Spider-Man: CPU temperature and performance spikes

[Ingel Riday]

Hello everyone. I just wanted to post this here in case anyone was having the same issue I was having.

Specifically, this game ran great for me for about the first hour or so of each play session. Then I'd start getting framerate slowdowns into the low 50s, then the mid 40s, and tweaking my settings did very little if anything to help. The only things that seemed to help were turning off ray-tracing completely or just quitting and restarting the entire game. My system specs are:

GPU: RTX 3080 Ti
CPU: i9-9900K
Ram: 64GB of DDR4 Ram running at 3600 MHZ
SSD: NVME 2.0 SSD (Samsung 970 EVO Plus)

I have the game set at 4K 60 fps with DLSS enabled (dynamic scaling with 60 FPS target), with all settings at high except depth of field (medium) and texture quality at Very High. I also have ray-tracing on (high on both settings with range of 8).

I thought my issues might be tied to a memory leak, but I started listening to people here and checking things. My GPU is running at about 60 to 62 degrees Celsius and peaks at around 80% to 85% usage during big fights, so it wasn't that.

Then I downloaded MSI Afterburner and started checking on my CPU, and yeah... ouch. This game is very CPU heavy and my poor processor was hitting upper 70s in temperature. Sure enough, every time it got there the game slowed down because the CPU was throttling itself in order to avoid melting. I'd go from 40% to 50% CPU usage to 80%+ and the game would lurch about.

I ended up going into my BIOS and tweaking all my fans; I set the CPU fans to default at 85% of maximum power and go to 100% when at 40 Celsius or higher and did the same for the case fans. I also dusted my rig and, in an act of goofy cooling dedication, turned on my pretty heavy-duty Dreo tower fan and pointed it at my bloody computer case.

It all did the trick. My CPU is 10 degrees cooler on average, my GPU is running cooler too as a side benefit, and my slowdowns are under control. If there is a memory leak, it's not enough to bother me anymore.

I thought I'd share. My issue turned out to be the game pushing my CPU to the breaking point, which makes sense given how CPU-intensive it is. Hopefully the next few optimization patches reduce the barbarism, but we'll see. :-P

[M&M's]

Get a better cooler.

[Ingel Riday]

Originally posted by M&M's:

Get a better cooler.

Sure, sure.

I'm using a "Noctua NH-U12A, Premium CPU Cooler with High-Performance Quiet NF-A12x25 PWM Fans (120mm, Brown)." It came pretty highly reviewed and it's done a great job for the past 2 and a half years. This is the first game I have ever played on this rig where CPU heat was such a pronounced, dire issue... so much so that I had to tweak settings on the BIOS to resolve it.

I also have Noctua case fans that, frankly, have served me well too. They're darned nice, truthfully. Again, this is the first game I have ever played on the rig where heat buildup became such an issue.

But... sure, sure.

[DarkPassenger]

Originally posted by Ingel Riday:

Hello everyone. I just wanted to post this here in case anyone was having the same issue I was having.

Specifically, this game ran great for me for about the first hour or so of each play session. Then I'd start getting framerate slowdowns into the low 50s, then the mid 40s, and tweaking my settings did very little if anything to help. The only things that seemed to help were turning off ray-tracing completely or just quitting and restarting the entire game. My system specs are:

GPU: RTX 3080 Ti
CPU: i9-9900K
Ram: 64GB of DDR4 Ram running at 3600 MHZ
SSD: NVME 2.0 SSD (Samsung 970 EVO Plus)

I have the game set at 4K 60 fps with DLSS enabled (dynamic scaling with 60 FPS target), with all settings at high except depth of field (medium) and texture quality at Very High. I also have ray-tracing on (high on both settings with range of 8).

I thought my issues might be tied to a memory leak, but I started listening to people here and checking things. My GPU is running at about 60 to 62 degrees Celsius and peaks at around 80% to 85% usage during big fights, so it wasn't that.

Then I downloaded MSI Afterburner and started checking on my CPU, and yeah... ouch. This game is very CPU heavy and my poor processor was hitting upper 70s in temperature. Sure enough, every time it got there the game slowed down because the CPU was throttling itself in order to avoid melting. I'd go from 40% to 50% CPU usage to 80%+ and the game would lurch about.

