Greetings Drkauloth good to hear from you!! It’s another day on exploring the mysterious Frame rate drops!
I did update a whole bunch of files today on my blog page for that troubleshooting. You are welcome to look through them!. I added in the HW monitor and bench tests.
Dasaries,
Thanks for cataloguing all that. Were those HWmonitor screenshots taken after doing a game? The results don’t look under load for a few reasons - the first being that your temperatures are super low and the second being that your CPU clock speed never seems to activate turbo. You’re stuck at 3.8 GHz in those hwmonitor tests which is base clock and your CPU should boost to 4.2 GHz while doing stressful things like gaming. O.o That’s pretty odd. Did you disable Intel Turbo Boost in your BIOS or something? Can you turn your turbo back on and get us new HWMonitor reports if it persists afterwards?
Greetings Drakuloth.
| Updates for troubleshooting on Saturday morning, early hours of the morning. |
It really HAS been something that IS hardware related and I THINK we are onto something. Your suggestion at the intel Turboboost technology seams to be hinging on something that really has intrigued me now.
My findings: SO i have been looking into this whole ordeal with Turbo boost and Intel’s correlation to my operating system. I think we have something that finally lines up with one another.
When windows 10 runs on a gaming rig. The operating system is trying to conserve energy and it calls for more or less power from the processor. This power saving feature from the operating system itself is DIRECTLY lining up with frame-rate loss. So I kicked up Intel turbo boost technology and suddenly the ceiling and base of the frame-rates, match the Processor’s speed output. We see higher frame rates, and the dips directly are measured EQUALLY to how they were on the lows’. The SAME exact dips, only at a much higher frame-rate.
I am bad at explaining some stuff, but in essence we are seeing that either windows 10 or the motherboard is throttling the programs for “power saving”. That is what it looks like to me. Yes, I have the operating system in “maximum performance”. But watching the CPU run while overwatch is running, the system IS going into some sort of “power saving feature” and it is trying to compensate energy savings for running a program at an extended period of time. Hence, why we see such a very consistent loss of frames over an extended period of time. I am a musician as well and can keep excellent time in my head, and I KNOW if I took a stop-watch out I could PREDICT the frame spikes and losses to the second.
I would say that with the whole GPU put into “maximum power” that answers some questions on part of the fix. But the main focus is the CPU.
Team based games HAVE to rely on the CPU very strictly because you are handling multiple actions that are much more intense than just rendering some frames. You have the environment and everything and everyone happening inside of it. So the computations are very intense, despite this game kinda does not look like Crisis or TCW. But because there is so much information going on, that the game is VERY hinged on having to use the CPU over the GPU. The CPU does LOTS of calculations for network packets and that effects the gameplay just as much.
So Where do I uncover the final piece to such a large mystery? It either has to be the Board’s BIOS telling the CPU to go up or down for power saving, OR Windows 10 doesn’t give you 100% freedom over the power saving plan.
My final test is to figure out how I can get this processor to run at a CONSISTENT 4.11GHz (4.2 is pushing it) and 3.8 is below threshold. SO with that being said. I’ve got some work to figure out.
YESTERDAY’S UPDATES
I have intel turbo boost clamped directly in the BIOS so it is off. I make sure to never overclock my hardware, as that is what Intel’s manual directly states what “Turbo boost” mode is.
I can take a look to see how it behaves under Turbo Boost on the BIOS today or early tomorrow, and send you results. We will see what it does!
I had originally only used stock coolers when this first started occurring for me back in November. So that is something I can entirely rule out. November’s Moira patch is where this ALL spiraled out of control for me.
The low Temperatures are very impressive when it comes to how low I can push them on the graphics card and CPU! With that cooling system that I have. Those lines that you see in the photo.
About the cooling and discussion of it:
Yes, with the system I have. The Temps will never appear that the system is “under load”. The cooling system for it is “over engineered” ![:slight_smile:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=5" ":slight_smile:")
I know some people out there, go to the great lengths of actually pushing the computer’s cooling system to the point of having to use a special coating on the board. Due to the condensation that occurs on the blocks. However, I didn’t go that far.
The reason for the elaborate cooling system, hinges on Hardware longevity and reducing the “rate of decay” in which heat causes to components. Components wear out and “fall out of tolerance” at the microscopic level primarily due to heat. The prevention of “soft errors” and “hard errors” hinges on heat.
For the blocks on my components; I assure you they are most certainly properly seated to the CPU’s Lid. I took out a feeler gauge (a tool used in Aerospace engineering) to determine if there is a gap which would cause a potential “hot spot” gathering point on the CPU lid itself due to block seating error. Which there is not.
