The game performance is suddenly horrible

[savro]

Has anyone else run into an issue where the game's frame rate is suddenly absolutely horrible? I have a system that is a few years old but I had been playing the game since early release pretty decently on medium settings. I was getting ~30 fps very consistently - playable enough.

I saved the game yesterday after a session that had been going smoothly. There were no indications that anything was wrong. I started the game up later and continued from that save and at that point I was getting ~8 fps. As far as I know there weren't any updates to the OS, drivers or game. All of the game settings were the same as before. I have since tried updating my GPU drivers and OS but nothing has helped. I turned the game's graphical settings to Low and this didn't help either.

Does anyone have any suggestions? The baffling part for me was that the game was running decently before, and now, for seemingly no reason, the performance has fallen through the floor.

Here are my system specs in case it helps.
Core i7 10750H
16 GB DDR4-3200 RAM
GeForce RTX 2070
Toshiba XG6 KXG60ZNV512G 512GB NVMe SSD (OS drive)
Crucial CT1000P1SSD8 1TB NVMe SSD (Steam games are here)
Windows 11 Pro 22H2

[Darth Revan]

A few people wrote that yesterdays nvidia driver update (GeForce now I thing) caused stuff like what you were describing.

A few people also wrote thar reverting back to the previous driver version fixed the issue for them.

[Zalzany]

Might be ware and tare ona part? Did you do the new driver update from NVIDIA could been that as well. Normally my pc starts acting up and I got no mods in this yet I would do a benchmark and compare it to my last ones stats, see if maybe something is failing the trouble shoot it.

[rjenkins16]

I had this happen yesterday as well, and it was after I updated my NVidia drivers. My solution, that I found in another thread about this, was to add the game to the exceptions of my AV. Fixed it right up.

[savro]

Thanks for the responses so far. I've been poking around a bit online too and based on some recommendations that I've found I disabled dynamic resolution in the game settings and disabled fullscreen optimizations in the game's executable file in Windows. This has helped somewhat and I'm getting around 18 fps now. Still not great but a bit better. I'll try reverting the Nvidia driver to an earlier version too and see what that does.

[His Divine Shadow]

About 60 hours in I started getting light stuttering in certain situations. Yesterdays nvidia driver update made the game run a hell of a lot smoother for me though.

[peon]

I find with windows 10/11 it just randomly "slows" down, time to time, likely the antivirus scanning files or maybe even something like a update compiling updating files in the background. It is possible its could be shaders doing something in the background, so after a few minutes itll clear up.

Sometimes window is doing something, and it says its not doing anything and this is why I really dislike windows 10 and 11. 10 also requires a windows microsoft for home, but pro doesnt need one. 11, there is no option but to bind your microsoft account to your install, I really dislike this. Even unplugging your lan cable doesnt help, unless they changed this recently.

Essentially spyware. Then they convolute everything with a 1000 processes, and some of them dont do anything that I use, but there is no way to disable them without breaking some kind of functionality.

Dam bill gates and his nsa friends.

[savro]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone but nothing has seemed to help. I downgraded the GeForce driver to 537.13 but this didn't improve anything. This sucks, the game is pretty much unplayable for me now and I don't know why.

[Consolgamer]

Originally posted by savro:

Has anyone else run into an issue where the game's frame rate is suddenly absolutely horrible? I have a system that is a few years old but I had been playing the game since early release pretty decently on medium settings. I was getting ~30 fps very consistently - playable enough.

I saved the game yesterday after a session that had been going smoothly. There were no indications that anything was wrong. I started the game up later and continued from that save and at that point I was getting ~8 fps. As far as I know there weren't any updates to the OS, drivers or game. All of the game settings were the same as before. I have since tried updating my GPU drivers and OS but nothing has helped. I turned the game's graphical settings to Low and this didn't help either.

Does anyone have any suggestions? The baffling part for me was that the game was running decently before, and now, for seemingly no reason, the performance has fallen through the floor.

