I am having continual frame rate drops that are quite irritating. Every ride the drops can happen for five minutes at a time. In a recent ride, they happened every 10 minutes, adding up to a total of 20 minutes! I’m not sure what is causing this. I would be happy with a frame rate of 25 to 30 fps, but 5 fps is terrible. I don’t do group rides or race. I’ve read that the drops can happen when there are many riders at one time, but this can happen even in areas with few riders. At this point, zwift is getting to be usable. I use a wired connection with gigabit service, so I don’t think it is network. I’m in the ultra profile.
Specs:
Core i7-7700HQ @ 2.80GHz
32GB
GeForce GTX 1050/PCIe/SSE2
3.1.0 Nvidia 442.70
Other than that, I’m not sure what else to do. Any ideas?
Hi Paul!
To start off, once loaded into a world. you can disconnect completely and still ride, so network won’t affect your frame rate.
Something that CAN affect your frame rate is Graphics Drivers. You show yours as 442.70, and the current version on nvidia’s website for the 1050 is 452.06
Of course, making sure your CPU is fully updated is a good idea as well. Also, check for any background services that might be running. While OS isn’t specified, I’ll assume Windows for now, in which case crtl+shift+esc will bring up your Task Manager so you can see if there are any other processes taking up chunks of resources or not, and see how things are running.
Additionally, while i don’t know how tech savy you are, some basic computer maintenance can always be helpful. Cleaning up unneeded files, optimizing drives, cleaning our fans and vents can all have positive affect on performance and frame rates.
Finally, I checked Zwiftalyser Benchmarks for your specified CPU and GPU combo at Ultra Settings, and here are the results, so you should be seeing anywhere from 25-60 FPS depending on resolution.
If none of these steps help, feel free to email us at Support@zwift.com with your log folder attached as a .zip file. We are rather backed up at the moment, so it may take us a few days to respond, but we will do so as soon as we can!
Ride On!
Those benchmarks are using the desktop processor and GPUs, OP is on a laptop using mobile versions of each. Big difference. 
I would guess at thermal throttling. Need to monitor temps and TDP when the frame rate drops (using tools like Intel Extreme Tuning Utility and GPU-Z) to try and observe what’s happening during a Zwift session.
You are right @Dave_ZPCMR. It was thermal throttling. I didn’t see you post until now, but I ran zwift and jut watched some riders for a while and could tell my lap, was running really hot. I bought a laptop fan, and that solved the issue. I’ve had two 45 min rides with almost no frame drops and am running at around 45fps.
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Could you recommend which laptop fan you have purchased. I think I am having the same problem. However mine isn’t intermittent zwift is basically unworkable on my laptop at the moment!