The GPU is properly seated and secured as well. ALL portions of the full coverage block properly touch all GPU’s VRMS, the processor lid itself, and the RAM banks on the card. To verify this, without the GPU having a block on it, (and just a stock cooler) the Frame rate losses are still there. Originally the computer had just the CPU cooled by the fluid block, and the NX-1080 was purchased and ADDED due to an assumption I had in the first place of overheating causing frame rates to spike. Again, nothing has solved this.
For the record I am playing other games and I don’t see this occur in them. Sometimes I play Tom Clancy Wildlands and others it is Dead by Daylight. I get a 6 hour gaming session in on these games, each. I don’t see the Frame losses at all. I dont know, it is only overwatch that does this.
With the new settings in this game, the frame losses are pretty much gone and only weird pauses here and there on Overwatch with the graphics on the game’s menu choked down completely. But I still have the every 2nd or 3rd game, where sometimes the Frame rates are just too low for enjoyable gameplay. So I restart the game, and my problems are 100% gone for a couple of matches. That much is what baffles me. Hardware corruption or soft errors that may not force the game to crash?
I have to ask myself, why only this game though?
With playing Widowmaker (alot and probably too much). ( her Character design was the selling point as to why I bought this game in the first place.)
It is the most noticeable for her and the MOST frustrating. I chose as best as I can, NOT to have duels with other snipers in the game, and avoid them at ALL costs. So when the MM system for QP puts me in with other sniper mains, I just cringe, because I want the sniper practice, but at the same time it’s just out-right a “face palm n’ cringe thought”. With this performance issue.
I can handle normal gameplay with her, but sniper battles are an embarrassing and demoralizing due to this issue with the game I have . I’ve suffered countless problems since November on this.
I use to play TF2 sniper a TON (500+ hours) on that guy. But I think this game has the overall best “sniper experience”.
Thank you
-Das
Streaming while playing will cause loss of FPS unless your system can handle the additional work. Also, is your RAM DDR4 @ 3000 MHz or higher? Fast RAM helps with dips in FPS.
Dasaries,
Very interesting follow up! A thought occurs. I cannot for the life of me recall if I recommended this, but that behavior sounds like you’re being throttled by Speedstep.
“Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology is an advanced means of enabling high performance while meeting the power-conservation needs of mobile systems. Conventional Intel SpeedStep® Technology switches both voltage and frequency in tandem between high and low levels in response to processor load. Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology builds upon that architecture using design strategies such as Separation between Voltage and Frequency Changes, and Clock Partitioning and Recovery.”
Did we ever try disabling this in any of the threads we bounced to? Just follow the directions there for How do I use Enhanced Intel Speedstep Technology and ensure that it’s off rather than on.
Greetings Drakuloth!
I was JUST thinking that too! I think it clicks. yeah I am going to play around with speestep on this and see if this it.
PS, the new live patch today is great. You and your team did a great job on it!
Okay so here is the summary here to my findings. I appreciate the challenge and I think this pretty much sums all of this up.
Today's TESTING
Okay, I have to say that this whole topic here I am going to talk about is from Testing purposes. It’s not meant to jab at anyone or offend anyone at all. I am doing this out of pure volunteering here. So in testing we find what reacts and how it reacts in computers. We want to take every variable here and see what effects what. This testing actually ONLY covers the game “Overwatch”. All of the other titles I own, have no fluctuations that are even considerably noticeable. So we are talking strictly here about the game “Overwatch” and ONLY Overwatch. So I am talking about testing lots and lots of settings for this game. To see what works and what does not.
In my findings today, I first covered “Speed step” in the computer’s BIOS. I was under the impression that locking the processor’s speed in would initial solve this. I made this first assumption with the behavior of “intel turbo boost”. But…When I did these tests with "speed step "disabled (which locks the processor speed). The frame rates crashed EXTREMELY fast. and had major hangs. So speed step has to remain “enabled”.
With Intel Turbo boost “ON” we have frame rates that are higher and they operate at the higher end of the processor. So this means whatever there is going on , is increased by 20%. Cool. But we still get the slow “Rate of decay” on frame-rates. Just not ultra bad. It’s bearable.
Which leads me to the next test of “overclocking”. Normally I NEVER overclock hardware, but for the sake of doing this as voluntary testing, out of the kindness of my heart. I allowed my Intel I5-7600k To go through under-clocking and OVERCLOCKING outside of the factory limits. My Cooling system can handle ALOT. Even taking the Processor up to 4.3Ghz on this CPU, it didn’t budget the temp AT ALL. So what did a 4.3Ghz overclock have in comparison to running this game at 4.1ghz?.. NOT enough to even say that it made the game any better or having it stall out.
So I guess it would boil down to the processor Cache size. Instead of saying “i need to overclock” its more like “I need to buy a bigger processor” for actual frame-rate gains, over a GPU at some point.
