Severe Frame skips in Overwatch on good PC

Technical Support
1

Hey team, I have been getting a lot of hangs in my frame output… sometimes to the point where the game will hang for up for half a second just randomly. I can’t seem to find any reason for this, for a while today it seemed it was during large fights, but sometimes it just does it in spawn.

I have also been having a hard time getting the desired frames out of my game on OW. (I can solidly get about 200 on most maps)

This has been going on for a few weeks now, but today was by far the worst (at one point there were around 5 hangs in under 7 seconds!)

I have posted my benchmark here, I can see that my GPU is apparently underperforming… though I am not sure why that would be.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/17380331

OW Settings:

https://imgur.com/a/jdxUYck

I originally had Ow on my Samsung SSD, though I think could be wrong… that is about then I started to experience the issues. I since moved it back over to the Toshiba HDD and that seemed to clear up some is the hangs… but they are still there, just not all the time.

To make things more complicated I just today received a new monitor and wanted to use 144hz, in order to do this with and still be able to record with an Elgato game capture device (for when I decide to do console gameplay not recording OW) I had to duplicate my primary display onto the display that was listed for the Elgato. I am wondering if maybe that wasn’t a bit much for my 1070 to handle? (the problem was present before the change in the settings as well, though it was much worse after)

Having this change made on the Samsung HDD seems, again to have cleared some stuff up, but it still happens while trying to play on the SSD with that change made, makes the game very frustrating.

I do have the GeForce Experience running to catch clips
HPET is disabled in BIOS and through Windows
This is not the only game that it happens on, though the others are very very very rare and excusable

I may try setting the details even lower, though I did not notice an increase in frames (which I am also having issues with, I feel as if I should be able to run more) I can usually get 200ish on maps other than Oasis and Paris, so I just capped it to the 144 and there it remains more stable across all maps except for the random skips.
I noticed that I am only using about 50% of my GPU and nowhere near the max on my CPU. There does not seem to be a drop in usage when these hangs happen on the GPU side at least.
No matter my settings I can not get more than 250ish frames (except when nothing is loaded in) and even then it is not consistent enough to use (even 50% scaling and all settings low)

Maybe I am expecting too much out of my GPU, anyway, any help is appreciated, thanks!

2

Start by posting one of these:

DxDiag instructions (click to expand/collapse)
  1. Press Windows Key + R.
  2. Type DxDiag and press Enter.
  3. In the DxDiag window, click Save All Information.
  4. Name the file “dxdiag” and click Save.

To add it to your reply here:

  1. Open the text file and copy all of the text.
  2. Paste the text in your reply.
  3. Highlight the pasted text and click </> on the post editor.

Note: If your DxDiag does not fit in one message, you can break it up into two posts, or (preferably) post it on Pastebin and provide the hash code (the random numbers/letters after the .com) in your reply.

3

https:// pastebin. com/JxbvgHJk

That should get you what you asked for, thanks for the help btw! It wouldn’t let me post links, so I put in some spaces, cheers!

4

What benchmark did you end up running where you were seeing issues? I would like to look into getting some HWMonitor screenshots so we can see those utilization and temps. We’ll want to run that for about 10 minutes while you’re having issues then take screenshots and upload them to an image sharing site like imgur to link here. You can get past link restrictions by encasing them in a set of ~~~ like so:

~~~
Link
~~~

With the introduction of FreeSync support on Nvidia GPUs, may want to make sure that’s disabled for your monitor.

5

There are many errors on this DxDiag with all of your Elgato software, as well as your GPU drivers. Instead of trying to address each one of these, can you reboot, open Overwatch, play a game or two, then run another DxDiag and share it? I think your issue is related to a software conflict, which could be: your virtual audio cables, your Razer device, your GPU drivers, or the capture software you’re using (looks to have the most issues). HWMonitor, as suggested by Zhyxen will also help rule out any hardware performance issues, so it’s important to do that step, too.

6

I have quite a long list on HWMonitor kind of hard to get a good screenshot during a game without throwing, is there something specific you are looking for so I could condense the list?

Also here is the updated DxDiag.

https://pastebin.com/Fq0wYJZk

I also went back and updated my first post with my settings and userbench ratings if that helps.

I checked and FreeSync is turned off.

I did take a couple of programs over from my old Pc on a hard drive… I believe one of them was one of the VB Audio cables that you had mentioned was having a few issues. Could that play a factor? Just recently I got an updated driver for my Nvidia card, downloading now.

Ohh also, I played 3-4 games just before the DxDiag.

Cheers!

