I've got a PC with an i5 10400f, RTX 3060Ti, and 16GB of RAM (one stick is G.Skill and the other is a no-name brand, both 3200MHz but not compatible with XMP). I also have a 256GB NVMe SSD for Windows and a 1TB external HDD for games. Lately, I had to switch to the external HDD because my previous one was failing. Initially, games like Forza Horizon 4 were running perfectly at max settings with a solid 75 FPS, but now everything is dropping below 60 FPS. I've updated all my drivers, and I'm unsure if a complete system format is needed or if there's another issue.
2 Answers
Try rolling back your GPU drivers and removing the latest Windows updates. Sometimes they can create issues. Keep an eye on your CPU, GPU, and HDD usage while a game is running – a rogue app might be hogging resources. Monitoring things like CPU affinity in Task Manager may also help. It's often a software problem that causes these sudden drops in performance rather than hardware issues, so troubleshooting these steps first might be the way to go.
Running games off an external HDD can definitely drag performance down. Even though you managed to play them fine before, the speed really makes a difference, especially with modern games. I’d recommend looking into getting an internal SSD for your games if possible.
I agree, but I’ve seen people play games from HDDs without issues too. It could be worth checking your game settings to see if something changed after you switched HDDs.
Thanks for the tip! I’ll roll back the updates and check the resource usage while gaming. Hopefully, that helps.