I ended up going into my BIOS and tweaking all my fans; I set the CPU fans to default at 85% of maximum power and go to 100% when at 40 Celsius or higher and did the same for the case fans. I also dusted my rig and, in an act of goofy cooling dedication, turned on my pretty heavy-duty Dreo tower fan and pointed it at my bloody computer case.

It all did the trick. My CPU is 10 degrees cooler on average, my GPU is running cooler too as a side benefit, and my slowdowns are under control. If there is a memory leak, it's not enough to bother me anymore.

I thought I'd share. My issue turned out to be the game pushing my CPU to the breaking point, which makes sense given how CPU-intensive it is. Hopefully the next few optimization patches reduce the barbarism, but we'll see. :-P

You and I have the same specs, only difference is I am running a 3080. I also have a Noctua cooler that keeps the CPU at bay. The game does have a memory leak though.

[DarkPassenger]

Originally posted by Ingel Riday:

Originally posted by M&M's:

Get a better cooler.

Sure, sure.

I'm using a "Noctua NH-U12A, Premium CPU Cooler with High-Performance Quiet NF-A12x25 PWM Fans (120mm, Brown)." It came pretty highly reviewed and it's done a great job for the past 2 and a half years. This is the first game I have ever played on this rig where CPU heat was such a pronounced, dire issue... so much so that I had to tweak settings on the BIOS to resolve it.

I also have Noctua case fans that, frankly, have served me well too. They're darned nice, truthfully. Again, this is the first game I have ever played on the rig where heat buildup became such an issue.

But... sure, sure.

I have that same cooler too lol. My case is a Lian Li Lancool Mesh II. It's an awesome case for airflow.

[Arc]

Intel Tjmax is 100 or 105°C usually, it won't start to throttle up till high 80s or 90s°C, so i do wonder :-O

[Ernimus Prime]

My temps have been normal. My room temp is about 21c. My R7 3700x temp is 58c and I'm using a Hyper 212 black RGB edition cooler. and my RTX 3080 is 70c. Hot spot 82c. Playing 2560x1440 using digital foundry's recommended settings.

[Ingel Riday]

Originally posted by DarkPassenger:

I have that same cooler too lol.

Haha! I love it. Nice to meet someone with the same system specs. :-P

Thanks for your post and I'm glad I got things resolved as much as I can on my end. I can enjoy this game in earnest with an occasional restart here or there to fight memory leakage while the upcoming optimization patches get crafted by the developers. Hurrah. Not a bad situation for a modern game-launch at all. I've had much worse.

Have a great day, dude!

[M&M's]

Originally posted by Ernimus Prime:

My temps have been normal. My room temp is about 21c. My R7 3700x temp is 58c and my RTX 3080 is 70c. Hot spot 82c. Playing 2560x1440 using digital foundry's recommended settings.

My room temp around 40 degrees.

[Ingel Riday]

Just as an addendum: got two and a half hours into my most recent session before the memory leak became too egregious and I had to restart the game.

But on the plus side, I've isolated enough variables that I know my issue is the game having a memory leak. :-P It's not a GPU bottleneck, it's not my GPU temperature, it's not a CPU bottleneck, it's not the CPU's temperature (anymore, despite the game's best efforts), and it's not my drivers.

So, that's a plus. I know what to look forward to seeing in the next couple patches. Guffaw.

[Ernimus Prime]

Originally posted by M&M's:

Originally posted by Ernimus Prime:

My temps have been normal. My room temp is about 21c. My R7 3700x temp is 58c and my RTX 3080 is 70c. Hot spot 82c. Playing 2560x1440 using digital foundry's recommended settings.

My room temp around 40 degrees.

That's a problem for cooling a PC.

[Easy Target]

What happens / temps when you stress test both CPU and GPU at 100% for 6+ hours ?

Also run 64GB Ram and not had a single crash / freeze / slowdown etc.

[Chubzdoomer]

I'm having the exact same problem after an hour of play, give or take. There's for sure some sort of memory leak. Here's hoping it gets patched soon!