Abysmal FPS (<10) on Good Spec Laptop - Please Help!

[Ramsgill]

I got a nice new gaming laptop for the primary purpose of running Warframe when I'm out travelling. However I have extremely low frames per second to point of the game being unplayable in any kind of team, and barely playable solo.

 

For example:

On Orbiter - 60-80 fps.

Solo random grineer or corpus mission - maybe 50 fps, dropping to 20 with enemies around.

Solo PoE - 30-50 fps, dropping to 20 or less with a few enemies around.

Any 4 player mission - Generally struggling to get over 15 frames per second unless standing right against a wall.

4 player PoE - fps dropping to 3-10 fps, basically a PowerPoint presentation at this point.

Edit: Even when getting a 'smooth' 40-50 fps in quiet times, I get severe hitching and lost frames when moving or rotating, which is fairly disconcerting.

SPEC: Alienware R4 -  i7-7700 2.8 Ghz, 16 GB RAM, GTX 1070 8GB, 1440p monitor capable of 120 Hz. Laptop is basically brand new and has no superfluous stuff installed. Warframe the only game on there so far, on the SSD, and there is nothing running in the background.

I get this poor performance regardless of temperature or time spent in-game. CPU and GPU usage seem to be capping at like 25% during play. I can also set every single display parameter to low/disabled and it makes perhaps 4-5 fps difference at most; even dropping the resolution from 1440p to potato levels makes no difference, with dire results even running around Earth tileset solo at 800 x 600. I can run Warframe at >60 resolutions on a substantially inferior desktop (older i5, R9 290x, 4GB Ram), so something is clearly amiss. I would like 120 fps if possible, hence the investment in the good spec. I feel like on paper this should cope...

 

Attempts so far: I have tried Verify/Optimize within the launcher and various combinations of 64 bit mode/Dx10/Dx11/multithreading being enabled and disabled inside its options menu. I have also disabled the GeForce Experience In-Game Overlay to no avail. I adjusted every battery/power setting imaginable for performance to check for temperature-based throttling anywhere. I have enabled and disabled the commonly suggested options such as PhysX. I have updated the Nvidia driver. So far nothing has made an appreciable difference...

 

Any help is appreciated as I am at my wit's end with this...

 

 

 

Edited March 8, 2018 by Ramsgill
Forgot something

[RugerMK1]

I'm wondering if I am having a similar issue to yours. I run a GTX 970 and previously had 70 FPS 98% of the time.  I get high FPS in the orbiter like you but get FPS into the 30s and worse in standard missions or Plains of Eidolon.

I did find for some reason that performance was steady on the Kuva Fortress tile set doing a mission there.  I would be curious if you had FPS problems on the Kuva Fortress as well.  I was having this issue before updating to February's Nvidia drivers, which would make me believe that Warframe itself may be at fault.

[krc473]

7 hours ago, Ramsgill said:

I got a nice new gaming laptop for the primary purpose of running Warframe when I'm out travelling. However I have extremely low frames per second to point of the game being unplayable in any kind of team, and barely playable solo.

Have you tested it on any other games at all? If not, I would do this.

 

Warframe sometimes encounters stuttering depending on NVIDIA drivers. It has happened a bunch. I would suggest you try and downgrade your GPU driver. Grab one that is a few months old (try a 2017 one). Also check in the task manager to make sure that it tells you the expected CPU/RAM/GPU. My friend had this issue a while back, we checked that and half the RAM was missing - it had not been inserted into the board correctly.

[llFezz]

I've got this exact problem as well.

Used to be able to run 60 fps or more on orbiter or any 4 player mission but recently its TERRRIBLE at 10-20fps on a GOOD day in a 4 player mission. 

[krc473]

6 minutes ago, FadzH said:

I've got this exact problem as well.

Specs, desktop/laptop, any similarities to the OP's machine etc?

 

I am getting around 140 - 200 FPS (depends on the situation) on max settings in a full squad. (i7-7700, 16 GB RAM, GTX1080)

[Ramsgill]

Thanks for the input folks. After a lot more digging and benchmarking it appears as though the CPU was woefully underperforming, in the <1st percentile on User Compare tests. In fact the GPU and RAM were short of average levels by a fair way too. Time Spy on 3D Mark was getting around 3 fps on the CPU stress test.

The laptop was a refurb, so I returned it as I expect that this was to blame and also explains why poor performance persisted at low resolutions. I have a replacement on the way, actually with a 7820HK this time, so I will be re-benchmarking once that arrives and will update accordingly on here.