bottleneck performance?

[Ooshima]

any screenshot? not doubting you but if its true it will break almost everyone' idea here

character and object quantity to max? because its what matter most

That info is legit.

I had one i7-4790K clocked at 4.8GHz, I get about 45-50FPS max setting max every thing at MD aetheryte rendering as much people as possible, but one thing is I am on 1440p. At 1440p may drop to 35ish FPS at MD during those days when hunts were popular and everyone teleported there for A/S Ranks.

If I downgrade to 1080p FPS could be even higher.

Nonetheless it would really puzzle me that a Haswell i5 CPU could be bottlenecked in this non demanding game.

Last but not least you might want to try switching your GPU to another PCI-E 3.0 slot that supports at least x8 speed to check.

It could be a that your current slot is faulty. Happened to me once, the first lane was damaged and FPS dropped to near zero, even after a fresh install of OS it was at most 15-20FPS at MD.

I was totally puzzled too, until I tried another lane and it returned to normal.