Lately I've run into some trouble keeping a stable frame rate in both FFXIV and WoW. Before I had my settings set to Maximum in XIV but had a framerate limit set at 60, and I'd get consistent 60 pretty much everywhere except Idyllshire. However, ever since I had to reinstall the game, I'll get horrendous drops below 60 fps but according to the in-game settings, it still says I'm getting stable 60 fps, the funny thing is the frame rate issues automatically fixes itself as soon as I remove the FPS limit, but my video card sounds like a jet engine.

At first I chocked it up to just XIV giving me issues since I had to reinstall it, but now WoW is giving me drops too, getting hiccups on lust level 7 settings, and the framerate issues in XIV are getting worse, seven people in The Pillars drops it down to 30 which is just fucking ridiculous.

Anyone have any ideas as to what's causing this? I have an I5-4690 @ 3.50GHz, a GTX 980, and 8GB of RAM. This was never an issue until recently.

You should downlod more ram.

Punch her right in the throat.

I'm not a tech guy, but just to clarify frame-rate drops are probably not random. It's probably a hardware or software issue. Asking here might not be the most productive option.

are your fans dusty?

Did you recently update your graphic drivers or have a windows update? If so, you might want to roll back to a previous version. There might be compatibility issues.

Launch your task manager and kill any backgorund processes that seem nonessential.
Even if they have low impact on your CPU they can trigger others that require more, and some background processed are designed to decrease CPU stress (so they can run even when your CPU is at 100%) by processing on your GPU instead.

Usually it will be stuff that's looking for updates in the background that will slow your framerate.

Thank's to all the serious replies, I gave my computer a thorough dusting three times in the last two hours and I'm seeing SIGNIFICANT performance increase in XIV. Whereas I'd get random FPS drops in Ishgard with the CPU hovering at around 60/61 degrees, after the dusting I'm getting zero FPS drops in Ishgard with the CPU shooting to 51 at the highest and staying stable at around 45/46 degrees.

EDIT: Did a run of Void Ark and the FPS drops came back, came back to Ishgard afterwards and the temps are back up at 57-61.....

I updated my drivers and optimized XIV for my GPU, so far I haven't had any problems YET. But the temps are still around the range they've always been in. Everything but the CPU is fine, I just probably have to invest in a liquid cooler because fuck those giant metal heat sinks, those wouldn't look classy in my case at all.

Also Off-Topic but: How did you keep your previous avatar so crisp? This one is my character making a smug smirk but it comes out kinda blurry.

Make sure it's properly vented for the air to circulate. Might also think about investing in new fans.

CPU hovering at around 60/61 degrees

Your CPU shouldn't throttle until 70-72c, you are fine there.  Improper venting in your case can cause thermal throttling on your card, or even a garbage fan curve.  What 980 do you have?  Have you installed say EVGA PrecisionX and set the fan curve to 100%, regardless of how it sounds?  Not worried about fan noise, see if that fixes your FPS issue, if so then likely your case isn't vented properly, and please tell me you don't have a Hyper Evo 212 facing down so it blows all hot air directly on to the GPU.

I'm glad I could get some legitimate help for a legitimate problem, thanks.

what do you have running in the background

Thnx, I'll experiment when I get home tonight.

Quote from: Luciana on September 16, 2016, 11:47:12 AM

Quote from: Ian on September 16, 2016, 08:52:12 AM

Also Off-Topic but: How did you keep your previous avatar so crisp? This one is my character making a smug smirk but it comes out kinda blurry.

Like Tru said, it's all about sizing. I didn't make mine zoom in so much. I just cropped the sides and kept her body the same size for the most part.

Just a note if you use Discord it actually allocates some functions to the GPU, but this can be turned off in the settings.