[Solved] Huge overall performance drop after 6 months of smooth playing

[PrinzEugenio]

Hello everyone,

I have been playing Warframe for half a year without any problems on my pc - it always ran smooth and stable. My specs are: Intel Core i5 7400@3-3.5 Ghz; Asus Radeon RX 580 8GB (18.2.3 drivers); 8GB of DDR4 memory@2133 Mhz; MSI H170 Gaming Pro motherboard; Warframe installed on separate SSD for Steam/games; Windows 10 64bit.

Since three days, I all of a sudden experience severe performance problems. Even the log-in screen would be so slow that it is difficult to place my cursor in the correct place to enter the password, due to the extremely low framerate and the lag.
Normally, I had around 200fps in Orbiter and definitely over 100fps in any mission, but I cap my framerate using the in-game settings to 72 fps for my 75Hz monitor. 
Now, I only get 7-12 fps, which is of course completely unplayable. I didn't change anything major to my pc - there was an update of my Antivirus (Avast), but I tried launching the game with Avast disabled and it didn't help at all. I use the Windows Firewall (Windows Defender) and it is definitely set-up correctly to let Warframe through. Extensive antivus scans (with Avast) and antimalware scans (with Hitman Pro and Spybot) didn't give any important results/warnings. So my system seems clean - which I think/hope it is, since every other game/application runs fine.

I do however notice now and then thatwatching Youtube video's seems on full HD seems to have some lag issues as well, with the video image freezing up for a couple of seconds but the sound continuing correctly. I am on cable broadband, a test on Speedtest just gave me a result of 193 Mbps download and 19.4 Mbps upload speed. This speed has always enabled me to watch any video completely fluid or to play any online game without lag whatsoever. I find it very strange that this all of sudden is causing problems.

The strange thing is: now and then the game will load and launch at normal speed, so it is not constantly broken (but more like 19 out of 20 times, which does make it no fun anymore to play). In order to get that one chance to play normally, I have like to reboot my pc 6 times, restart Steam several times and try Warframe several times as well only to hit the one moment my pc seems to decide to run it smoothly.

Also very strange: since the performance problems started, I get a UAC pop-up when launching the game in Steam, asking "Do you allow this app to make changes to your pc: Evolution Engine". When I click no, I get an error message in Steam: "Failed to start process for Warframe". When I click yes, the game does start, but extremely laggy and with extremely low fps, as described above. It "feels" like some other program/service is using a big part of my internet bandwidth, which makes me nervous, but the virus/malware scans were definitely negative.

I do have a Windows system restore point from just before the problems started. The weird thing is that it states that restoring the system to that state (March 11th), will cause changes to several Windows drivers. Actually Windows did update on March 13th: afther that update Warframe ran smoothly one time, only for the problems to come back. I have never before seen that Windows 10 updates a bunch of the stock drivers (monitor, modem, keyboard, ...), so this is a flashing alarm light for me.

I really hope someone can help me on this: I tried for several hours to get it working properly already, also re-installed the entire game from scratch yesterday, but nothing seems to work. I am very willing to answer any further questions if someone thinks of a possible solution. I do hope it won't come down to have to re-install Windows completely.

Many thanks in advance for any help, this game is awesome and I would dearly love to continue playing it smoothly.

[swinxz]

I have the same specs except a Z270G board and i7-7700, and I've had the same since the latest update

[PrinzEugenio]

That's very intriguing - could it be that the latest update messed up with the Radeon drivers? Just a thought... There is a newer version of the AMD drivers, but they are a beta update and I try to avoid those. I did submit a ticket to the Warframe support, so I hope to get an answer from them eventually.

[CronixGaming]

I have the same problem my game would be at 60 fps in my orbiter and 30-40 in missions after the recent update for the dojo my frame rates have dropped to 8 fps which I believe is non playable 

[Prime_Stein]

Same problem with a Nvidia Gefroce 440GT.

[datCoffeeGuy]

Same issue here, FPS stuck at 30. Set all display options to low and it makes no difference. Also Radeon user.

[ErikPhantom]

Same issues, plus crashes so bad they require a forced restart to regain control.

Recent hotfixes didn't help either, as I just had another crash and had to force-restart just before writing this. 

Plains are particularly bad, jumping between 30 and 5 FPS constantly and with most of the crashes occurring when in them. Makes them unplayable, which sucks as I need only two more things to make everything in this unvaulting.

 

Re: the UAC pop-up when launching, I've been getting that intermittently for months now. Not sure what the cause is, but it doesn't happen every time and I hadn't noticed any other issues. (It was mildly annoying having to click it over and over, that's all.)

[Dougram]

Another player posted about setting the game to windowed borderless mode and that seemed to help them and my own performance hits the past few weeks.  I used to run game at near max settings then all the sudden I was getting fps and video stutters.  Changing to windowed borderless seemes to have fixed the problem.

[ErikPhantom]

Logged-in today after verifying and leaving it to optimize the game files overnight, no issues whatsoever. Not sure what changed, but Plains are running fine again, no major FPS drops or crashes at all today. Maybe my PC was stealth-updating when I was having the issues, who knows.

