Hardware issues not game related

[Demiurge.exe]

ISSUE ISOLATED:

I believe my cards are on the way out. My GPU activity steadily increases while playing any game until it his about an average of 58% i'll see the fps drops. I just happen to notice it most while in Warframe. If a mod can delete this post tha'tll be dope. Thank you, and sorry for misusing the forums.

 

Hello DE,

While typing this post I found the problem, which may now just be my cards showing their age, but I'd like to continue with the post anyway.

GPU particle systems are tanking the UI/Menu screens - all action and gameplay is unaffected.  It seems like an unintended situation, but I'd like to see if anyone else can blame my hardware or something happening within the engine. What I've discovered is, if the Particle systems are set to high, it will not matter that the GPU particles themselves are set to Low or disabled. The hiccups will continue to occur within the UI aspect of the game and not the combat. You can perform any combination of those settings with every other option toggled off or set to low. Restart the game and experience the frame drops. The issue still shows itself with Particle systems set to Low and GPU particles disabled, albeit slightly less frequently? it still occurs so obviously not the solution to the issue but a reduction.

Could this be my hardware not up to task or a symptom of some other issue at play here? Hope the information helps. The rest of this post I was typing and troubleshooting to keep my claims accurate and while doing so isolated the issue. I hope this post was clear and direct. Thank you for your time.

First off some stats:

Windows 7 64bit, AMD Crossfire r9 290x, Intel i7 5820k,16gb ram

Warframe DX11

I play on a 4k monitor fullscreen/windowed ( most stable fullscreen of course )

I've adjusted my drivers:

I have been doing a significant amount of FPS drops lately, I'd say it was around the Jovian drop. I had a feeling that the issues were due to my drivers with AMD from ( i think ) 19.3 up too 19.5.2 . I only update them when needed, so I did the DDU shuffle in safe mode to remove the old and do a fresh install of the current drivers. These definitions made matters worse for most games in my list but, I felt I should just state that as it is. From here I would launch the game and idle around in the arsenal to eventually see my fps hiccup from 64 to 28 for about 4 seconds. This happens every 30 seconds or so, but it is not limited to just the arsenal. Pause menu will also perform this way when navigating to the display options to make my adjustments.

Just a note, I've been able to play at max settings with maybe a few shader issues here and there, but never enough for me to stop in my tracks and make vigorous adjustments to keep a stable frame rate. Even on PoE's launch out in the plains dealing with Garry the lowest I can recall was around 56fps.

In Game Adjustments

I pretty much reduced everything to low ( kudos to the team it still looks pretty good ) I just cannot seem to narrow down the culprit here. This link is a folder set of screenshots for my current stable fps settings. I'm at a point where I'll launch the game, increase the setting play for a bit, have no problems. Turn that option off, ( possible relaunch for clean boot ) turn on another options and see how it fairs.  I thought it was the Texture memory and my Graphic cards having an issue. I went to turn off crossfire, and it was already disabled. So I turned it on? Why not see how it works, still the same consistent drop, again, with this one ingame display options triggered that is causing the fuss.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Demiurge.exe
Delete this please, I had a different issue not game related

[sam686]

Your graphics card / GPU might be overheating and slowing down. Check with temperature monitoring programs like HWinfo64. Most of recent AMD GPU's safe temperature goes up to 95 C, any higher and it will slow down and throttle, dropping FPS down.

AMD chill might be accidentally activated, dropping FPS down. F11 by default and this can be changed to something else like Shift+F11 in AMD Radeon settings, gaming, global graphics.

[Demiurge.exe]

On 2019-08-06 at 11:50 AM, sam686 said:

Your graphics card / GPU might be overheating and slowing down. Check with temperature monitoring programs like HWinfo64. Most of recent AMD GPU's safe temperature goes up to 95 C, any higher and it will slow down and throttle, dropping FPS down.

AMD chill might be accidentally activated, dropping FPS down. F11 by default and this can be changed to something else like Shift+F11 in AMD Radeon settings, gaming, global graphics.

Hello, thanks for the reply.

I had a situation with drivers that got so out of hand, I chose to reinstall windows 7. 

 

At the time of this post, my temps never exceeded 60c in warfame according to Rivaturner. Since finding drivers that wouldn't BSOD the OS is such a pain with the current definitions, I chose to go to a familiar driver 19.5.1 that did not give me any hassle. ( I only had problems when I upgraded as they were being introduced ) Which I downloaded, access safe mode, use DDU then install the new definitions. Making sure it was clean installation. 

Anyway, checking the Chill feature completely slipped my mind, it was a hassle "optimizing" some games and causing issues or its hotkey would activate and cause a drop. The current drivers I have installed does not have The Chill feature or Wattman. I've disabled crossfire just to test it but, I'm still getting this odd drop.