Hey. I've been experiencing insane FPS drops in GTA 5, I'm getting around 30 FPS avg, no matter the in game settings. It works the same on ultra and on low. I've looked it up online, read numerous threads, and figured out it happens really often to people who have the 900 series of NVIDIA GPUs. There are really a lot of threads on the internet, but I can't drop links because of my post count. The problem is not related to my CPU, or any other component. I tried it out with an entirely different configuration, with the same GPU, and experienced the exact same problem. I've looked for possible solutions but nothing really helped me. My GPU usage, clock speed and temperatures are normal when playing the game, I've played around with settings in NVIDIA Control Panel and as I've previously stated, I tried out a lot of different in game settings. I've also came across a solution that these are the symptoms of a computer infected with a Bitcoin mining virus. Ran the malware scans the guy recommended and some infected files were detected and deleted, but that didn't help it as well. And, of course, I tried re-installing the drivers with DDU, updating them, downgrading them etcetera. My system specifications are: Intel Core i3 6100 3.7 Ghz Asus B150m Pro Gaming Kingston HyperX Fury 8GB, DDR4 2133 Mhz Gigabyte GTX 960 mITX Cooler Master B500 My old system's specifications are. AMD FX 6300 Gigabyte GA-D3SP Patriot Viper 8GB, DDR3 1866 Mhz Gigabyte GTX 960 mITX Cooler Master B500 I'm really hoping I'll run into a solution here, but before you guys write anything - I don't need some guy to tell me I need to update my drivers, or run the game as administrator. Carefully read the things I wrote above, and then drop a response. Thanks in advance.
There are a few things that jump out at me. First off, and I'm not trying to be condescending, make sure that all forms of V-sync are off in both driver and game. Second, it looks like your PSU was the same in both test computers. I'm not saying it is bad or dying, since I would need physical access to say that, but is there any way you can obtain or borrow a different PSU to rule yours out as a possible issue? Third, I read that you cleaned out some files that may have been related to bitcoin mining. Have you tried a fresh Windows 7 install, or even a trial install of Windows 8.1 or 10 on a separate partition or drive? Lastly, you said that you tried the same GPU in different systems with the same undesirable results. Could it be possible that the GPU needs to be RMA'd for some reason or is GTAV the *only* game that you have issues with? These are just my first few thoughts with the information you provided. I'm sure that with more information and testing we can help you get to the bottom of this.
V-sync is off, yeah, and I suspected the PSU, but after reading some threads I've seen that if the PSU is the culprit, I'd probably experience some other issues, like bluescreen or lower clock speeds etc. I unfortunately don't have an another PSU to test out my PC with, but the current one is in warranty and I could change probably send it back to them if it's faulty, and you guys will have to instruct me because the guys in charge of that stuff in Serbia are too stupid to figure it out alone. I don't think it's the GPU because it works just fine in other games. In Battlefield 4 I'm getting around 100 FPS on high settings in 1080p.
It is going to be tough if you can't switch out any hardware to 100% prove whether they are causing issues or not. At this point, you can try my other suggestions. It is very simple to get an ISO of Win10 through MS's tool. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Of course, it goes without saying that you should make a full backup of your current OS if you don't want to risk losing anything.
If its 30fps by game start try alt+tab or alt+enter.. sometimes internal triplebuffering gets broken. Also set prefer max performance in gta5 nvcpl profile.
GTA V is pretty demanding on the CPU, what is your CPU usage like while playing? Also make sure you don't have the Extended Distance Detail slider in advanced settings maxed out, as that has an impact on even the fastest CPU's.
Op, use Afterburner to monitor GPU use, GPU memory use, system ram use and CPU use on each core. Report the results. Note that reporting CPU use per core doesnt always show if a process is maxed out because threads can be time shared between cores. If you still havent uncovered the problem, we can look at this. Sounds mad that a thread cant make full use of a physical core, but thats the reality. You can force a thread to use 1 core only to make this easier.
I ran it at 30fps locked with no fps dips on my old laptop with GTX960m, which is slower than the desktop card he has. However I had a i7 mobile chip which is quad with hyperthreading. GTA5 is very hard on CPUs I'd suspect that i3 isn't quite up to the task. There are a few settings to lower pedestrian & traffic density.. I'd try lowering those and see if it improves. Also I'd install MSI Afterburner and turn on the OSD so you can monitor the Vram usage. If your pegged right at the 2GB limit your likely pushing settings too high for that video card. You'd want to keep that under ~1950MB, if your going over 2000MB your settings would be too high.
I have a GTX 960 2GB in one of my PCs. It's perfectly fine for GTA V at 1920x1080. As long as I turn the settings down a bit I can get good frame rates with no stuttering. It's paired with an I7 870 @ 4GHz with 8GB of RAM. It certainty is an odd GPU the GTX 960. I have really bad performance in DOOM. Considering the 960 is basically a 980 cut in half, it gets way less than half the FPS my 980 gets. Do you have any other GPUs you can test?
I have no other GPUs, I only have a 8800 GTS laying around, but it's pretty damn old, so it's really no use.
I've had a very similar issue with this game, the frame rate was stuck at 30 regardless of settings or resolution, I nearly pulled my hair out trying to fix this issue, I even deleted the entire game folder to reinstall only to run into the same problem again. After messing around for hours I decided to simply start a new game and everything was back to normal again, give it a shot.
As i had 1050Ti a few years back i remember i used to get 40ish at 1080p max settings on average and drops to mid 30s during explosion etc, so the only difference between my 1050ti and yours 960 is i had 4gb Vram, the performance of GPU should be similar though, by what you mention even at low settings you are locked at 30 seems very odd and sounds like CPU bottleneck of some sorts, try monitoring using MSI afterburner to know for sure what is the limiting factor in your case. EDIT: watch the below video as it confirms 2gb vs 4gb is not much of an issue in this game i think its about right of what you are getting during gameplay.
So, both of your rigs only have a single stick of memory? If that were the case then it would explain lower FPS and stuttering. As a reference I had a setup worse than yours. i5 4440 GTX 950 2x8GB DDR3 1600 H81M 600W PSU It ran GTA5 at 1080p high settings with 70-100 FPS.
Serious Necro action going on. But since the deed is already done, i should point out that the i3-6100 combined with a normal GTX 960should be able to do 60fps @ 1080p when on medium settings and like 45fps on high according to this site.