90F range my PC freaks out and slows everything down. But, the power management is in high/best performance mode (has been for a long time). Other games also run fine. Hmmmm. I'm just not sure. Thank you for your help though.

@Sora.8410 said:

@munster.2749 said:I notice on your screenshot that during the time you have low fps your CPU is only clocked to 1.4GHz. The base clock for your CPU is 3.5Ghz (which you can see in the upper screenshot). So your CPU is throttling. As BigBragg said the cyclical nature of the throttling makes it look like a thermal issue, but first I would check that OS power management is in high performance mode and see if it still happens. If that doesn't help then you will have to try and diagnose where the problem is. Could be a CPU thermal issue, or a motherboard thermal issue (the VRMs), or a PSU fault. There might be other causes I'm not aware of.

90F is actually a very good temperature for a CPU as it's roughly 32 degrees celsius, technically it's far from throttling temperatures. To be on the safe side, have you tried resetting your BIOS settings to default?

If it makes you feel any better I am running the game on an intel i7 6700k and a GTX 1070 and I also get frame dips in really busy places or even just looking in a different direction. The game is unfortunately known to be poorly optimized. It is based on a heavily modified version of the Guild Wars 1 engine (a game released well over a decade ago in 2005) so this should come as no surprise given what it is being asked to do.

One thing you could do is go somewhere that you know should get very good frame rates and just see what happens. I actually find that if I go to Sparkfly Fen and stand at the western-most vigil laser charging point for the Tequatl fight I will always get incredibly high FPS there.

@Sora.8410 said:

This makes sense to me, though obviously I'm not a hardware person. The pattern definitely feels like it's throttling, like once it gets up in the 90F range my PC freaks out and slows everything down. But, the power management is in high/best performance mode (has been for a long time). Other games also run fine. Hmmmm. I'm just not sure. Thank you for your help though.

If the CPU is at 32 degrees celsius then that isn't likely to be the source of the throttling, but I wouldn't accept those temps at face value just yet. To get a more accurate measurement on Bulldozer/Piledriver AMD CPUs you need to measure the thermal margin instead. This is the temp distance to Tjmax. In the Core Temp options there is a checkbox to enable this. With thermal margin the figure reported will get smaller as the CPU heats up.

Here's me in my guild hall with the Tjmax option enabled.

So apart from the possibility that there is a thermal issue with the motherboard power delivery or a PSU fault, the only other idea I have is AMD Cool n Quiet (a CPU tech that throttles the CPU at low load to save power) is behaving a bit wacky with Guild Wars 2. This is something that can be disabled in the motherboard bios usually. This is a bit of a stretch though and I would be surprised if it was the source of the downclocking problem.

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@"Kvasimil.5146" said:Mate, you need better CPU, this game does not properly utilize multicore and it's mainly dependent on single CPU core.This is where Intel CPU shines. You won't get better fps unless you get Intel i5-6400 or i5-8400 (even i5-2500/3770 get better results then your CPU).AMD Ryzen would be option too, but it's not that fast as Intel CPUs, at least NOT in this game.

No, i'm not crazy, it does not matter how much Ghz you get with this CPU at all, just compare single core performance with some old i5 Intel 2500K .. Of course shadows will have impact too, but he won't get any much better performance then this. Well maybe if he lower how much NPC/players can be seen at screen at once. Trust me, i had alot of CPUs and this game just sucks with poor performing single core CPUs. Rift had same issue, poor fps with olded AMD cpus, until they added proper multicore support, which Guild Wars 2 still missing.After rereading i guess i didn't help at all, as if CPU is randomly downclocking, getting better CPU would resolve it, but then user would need to buy new motherboard/CPU/RAM which is not viable, so sorry for spamming ;-)

@Kvasimil.5146 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@Kvasimil.5146 said:Mate, you need better CPU, this game does not properly utilize multicore and it's mainly dependent on single CPU core.This is where Intel CPU shines. You won't get better fps unless you get Intel i5-6400 or i5-8400 (even i5-2500/3770 get better results then your CPU).AMD Ryzen would be option too, but it's not that fast as Intel CPUs, at least NOT in this game.

Well, I have a gtx 1060 6gb with an I5 6500 (goes up to 3.7) and in hot/pof maps I float around 40 unless I turn off reflections/shadows.

Make sure your ram and cpu (as well as your gpu) are all running at normal frequencies. If you're at 1.4Ghz while gaming that explains a lot.

Any wild mouse movements when dropping fps? Game sometimes has problems with high polling rate and drops frames if you use both mouse buttons to move the camera - lowering the rate helps. It's kinda my pet problem in this game because it's so weird and nobody before me found out about that.

Btw I'd just turn Shadows and Reflections completely off in this game, especially reflections eat an ungodly amount of CPU power, we're talking Crysis levels here.

@Maze.3825 said:Make sure your ram and cpu (as well as your gpu) are all running at normal frequencies. If you're at 1.4Ghz while gaming that explains a lot.

I don't know what this means :(

It appears that your CPU is throttling, reducing the running speed under load.

Found a thread with someone having the same problem with that processor here:http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2756742/8320-speed-drop.html

What's your motherboard? If it's a cheap model (or a worn out model after years of usage) then it is probably throttling to protect itself.

