I started playing Overwatch on my PC about two months ago. It ran normally for the first couple of weeks, around 140 FPS with 40 ms latency, but then launching the game would completely lock up my computer. It would not work again until I unplugged it. When I tried the game again last week, everything seemed normal, but now I am getting roughly 3 FPS and 700 ms latency even though other games run fine. The computer no longer completely crashes when I launch it, but something is clearly wrong. My hardware includes a Ryzen 7 5700X, ASRock B550M-C motherboard, 16 GB of DDR4-3200 memory, an RX 6600 XT, and both a WD hard drive and WD Blue SN570 NVMe drive. What should I check or change?
4 Answers
The latency problem may be separate from the FPS problem. Test with an Ethernet connection if possible, restart the router, and check whether another program is using bandwidth. For the computer lockups, inspect the power and display cables, remove any overclock or undervolt, and confirm that the GPU is firmly seated. If temperatures or power readings look abnormal, stop testing until those are resolved.
The CPU frequency shown at about 4.5 GHz is normal boost behavior for a Ryzen 7 5700X, but it is still worth updating the motherboard BIOS and AMD chipset driver. Your 16 GB of RAM is sufficient, though closing overlays and background tools such as recording software can help. If the problem began after an update, resetting the game's configuration and reinstalling the graphics driver are good first steps.
Start by checking temperatures and usage while the game is running. Use a hardware monitor to see whether the CPU or GPU is overheating, whether the GPU is actually being utilized, and whether anything is stuck at 100% usage. Also update or clean-install the AMD graphics driver, then reset Overwatch's graphics settings and shader cache. A damaged driver or configuration file can cause extremely low FPS even when other games are fine.
Your listed hardware should run the game well, so the specs themselves do not explain 3 FPS. Make sure the game is using the RX 6600 XT instead of a fallback display adapter, and check that the render scale, resolution, and frame-rate settings were not changed. Verify or repair the game files, and try deleting the game's settings so it can recreate them.
I’m not sure how to check some of those things, but I can look at the temperatures and try reinstalling the graphics driver.