Inconsistent FPS Drop

[Ahkaskar]

Edit: I've done some further testing and I'm pretty sure I've found the source of this issue. I had another monitor which duplicated my main display (the one on which I was playing Warframe). When this display is duplicated, switching windows, or interacting with UIs such as the Arsenal or star map, could cause Warframe to drop from a stable 60 fps to a glitchy 45fps. Switching away from the Warframe window causes the FPS to return to 60fps, but upon returning to Warframe the framerate drops to 45 fps again.

Reproduction steps:

1. Have two monitors, one of which set to duplicate the view of the first
2. Run warframe, make sure you have the FPS counter visible and it running in borderless windowed mode
3. Interact with the arsenal or the star map. Try switching windows.
4. Framerate should drop from some combination of interactions
5. Try alt+tabbing to switch between windows
6. Framerate for Warframe in the background will return to 60 fps or whatever the stable rate is
7. Alt+tab back to Warframe
8. Framerate for Warframe in the foreground will drop to 45 fps

 

 

I just started the game up for the first time in a while and I'm seeing this odd framerate issue. Normally I run the game at max settings, getting 60 fps (capped) in the orbiter. Heck, I even get 60 fps in Cetus. Now every once in a while, the framerate will suddenly drop to a range of about 43-47 fps and will hover there. I feel like this would make sense if I was sitting in Cetus, depending on what was going on. But this will sometimes happen in the Orbiter as well with literally nothing going on but me staring straight ahead.

• Changing my visual quality settings has zero effect on this at all.
• Verifying files didn't seem to help.
• Toggling DX10 or DX11 didn't seem to help.

The FPS meter will read something like:

Frame Rate 60fps Time 16.7ms RAM 640MB

... then I might interact with a menu or open the arsenal where it will drop to:

Frame Rate 44fps Time 25.0ms RAM 640MB

I've noticed sometimes the framerate will go back up if I'm looking at another window in my multi-monitor setup and then back down to 45 fps when I click back to Warframe. Now, I can't say for sure, but I feel like it might have something to do with polling rate. Not going to say for sure but I saw a framerate issue with another game that also wasn't affected by visual quality settings and that's what it turned out to be.

I took a couple screenshots to show what I mean--sitting in the orbiter I was at 60fps. I hit steam's screenshot key and the frame rate immediately dropped to 45 fps and stayed there for a short while. Clicking out of the game the fps went back up, then clicking back to the game it went down. Eventually it seems to figure itself out and the game will run at 60 fps regardless.

https://imgur.com/rNr99py

https://imgur.com/odEdlbR

My specs:

• Ryzen 5 1600X
• 32 GB RAM
• nVidia 980 GTX

My mouse is a Corsair Scimitar Pro RGB set to 250 Hz polling rate.

Warframe is installed on an SSD drive, so I wouldn't think load times would severely impact it (and the game's RAM doesn't seem to indicate a large load operation of any kind)

Hitting steam screenshot key seems to consistently cause it to happen. Sometimes using the arsenal causes it. Sometimes opening the options menu causes it.

I hope this helps, if there's anything else I can try let me know.

Edited February 21, 2018 by Ahkaskar

[Harestation]

Hi there. I wanted to do a thread to a similar problem i've but i guess i'll add a +1 here. Thought i've an old config.

Basically i discovered lately that for some strange reasons my fps were'nt higher than 50 and would go down to 32 already in menus, like the star chart, the dynamic resolution would even be triggered there. It also leads to trash fps in regular missions where i never had any issues.

I had a second screen enabled though not powered, a relatively old TV (HD ready, 1080i 50 fps max). As soon as i disabled it in the Win7 display settings, my fps went back to normal at 60 fps max and constant decent fps in missions.
TL;DR : Multi-screens is causing the fps drop issue.

So @Ahkaskar : did you try to disable temporarily your mutil-screens setup just to see if having only the game on one screen solve this issue or not ? I've the feeling a recent update included a bug here for any multi-screens players.

cc @[DE]Saske

Edited February 15, 2018 by Harestation

[Ahkaskar]

Interesting. That might be the case? Though trying today, I've tried it with only 1 monitor, then 2, and then 3 and I can't seem to get it to happen as consistently. It happened once while I was at 3 monitors but I haven't been able to get it to occur since.

Edit: Spoke too soon, I just got it to happen. When I unplugged the other two monitors it went away and wouldn't come back. Then when I plugged one monitor back in, I got it to come back by going into the arsenal and trying to change my current warframe.

Edited February 16, 2018 by Ahkaskar

[Harestation]

A little update : It seems the issue only occur in Windowed mode. Fullscreen / Borderless fullscreen are not concerned at least in my tests. Dunno if it's also your case, OP.

I hope there'll be a fix for it. Or i'll try to play in borderless fullscreen (fullscreen isn't an option with all the stuff you want to check out of the game at times). I don't recall if the focus is well kept into the game for the mouse cursor, i hope so.

Edited February 17, 2018 by Harestation

[HanShotFirst]

Not sure if this is related, but it sounds similar.

Roughly within the past two months upon launch of the game, the first time I interact with the Orbiter's Navigation UI there is a sudden, radical drop in framerate (single digits). It only lasts for about a second or two at most, then returns to my preferred cap of 60fps. All subsequent interactions behave normally without any noticeable drop, even if I change instances to run a mission. 

This isn't really gamebreaking or even particularly inconvenient. But given I'm accustomed to Warframe's typically amazing performance, I thought it might be worth mentioning.

Running client with max settings @1080p, borderless window mode.

CPU: Intel i7-4790 @3.60GHz
GPU: NVIDIA 1060 6GB
Memory: 16GB ram
OS: Windows 10

[Ahkaskar]

On 2/17/2018 at 8:22 AM, Harestation said:

A little update : It seems the issue only occur in Windowed mode. Fullscreen / Borderless fullscreen are not concerned at least in my tests. Dunno if it's also your case, OP.

I hope there'll be a fix for it. Or i'll try to play in borderless fullscreen (fullscreen isn't an option with all the stuff you want to check out of the game at times). I don't recall if the focus is well kept into the game for the mouse cursor, i hope so.

I run exclusively in borderless fullscreen, I suspect it would operate more or less the same as windowed.

Yeah, I hope there will be a fix for this soon, the framerate issues contribute to eye strain for me. While I know I could unplug my other monitors, it's also painful to have to deal with Windows resetting all of my audio settings due to treating each reconnected monitor's built-in speakers as a brand new audio device...

Edit: I swear the details of this bug keep changing every day. Now it's happening even if I have only one monitor connected. Going to test some other things and when I do I'll update here and the original post.

Edit^2: I've been playing without any issues for the past hour or so, looks like it was actually due to a different monitor I thought was inactive since it was switched off. This other monitor was duplicating my primary monitor, the one on which I play Warframe.

Edited February 21, 2018 by Ahkaskar