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why does my FPS drop after Alt-Tabbing and goin back to the game?

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Jan 19, 2017
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System Name Core p90
Processor I7 9700k
Motherboard ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4
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Case Thermaltake Core P90 tempered glass edition
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Keyboard Logitech G910
Software Windows 10 64bit
why does my FPS drop after Alt-Tabbing and goin back to the game?

Happens lately with call of duty modern warfare and cold war.
I have an rtx 2080 ti and an i7 9700k.
Very very conservative overclock on the GPU
16gb of ddr4 ram
windows 10
running all my games on NVME PCIE SSDs
My monitor has gsync (i play fullscreen)

Any idea as to why this happens?
 
I think it makes the game play in full screen windowed mode. :toast:
 
Install Msi afterburner and monitor the gpu/mem clocks. Graphic cards have different clock frequency for gaming vs desktop so it's possible that the clocks gp back up when you go back in the game stay stuck at lower freq. You can try doing driver driver removal tool and doing clean driver install.
 
Probably drops priority after tabbing back in. Have seen this happen for 10 or so years over multiple games and builds.
 
@Toothless I didnt know that the app has lower priority afterwards!!! :toast:
 
@Toothless I didnt know that the app has lower priority afterwards!!! :toast:
That's just what I'm assuming. Once you tab out to something else it feels like Windows kicks the game to the side because why not and you never get the nice performance until you reload the game.
 
That's just what I'm assuming. Once you tab out to something else it feels like Windows kicks the game to the side because why not and you never get the nice performance until you reload the game.
I'll look into the game priority in task manager and report back. I'll also check to see if the clocks get reduced when I tab back in and report it here too.

Thanks guys

That's just what I'm assuming. Once you tab out to something else it feels like Windows kicks the game to the side because why not and you never get the nice performance until you reload the game.
ok I checked and my GPU clocks don't change when I come Back to the game after Alt-Tabbing
As for the priority I set it to High priority manually and my FPS is still about 40% less than when I DON'T alt tab out of the game... :(

The whole game feels very glitchy and hitches a lot when I come to back to it after alt tabbing out.
I remember reading on the web that apprently it might have something to do with gsync, although I don't understand why :(

I just played Borderlands 3, and BL3 doesn't suffer any performance hit when I alt-tab out and back in... Only a few titles, especially Black ops Cold war and Modern warfare

**UPDATE** I went ahead and selected fullscreen borderless window mode for both call of duty modern warfare and black ops cold war and it seems to have fixed my problem (mostly). I can alt-tab with no loss of performance when I tab back into the game... BUT... I do have slightly less performance overall than fullscreen. But it's slight, maybe 10-12%. I guess gsync works better with fullscreen. (I do have gsync enabled for both windowed and fullscreen mode)
 
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I'll look into the game priority in task manager and report back. I'll also check to see if the clocks get reduced when I tab back in and report it here too.

Thanks guys


ok I checked and my GPU clocks don't change when I come Back to the game after Alt-Tabbing
As for the priority I set it to High priority manually and my FPS is still about 40% less than when I DON'T alt tab out of the game... :(

The whole game feels very glitchy and hitches a lot when I come to back to it after alt tabbing out.
I remember reading on the web that apprently it might have something to do with gsync, although I don't understand why :(

I just played Borderlands 3, and BL3 doesn't suffer any performance hit when I alt-tab out and back in... Only a few titles, especially Black ops Cold war and Modern warfare

**UPDATE** I went ahead and selected fullscreen borderless window mode for both call of duty modern warfare and black ops cold war and it seems to have fixed my problem (mostly). I can alt-tab with no loss of performance when I tab back into the game... BUT... I do have slightly less performance overall than fullscreen. But it's slight, maybe 10-12%. I guess gsync works better with fullscreen. (I do have gsync enabled for both windowed and fullscreen mode)
Typically fullscreen for dedicated gameplay, and windowed for multitasking has been how it goes.
 
I hope @unclewebb doesn't mind me quoting his post here, but It may be relevant to the frames dropping.
Problem
- both turbo power limits are being incorrectly set to 0 Watts.

Result
- Intel Turbo Boost is now disabled so the CPU cannot run higher than its base frequency.
- 9900K = 3600 MHz
- 10850K = 3600 MHz

How to Test
- run CPU-Z and on the About tab, press the Save Report button.

1GBHG6d.png


- save the Report file, open it and search for the turbo power limit register, MSR 0x00000610

eXRNaAx.png


If you see the value 8000 at these two locations within that register, that is the problem.
The 8 means that this power limit is enabled and the 000 means the turbo power limit register is set to 0 Watts.

When to Test
- after booting up and before running anything, run CPU-Z, create a report and check this register. If you see the 8000 value displayed for either power limit then the BIOS is not setting your CPU up correctly. You should never see 8000 on either side of this register.

- if you have a game that has this throttling problem, start the game, ALT+TAB out to your desktop, run CPU-Z and look at the turbo power limits register to see if either of the power limits have been set to 8000 (0 Watts).

- exit the game and check to see if this register has been reset. If it is still set to 8000 then any other game you try to run is also going to be limited to the base frequency. If your computer is stuck at 0 Watts, you need to reboot before testing a different game.

HWiNFO
- to confirm this problem, run HWiNFO and check to see if it is reporting, Power Limit Exceeded.

gmYWhN7.png


Solution
- if you have this problem, run ThrottleStop, click on the TPL button and use the Lock option to lock the turbo power limits register so no other software can modify these values. Setting both power limits to the maximum value (4095) will prevent all power limit throttling.

After the power limit register is locked, you can exit ThrottleStop. This register will remain locked until you sleep, hibernate or shut down your computer. You will need to run ThrottleStop again so it can lock your power limit register. If you leave ThrottleStop running, minimized to the system tray, it will automatically lock this register after you resume from sleep or hibernate.

3YxmLnd.png


Results So Far
- at the moment, this throttling problem has been discovered on Gigabyte motherboards with the Z390 or Z490 chipset. More user testing needs to be done to try to find out what is causing this problem. If you have this problem, post what motherboard, CPU and GPU you have and the name of any game that is causing this problem
 
priority is possible, and so is windows giving up RAM to the background tasks
 
Sometimes it's 2d Vs 3d clocks and tabbing out switches between the different profiles
 
I believe it's a graphic driver issue. Try completely reinstalling your drivers to an older version.
 
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