I've been facing some serious performance problems with my PC since a week ago. Right after booting, everything feels sluggish. For instance, loading large Discord servers takes over two seconds, and games like Arma Reforger and Arma 3 are seeing a dramatic drop in FPS—more than 90% compared to what I used to get.
Here's what I've tried so far to troubleshoot this issue: I've completely reinstalled Windows, switched to Linux Mint (which I'm currently using), reseated all the hardware, tested the RAM in various configurations, reset the BIOS settings, and turned off EXPO. Unfortunately, the performance issues remain consistent across different operating systems and even after reseating the components.
When playing Arma, adjusting graphics settings hardly affects the FPS at all. For example, I get around 25 FPS in Arma Reforger when I used to enjoy over 150 FPS. Even with maxed-out graphics settings, the FPS barely drops to around 20. What's odd is that my GPU usage hovers around 90-95%, but never quite hits 100%, and the temperatures remain normal for all components. While some games like Minecraft and War Thunder run relatively well, even Roblox is struggling to reach 30-50 FPS, which is definitely below my expectations.
For diagnostics, I've checked the storage drives, run MemTest on the RAM, and verified PCIe lane and voltage checks—everything looks normal. At this point, I suspect there might be a bottleneck or a communication problem between the CPU and RAM, or something affecting the motherboard pathways or CPU performance under load.
I'm looking for any ideas on what might be causing these symptoms and recommendations for further diagnostics, especially ones that can work under Linux. Here's my setup: AMD Ryzen 7 9800 X3D, PowerColor Radeon RX 9070 XT, Gigabyte B850 Eagle motherboard, 2x16GB Adata XPG LancerBlade RAM, MSI MPG A850G PSU, and two drives: GOODRAM PX600 1TB for the system and Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB for games.
1 Answer
Have you checked if you’re using the most recent driver for your GPU? Some users have reported issues with version 25.10.2, so consider rolling back to an earlier driver like 9.1 if you haven't tried that yet. Since you’re on Linux, make sure you’re using the Mesa drivers properly, as they can sometimes affect performance too.
I'm actually on Mesa 25.0.7 with the amdgpu kernel driver. The problem was present on Windows as well, and I also experienced it with both older and newer GPU drivers.