Here are my system specs in case it helps.
Core i7 10750H
16 GB DDR4-3200 RAM
GeForce RTX 2070
Toshiba XG6 KXG60ZNV512G 512GB NVMe SSD (OS drive)
Crucial CT1000P1SSD8 1TB NVMe SSD (Steam games are here)
Windows 11 Pro 22H2

By your own admittance you said your computer was old then wonder why performance isn't great?

[savro]

@Consolegamer - thanks for that, very helpful. Also in my original post, "by my own admittance", I said that the game had been running pretty well. Not great, but good enough to play. It's not a new computer, that's true. But the specs are right there in my original post and they are still quite a bit better than the minimum requirements.

[savro]

Originally posted by Zalzany:

Might be ware and tare ona part? Did you do the new driver update from NVIDIA could been that as well. Normally my pc starts acting up and I got no mods in this yet I would do a benchmark and compare it to my last ones stats, see if maybe something is failing the trouble shoot it.

It could be wear and tear on the PC but I don't think so. Other games still play just fine. It seems to be an issue that is particular to Starfield.

[savro]

OP here, back with an update.

The good news (for me) is that the game is performing reasonably well again. I'm getting 50 - 60 fps pretty reliably at this point. There are a few slowdowns here and there, but nothing game breaking like before.

The bad news is, I'm not sure what (if anything) I did to resolve the problem. I tried many different things, one at a time, and nothing seemed to help. Then suddenly, last night after I enabled full screen optimizations and disabled Run As Administrator in the Windows settings for Starfield.exe everything was working fine. I'm doubtful that changing those settings back to their original state is what did it as others have said changing those settings have helped them.

Here is a list of things I tried (in order as best I can remember):

• Decreased resolution (from 4K to 1080p)
  
• Decreased in-game display presets to "Low" (though I am running on Medium currently)
  
• Closed unneeded background processes and applications
  
• Downgraded Nvidia graphics card drivers (however I am now using the latest driver again)
  
• Disabled Windows full-screen optimizations (these have been enabled again however)
  
• Ran Starfield.exe as an administrator (but this has been disabled again)
  
• Installed the mod to enable DLSS[www.nexusmods.com] (still enabled)
  
• Recompiled graphics shaders by following the instructions here
  
• Relocated the install location of Starfield from one SSD to another and back again in Steam
  
• Backed up, uninstalled and restored the game in Steam
  
• Updated the PC BIOS
  
• My computer has a "Gaming Optimizer" (HP Omen Gaming Hub) - I changed the Performance Control setting from "Default" to "Performance"

Also, it seems that the game runs better if I don't open the whole Steam client and just run the game from the icon in the Notification Area of Windows in the lower-right corner of the screen by the clock.

So, unfortunately I can't say what it was that fixed things (or what combination of things). I would normally say it was the decrease in resolution and graphics quality settings, but those didn't seem to help on their own. If nothing else, the above is a list of things to try for anyone else that runs into a similar situation. Thanks again to everyone for their comments and suggestions.

[pr0phet00]

Originally posted by savro:

OP here, back with an update.

The good news (for me) is that the game is performing reasonably well again. I'm getting 50 - 60 fps pretty reliably at this point. There are a few slowdowns here and there, but nothing game breaking like before.

The bad news is, I'm not sure what (if anything) I did to resolve the problem. I tried many different things, one at a time, and nothing seemed to help. Then suddenly, last night after I enabled full screen optimizations and disabled Run As Administrator in the Windows settings for Starfield.exe everything was working fine. I'm doubtful that changing those settings back to their original state is what did it as others have said changing those settings have helped them.