Go to Start -> Run -> type CMD and press enter. In the prompt that appears type this command:

wmic baseboard get product,Manufacturer,version,serialnumberand press enter. It will show you your motherboard product name, manufacturer, version and serial number (the info we ask the command to display).

Once your motherboard is known we can proceed.

Also, have you tried other demanding games? Or maybe run a benchmark like this one: https://www.userbenchmark.com/It will stress test your PC and you can notice if the CPU speed goes up and down like when playing Guild Wars 2.Finally, did you upgrade your CPU/Motherboard recently?

@"maddoctor.2738" said:It appears that your CPU is throttling, reducing the running speed under load.

Found a thread with someone having the same problem with that processor here:http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2756742/8320-speed-drop.html

What's your motherboard? If it's a cheap model (or a worn out model after years of usage) then it is probably throttling to protect itself.

Go to Start -> Run -> type CMD and press enter. In the prompt that appears type this command:

wmic baseboard get product,Manufacturer,version,serialnumberand press enter. It will show you your motherboard product name, manufacturer, version and serial number (the info we ask the command to display).

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/13503932UserBenchmarks: Game 54%, Desk 42%, Work 33%CPU: AMD FX-8320 - 54.4%GPU: Nvidia GTX 1060-3GB - 67.3%HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 1TB - 78.1%RAM: G.SKILL RipjawsX DDR3 1600 C9 1x8GB - 27.8%MBD: Biostar A960D+

Finally, did you upgrade your CPU/Motherboard recently?Nope!

@"Sora.8410" said:Hmm I've been playing Witcher 3 recently without any issues, is that considered demanding?

Check in task manager if your CPU speed is lowered while playing Witcher 3Your "normal" speed should be 3.5GHz (3.499) and when fps drops it goes down to 1.4GHz (1.399)as per your screenshots

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/13503932UserBenchmarks: Game 54%, Desk 42%, Work 33%CPU: AMD FX-8320 - 54.4%

According to your CPU bench, it's fine so the CPU didn't lower speed during the benchmark.I'm not an expert on AMD CPUs but you can search online and find how to disable "amd cool & quiet" in your bios and see if that helps with the speed drop.

The issue is not in the game settings, (actually with your hardware you can easily have everything on high, except character model limit (this one should be on low or lowest)) your system seems to be doing something strange on the background. could be "amd cool & quiet", if not, your motherboard might need a firmware update or windows is just freaking out for some reason.

I play GW2 with a similar CPU (AMD FX 8350 @ 4Ghz), and I can tell you that you should be looking at FPS around 60+ on non populated areas, 40/50ish on cities/dungeons/raids, 20/30ish during world bosses or big blob fights on WvW.On your resource monitor, normal behavior while playing gw2 is, 4 Cores being used between 80% to 100% and the other 4 cores should be parked, if u see medium/high activity on more than 4 cores means that windows is running heavy processes on the background.

As for your question about the witcher 3, that game is GPU bound, that's why you don't experience anything wrong there. GW2 is CPU bound, but your CPU should able to play it at very decent FPS for the most part.

It's about time to ditch the FX CPU regardless. The game engine is severely held up by a single main thread. Back when the game was still new the FX series trailed i5-2500k and i7-2600k, especially when they were overclocked.

I think if you want to upgrade something along the likes of i5-9600K / i5-8600k or Ryzen 5 2600X would do great as an upgrade. If you're willing to overclock then the Ryzen 5 2600 is a decent option.

To lessen CPU load in your current situation turn down model limit , limit shadows, and turn off reflections.

Does anyone know if dual channel memory would allow him more gains? I noticed the OP has just one of four sticks of 1600 DDR3. Also, shouldn't his be 800Mhz and not just 667Mhz as the benchmark above shows?Obviously, a new CPU and Memory would help entirely, but we're not there just yet!

that is super weard my machine is no powerhouse Old Z420 workstation with a 750ti tossed in it. i am able to run at everything on and i never drop below 60

I'm running a AMD FX-8320 processor on a Asus TUF Sabertooth 990FX R3 motherboard and using a EVGA GTX 1060 SSC 6gb. While playing my processor hangs around 38 celsius and if you convert that to fahrenheit would be 100.4 My processor don't throttle at all and can reach it's turbo speed of 4 GHz while playing.

The specifications for the AMD FX-8320 posted by AMD says the max temp is 61.1 celsius and that would convert to 141.98 fahrenheit. I hardly think their CPU is being throttled cause of CPU over heating.

At one time I was using the MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard with my AMD FX-8320. I'm talking about this one here https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GAMING-DDR3-2133-Motherboard/dp/B00LUY72F6

One day while playing games I noticed my computer was not running right and noticed the CPU was being throttled to 1399.61MHz no matter what I did. I knew for a fact the CPU was not over heating issue and I never overclock processors.

At that point I opened up the computer and seen this wet/stickyness substance around the VRM. It turned out the choice of thermal pad MSI used on the VRM's must been silicon based. Even though I never overclocked the processor the VRM's must have got warm enough to cause the silicon in the thermal pad to leak on the motherboard.

I then done some research and found it's a common problem with the MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard. Even through I still had 3 month's left on the motherboard warranty I decided not to do a RMA. Cause I knew the replacement would do the very same thing at some point so I ended up getting a super nice deal on the Asus TUF Sabertooth 990FX R3.

Once I installed the Asus TUF Sabertooth 990FX R3 the CPU trottle issue was gone.