In-game FPS stuck at 5-15 framerate

Hello,

I encountered this problem a few hours ago and have been attempting to troubleshoot it since, I'm uncertain what caused it since the game was running with no FPS issues prior to this before closing it out the day before. I'm unable to play the game either bordered or borderless window/fullscreen at full resolution and screen size without the framerate going down to around 5 - 15 FPS. Usually I'm able to run the game in at least 30 - 60 FPS (graphics card: Nvidia 1660 Ti GTX).

In the past, if there have been FPS issues it was usually tied to RAM bandwidth on my machine, but in this case it seems to be local to FFXIV. Even when I observe that my memory is at 39-40% it does not seem to increase frame rate (while running the game at typical 30-60 FPS memory usage is around 45-48%). I can run other games with no performance issues under the same conditions.

There have been no Windows updates installed in the time between the last time the game was played without this issue and the first time the problem began this morning. I found somewhat of a workaround by opening the game in bordered mode on another monitor where I can run it at 20FPS, but it is a much smaller view (1550 x 890) and 20FPS is still lower than what I think the graphics card should be able to handle based on previous performance...Any help would be appreciated.

Graphics Settings: Standard (Desktop)

XIV is fairly RAM agnostic, with speed (bandwidth) have a net zero effect on the game. Typically it's quite CPU bound if anything so I would suggest checking both CPU and GPU utilization while you play. Also disable any overlays (check the Xbox one, win10 likes to stealth enable it sometimes during an update). Also ensure fullscreen optimizations are off as well. That card at least (your CPU is unknown) should be able to run XIV at 60fps most or all of the time I expect.

Thanks for the input. My CPU is:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz

I've read different things regarding FFXIV graphics processing, some discussion boards say it's a CPU reliant game as it's an MMO, others say it's a GPU intensive game compared to other MMOs, and I haven't played any other MMOs for comparison so it's a bit confusing :confused: Either way I'm pretty sure there's no issue with my CPU either, it's almost always clocked in at 5-15% even when running other applications at the same time as the game. Currently running the game with this issue it's around 7-13%.

I also let my computer stay off for a while just to see if I had overheated the card or something, but several hours later the issue still persists. I can get it to 20FPS if I have all other apps disabled, but even with FFXIV as the only thing running it's very hard to play the game in this state. It's quite frustrating :(

Might be obvious but you haven't done something like accidently click the frame rate limiter to 1/4 have you. In the system settings.

Assuming you have a 60hz display and your only getting 15. It seems like a good candidate for the problem.

A 1660 ti should have no problem keeping 60fps constantly. I have a 1060ti and it keeps 60fps on max settings. The only times it really dips are in alliance raids or large scale content itncan dip to low 50s. Think your cpu is better than mine to.

Which comes back to maybe you've accidentally set the frame rate limiter?

Thanks for asking, I'm definitely the type of person that would make this mistake so that was the first thing I checked. It's currently set to 144 fps (1/1), still stuck at 15FPS.

I've also set it to "None" in between testing to see if that gets rid of the ceiling but it hasn't seemed make a difference.

Actually, this reminded me I hadn't tried to update the graphics drivers since this started happening and it seems like that fixed it since it's now at 130FPS! Somehow it jumped even higher than it was before :cool:

Thanks for the help all!

Glad you got it fixed!

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

Thank you for keeping us updated. We will be moving this thread to "Closed Concerns".

Good luck with your adventures through Eorzea!