Help with performance

General Discussion
1

Hi gurus,
I have spent the last 48hrs reading through different posts in this forum about poor performance.
I have bought a second hand gaming computer, a i5-9400F with 8GB DDR4 and an Geforce GTX1650. It should work fine with zwift, and I have seen many of you complaining about poor performance… my performance is less than 10FPS!! Even in 720p, not HD or ultra.
I have changed the geforce settings as I saw in a post (enable GPU,disable threaded optimization, enable triple buffer…) I’ve tried many settings. I have also modified the log file as I saw in another post, lowering the requirements (for res and sres etc)… None of it works…
I am thinking now purchasing 16GB of DDR4 to replace my 8GB, but looking at the resource utilization, both CPU and GPU are very very low, the only thing that is high is the RAM, as zwift alone seems to use 4Gb.
I share a screenshot of zwiftalizer

image
image2640×1492 216 KB

PS: I have also tried to uninstall & reinstall zwift, and also to upgrade the drivers of the GPU.

Next thing I am going to try is to install W11 instead of W10.

Thank you all

2

16gb is unnecessary unless you are using multiple apps and/or sauce.

Are you using and additional security software?

1 Like
3

Thanks for helping out Stuart. I have windows defender, I have disabled it now (real time protection disabled) and it makes no difference in performance.

1 Like
4

No no. Don’t do that. It won’t be the issue.

Next thing is to turn off video screenshots as that’s renowned for causing issues.
Not seen it drop what should be 60fps down to 10 though.

1 Like
5

Any potential malware running in the background without your knowledge?

Is this a clean operating system install?

6

That’s horrible. Definitely should not be happening. I wonder if the PC has some kind of problem, like CPU overheating due to poorly fitted / pasted heat sink. Have you checked temperatures?

A Windows factory reset is pretty easy so you might try that before doing a Windows 11 install, which is unlikely to help more than a clean install of Windows 10.

Might also be worth resetting the BIOS.

7

Definitely looks like it’s hitting a thermal limit; is the fan(s) dead on the 1650? is it a laptop, are the vents blocked?

Only reason that makes that super obvious is how high in FPS it starts, and just seems to plummet within a minute, and then remains steady.

8

Do you have OneDrive installed on the computer? If so uninstall it.

9

Thank you all for your responses.
I have uninstalled google drive, resetted to the BIOS factory defaults and monitored the temperature and performance of CPU and GPU with NZXT, all to no avail (temperature is very low).
The only thing I noticed is NZXT showing 100% of CPU usage at times, when the task manager shows 20%, but anyway I have decided to consider the 2nd hand PC a lost cause, I have been defeated and I have just bought a new PC…

10

Task manager in Windows now is mostly confusing and a pile of junk compared to what it was from Windows 7 and prior.
RAM and GPU statistics aren’t even fully visible anymore, and CPU stuff MUST be viewed in the logical processors mode.

(An example is when running software using things like Vulkan for graphics processing… doesn’t even show up in task manager, you’ll see GPU 3D loads of like 5%, despite it being under a full 100% load… which VRAM will be telling that it is. It’s just not useful anymore like it used to be, and Microsoft doesn’t seem interested in making it useful anymore)

I wonder if the 1650 just had a fan go bad, or perhaps something preventing it from spinning? Something definitely looks wrong.

That said, temps will mostly look normal regardless, as all things now will limit to stay within a thermal load…
If they can’t stay within a thermal range, you will certainly know though (BSODs and the like).

That said, that’s still a reasonably functional PC for many a folks, could make for a good media server or once the issue is resolved a gaming PC for someone, definitely get it to a good home!

Good luck with new computer, should be flawless.