25% FPS loss out of the blue

Billy Pilgrim · Dec 23, 2018

I'm looking for a bit of help.

A week or so ago, I started getting 20 to 30% fewer FPS when using AC. I wondered if it was Dynamic Shaders so uninstalled it but that doesn't change much, if anything. I can't figure it out. (the fps drop didn't come just after installing Dynamic Shaders anyway)

Wondering if a Windows update may have done this. I can't think of any graphics-type mod that I installed a week ago either.

I've got a 1080 ti and an i7 4770k (with an overclock). Triple screens. But there has been no hardware change recently that could have caused this.

pattikins · Jun 20, 2020

Steam Mover might save you some time & hassle.

MrBraindown · Jun 20, 2020

Thanks Patrick, that will be useful!

Deleted member 197115 · Jun 20, 2020

pattikins said:
Steam Mover might save you some time & hassle.

Steam has this option already, you don't need 3rd party tool anymore.

How to Move a Steam Game to Another Drive, The Easy Way

You can easily move a game from one hard drive to another without downloading it all over again,

www.howtogeek.com

MrBraindown · Jun 20, 2020

Cool, good to know, thanks Andrew.

MrBraindown · Jun 21, 2020

So, I installed AC on a different SSD today. Lightning quick to load and 85 fps during the first race. Started the second race immediately afterwards, exactly the same car, track etc: 85 fps, third race 85 fps. Looks like my problem is solved as well! Thanks for the tip Billy.

Billy Pilgrim · Jun 21, 2020

That’s good news.
And very interesting that your solution was the same as mine.
Have you noticed other problems with your Ssd? I haven’t noticed any with mine, but I did read something today saying SSDs don’t have long lives.

Neilski · Jun 22, 2020

Unless the SSD is pretty badly unwell, it should beat a HDD for most tasks.
Are you both using Windows 10? (I accidentally almost trashed an SSD while using it on Windows Vista, which didn't understand SSDs very well and did bad things to them.)

Billy Pilgrim · Jun 22, 2020

I'm on Windows 10. The SSD is 6 years old now but I haven't noticed any other problems with it. So this is weird.
Now I have my AC installation running off of the (non-solid) HDD on my PC and it's all better, really. My FPS are back in the 98 to 115 range more or less.
There are no other apparent problems with my SSD though so I'm not sure what's going on. I seem to have found the cure but don't understand why it's a cure.
I may have read that SSDs have a shorter life expectancy, I think.

It's all a bit curious...

MrBraindown · Jun 22, 2020

Weirdly, I've ran a few 2 lap races this morning and I'm up to 145fps (!) but notice my GPU is now running at 98/99% again. (I'm not taking part, it's just the AI slugging it out whilst I 'Return to Pit' on race start)

I'm going to run a few more whilst sat here home schooling my two lads, but I'm dreading getting the fps drop again.

For what it's worth, the original SSD was just over a year old. The one that I'm running it on now is a few months old, but I only installed it yesterday, it's also a m.2 if that makes any difference (perhaps to the loading times)

Curious as you say Billy.

FuzzyHead · Jun 22, 2020

Just to throw something else into the mix...I also suffered with stramge FPS drops from time to time, and my issue was that due to the numerous times that AC had been crashing (often silently) the Fault Tolerant Heap function of windows was getting triggered, and everything would slow down.

Details in this thread here: https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...s-in-event-log-and-slower-performance.182060/

Billy Pilgrim · Jun 22, 2020

FuzzyHead said:
Just to throw something else into the mix...I also suffered with stramge FPS drops from time to time, and my issue was that due to the numerous times that AC had been crashing (often silently) the Fault Tolerant Heap function of windows was getting triggered, and everything would slow down.

Details in this thread here: https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...s-in-event-log-and-slower-performance.182060/

OK, thanks a lot for the tip. I'll look through that when I'm back at my rig/PC.

Something I don't undertsand in all this is why switching to another hard disk would improve my fps (I can understand loading times improving but not in-game fps).

And there's no real reason for the moment to see that my SSD is in bad health.

MrBraindown · Jun 22, 2020

I ran numerous races (single screen) throughout the day and not once did the fps dip below 100. I managed a couple of VR races this evening and again, it was smooth and had decent fps.

I'm with Billy, I'm stumped why moving my AC installation to a second SSD seems to have cured my issue. ACC, rFactor2 and Wreckfest (all located on the 'old' SSD) run at high fps without a hitch.

Neilski · Jun 22, 2020

That's all pretty weird then. The game really shouldn't need to write anything to the game installation folder on the SSD during the race anyway.
The replays are written during the race, but they go to the user's Documents folder.
Hmm, just thinking: apps can write stuff during the race, and in my experience they do store their stuff in the game installation folder...

Edit: if any of you still have the installation available which causes the bad behaviour, you could take a look and see what Task Manager shows for the disk utilisation history after a couple of minutes of driving while it's exhibiting the problem. It should show "Active time" sitting around 0% unless something dodgy is going on. (See pic below.)

Deleted member 197115 · Jun 23, 2020

There is cache folder in AC with car shadows. May be something is corrupted there, try to wipe it out clean.

RasmusP · Jun 23, 2020

Neil's and Andrew's hints sound very good for me!

Just to throw in another thing:
How much free space is on your "bad" SSDs? Some SSDs perform quite badly when they don't have at least 10% of their capacity free.
Although I never experienced any problems even when filled to 100%...

About the lifespan: You can read out the TBW (Terabytes written) and compare it to the spec's maximum TBW.

For me the quickest way to see this would be downloading HWiNFO64 (I use v7.27-4181 in "sensor only" launch) and scrolling down to the S.M.A.R.T.: sections shows: