FPS Drop in Steam Games Only

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AtomicEnigma Nov 3, 2021 @ 12:56pm

FPS Drop in Steam Games Only

I've started getting crazy low FPS in only my Steam games - I'm talking under 10. I ran another game that isn't through Steam and had no issues with it, worked perfectly. My graphics card is up to date, I have plenty of memory, everything is good. It started with Graveyard Keeper yesterday, but now I'm getting it in another Steam game as well. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the games themselves, same with the Steam app, done countless restarts, nothing is working. Help?

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Showing 1-10 of 10 comments

Phantom Nov 3, 2021 @ 1:32pm

Disable the Steam overlay, disable ANY third-party programs you have installed on your OS.

You can uninstall them completely or disable it them via any OS settings or in-program settings.

Wolfsun Nov 3, 2021 @ 2:18pm

Uninstall the offending game. Then run a few of the other steam games you noticed had slowed down after you started running the offending game.

If the other games now run just fine then the issue is with the offending game (though how is mystifying to me). If the other games are now still running slow then something has been changed in steam. If that's the case you're on your own. You might try getting help from steam support but then you might also try getting help from Zeus - you'll get the same results.

AtomicEnigma Nov 3, 2021 @ 2:29pm

Did that as well, had everything shut down/closed and it was still running crazy low.

Wolfsun Nov 3, 2021 @ 3:14pm

Try this:
Open windows Task Manager while the offending steam program is running. Check CPU%. For what it is worth it is rare for a single executable game to ever go up over 30% or more on a multi-core CPU. They may spike to 40 or 60% on occasion but not often.

If the offending game CPU usage seems normal then check other process' CPU%. You may find one that is exceptionally high. If so then right click on it and end task. Hopefully that won't crash the offending program. If it doesn't then check your FPS - did it go back to normal? If so then you've got to figure out why the high CPU usage process was even loaded - is it a legit load? If it is then google high CPU usage for that process. You should get some hits which may solve your issue. In addition locate the process file on your PC and then run your Virus/Malware scanner on it. You may get a hit.

If killing the High CPU process does crash your game you may want to go to the dev web site and deal with them directly. Like I said: steam support is the poster child for an oxymoron.

Last edited by Wolfsun; Nov 3, 2021 @ 3:17pm

AtomicEnigma Nov 3, 2021 @ 3:41pm

Originally posted by Wolfsun:
Try this:
Open windows Task Manager while the offending steam program is running. Check CPU%. For what it is worth it is rare for a single executable game to ever go up over 30% or more on a multi-core CPU. They may spike to 40 or 60% on occasion but not often.

If the offending game CPU usage seems normal then check other process' CPU%. You may find one that is exceptionally high. If so then right click on it and end task. Hopefully that won't crash the offending program. If it doesn't then check your FPS - did it go back to normal? If so then you've got to figure out why the high CPU usage process was even loaded - is it a legit load? If it is then google high CPU usage for that process. You should get some hits which may solve your issue. In addition locate the process file on your PC and then run your Virus/Malware scanner on it. You may get a hit.

If killing the High CPU process does crash your game you may want to go to the dev web site and deal with them directly. Like I said: steam support is the poster child for an oxymoron.

CPU is fine. Ran Tomb Raider a few minutes, held steady at about 16-17%, memory at about 442MB. Ran okay but was much better yesterday. Tried the game I have the most issues with, CPU hit maybe 25% as I was loading in, but held steady mostly at the same 16-17%, but was using nearly 2k in memory and was completely unplayable. Nothing else was causing issues.

For what it's worth, I've played this game before not only without issue, but with half the RAM. When I re-downloaded it a bit ago, I downloaded just the game itself, no DLCs in case it was an issue within them (new one just came out).

Phantom Nov 3, 2021 @ 5:44pm

You can try booting your OS in safe mode with networking then launch Steam, test your game (s) and see if the issue persists.

I am 90% certain your issue is because some program/process you have installed is affecting Steam and ultimately the games....

AtomicEnigma Nov 4, 2021 @ 6:57am

Originally posted by Tyranny:
You can try booting your OS in safe mode with networking then launch Steam, test your game (s) and see if the issue persists.

I am 90% certain your issue is because some program/process you have installed is affecting Steam and ultimately the games....

Did this, still lagged. Was marginally better at first, but dropped pretty quick. Roughly 40% of my RAM was in use, 33% just by Graveyard Keeper.

Oridiron Mar 7, 2023 @ 7:48am

I know this is an old thread but I fixed this issue for myself. So, I had this exact same issue over the past few weeks. I finally found the culprit to be that I increased my refresh rate to 120. After dropping it back down to 60, all my games are running correctly again.