Massive FPS drops at regular intervals on high-end hardware

Experience routine (Every 10 seconds or so) fps drops. Drops down from around 80+ to 15-20 for half-second or so.

Windows 10 pro
i7-5930k
nVidia RTX2800
Samsung Evo 850 SSD

Genuinely not quite sure why frames are this low to begin with. The stuttering is the main issue, however.

Good afternoon and thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums

Does the issue occur if the resolution is lowered? Additionally does this occur if the game is run on borderless full screen or windowed mode?

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums

Changing the resolution did not change the frame drops, but switching to full-screen mode did mostly eliminate them. This said, I use too many programs at once for this to be convenient - switching windows while in full-screen mode causes considerable lag.

Good morning and thank you for posting on the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

To prevent repeating previously attempted troubleshooting, what have you tried to alleviate the problem? Does this issue happen when Final Fantasy XIV is the only program running? Also, could you provide a system report? Simply go to the 'Config' option on the Final Fantasy XIV launcher and to the right of 'System Information' click on 'Display.'

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

jSubbz - Not Square-Enix support, but...

1. Do you have either your Windows wallpaper randomly cycling or Wallpaper Engine running? For whatever reason, when the wallpaper cycles it can cause a 'catch' in animation (though I wouldn't imagine you have it running so constantly that it'd cause it every 10 seconds) and Wallpaper Engine sometimes seems to get into a 'war' with certain games (including FFXIV) over who has access to graphics stuff at a particular moment (which does seem to cause a cyclical 'hiccup' in framerate with certain wallpapers).
2. You mention running with 'many programs at once'; as Rhaervis mentions is it possible to briefly try running FFXIV with most of those other programs exited (just to see if there's a conflict between any of them and FFXIV)?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Packetdancer

Do you have either your Windows wallpaper randomly cycling[/LIST]

---

I have a similar issue as OP, and this fixed it! Thank you!

Just a quick update - the wallpaper advice is excellent, but not the cause in this case. As for running without other programs in the back/foreground, that was one of the first things I did. Sadly, no luck there. I will be posting the full system information soon. So far I have ruled out memory issues, cpu bottlenecking, gpu issues, and have even poured over the system logs to see if something is starting and failing in the background in windows. Nothing so far. Frankly, performance is leaving me scratching my head. A similar strength machine I have access to (i5 7400k, GTX1080ti) is able to crank out over 200fps at idle, albeit in only 1080p. Despite having to drive 2+ times the number of pixels per frame, I would think that with the vastly superior graphics card would keep fps on this system higher than 75 at idle.

Is it possible that you're using the in-game frame limiter? I remember when that was forced upon us for a brief time, it would incorrectly lock my FPS to half of the displayed amount (e.g. 30 instead of 60, 72 instead of 144, and so on.) And it would cause random FPS drops, too. I would also recommend disabling any overlays you may have running- Steam, Discord, Nvidia, etc.

Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

Due to no response from the original poster, this thread will be moved to 'Closed Concerns.' If anyone is still having this particular problem, please create a new thread and we will assist you in any way we can.

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.