50-80 fps on LOW with a gtx 970 and i5 4460? 144hz monitor (Overwatch)

[Lunaerus]

I've had this problem ever since I started playing Overwatch. I run everything on the lowest possible settings or disabled. I've seen videos everywhere of people with my setup or an even lower end one get far more fps, even when they are running the game on Ultra!

I've just dealt with it for the most part, but I would really like to get more use out of my 144hz monitor, and I've tried everything that I can think of, such as making sure my monitor is plugged into my GPU, and etc.

I run Overwatch with absolutely nothing open in the background, but it doesn't seem to help. My GPU usage is usually 30-50, and my cpu is always in the 90s. I know this points to a CPU bottleneck, but should an i5 4460 really be bottlenecking at 50-80 fps at low settings? My fps usually hovers around the low 60s.

Any help on this subject would be appreciated. Here are my system specs:

Zotac GTX 970

I5 4460

8gb of ddr3 ram

Samsung 850 evo SSD

1TB Toshiba HDD

Acer XB240H 144hz G-Sync monitor

EVGA 600w bronze psu.

gigabyte h81m s2h motherboard

 

[Lunaerus]

I've found even more examples of people with my hardware running the game at 200+ fps..

 

[Lunaerus]

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Check temps with HWMonitor? Maybe your CPU cooler is loose and the CPU is overheating? Did you build this rig yourself? Transport it recently?

 

[The Green Bean]

Check in game settings if you're running at the scaling above 100%

 

[Aikouka]

Do you use the Blizzard launcher? I know some people attest that shutting it off helps, but I've never seen the need to do so.

Also, are all of your drivers and BIOSes (including the video card) up to date?

Check in game settings if you're running at the scaling above 100%

I hate how Overwatch likes to change that on you randomly, and it's hidden under the advanced settings. I swapped to a GTX 1080 Ti, and I was surprised when I was only getting 150 FPS. Once I remembered that it probably screwed with my render scale, it went up to 200+ FPS.

Although, what annoys me even more is how the sensitivity never takes effect properly. I have to go into the settings every time I start the game, click into the mouse sensitivity text box, hit ESC and my mouse finally moves at the correct speed. If I forget to do this, I sit through at least a game or two wondering why I keep missing so many shots.

 

[CuriousMike]

Do you use the Blizzard launcher? I know some people attest that shutting it off helps, but I've never seen the need to do so.

Yes, there is an option in the Blizzard launcher to "[X] Exit Blizzard Launcher when starting game" you want to find and see if that helps. When I was looking into it, it was on the order of a free ~20fps.

You... you have some other issue.

My son son with a 4590 and an R9 390 (similar to your 970) averages 150-220 fps on his setup at 1080p, low on his 144hz monitor.

 

[Lunaerus]

Although I don't have the option to auto close battle.net enabled, I close it manually every time I play a game. Also, my cpu is not overheating, as the temps are usually very reasonable in the 50s-60s. I originally bought this pic pre built a few years ago, but I've replaced just about everything except for the motherboard/cpu/ram, which coincidentally are the only pieces that may be having issues haha. At this point i'm basically at a loss for ideas.

 

[CuriousMike]

Did you take Larry's suggestion and run HWMonitor while running the game?

You care about your CPU temps, but you also care about the GPU temps.
It'll also show you what the GPU clock speed is -- look into MSI Afterburner and you can have it overlay all this information in real time. Maybe your GPU is downclocking.

 

[richierich1212]

When you lower graphics settings you put more stress on the CPU as you observed. You want to make sure your GPU is doing most of the heavy lifting. So raise those graphics settings back up to High.