Droping FPS thanks to Razer Synapse - Fix

Technical Support
1

I’ve seen it a lot and the support seem to be aware of the Razer Synapse issue. If you own a Razer product, you probably have the driver installed, which is Razer Synapse. I’ve upgraded from my Logitech G930 + Razer Naga Hex to my Razer nari and Razer Naga Trinity a while back and recently issues have started happening that made me believe that either my CPU needs and upgrade or i need to do a wipe and reinstall windows.

I did some experimenting and found that the background services related to “Razer Chroma SDK” cause all the issues you can find out there. You can’t disable the services in “msconfig”. If you do, the game won’t launch and just close after one second.

Note: I did enable Chroma for Overwatch in “Chroma Apps” and did test it, same issue on or off!

Solution was to go to System > Apps and Features" and chose the “Change” option on the Razer Synapse app. You can unselect all the “optional” garbage that comes with Synapse including the main culprit, Chroma SDK.

I did that and behold, my minimum FPS on the FFA Chateau map are now NEVER below 200FPS. With Chroma SDK running, my minimum FPS bottomed out at 150 sometimes 130 when it spikes.

Also, the issue where the game felt choppy, close to laggy if i have a browser open with a video or to many tabs, is gone too!

This is a complete mess! Considering that Overwatch has a Chroma integration, Blizzard should fight for the user to have a better experience and not cripple them. I mean, they sell Overwatch branded gaming peripherals and yet they burn you if you want to use it!!! Makes it even worse considering that you have to go over the System App Manager to change the installed modules, since you only have a “install module” or “update” in Synapse itself.

ps. i know that this issue is somewhat addressed in [Common Technical Issues and Solutions], but it doesn’t tell you that you can remove chroma SDK and fix your issues for good, without having to sacrifice a virgin to the dragon.

This needs to be addressed by Blizzard. Remove the Chroma support until the fix it or remove it for good if they can’t.

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2

I’ve run into the same problem when I switched my mouse to Razer a few weeks ago. My solution was to uninstall almost all the Synapse addons, especially ones that deal with lighting effects. (I kept the macro addon).

At first, I was extremely vexed when I started experiencing extreme FPS drops after installing Razer software. Couldn’t fathom that an ostensibly lightweight mouse app could cause such problems, but it was the only thing that changed in my configuration in a while, and as such was the prime target for investigation. Turns out that it is anything but lightweight, and its multiple lighting effects modules cause much havoc even when you have all lighting turned off a priori.

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Thanks for sharing this, much needed!

Just to add, for those looking for a clean uninstall, you can follow the steps below, adapted from this Reddit post:

  • Go to Add/Remove Programs in Windows and uninstall all Razer Software as well as Razer Chroma SDK (if you’ve kept your Razer software up to date it should all be in one app/uninstaller)
  • Reboot
  • Open Windows Services and check to make sure that if there are any stray Razer services left that that they are stopped (stop them if they are not)
  • Open Task Manager and check for any running Razer processes. Kill them if there are any.
  • Go to C:\Program Files (x86)… or wherever you installed and delete the Razer folders
  • Go to C:\Users<your user name>\AppData\Local… and delete any Razer folders
  • Reboot
  • Open Windows Explorer and, on your entire drive where you installed Razer software (likely C:), run a search for “rzchroma”, just to be sure there aren’t any strays left. I found one last DLL in System32.
  • Delete all Razer stray files
  • Clear out Recycling Bin
  • Reboot

You should be good to go.

… or else Razer wasn’t the issue and you might want to share more info on a fresh thread in this forum lol.

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Does anyone know if this issue was fixed?

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It has not! Removing Razer Chroma SDK today and confirmed that this works. I don’t get what the big deal is with Chroma or RGB lighting needing to sync with game play. It’s unwarranted and it’s not like I stare at my keyboard.

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