Gaming on 8.1 slowing over time

Sampsy · 6 Jan 2015 at 18:44

I’ve had this issue since installing Windows 8. After initially installing the OS everything runs great but over time (in months) games become extremely sluggish. For example where I might get silky smooth 120fps on day1, on day 110 I’ll get a 12fps slideshow. I don’t notice any performance issues anywhere else – either it’s only affecting games or simply isn’t noticeable elsewhere.
I could really use some help diagnosing this. I’ve asked in various places before and I’ve got nowhere with it – the only solution has been to perform a clean install of Windows which is a massive pain.

Some things I’ve tried before that haven’t worked:
Checked for viruses
Checked temps & Overclocks
Reseated CPU / GPU
Updated Windows & Drivers
Checked background programs
System Restore
Windows Refresh

System Information:
CPU: 2500k @ 4.8Ghz
GPU: GTX 670
Mobo: Asrock z68 extreme 4
OS Drive: Samsung 840 Pro (256GB)
Other Drives: 120GB OCZ Agility 3, 1TB Seagate Barracuda, 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3

OpenToSuggestions · 6 Jan 2015 at 18:55

Have you looked at task manager to see if the issue is something hogging your ram or CPU?

Sampsy · 6 Jan 2015 at 19:14

OpenToSuggestions said:
Have you looked at task manager to see if the issue is something hogging your ram or CPU?

I have, there doesn't appear to be any issue there. See below for an example.

That was in game in GW2 getting about 8-10FPS. Task manager was open on my second monitor. The GPU was at ~99% load. However in the past after reinstalling Windows the GPU would still be at full load but the game would perform wonderfully.

opethdisciple · 6 Jan 2015 at 22:09

Sounds like you've tried everything. Could try cpu at stock and see if that changes anything. Then if it does, see if a little less aggressive oc helps.

K1LaW8tt5 · 6 Jan 2015 at 22:15

have you ruled out a failing harddrive?
do you have shadowplay(recording) turned on?

demonix · 7 Jan 2015 at 16:12

Where are the games installed?

If it's on one of the mechanical drives, then defragmenting the drive might get rid of the frame rate issues (I always had frame rate issues on world of tanks after a major update, but doing a defrag on the hard drive does make things run a bit smoothly apart from the first match load up), but you have a few unnecessary processes running in the background (Word, Google Chrome and Power DVD) that might be causing issues.