I WOULD say that Overwatch is very reliant on the CPU. I mean we are talking ALOT. It’s just the nature of how the game is engineered and has to be. In other testing, which is the FIRST rocks I tried to undercover. I did GPU testing back in November and In December. I HAD throttled my graphics card just the same with tests taking the card clear down to a bare minimum speed and frame rate loses were still there. Maybe at most I suffered a 10-25FPS loss on speed, but when you play with the CPU more, it’s where we see the problems really occur. So the GPU is off the table for discussion.
The Hard conclusion.
To the best of my abilities and training I cannot pinpoint where this frame-rate fluctuation happens, or why “SIM spikes” occur. These are my available resources and I have completed my studies to the best of my abilities.
I would kindly, and I MEAN kindly suggest here, that it is on the table for discussion on my Findings with the Engineering Department there at Blizzard. On how the game runs. I see hundreds of posts on Reddit, youtube, IGN, and other gamer forums that they too have “Frame rate losses”. Does every player have the same circumstance as I do? Probably not. But They all have some sort of “Symptom” that sounds the same.
The forums on Technical support are FLOODED today with reports of Frame rate loss reports. We are talking VERY flooded. Its an impressive amount.
I agree, No game dev should ever have to reinvent the wheel at all. But I have EXHAUSTED everything that I would do, outside of looking at the official testing computers you use in your engineering department, I would have to know their system specs and Overwatch League’s systems. I mean are you running Intel XEON, i7, Opteron, or even playing this game on a Quadro or Tesla card? Those are VERY important factors to know.
-Das
Dasaries,
We do have an increased number of reports of fps issues with this patch - more than normal actually. The developers are doing some investigation on the latest spike to see if there’s some kind of optimization they can do there, and I’m working on getting some information at that thread in case we can find a work around in the mean time.
Your issue however wouldn’t be related, and honestly you’re right - we’ve nigh exhausted all possible troubleshooting for your issue. I’m going to run this by some more people to see if there’s anything else we can try out that might explain your version of the problem, but please do keep in mind a couple things:
I appreciate your patience and all the information in the mean time. I know that this is irritating behavior and impacts your ability to predict movements and the like. If we do end up opening an investigation on this, this’ll be the first thread I send the QA team.
Dasaries,
Question - can you currently reproduce this behavior by hitting the TAB key (or any other key on your keyboard - especially whichever hot key you use to view the score/team screen?)
Hello Drakuloth, It is really appreciated.
Yeah it is completely frustrating. Today I had Comp matches that were bad, because the frame rates crashed into the 90s and they needed me to widow play. So that was really etchy gameplay. (while receiving nasty remarks). Since aiming is SO much more different in Comp than it is QP (the higher expectations of headshots vs body shots). There really is a great deal of frustration that is tied to the aiming issues caused by these frame rate losses.
Here is the information you requested:
When I tab out to the team fields. It takes the game from 220 FPS down to 60FPS, but does NOT stutter the game, when that overlay for team score is in use. When I release the tab key the game brings itself back up to the frame rate threshold. I did try to cap the game at different frame rates. But it still falls at the same rate. Whether my graphics cards are fluid cooled or factory cooled.
When in the title screen, the player settup screen, the settings menu or even tabbing to player score. It NEVER allows the game to go above 60fps. So whatever happens here, is your game runs a “speed limiter” as I like to call them. Is kinda what I am hinging on. WHAT makes the graphics card do this? That is the big question. Because In theory if the game is parked on the title screen. It is telling that card to ONLY use 60fps? But if I were to go to let’s say “Route 66” and NOBODY is around, ( as they are already settup near the enemy, our team defending), while I am looking back towards the spawn room. The game engine is running and the FPS meter is ticking back and fourth. Even though there is NOTHING happening infront of me.
Yeah I am just as baffled as you are.
I did play Dead By Daylight, Deceit, Quake champions, for HOURS today and yesterday. I don’t see this at all in those games. Nothing. I mean if I saw something where it points to one piece of hardware, patching or update. I would be changing it out of the system, or within the system, without hesitation.
I am pleased to hear that the software engineering department knows about this now. I know that it is hard to decide what to utilize more. The CPU or the Graphics card, when it comes to handling game information. Since there are such a wide range of Motherboards and how the data is handled through the North Bridge or the Chipset. Yes, it is so different on all. It can become tedious work. So I think most game engineers just try to work around with only using primarily the graphics card to crunch the game information. Since there is such a narrow variety now for them. (Nvidia and AMD/ATI) boards, compared to the hundreds of boards out there.