7

EVR Power Information
Current Setting: {651288E5-A7ED-4076-A96B-6CC62D848FE1} (Balanced)

Make sure that you use High performance for gaming; right now you’re set to Balanced, which will definitely hinder gaming performance.

Problem signature:
P1: nvcplui.exe

The nVidia Control Panel is reporting a crash, so I’m not sure if there’s still a problem with your drivers or what’s going on there.

Problem signature:
P1: GameCapture.exe

Elgato Game Capture is still reporting an app crash, so it might be worth disabling it.

Device Name: Pentablet HID

Sometimes Windows will try to write to the tablet screen, is it normally plugged in when you’re playing?

Device Name: Razer Naga Trinity

The Razer devices have been popular on the forums lately, causing a myriad of issues from fps loss to crashes when combined with Overwatch, so I still recommend looking over this thread from the staff.

FWIW, I know you’re not crashing, but there is also a note about Ryzen CPUs in the stickies that might have some insight.

As for the HWMonitor stuff, you can play and then take the screenshots right after. There will likely be multiple pics you need to share to see everything in the window.

8

Main things we’ll want are the CPU and GPU temperatures as well as the CPU and GPU utilization and clock speeds.

As Nicole mentioned Current Setting: {651288E5-A7ED-4076-A96B-6CC62D848FE1} (Balanced) indicates the computer is in power save mode. Would make sure that the High Performance power profile is selected.

9

I will try this, I usually try to be very generous when it comes to temp inside my PC, not that I am too worried about it, but I figure the cooler the better

New driver now installed, will check back after a while.

Disabling in the device menu, or simply unplugging it… willing to try both.

I only use it very rarely, it has not been plugged in for a few weeks. When I start up Windows 10 it seems to think I may have a touch screen for some reason, probably not what that log was mentioning, but it is only thing I can think would be related to a tablet. I found that it was booting on startup, disabled it, should be ready for the next session.

As for the Ryzen CPU, I will look into it, I believe my BIOS are good, though I don’t recall ever updating my chipset. Updated the chipset, minor improvement…maybe? Either way it needed to be done.

Chroma, will look into it.

Here are the new DxDiag, I made two after all of the updates and such.

https://pastebin.com/T1SVv8VC

https://pastebin.com/Tni4f465

I did forget to set my PC to High performance, I usually just keep it to balanced to help with temps, not that they are out of wack, I just try to run cool.

Here are the temp screenshots

https://imgur.com/a/aKx9Izx

I will try the high-performance next time I can sit down and play.
I have a feeling it is GeForce Experience Shadowplay DVR feature… which is a bummer because it is really handy for multiple reasons. Any good alternatives?

Thanks again!
Cheers!

10

You’re right, cool is good, but you’re also throttling the performance of your hardware by using Balanced. It’s worth the High Performance when gaming, and you don’t have to use it when you’re just surfing the web, etc.

Did you happen to use Display Driver Uninstaller when you updated these? Because the error is still showing up.

Also still seeing an error from your Elgato software, and Windows is reporting problems with your virtual audio cables. Sometimes audio problems can cause performance loss.

And finally, there’s a new bluesreen error for your memory appearing in the second report. I’m not sure if that’s the result of the test you ran, or if it’s one of the sticks. The staff might know more about this combo happening because they have actual training for this stuff :slight_smile:

I think the best thing to do would be to disable all software still showing errors, including the virtual audio cables, elgato, etc, and then re-enable one by one to see what’s contributing to the frame skipping. But I can’t stress enough how important High Performance is for gaming.

11

I will try the high performance, I know I probably baby my setup a little bit too much.

I was rendering out a video with Vegas the other night and it kept crashing with that memory error, I had a cam link attached at the time and after I unplugged that it seemed to behave a little bit more.

When it comes to the audio cables would disabling them be enough or would I have to uninstall them completely?

Regarding the uninstaller I will look into that as well, I just figured an update would be enough :slight_smile:

I’ll take your advice on unplugging everything and reattaching one by one! Cheers!

12

I honestly have no idea. Virtual audio cables don’t fall in my expertise, but Windows is reporting lots of errors for the drivers not being signed.

Unfortunately, no. The installers don’t remove everything, and sometimes even cause corrupted files. It’s a mess, and that’s why DDU was created :laughing:

13

Okay, so after a few sessions, I believe the issue is resolved.

It was likely a result of not having high performance turned on (my old pc never had an issue and I believe it was technically weaker) and Steam also seems to cause problems when I forget to close. I am sure that all of the driver updating and such was also a large help.

As of now we are good! You have helped me a lot, thanks Nicole and Zhyxen, cheers!

1 Like
14

Thanks for reporting back. Lots of times things get resolved and I never get to hear back if anything helped! :slight_smile: