Virmire FPS Drop

[Bruttino Craxi]

So, i've a decent pc. it can run mass effect in 2560x1080 at 60 fps with no issue, but in virmire something dumb happened. After freeing one salarian prisoner, and killing a bunch of other ones that were totally indoctrinated by saren, my fps dropped drammatically to 8 fps. i can't resolve this problem by changing the video settings neither lowering the resolution. i've tried everything. Any ideas on how to solve it?

[Ogami]

Yes, its a known bug. Same happens in the Garrus side mission if you kill the Salarian doctor.
Its something about that Salarian scientist corpse model which completely freaks out the engine.
At the moment the only way to prevent it on Virmire is to not kill them. They will die in the bomb blast anyway.

For the Garrus mission the FPS drops stop when you return to the Normandy.

But for Virmire they persist till you finish the whole mission and thats not very fun.

[Jan]

This bug was also in my game. I will fix itself when you meet the Asari scientist.

[Ogami]

Originally posted by Jan:

This bug was also in my game. I will fix itself when you meet the Asari scientist.

I seen some streams where it persisted through the entire mission till the bomb went off.
So it seems not guaranteed to fix itself by meeting the Asari.

[GoldKn3cht]

If you don't want to miss out on this Renegade Scene.
Load your save before you activate their door.
Leave the room and continue playing normally until you reach the room where Rana Thanoptis is.
However, don't go into this room, but back to the Salarians.
Do your Renegade action. Your frames will still go down a lot.
Now go back to Rana under strong frame drops and talk to her.
Now your frames should return to normal.

[Bruttino Craxi]

♥♥♥♥, on xbox 360 back in the day i didn't ever notice it, i've already made another save, sooo i guees i have to finish the mission like that...

[Darkan]

Originally posted by Jan:

This bug was also in my game. I will fix itself when you meet the Asari scientist.

work for me thx

[Davi]

It will go back to normal once you get far away. It's something with the corpses, you will come across it once again later on I forgot where exactly.
But yeah just walk away from them and your game will go back to normal

[DS1404]

Same thing happens with the Dr. Saleon assignment. After the interaction with him the fps tanks until you leave the area and then its fine. Returning to that specific area: FPS tanks.

[Shepherd]

One thing that worked for me was disabling my Xbox bluetooth controller from the task bar. After I did that I went back into the game and the FPS jumped back up from 4 to 60. Deciding that playing on the keyboard was annoying I checked Windows updates this morning for a bluetooth update and sure enough, there was one. So I installed that. Removed my old controller from the bluetooth items, and then re pared it. ME1 has been running smoothly since doing that.

Mine was also dumping frames when you first get to the asari dungeon to pick her up. Specifically with the Geth giant walking Apple vacuum outside. I had to do the trick where you unplug your power cord, then hit the power button a few times to cycle the power out, then plug the cord back in, then restart the system just to find bluetooth again after the first crash. My Xbox controller has been great but he bluetooth seems to cause all kinds of headaches. Hope this helps anyone having the same problem.

[Noodliest]

I was wondering about this. Good to know it's just this mission. Kinda weird bug though. Trying to finish the mission on 6 fps is pretty fun !! NOT

[Chimaer]

Same bugs with decent crashes. Can't be the PC specs problem.

[DePhoegon]

Honestly, I had to save & reload .. more often. I suspect there may be issues about some objects not getting loaded correctly or being in friendly spots.

General advice save, exit to the menu & load the game for ME1... the physic engine got touched I suspect & it gets nuts, reloading can cause things to settle, or violently eject themselves out of render distance & settle way from other things. (Though, I typically saw this when anything interacted with complicated things like the mako)

[Shepherd]

After my bluetooth fix I have still experienced the frame drops a couple of times. Not as bad as that one area where you pick up the Asari. Sometimes now if I just let it lag for a few seconds it self corrects somehow.

[Soloks]

The same thing just happened to me with the salarians.