I really don’t know at this point what is the missing piece to this puzzle. If Programs A, B, C, D, E and F work fine. But G doesn’t. I think it really comes down to a graphics setting that your game uses. But these games do not. I am really hoping it is just an Oversight that I am not catching. But since I have played around with every Nvidia setting it has. I really am Not sure at this point.
As for a game engine overhaul. Thats something I would feel really bad to push on someone. It’s bad enough re-doing something without having something else break. But from my understanding. This game utilizes the processor quite a bit more. As it very much so, resorts to using the cpu first. Over the Graphics card. Compared to the other games that are relying on the graphics card MORE to do the work. I guess if people can make programs that only use the Graphics card to crypto mine, than its feasible in some aspects to push more load into the graphics card. I know that Blizzard uses it’s own proprietary engine, compared to other games that rely on engines such as “unreal engine” and “unity” and other engines. I respect proprietary game engine builders. Because it allows for unique creativity and flexibility that other engines may limit a developer to.
(I will be posting more later, gotta catch some rest)
Day 2 of the postings.
I think really what I would suggest at this point, since we have covered EVERYTHING here, including the DDX software that I would use to diagnose a problem, would be if I had myself an actual software used by your developers for testing. (talk about a big request). I am CERTAIN that it would uncover some very big things here.
If I was testing this from a standpoint today at Blizzard studios and was in your team’s shoes. I would begin asking these very questions
Hypothetical(s):
Are we finding that a piece of hardware from a certain vendor doesn’t work with this game?
Could there be some sort of anomaly where a memory stick brand that doesn’t allow the game to properly function?
Is there a BIOS setting that prevents certain parts of the cards, CPU, or RAM to address what we need?
Is there a default graphics card setting on both cards that are causing this issue.
Does one graphics card sub-vendor play differently than another sub-brand (same chip maker, different board maker).
Do certain motherboards handle process requests in certain aspects more than others?
Map reviews on their performance FPS drop rates.
What we know remedies the situation:
After 1-2 games played, TURN off the game completely. Restart it and begin playing again.
This is something my Uncle keeps pointing fingers at and saying the word over and over which is “leak” or buffer overflow problem. ONly it doesn’t trip up the game enough to crash it.
Anyway, what I am going to do next, is something absurd next to get the data I need, and I may get a leave penalty | (im racking up TONS of those BTW!) ,which is another topic for fixing “leave penalties” I’d like to see a 15-20% leave penalty on quick play matches , not 75%. | I am now probably listed as a Habitual leaver on the MRR system. But whats gotta be done, has to be done.
Extended testing for today:
SO I tested this game on EPIC settings to see what it would do: Playing the game didn’t seam fun at all. It was VERY sluggish. This testing was done on LiJang Tower. Sim spikes were only present during replays.
Running the game on ULTRA settings. I can run this game on ultra settings, straight across the board. The gameplay starts out very reasonable. Nothing but smooth performance at 145 FPS. I get good clean shots with widow and I can actually see what my targets look like. I could run this game on Ultra settings all day if I wanted to. BUT that Nasty SIM rate just slowly climbs. When It hits the 14.4 it goes down to 85FPS and becomes nasty. Thats roughly 3/4 of the way through the match that the game was running almost PERFECT. So that shows me its not an immediate graphics setting. But again. It’s not heat. THis card plays other games maybe 6 hours straight in other games, without a break between action. This testing was done on Volskaya Industries
At this point. I don’t want to give up. As there is tangible value here in our findings and I think there is a key here that will unlock a lot of doors, once it is found.
Heya Dasaries,
Thanks as always for the details. I’m going to gloss over a bunch of this as it’s not really our department here in technical support, but as for the things that are tech relevant:
As for your hypotheticals:
We test the game on a ton of different setups, and whenever we find particular bits of hardware with issues in common, we have the QA folks test rigs with the reported setups. So far the issues are just happening on disparate setups, and the biggest problem is that they aren’t happening for everybody.
There are some details you mentioned there that I’d missed previously in the other text walls, and your Uncle may be on to something there. When the performance starts fine and becomes reproducible after a certain amount of time, that may indicate there’s some kind of memory leak going on. That said, you’ve already hit normal offenders here, assuming you’re still playing with all your extraneous background programs disabled.
Buffer overflow exceptions tend to cause crashes, but radar pre leaks can cause this kind of behavior. There’s a bunch of things that can cause that kind of leak but it’s usually either a program conflict, driver issue, bit of poorly written code, or a hardware issue.
You’ve got two accessible memory types for this - your RAM directly and your backup page file. The page file’s a complicated beast because there’s almost nothing you can do about it other than make it bigger or smaller or move it to a different drive, and I honestly wouldn’t move it off your SSD given the speed of your platter drive. The only other option for the page file is reinstalling your whole OS and the game on a different SSD.