[PrinzEugenio]

Thanks a lot everyone for all the tips & suggestions. Still struggling to get the game run smoothly: it feels like a lottery. Sometimes (let's say one in five) it runs perfectly ok, the other 4 times it's still a complete slideshow at 7-10fps.

Things I already did to fix the problem:

• Restore my pc to a Windows restore point from before the problems started.
• Changed the game to run in borderless windowed mode (seems to enlarge the chance to get a smooth run)
• Ran another set of anti-virus and anti-malware scan

Still going to try to re-install my Radeon video drivers and thinking of re-installing my Intel ethernet drivers. Still feels like there might be a problem on my side with the bandwidth the game gets allocated. Or does this sound completely off-track? Does an online game run very slow & lagging due to not getting enough internet bandwidth? Or are those things independent from each other?

[Happy2B]

Ye i am having same issues had playing smoothly for past month and was happy about it , now frame drops are unplayable sometimes and stutters even worse tryed all possible things lowering graphics reinstalling windows, defragmenting still same, after this patch they did something so bad that its terrible and sad i realy love this game but its makes me to leave it.

[PrinzEugenio]

After getting in touch with the support department from DE, I got my problem solved - at least to a playable degree. So, I thought it might be useful for everyone who is having the same issues, to read how I fixed it.

First of all: be sure both your Antivirus- and Firewall-software have added Warframe to the list of applications that may run freely, without them intervening. This should most of the time being done automatically, but it's a good idea to check anyway (refer to your av/fw software for instructions). This step didn't help me, because Warframe already was set as intended in both Avast! and Windows Firewall.

Secondly: DE told me that, based on the information I provided them with, it looked like some 3d party program was interfering with Warframe and caused the huge performance impact. So they suggested me to disable all services when Windows boots (I use Windows 10 64bit version). To do so: start up msconfig, select services, select "hide all windows/microsoft services" and then deselect all services still visible. Reboot your pc, and it will start up without any of the programs that require these servies being started. This made a big difference for me: instead of getting 10fps, I went to 60-70fps in-game, which is perfectly fine for me on my 75Hz monitor. Still: the 200+ fps I got like ten days ago, is not back. No big deal for me though.

However: starting your pc with all non-Windows services disabled, has some disadvantages. You will have to make sure to re-enable your antivirus/3rd party firewall software to be safe on-line, and some programs start up a lot slower (most notably so Steam). So I feel like this more like a workaround that a full-scale solution, but I does work.

I am going to change my antivirus & firewall into an internet security package, maybe that will help to eliminate the problem completely. But at the moment, I'm glad I can play Warframe without stuttering, lag of major fps problems.

[Happy2B]

Ye well i am good at managing my own services and i know they dont interfer with warframe, all started when they updated, so ye that is just bollox. What helped so is only one thing i switch to directx 10. And the fps stabilazed.

 

For me solved i turn off dx11 in launcher and leave dx10 and everything back to normal.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Happy2B

[Aliothale]

On 3/21/2018 at 6:12 AM, PrinzEugenio said:

After getting in touch with the support department from DE, I got my problem solved - at least to a playable degree. So, I thought it might be useful for everyone who is having the same issues, to read how I fixed it.

First of all: be sure both your Antivirus- and Firewall-software have added Warframe to the list of applications that may run freely, without them intervening. This should most of the time being done automatically, but it's a good idea to check anyway (refer to your av/fw software for instructions). This step didn't help me, because Warframe already was set as intended in both Avast! and Windows Firewall.

Secondly: DE told me that, based on the information I provided them with, it looked like some 3d party program was interfering with Warframe and caused the huge performance impact. So they suggested me to disable all services when Windows boots (I use Windows 10 64bit version). To do so: start up msconfig, select services, select "hide all windows/microsoft services" and then deselect all services still visible. Reboot your pc, and it will start up without any of the programs that require these servies being started. This made a big difference for me: instead of getting 10fps, I went to 60-70fps in-game, which is perfectly fine for me on my 75Hz monitor. Still: the 200+ fps I got like ten days ago, is not back. No big deal for me though.

However: starting your pc with all non-Windows services disabled, has some disadvantages. You will have to make sure to re-enable your antivirus/3rd party firewall software to be safe on-line, and some programs start up a lot slower (most notably so Steam). So I feel like this more like a workaround that a full-scale solution, but I does work.

I am going to change my antivirus & firewall into an internet security package, maybe that will help to eliminate the problem completely. But at the moment, I'm glad I can play Warframe without stuttering, lag of major fps problems.

In the Warframe launcher, deselect DX11 under the settings cogwheel in the upper right. Make sure only DX10 is selected. This fixed the recent performance drops with the March 15th patch for me and some others. Thanks to Happy2B for finding this fix!

[PrinzEugenio]

Thanks for the extra tips! But what seems to have completely solved the problem for me, is changing my antivirus. De-installed Avast and replaced it with the full Internet Security software from Bitdefender (free 30-days trial period), which now takes care of all security-related things.

My pc not only feels quite bit snappier, Warframe is back to its normal speed at 200+ fps when I don't cap the framerate.