Help - Framerate issue

[weyland yutani]

I installed Dirt3 via steam a couple of days ago and despite some initial issues the game ran well, averaging 58 fps in the benchmark at 1080p highest settings. Today my average framerate has dropped to around 25fps.

I installed and played World of Tanks this afternoon, the only thing Ive done on my machine prior to launching Dirt today. Could this be a cause for the performance loss in Dirt3?

My rig is i5 2500k stock speed, 6870 stock at 930 mhz, 8GB DDR3. Im a novice so any advice appreciated.

 

[varkanoid]

Do a system restore to before today ?

 

[weyland yutani]

I could do that I suppose. Im just wondering if installing World of Tanks has somehow messed up my settings (direc t x maybe?), is this even possible?

edit: Ok tried Dirt3 benchmark after a reboot and the framerates are back in the low 60's. So if I play one game and go to straight to another why would this cause a loss in framerate, memory usage? Surely 8Gb ram should be plenty. Is there a way to purge the memory without having to reboot? Any of this make sense? lol

 

[pgi947]

tried verifying the integrity of dirt3 to make sure everything is in order?
right click game>properties>local data>verify integrity of game cache

Also try removing world of tanks and see if the problem persists, just to be 100% sure thats whats causing the issue.

 

[weyland yutani]

I've done the verify cashe method a few times and I still have issues with dirt3.

Sometimes it plays really well at 60fps, sometimes at 45fps without any changes made to settings, no apps running in background etc. OIs there a way to check which version of DirectX the game is running at? There is no option in graphics settings ingame.

Any ideas?

 

[Final8y]

Make sure your CPU is not throttling down.

 

[weyland yutani]

This woulld be caused by the CPU getting hot right?

Thing is during gameplay I dont get lag spikes, just that it plays at a consistent 60fps sometimes and a consistent high 40s at other times when I load up the game.

 

[Tokin]

I no that you shouldn't need to but lower the settings and see if you still have the problem.

 

[MichaelM]

I had an issue like this before but it turned out to be from when I switched my system's power management from auto to max power saving. Was banging my head trying to figure it out then kicking myself when I found the problem haha.

 

[weyland yutani]

I found that turning shadows down from Ultra to high gave back rock solid 60fps with everything else at its highest. I'm certain it used to play fine with shadows on Ultra though.

Do you play Dirt3 Tokin, if so what settings do you use?