As for your RAM though, you could theoretically test by removing individual sticks of RAM or testing RAM in different slots.
Keep in mind you may want to table the troubleshooting for now while we check out the new Symmetra rework patch issues with tabbing.
Yeah don’t worry. I can wait! I’m not in a big hurry!
The game works, that’s 3/4 of the battle! Especially for getting software to run 70-80% bug-free.
Here are some finale thoughts on this. I am Just going to put down what I can on here. Because I am not a welcome opinion on the forums. (as I have harshly found out). But because solid, direct feedback is vital, Here are some quick thoughts. Again thank you!
This new sym rework is very taxing on everyone. As there are lots of imbalances happening with the game. It’s stressing everyone out. Making a hero that wasn’t easy to play on attack, to now a star for the Main attraction (all smiles here). I would say that from my own point of view, observing team based games that I did with Valve stuff on a Clan server. That re-balancing, is difficult, even for the best game developers. NO, I do NOT have the experience that you have, or your team. But It is up for discussion always, and friendly conversation about what we hold true to gaming.
Yes, We modded our servers for SRCDS that wasn’t “official valve content”. But when you can build a game into a VERY competitive environment, where everyone is NAIL biting and the picks are UN-predictible for an outcome. That is where players are drawn in, to really put the pedal down, and become inspired.
I’d have to say that the most memorable moments from your Game, World of Warcraft, (Like for example). Wintergrasp and The Battle of Alterac Valley. Those matches came down to such a wire, that when the match was over with. It was a “good game”. That was always what made a person feel like they really did play a game, and not just “tossing some paper in a fire”. Even if a person lost. It’s that kind of stuff that I miss most. and would ENCOURAGE a system designer to do for this game. Because adjustments and very, very fine tweaks are really what keeps player interest going. At some point, a person has to allow the class to be a class, but bring out the tenacity of a player and their endurance.
Yes, my uncle is working on extremely high end systems out in a couple of different states. I’ve had training from him. He works with stuff for the big med companies, so hes got a hand with working directly in conjunction with Microsoft for that company. As to what software should and should not do.
He knows my abilities on hardware (vs software) and knows that I have DDX’d this thing to kingdom come. Oh yes, Ive done the whole Operating system thing. If there was a solid fix for it. It would have been fixed 3 times already. (3 OS wipes).
Well hopefully when things are on the table for a Graphics engine tweak, The fix can come about this year. I know that seeing a game that can be run on Ultra, run fine for a match, then require a restart after every game, to mitigate frame-losses is something that A big pool of threads talk about. Believe me, I went there first, because I didn’t want to have to open up a ticket on this. Its a BIG thread! A lot of great ideas and thoughts have been thrown around. That is the joy of computer Diagnostic. It kinda reminds me of House M.D. (except we aren’t playing with Human lives. (thankfully!) Where troubleshooting comes with every diagnostic that can be made possible. I know that I could run out and buy a larger CPU and larger GPU to offset the problem. It is tempting. And yes, I would love to play this game 6-8 hours a day again on my “off season” when it comes up.
But honestly there are two things going on here that makes this difficult. The FPS being the primary key here. Where consistent game-play isn’t possible, and Non-registering shots with Widowmaker. Especially Widow V Widow. I can click and the gun does not fire. Despite the game registering me as “dead” because someone saw me first, before I saw them. Even though it was the opposite. That is what FPS drop has done.
I love the feel of a “sniper” from games, and what made me throw down the money on this one, I felt the character WIdowmaker was VERY well thought out. I mean I’ve got a couple a TON of hours socked up on TF2’s sniper and he never felt this “smooth” and “coherent”. When I bought this game. I was looking for an FPS that just felt “good”. Which is difficult to come by. Valve made their niche for TF2 and I did go back a few times to compare it. Pat yourselves on the back, Overwatch feels EXTREMELY “smooth”.
The big thing with TF2’s downfalls is their “kill cam” Which cannot be turned off, AND it causes freeze’s. I’d see TONS of disconnects from users, because the kill-cam crashed their hardware. As well as Nvidia’s SLI NEVER worked correctly with the game. It would have to be turned OFF, or it’s game would Have RANDOM frame-rate crashes. I guess since SLI does do Maximum PRF. It can create issues on games like that.
Well the last topic of the day for this, before I close it out for now. Is some feedback from MY experience through the years of TF2’s rein on the team based shooter-game genre. I would STRONGLY suggest that when your system builds a match of players. That some extreme-reduction in toxicity would be to have some level capping on QP matches. That way players 0-100 are in a group of their own, despite their skill-level and then 101+ to begin matching them in with the other higher experienced players. It’s really taxing on players (both hard for the fresh accounts, and stressful on the long-term accounts.
