I'm having a really frustrating issue with my PC. After having it on for a few days, my game performance drops significantly. At first, I can enjoy great FPS (over 200) in games like 'The First Descendant', but after 2-3 days, I start experiencing major lag spikes and FPS drops, especially in the main area called 'Albion'. Not only that, but I even notice my YouTube videos lagging on my second monitor during that time.
This isn't just happening in 'The First Descendant'; I've noticed it in other games like 'Marvel Rivals', 'Overwatch', 'Forza Horizon 5', 'Call of Duty', and 'Halo Infinite', as well as single-player titles like 'Last of Us'. I've tried verifying game files on Steam, restarting my PC, and using MSI Afterburner to help, but the issue just keeps coming back.
I have a clean install of Windows 11 with all updates, and the only background apps I keep running are Chrome, Firefox, Discord, Gyazo, Razer Synapse, Black Desert Online (which is minimized), Spotify, and my email. My hardware setup includes an RTX 3070 and a Ryzen 9 5900X with 32GB of RAM, and temps seem fine. So I'm wondering if there's a memory leak in Windows, a hardware issue, or just poorly optimized games. Has anyone else faced this?
3 Answers
You might want to look at the games running in the background, especially Black Desert Online. Even minimized, it can still take up resources. It sounds like you're running multiple demanding applications, so try closing some and see if it makes a difference. It could be stressing your GPU, especially with the limited VRAM on the 3070.
Have you checked for any driver updates? Sometimes, older GPU drivers can lead to performance issues like what you're describing. Make sure your Nvidia drivers are updated to the latest version. It could help resolve those lag spikes over days of uptime.
It sounds like you've got a memory leak problem, especially since you've mentioned it happened during your Windows 10 days too. Try checking the Task Manager's Performance tab, specifically the Memory section, to see if the non-paged memory usage is high. It should generally stay below 1.5GB. If it’s above that, it's likely the culprit. If not, we may have to dig deeper into the processes using memory.
In Task Manager, my non-paged pool is sitting around 800 MB, so that seems fine. Any other thoughts?
Yeah, I’ll close it and see how that goes. I didn’t think it would use much when minimized, but I guess it adds up!