Sudden intermittent massive FPS loss

[AstroCreep]

[SOLVED] Sudden intermittent massive FPS loss

Hi guys, anyone come across this before: I was playing just fine for two days, Low/Medium settings on my rig, locked to 45, smooth as silk in all gameplay aspects. Then suddenly I'm now getting terrible FPS at random times (sometimes around stations, sometimes out in deep space with nothing nearby, sometimes on planets), GPU usage is bouncing High 90s to 100%. Then as sudden as it appears it disappears and I'm back to normal 45 smooth fps in all situations again [blah]

I've checked and there is no background task or program interference which I thought would be the cause (turned AV off as I thought it might be that), no downloading of anything by windows or other, the system is running just fine. I've verified the files in the launcher (nothing to re-download), it's a puzzler so if anyone has any tips then please let me know as it's totally unplayable when the FPS drops like it does, thanks.

 

[Raptoyd]

Sounds like your network connection was taking a dump for some reason happens sometimes even with the best of them

 

[Karl Agathon]

Hmm, I have crappy internet and it has never caused graphical problems before, even with my old 7970. The most it does is get me stuck in a loop trying to exit a jump to a system or station ... or suddenly get me disconnected. OP, monitor your connection anyways, see if Raptoid is on to something... What GPU are you on?

 

[AstroCreep]

Sounds like your network connection was taking a dump for some reason happens sometimes even with the best of them

Nope not that, downloaded a network meter and that shows nothing during these "periods of crapness" as I've come to call them but thanks for that tip.

Hmm, I have crappy internet and it has never caused graphical problems before, even with my old 7970. The most it does is get me stuck in a loop trying to exit a jump to a system or station ... or suddenly get me disconnected. OP, monitor your connection anyways, see if Raptoid is on to something... What GPU are you on?

GTX970 but that is not the cause, hence I'm locked to 45 and low/medium settings and for the most part it runs fine, just these random moments (again GPU drivers not changed since it was running 100% fine the other day).

 

[Orvidius]

I wouldn't be surprised if something in the background is hogging up CPU at various intervals. Do you have a virus scanner, or update downloader, or anything something along those lines that might just "wake up" and start thrashing the system? Something eating a lot of memory that could cause a lot of swapping and thrashing?

If it's intermittent like that, and severe when it hits, it's probably another program using resources. How much RAM do you have, and have you changed any of the virtual memory settings?

 

[AstroCreep]

I wouldn't be surprised if something in the background is hogging up CPU at various intervals. Do you have a virus scanner, or update downloader, or anything something along those lines that might just "wake up" and start thrashing the system? Something eating a lot of memory that could cause a lot of swapping and thrashing?

If it's intermittent like that, and severe when it hits, it's probably another program using resources. How much RAM do you have, and have you changed any of the virtual memory settings?

Like I say I've been watching but nothing is doing anything in the background, I have Elite in a small window on the Desktop with Task Manager open to check (through the nose gap!) but nothing seems to cause it, frustrating but I'm determined to find out the cause.
8GB RAM, not been an issue at all and as before Elite was running flawlessly for a couple of days before this all started and worked flawlessly when I last played the game regularly months ago.

Something I just thought of is perhaps low disk space is perhaps causing something (SSD with limited room), no Page file or anything set up (just standard windows 10 settings) - at work now but that's something I may check when I get home.

 

[Orvidius]

Yeah, 8GB is a little small by today's standards. I would expect it to be enough, personally, but it's also possible that if the SSD is quite full, Windows may be more aggressively swapping things in and out to make use of paging with a small footprint. It could be that you simply crossed a threshold on free disk space while being short on memory, and it has changed the behavior. It's a shot in the dark, though. It would be great if you could test with 16GB RAM and see if it changes anything, but that's spending money of course. More RAM is never a bad thing though.

 

[imski]

Were you mining or in a roid field at all?

I used to get massive fps loss over time in those settings. Haven't needed to be in one for a while so can't say if it's still happening.

 

[AstroCreep]

Yeah, 8GB is a little small by today's standards. I would expect it to be enough, personally, but it's also possible that if the SSD is quite full, Windows may be more aggressively swapping things in and out to make use of paging with a small footprint. It could be that you simply crossed a threshold on free disk space while being short on memory, and it has changed the behavior. It's a shot in the dark, though. It would be great if you could test with 16GB RAM and see if it changes anything, but that's spending money of course. More RAM is never a bad thing though.

Yeah that's my hunch now, got an old HDD lying around so will throw stuff on that and see if the low space is the issue. It maybe 16gb afterall having a brain fade

Were you mining or in a roid field at all?

I used to get massive fps loss over time in those settings. Haven't needed to be in one for a while so can't say if it's still happening.

It happens in random places not specific to one area, like I say sometimes its smooth in all areas.

 

[AstroCreep]

I've Solved it, as ever it's right under my nose:

Watching Task Manager (again) the only running process that gets near Elite was the Oculus Service, never thought anything of it as presumed it was always there as it needs to run obviously. But then after an hours play I decided to go from ASW 45fps (locked) to ASW Auto...Voila! No more random FPS loss, put it back to 45 until it happened again and when it did I immediately hit CTRL + Numpad1 for ASW Auto and it cured it straight away...phew! I can get back to proper playing now

Thanks to all for helping [smile]