It would most certainly take toxicity down a few notches. I know that I turned off comp, after I started falling fast. Players at lvl 50 were in my comp matches for 300+ and Honestly I couldn’t tell if they were throwing the game, or just having a really bad match due to stress. I have to give them the benefit of the doubt though. So It’s something to really consider for your match building engineers.
The LAST thoughts: SNIPERS become toxic and we have our egos. I cannot tell you HOW many times I had to shut down a match on my server (srcds) where snipers were really going to town, into an all-out toxic fight. The rage was too much. I’d tell ANYONE that runs a server where it matches snipers. To NOT put a sniper main vs a sniper main. It will save you grief and a lot of stress! (a lot of grief).
Well I think this about sums it up then for the time being. Glad we could have this conversation about the game, and talk about it. It sounds like your staff at Blizzard works hard, despite us end-users being cranky, hang in there!
Thank you!
-Dasaries
How about I get a reply. I’ve posted numerous posts on here reddit you name it and haven’t heard a thing.
I’m a Xbox one x player and the game has been unplayable for me. The aim is completely screwed up as well as the FPS drops in team fight etc… I’ve literally done everything to try and fix this it is 100% the game update that messed things up and there are multiple people who have the same issues as me
Hi,
I just came across this post even though I have been having this problem for a long time. It started about 1 year ago.
I had the opportunity to try the game on all sorts of GPUs, and I also tried on multiple different systems, swapping the hardware around.
From R9 280x to R9 390 -> GTX950 -> RX470 -> RX580 -> GTX1060 -> GTX1080Ti.
From i7-3770K to i5-4690K -> i7-4790K -> Zeon E3 1231V3 -> i7-8700K (I’ve returned this to my friend so currently I am using the Zeon)
From single stick of RAM to 4 sticks, different frequencies, DDR3 DDR4 and stuff.
The only thing that doesn’t change all is just my SSDs (I doubt this is the cause).
Current system:
E3 1231V3
2x 8GB 1866mHz DDR3
Z97x Gaming 5
Aorus GTX1080Ti
Rosewill 750W Titanium PSU
CPU water cooled.
I kept my OS drive very clean, my OS drive contains only drivers, Steam, Battlenet App, Spotify, GPU-z. My games are all in my second SSD. This is because I often format my boot drive. The weird thing is, after I format the PC clean, this issue will go away for a few days/weeks, so I kept formatting every time the issue arises.
I noticed one thing, the game seems to be acting weird in a very specific way.
Main menu & match complete screen, it’s capped at 60FPS, which is normal.
Character selection screen, it would hold at 300FPS.
In game, waiting in the spawn room, it would still be 300FPS.
Game started, and a few minutes into the game it would still be 300FPS, but after a while the FPS starting to drop. From 300 to 230, then 180-200FPS.
IF I press Tap (the team screen), the FPS would drop all the way below 100FPS, sometimes even below 60FPS. When the FPS is below 60FPS in team screen, if I press Jump and my hero character jumps, the FPS would go up to around 130-150FPS, once I let go of the Tab, it would back to 180-200FPS.
During the game end screen (Victory/Losing screen) and the POTG screen, the FPS would ramp back up to 300FPS.
Here is the weird thing, the game doesn’t seem to be using my GPU most of the time. What I mean is, I can see the GPU is sitting at idle clock, even showing me the status “IDLE” in GPU-z. (Training room doesn’t effected for some reason, the GPU remain active even if I leave my character AFK until the game kicks me out to main menu).
The GPU will only be used during Hero selection screen, waiting in spawn room, ending screen, and POTG screen. I can only see the GPU clock speed ramp up during these moments. Once the game started, once I starting to encounter the enemies, the clock speed will drop slowly and eventually back to its idle clock.
I have my Nvidia settings at maximum performance and Windows Power management at High Performance. Other games don’t seem to be affected. I have my Windows Update auto, and it’s always up-to-date. Drivers are up-to-date as well.
I am going to format my PC again this weekend, this time I will follow the solutions in the replies above and hope I can find a solution. I hope we can work together to solve this issue.
Same issue here after playing a while fps drops. I put a cap at 175 fps and never went under 150. Now I have sometimes 100-110 fps. When i press Tab is even worse drops to 80-90. After i read a solution I did fresh instalation of my win 10 make upgrade to 1803 and new drivers from nvidia (gtx970). After I did it it nothig change and the game is lost for me now. Im playing on eu PC pls help
Greetings Fellow Forum users! Thank you for visiting this thread. 
I’d say this very bluntly, but a Fast warning. DO NOT REFORMAT YOUR PC. It will not fix this issue. (I’ve done it 4 times) Just for this game’s sake. 
