Performance drop after 95 hours

[Sagrit]

Something weird happened with performance. I played for 95 hours without any issues. Had no fps drops or shuttering, even in crowded areas like Zalysia or Rostok. Yesterday I reached certain point in story : finished Malachite location and got side quest "In the name of science" (i guess final stage of the quest). Don't know if that's matters though. After that I noticed 2 big changes:
1) almost all random stalkers are in exoskeleton
2) my game is lagging
I mean it's not because I traveled to end game areas. Its happening even in starting areas : i traveled back to Cordon, Zaton, Garbage, also Red Forest (ok, this one is pretty late game). And everywhere performance is worse than before yesterday. I assume it's connected somehow, that random NPC's are using more late game gear and in the same time game performance drops.

Any solution or advice? Maybe some trustworthy mods?

My spec is far from top:
CPU: i5-11500
GRP: 3060 12 GB
RAM: 16 Gb
Windows 10

But I must repeat - I had no issues before yesterday, played 95 hours and visited almost every location and points of interest on the whole map southern from Red Forest.

[Sagrit]

Updated Nvidia drivers.
Changed few settings in game to low/medium. Noticed, that somehow few of settings wasn't like i remembered... For example DLSS was on quality. Changed to Performance, turned off FSR. It helped, the game runs much better than today. But still worse than yesterday :)
Will try to update BIOS tomorrow.

But there was no patches for past few days. So the only difference is what i described above: the "world" went on second level, stalkers start using exo's and better weapons (Kharod, Zubr-19 etc even in Cardon and Zalisya)

[Greyfire]

Originally posted by Sagrit:

Updated Nvidia drivers.
Changed few settings in game to low/medium. Noticed, that somehow few of settings wasn't like i remembered... For example DLSS was on quality. Changed to Performance, turned off FSR. It helped, the game runs much better than today. But still worse than yesterday :)
Will try to update BIOS tomorrow.

But there was no patches for past few days. So the only difference is what i described above: the "world" went on second level, stalkers start using exo's and better weapons (Kharod, Zubr-19 etc even in Cardon and Zalisya)

After I updated Nvidia drivers today, I loaded into the game and my GPU temps shot way up. So, I closed the game, and then reloaded the game and suddenly temps were normal again. IDK - just trying to relate that something may be wrong with the drivers. That said, not sure what that has to do with more powerful enemies...

[cckkcckk]

Originally posted by Greyfire:

After I updated Nvidia drivers today, I loaded into the game and my GPU temps shot way up. So, I closed the game, and then reloaded the game and suddenly temps were normal again. IDK - just trying to relate that something may be wrong with the drivers. That said, not sure what that has to do with more powerful enemies...

Yeah, I believe there is something wrong with the drivers. I think frame gen makes the game a little bit more unstable. My game became a little more stable after the last driver update so I have been using frame gen again with less but still present & huge FPS drops. Sometimes I can be fine for hours, other times my frames randomly drop into single digits after for example being in the pause menu.

[Raptor]

I'm having kind of the same problem:

I have a weird issue that start happening after the mission Extreme Simplicity - Escape The Swamp and this issue stuck with me after this mission regardless of the area, I reloaded an old manual save just before the swamp mission and there is NO STUTTERING and now I don't know what to do ? ... I hated this mission so much and I don't want to replay it especially that the issue may still reoccurs after this mission.

The issue : there is micro stuttering when I zoom with any scope and I use the scope a lot.
I tried lowering the graphic options even to all low and the micro stuttering is still there.

PC specs : 13700K , 32GB RAM , 3080Ti

[Pheex]

At first glance it sounds like the new drivers could be the problem? I'm on a near identical system and I'm waaay past that mission and haven't had any changes in fps.
I never updated to this week's drivers though, since, if it aint broke I aint fixing it while I'm in the middle of a playthrough of a new game.

[Raptor]

Originally posted by Pheex:

At first glance it sounds like the new drivers could be the problem? I'm on a near identical system and I'm waaay past that mission and haven't had any changes in fps.
I never updated to this week's drivers though, since, if it aint broke I aint fixing it while I'm in the middle of a playthrough of a new game.

I only updated to the recent driver version after the problem occurred as I was try to find a fix, also for me if I load a save before the swamp mission I don't have the stuttering !

[Sagrit]

OK, I found something interesting... I know it will sound weird, but I tested it several times, including rebooting a game, reload saves, changing resolution etc. Apparently me personally gets heavy stuttering in crowd bases like Rostok, Yanov, or Malachit when I have Exoskeleton "Operator" with me. Equipped, or even just in an inventory. This particular exoskeleton, not any other of them, specifically "Operator". The moment I drops it in personal chest, or sell it - stuterring almost gone.

The moment I described in the first message of this topic is not just "finishing Malachit mission", but also looting that exo in a process, for the first time in a game. Than I got rid of it, and everything backs to normal (haven't noticed the connection though, just was happy that game runs normally). But today I looted another one, during one of later missions, and the moment I looted it - stuttering appeared again. Sold it and no more heavy stuttering.

I know how it sounds :) But that's how it works with my PC specifically. Don't know the technical aspect of this problem, but there's must be something wrong with an item.

[Raptor]

Originally posted by Sagrit:

OK, I found something interesting... I know it will sound weird, but I tested it several times, including rebooting a game, reload saves, changing resolution etc. Apparently me personally gets heavy stuttering in crowd bases like Rostok, Yanov, or Malachit when I have Exoskeleton "Operator" with me. Equipped, or even just in an inventory. This particular exoskeleton, not any other of them, specifically "Operator". The moment I drops it in personal chest, or sell it - stuterring almost gone.

The moment I described in the first message of this topic is not just "finishing Malachit mission", but also looting that exo in a process, for the first time in a game. Than I got rid of it, and everything backs to normal (haven't noticed the connection though, just was happy that game runs normally). But today I looted another one, during one of later missions, and the moment I looted it - stuttering appeared again. Sold it and no more heavy stuttering.

I know how it sounds :) But that's how it works with my PC specifically. Don't know the technical aspect of this problem, but there's must be something wrong with an item.

Interesting .. the more we know the better ... I said that my issue kind of similar to your but it's totally different; mine after further investigation confirmed by multiple players that it is time issue .. after certain time according to the save ( 3d and 49 mins ) the game start to have micro stuttering while zooming ( right click ).