Windows 10: FPS drops and system crash issue while playing games

As above.


It's just impossible to play anything..

If I start streaming then the game just freezes all together.. From playing @ more than 70fps on a fast paced game with the highest settings I can even lower the settings to minimum and my FPS just drops to 30 average and impossible to aim with the mouse because the mouse won't move at all or move at such a low pace that it's impossible to do anything.


Game in this session: Destiny 2 on D: (HDD)

Battle.net: on C: (SSD)

Windows 10 1809 (build 17763.316 up to date)


All possible drivers were given the 'update treatment' but none needed (windows update).


Is there anything I can do to get rid of those slowdowns? Only way to get the system back is to restart/hard reset the PC back to life, for a few minutes, sometimes all night (if only browsing).


ETL file (3.2gb unzipped): https://1drv.ms/u/s!AnwY9enE-9o4iwC6qVvkoGSy6cYA















***Modified Title from: ndsis.sys and others causing slowdowns***

:)

 

FPS drops when playing video in background

I am trying to understand why I experience FPS drops in demanding games when a video is playing in background and how to fix it. My particular setup (see the specs at the bottom): two monitors in extended desktop mode, the primary monitor connected via DisplayPort to an AMD R9 390 video card, the other via DVI alternatively to the on-die Intel HD 4600 graphics output or to the R9 390's DVI output.

I will demonstrate the problem with Witcher 3 game, but the same problem occurs with at least one other game that I tried - World of Tanks (which is where the issue actually matters, as sometimes I put on music from YouTube while in game). In all the experiments below I run Witcher 3 on my primary monitor in windowed full-screen mode and measure the FPS in it with FRAPS. To guarantee stable FPS, I put the game on pause (by pressing ESC). I also set affinity of the Witcher 3 process to the first 3 cores and set the affinity of other applications to the 4th core. The CPU load has remained stable on cores 1-3 throughout the tests at 45-50%.

Baseline test when the game is not running: CPU load is at ~0% on cores 1-3 and ~5% on core 4.
Baseline test when the game is running, but no video being played in parallel: stable 58 FPS, CPU load: ~10% on core 4.

First batch of tests: the secondary monitor is connected to the R9 390.

1. 1080p YouTube HTML5 video running on the secondary monitor (in
   Chrome or Firefox): ~48 FPS, CPU load: ~50% on core 4.
   
2. The same YouTube video running on the primary monitor on top of the game:
   same results as in (1).
   
3. SMPlayer playing a 1024x426 AVC video on the
   secondary monitor: ~48 FPS, CPU load: ~25% on core 4.
   

Second batch of tests: the secondary monitor is connected to HD 4600.

1. 1080p YouTube HTML5 video running on the secondary monitor (in Chrome or Firefox): ~44 FPS, CPU load: ~50% on core 4.
   
2. The same YouTube video running on the primary monitor on top of the game: ~48 FPS, CPU load: ~50% on core 4.
   
3. SMPlayer playing a 1024x426 AVC video on the secondary monitor: ~50 FPS, CPU load: ~25% on core 4.
   

Now, one thing I noticed is that performance varies depending on whether the game window is focused or not. The benchmarks above are given for the case when the game window is focused. If the game window is focused, I see clear choppiness in video playback (both in YouTube and in SMPlayer). If another window is focused, video playback is smooth, but game FPS drops more.

My specs: Windows 10 x64, Intel i5-4690K, Gigabyte Z97-D3H, 8Gb RAM, R9 390 video card. The primary monitor (connected to R9 390) runs at 1920x1200, the secondary at 1600x1200.

EDIT: I took a music-only YouTube and tried to play it in various resolutions from 240p to 1080p. The FPS dropped gradually from 58 to 48 FPS as I increased the resolution.

 

FPS drop in games

I saw also fps drops with some DX9 games at least since the anniversary update (I even did a fresh install but was the same), the only DX9 game that I play that had fps issues was 4Story (some had no changes, for example TERA, Final Fantasy XIII...), I usually
had 20-30fps minimum and it runs at 1fps or even lower.

The only way I found to play it was to change the d3d9.dll with the version of it before the anniversary update. A friend also had fps drops in CS:GO with w10 anniversary, so I think the problem is with that file and it should be fixed... There are posts
that talk about disabling Game DVR in the XBOX app, but since my computer does not meet the requirements I didn't test it.

 

Sudden FPS drop/Stutter

Since 2 days ago, I just turned on my Computer, and it starting having issues while I was playing Witcher 3 (starts with decent fpsm and then very low fps, dropping to 35, then 20, and stopping at 12 or so, in a matter of seconds, in a matter of 1min of starting the game), also stuttering without any high demanding programs, randomly. I was playing at 45-60 fps, without any stutters or sudden fps drop. Have tried other games the issue persists. Even setup everything to low settings.
I have ran several tests with several tools, all seems normal, no sudden memory spikes, or temperature raising out of the ordinary, nothing that would indicate such an fps drop or stuttering.

MSI Afterburner

I also did the reset option on Windows10, completly cleaned out all my personal info from the windows partition.
So at this point, I am not sure if it is a software issue or a hardware issue.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Edit: I kept doing some tests to find out the issue. And this happened before and I was able to replicate it. Same thing happened as before, till I set it up to fullscreen, Alt+Tab from the game and then back to the game, FPS went up to 50 again, stable and good, dropped after a couple of seconds. After a bit it went to 2-5 fps, and I had to shutdown the game, because even the sound was getting messed up.

MSI Afterburner 2

In this image those ups and downs in the GPU usage are when the fps dropped really hard and the sound got messed up.