Yes, it intrigues me just as much. As to why X percentage of people have this issue and X percentage do not. I’ve got some nice experience with computer hardware and have left the profession since, due to the 2008 economic crash. I still sideline but for the most part there isn’t much one can do at this point. 
Their statement about Symmetra a priority to being fixed is important. As there is imbalances. Causing many of us long-term players to become frustrated with matches. Thus, Causing rage quits and less drive of passion for the game.
So it is hard to request. For them to fix this issue with the game’s performance. But at the same time solve the game’s play issues. I know that Moira’s patch is what brought me to the forums. The game ran perfectly fine for me, but as I progressed through patches. The game’s only become a hard-lock game to run.
I agree with them. That the initial game must be fixed first. Because we see Symmetra’s spammy turrets, the amount of Shield spam now, as well as hanzo having Chukunu abilities (from AOE II). The “smurff problem” and our BIG one: The level imbalances of Quick Play. Has sent a spiraling, out-of-control community. Which the Overwatch team will have to fix FIRST. So FPS drops are put on the “back burner” until then.
I can personally “tollerate” the FPS and “no registration” shots for now. But with all of which I have listed above. I too feel that “imbalance” is why I went from playing this game 6-8 hours a day, to MAYBE 1.5-2 hours per day, and don’t even look at Loot Boxes or even consider looking at the OW league stuff. Because I have considerably less passion for the game now. The FPS drops just put the “nail in the coffin” for me. So my motivation has dropped considerably for the game. Despite I long for this game’s style of gameplay and design.
So, until they have Symetra’s stuff figured out; ie. hanzo, moira, mercy, shield issues, and the Quick Play level indifference’s fixed. It looks like it will be some waiting, for quite awhile. 
Yes, My game has become even WORSE yesterday when it comes to FPS. Where Ultra isn’t feasible even part-way through the match. Despite Ultra settings worked every 2 matches last week. It seams after each micro patch that is done, the game’s graphics engine is effected.
My best advice. Start from the TOP settings in the game’s graphics and then work your way down after each and every game. On each and every individual setting. Until the game’s engine allows you to play 1-2 matches after every restart of the game’s client. That way you can get by.
-Don’t run the Blizzard client prior to launch.
Happy Fragging and may your frame rates stay consistent and true. Always respect your fellow team mate and have a great day!
-Das (fellow community member!)
I see a lot of effort here I have done myself in the past. If you’d like, friend, I could finally condense all I’ve learned about improving the smoothness of the game for you, because all the information currently available is incomplete or incorrect. There is still a lot to be done, though, and I certainly have no special fix, only remedies.
I will note that a ‘no reg’ is not an issue with framerate, and is a server issue related to your ping and your targets ping. When a noreg happens, you missed, but your game client was not yet told by the server that it was, and in that split second time the server gave that information, registered it as a miss in your opponent’s game, and he didn’t die when it looked like a hit on yours.
Again, totally unrelated to frames, and only a limitation of medium+high ping.
I run my game at 300fps solid without drops in team fights with an i7-8700k, 3200mhz ram, and a 1070. I have figured out which overclock settings are helpful and which aren’t. I want to condense all this information but it seems like a lot for what most users won’t find relevant or useful.
Quick fixes: turn off the killfeed and performance stats overlays. I don’t recommend this for anyone but widowmaker because the killfeed is too important otherwise. Run as admin from the exe not battlenet, disable fullscreen optimizations, etc etc, make sure geforce experience is UNINSTALLED and not “optimizing” the game. Use nvidiainspector to manually max out your gpu fan speeds if you don’t already take care of that. Make sure you’re running in fullscreen. Make sure all other programs are closed- especially bnet, discord, steam, your browser, and anything else. Set priority to high in task manager (google to find a nice reg file to do it automatically).
These are all easy fixes and well known, but the major FPS increases came from increasing RAM speed and ensuring it was XMP’d, and upgrading CPU.
Believe me I have done most all of those things you have listed above, during my initial DDX testing.
Here is some comparisons to my hardware (not to be rude).
The i7-8700k is a very slight step above the i5-7600k I have (maybe 15%) . It’s running a stable OC at 4.3ghz. Taking the processor down to 3.8GHZ shows drastic frame drops and puts the Frame rate ceiling at 160FPS, and gradually drops at the same rate. I tested this same game with a different, SLOWER processor and got the same results.
The 3200mhz ram is just above my 2800mhz ram .
The GTX1070 is slightly above my 1060 FTW+.
IN all honesty The margins between what I have and you have, are slight. I doubt that going up to even better hardware for me, would fix it. If they were big hardware jumps, I would then conclude that it would be a fix.