Here is a list of things I tried (in order as best I can remember):

• Decreased resolution (from 4K to 1080p)
  
• Decreased in-game display presets to "Low" (though I am running on Medium currently)
  
• Closed unneeded background processes and applications
  
• Downgraded Nvidia graphics card drivers (however I am now using the latest driver again)
  
• Disabled Windows full-screen optimizations (these have been enabled again however)
  
• Ran Starfield.exe as an administrator (but this has been disabled again)
  
• Installed the mod to enable DLSS[www.nexusmods.com] (still enabled)
  
• Recompiled graphics shaders by following the instructions here
  
• Relocated the install location of Starfield from one SSD to another and back again in Steam
  
• Backed up, uninstalled and restored the game in Steam
  
• Updated the PC BIOS
  
• My computer has a "Gaming Optimizer" (HP Omen Gaming Hub) - I changed the Performance Control setting from "Default" to "Performance"

Also, it seems that the game runs better if I don't open the whole Steam client and just run the game from the icon in the Notification Area of Windows in the lower-right corner of the screen by the clock.

So, unfortunately I can't say what it was that fixed things (or what combination of things). I would normally say it was the decrease in resolution and graphics quality settings, but those didn't seem to help on their own. If nothing else, the above is a list of things to try for anyone else that runs into a similar situation. Thanks again to everyone for their comments and suggestions.

The update is appreciated. I've had a similar issue where it ran fine for a couple days, now just became a laggy POS. My rig is a bit newer than yours as well:

i7-11700k / 32GB ram/ 3070

But I've been seeing the same issues. Runs good now for 5 seconds, hitches and lags horribly for another 5. I can actually see it happen anywhere there's a fan in game, the blade slows down, then speeds back up. Hopefully we can find a root cause eventually.

[Darth Revan]

How many save files do you guys have? I recently read that having more than 10 save files can cause performance problems.

I don't know if that is true though.

[Mathias Giovanni]

Originally posted by savro:

OP here, back with an update.

The good news (for me) is that the game is performing reasonably well again. I'm getting 50 - 60 fps pretty reliably at this point. There are a few slowdowns here and there, but nothing game breaking like before.

The bad news is, I'm not sure what (if anything) I did to resolve the problem. I tried many different things, one at a time, and nothing seemed to help. Then suddenly, last night after I enabled full screen optimizations and disabled Run As Administrator in the Windows settings for Starfield.exe everything was working fine. I'm doubtful that changing those settings back to their original state is what did it as others have said changing those settings have helped them.

Here is a list of things I tried (in order as best I can remember):

• Decreased resolution (from 4K to 1080p)
  
• Decreased in-game display presets to "Low" (though I am running on Medium currently)
  
• Closed unneeded background processes and applications
  
• Downgraded Nvidia graphics card drivers (however I am now using the latest driver again)
  
• Disabled Windows full-screen optimizations (these have been enabled again however)
  
• Ran Starfield.exe as an administrator (but this has been disabled again)
  
• Installed the mod to enable DLSS[www.nexusmods.com] (still enabled)
  
• Recompiled graphics shaders by following the instructions here
  
• Relocated the install location of Starfield from one SSD to another and back again in Steam
  
• Backed up, uninstalled and restored the game in Steam
  
• Updated the PC BIOS
  
• My computer has a "Gaming Optimizer" (HP Omen Gaming Hub) - I changed the Performance Control setting from "Default" to "Performance"

Also, it seems that the game runs better if I don't open the whole Steam client and just run the game from the icon in the Notification Area of Windows in the lower-right corner of the screen by the clock.

So, unfortunately I can't say what it was that fixed things (or what combination of things). I would normally say it was the decrease in resolution and graphics quality settings, but those didn't seem to help on their own. If nothing else, the above is a list of things to try for anyone else that runs into a similar situation. Thanks again to everyone for their comments and suggestions.

Maybe it has something to do with threading the game and using cores? Running as admin versus normal may switch how that works.

[Sunday Driver]

Todd claimed the game was super optimized. Sadly for him and lazy Bethesda the modding community has already proven the game is a buggy unoptimized mess and they are bad coders or too lazy or greedy to fix it before releasing it as the modders have been pointing out issues in the code that are easily provable.

The game could have had a much better launch if they had a little talent and spent a little more time on fixing it up first.