Help With Computer Performance

General Discussion
1

Hi there, so I’m stupid when it comes to computers but I’ve been having this problem since the first time I hooked this computer up.

I’m not actually entirely sure if it’s lag due to network latency, because I’ve got the little display on in-game that lets me see the latency at any given time, along with the FPS indicator, and most of the times I experience these issues, the latency reads within normal range.

Sometimes I do know it’s lag, but other times it just feels like my computer or the game hates me because randomly it’s performance will drop severely- even if I freshly reboot or only have Overwatch running and nothing else.

I’ve got an Alienware Aurora R7 with these specs: NVIDIA GTX 1070, Intel Core i7-8700 @ 3.20 GHz processor, 8GB of ram. This computer, at least according to GeForce Experience should be able to handle ultra settings in Overwatch but it can barely keep up on custom medium settings. I limit Overwatch to 60 FPS because it will then constantly just drop frames if I push it up any higher- and even still at 60 FPS it will sometimes drop frames.

That and most of the times I have to press multiple times to have a move in game work, or have stuttering and rubberbanding issues even though the latency was reading as fine (from around 50-60 ms of latency).

I’ve had this computer for around 4 years now and it’s been like this since day one and I’m so computer-stupid I’ve never been able to even figure out how to search for help.

Anyone know of anything that could possibly help me diagnose and fix this problem?

Thanks in advance!

2

Hi,
you should make a post under “technical support”, more people will see it and you’ll get advice/help faster than in “general disscusion”.
Good luck in solving your problem

3

Have you checked your temps?
I assume you have updated drivers/checked the correct procedure for doing so?

Any chance you can list the rest of your specs? Mobo, PSU, Monitor, RAM?

When it does drop frames, how long for? (I have a 1070ti myself, and a Ryzen 5 3600… I net 155 FPS stable never drop, on 1440p but almost the lowest settings for max frame rates).

Only in Overwatch or other games?

I use Open Hardware Monitor to watch my temps, but I think you can also use Afterburner.

4

There’s a lot to unpack here, but rubber-banding in particular is often indicative of a network problem. Low latency doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t packet loss. If you’re on WIFI, the first thing I would do is try a wired connection.

5

A few things come to mind:

  • Update your drivers, most importantly your graphics card, storage(if applicable), network adapter etc…

  • If using wireless, stop using wireless.
    Use an ethernet cable, always.
    If your pc is too far from
    your router consider using a powerline adapter, it’s essentially ethernet over the wiring in your house.
    Performance may vary depending on the quality of the wiring in your house.

  • Apart from that there’s this guide on optimizing settings of your network card:
    h ttps://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=727946014
    (remove the space)

  • Then there’s some windows issues which might be fixed by opening a command prompt as administrator and copy pasting

(checks to see if there’s issues with the windows 10 image)
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

If there’s issues run to actually repair the image
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

After this run
sfc /scannow
to verify the integrity of your windows files(not the same as the image, I believe this compares your install vs the image I mentioned earlier)

  • In the nvidia control panel you see a screen called physx, set your gpu as the preferred choice for physx since it seems more capable than your cpu.

  • You could also mess around with the profile settings for the game in the nvidia control panel such as:
    Setting power management to maximum performance,
    single display mode,
    turn vsync off etc…
    but you should look up another guide for that.

  • Then, go to the battlenet launcher and click overwatch -> options -> scan & repair game files.
    If necessary reinstall the game.

  • In game options set vsync off, triple buffering off, reduce buffering on and limit your fps to 10 fps above what your screen
    can handle.

  • Under graphics quality advanced set render scale to 100%, local fog detail,dynamic reflections and refraction quality to medium. If still not enough turn off local reflections and ambient occlusion.

Best of luck.

6

8 Gigabytes of RAM is actually pretty slim (though it exceeds the Recommended System Requirements for Overwatch) and can hinder your performance at higher settings. I recommend keeping it no higher than “High” for your general render performance settings unless you can replace your RAM to a higher capacity.

Again the RAM can have some impact on this. However I would be curious to know if you use a Hard Disk Magentic Drive for your harddrive or if it is a Solid State Drive. A lot of frame rate issues can also be affected here.

Aside from that, these standard tips can help resolve most Overwatch FPS drops:

  • Reset Overwatch’s Video Settings
  • Update your graphic card driver.
  • Reset your graphic card driver settings., then make sure that your Graphic Card Driver control panel is configured correctly for Overwatch. This includes setting Overwatch at Maximum Performance (not optimal power) for Power Management and making sure it set to run on the graphics card and not the motherboard chipset.
  • In drastic cases you may need to reinstall the driver and update to the most recent driver for your card. Remember to use Display Driver Uninstaller to completely clean out your old driver. Then download the most recent NVidia or AMD driver for your system.
  • There have been other threads reporting that updating your system BIOS can help with some performance issues with recent patches. Please be careful if you choose to update your BIOS and look up your motherboard’s instructions on how to do this.

Also, click here are advanced tips I have written in Overwatch’s Tech Support forum that maximize your FPS performance in the game.

7

You should consider including some of the windows related checks/fixes.

A corrupt windows install happens often enough to be worth a mention imo, can definitly impact performance or game crashes and is often easily fixed using the method mentioned above.