My system runs an INSANE fluid cooling system that takes care of my CPU and GPU very well. That cooling system keeps everything very very cool. I could take those pieces of hardware up to some very hot thermal ranges. (But I dont).
My only thing that I would ask you for. Is what is your board’s brand. i’ve been wondering if the Board I run is just an absolute joke. As it may not even be handling the rest of the machine.
I will look at that XMP suggestion. That does intrigue me.
Thank you! If I sound like I am being harsh. I’m not. Just picking my own brain as well. It’s kinda a rough deal. But again, I wonder about the board I have.
Motherboard: ASRock Z170 K4 - Lan killer DISABLED.
You can check my stream and see that I run the game at 300 or 250fps constant (felicityc, dont go if you dont care, im not trying to advertise) depending on if i unlock the cap or not, so I know that what I’ve done has worked. The i7 is NOT a small step above the i5. One, the difference between i5 and i7 is large, and I’m running mine at 4.9 or 4.8ghz. I used to have a 6700k and I would get max 240~fps, and with this upgrade and XMPing my RAM it runs perfectly.
I don’t know where you get this ‘15%’ value from. CPU-Z’s reference benchmark has your cpu at 1837 (arbitrary number reference) and mine scores at 4350 average when at 4.9. That’s like a 240% increase. While the number isn’t necessarily the word of Jeff, I saw the performance difference just going from a 6700k to this. Yeah, single core power may not be significantly stronger, but OW uses 6 cores. Over 6 cores, the difference becomes massive.
I can’t stress the importance of a strong CPU. No killfeed isn’t for fps increase, it’s for stutter reduction.
I’m also not being rude so don’t think either of us are trying to be, this is just discussion. I think you are strongly overpowering your hardware.
yeah I know. You aren’t trying to be rude. But I guess I would ask for your specs linked here. Because I would like to know. For my point or reference. We are talking a full specs list. Please
I don’t know if you have read through all of the dialogue between myself and the help support staff here. I normally NEVER overclock my hardware. I was suggested to use Intel’s turbo boost settings in my BIOS.
The questions I would ask on this is .
A. Do you recommend the processor being upgraded or the GPU.
Note: I would say that if I am going to make an investment in playing this game better. To give it a ceiling which allows room for fault tolerance (which this game appears to really need, badly). Do I go for clock speed or number of cores? Because I know that some games on the market rely on the following.
Clock speed > number of cores
or
Number of cores > Over clock speed.
Because some of the big titles I ran. I had an older CPU which had higher clock speeds, did great because they were clock speed hungry. COmpared to ones that handled the newer processor with more cores, and LOWER cpu clock speed better.
SO it was not an investment for my games that did NOT not like slower processor speeds. VS games that would take more cores to run.
I originally played this game on an intel i3 processor and after the moira patch. I was thinking to myself “hm I wonder if I need a bigger cpu”. So I took that next jump to the i5-7600k , and it really did not do much for me.
B. Or do you recommend The GPU jump.
The GTX 1060 FTW+ Is pretty much JUST under the 1070 series line. a 20% improvment at most.
I mean I would HATE to take out my Charge card, purchase a couple of pieces of hardware and find out that nothing solved it. When all it was, was
“motherboard bad”
“CPUs of that specific line do not handle this game”.
or
“The gpu’s out of a certain series, have a driver or design flaw which makes overwatch run very bad”.
The game is incredibly CPU and RAM based. I believe 2800 is fine for RAM as long as it’s correctly overclocked. My full specs are here: pcpartpicker. com/user/FelicityC/saved/m7rgLk
I do not overclock my GPU or overclock my RAM past expected XMP settings. GPU or that causes crashes and bluescreens for me with OW. However, I have overclocked my i7-8700k to 4.9 allcore 4.5 uncore with no offset w/ 1.39vcore.
Although the 1060 and even the 1070 will bottleneck with an 8700k, it doesn’t really matter for OW. On low settings (hell, could get away with medium 100% render), which is what you should be playing at for maximum competitive value with Widow, and 2800+mhz ram and an 8700k, you get full 300fps nonstop. The only potential drop would be using reduce buffering, which I don’t think is needed at 300fps. I also have a very fast SSD and have optimized the game using as many tricks as possible.
The game uses a maximum of 6 cores. Even the i7-6700k is 4 cores 8 threads. The 8700k is 6 cores 12 threads. The 8700k can also clock higher per core than the 6700k, even with having extra threads- and with liquid cooling, it never gets as hot.
Just remember, six cores is max used. You don’t need a threadripper or some nonsense. But being able to use 6 cores without the use of hyperthreading is invaluable.
High ping can also give frame drops technically.
GPU is simply not that important for OW unless you are trying to crank up the graphics and still maintain over 144fps, inwhich case you’d probably need a 1080 or 1080ti.