Frame Rate Loss after Alt-Tabbing

[djstewy]

Hi All,

So I just built a brand new system and I'm loving it, all my games are pretty much running at max now and I'm very happy with the performance. There is one BIG exception though. Whenever I'm in a game and I need to check on something outside of the app and I alt-tab out, do my thing, then alt-tab back into the game, it instantly loses significant frame rate.

Everything is super laggy and there is significant performance hits when resuming the game. I've had the same issues with both Dragon Age Inquisition and Far Cry 4. It's to the point that I can't stand to play the game and I have to reboot to fix it.

It's almost like it's not releasing memory or something when it's forced in the background or going into desktop mode and not switching the video card back to the higher demands of gaming when I resume it. I've been PC gaming for 20 years and have never seen this issue before. Once I reboot, all is well, but if I do an alt-tab at any point, instant performance hit when I resume the game. This is my first Windows 8.1 system and I'm wondering if their is any OS quirks I should be aware of. The system is a Intel 4690K, Nvidia 970 4 Gb ram, 16 Gb of system memory, 240Gb SSD boot disk.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Stewy

 

[lavaheadache]

when you get back into the game try hitting alt-enter. You could be stuck in borderless window mode or something dumb like that

 

[djstewy]

Yeah I thought of that one as well, Alt-Enter doesn't help unfortunately. The really odd thing is it doesn't get better even if I close all the way out of the game and reopen it. The frame late loss remains until I give the system a full reboot. If I don't alt-tab at all I can game for hours with no frame rate loss, but the second I alt-tab out and go back in the performance tanks and stays tanked.

Derek

 

[MrRamon]

I had the same exact problem 8~ years ago with a rig I built in all games. It was dual core socket 939, X1900XTX, 2 gigs on xp. My other system at the time(and the system I use) was an AMD FX-55, 2gigs of ram, and had an agp card.

I swapped the ram and cpu into the agp machine and worked it fine and could not replicate what was happening to my new system. The only thing I didn't try was a different video card/mobo in the new system.

I'm really interested in seeing what is causing your issue. It was the most annoying thing in the world. Best of luck.

 

[digitaldurandal]

I have found this to always be the case with certain games no matter what build I used. Some games respond better with alt tab then others.

Is there anyone with DA I and Farcry 4 that can confirm if they are having the same behavior?

 

[tidy]

.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I have found this to always be the case with certain games no matter what build I used. Some games respond better with alt tab then others.

Is there anyone with DA I and Farcry 4 that can confirm if they are having the same behavior?

This is my experience as well. Different games behave differently to alt tabbing, some crash, others won't ever return back to the game without visual artefacts, some have performance issues and others run perfectly.

For example you'll find that a LOT of MMOs will alt tab perfectly, they need to because so many people alt tab to browse MMO related webpages such as quest guides, etc.

One thing you can tinker with is the windows launch options, right click the exe for the game, go to properties, then use the compatibility tab. You might find some of the settings help you run the game more smoothly when transitioning to the desktop and back.

 

[BFG10K]

The really odd thing is it doesn't get better even if I close all the way out of the game and reopen it. The frame late loss remains until I give the system a full reboot.

That's some kind of system problem as you shouldn't have to reboot to restore performance.

Are you overclocking anything?
Do you have any kind of background monitoring tasks running, especially related to GPUs?