Extreme fps drop/lag spike after a few minutes of gameplay

[fosterovsky]

I just started playing Witcher 3 a few days ago and at first noticed no problems, game was running beautifully, most options set to high/ultra. Today, after about 10-12 hours in I have started noticing consistent drops in FPS. Starting the game up I begin with 48-55 FPS, then it hovers at 33-38, before finally dropping to below 30 and frequently dipping below 10 before coming back up. I have tried lowering settings/resolution, slightly overclocking my GPU. My specs:

CPU
Intel Core i5 2320 @ 3.00GHz

RAM
10.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-24)

Motherboard
Gateway IPISB-VR (CPU 1)

Graphics
MX279 (1920x1080@60Hz)
GIGABYTE 4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (Gigabyte)

Is it a problem with my CPU bottlenecking the GPU? I have heard that the 2320 is fine for Witcher 3 but I could be wrong.... please help!

Edit: I have always had the hair effects off and and the foilage visibilty range set to low.

 

[devivre]

Please avoid overclocking. It can cause a lot of issues.

Other than that, did you run GeForce experience? There should be an optimized setting for TW3 on your computer. Also you could try to change the Vsync settings in the game a bit and see what happens.

 

[SigilFey]

That definitely sounds like heat throttling. The 2320 is below minimum specs, so that might actually be why it's happening. The 1050 ti is more than capable of running it well, so it's not the GPU directly. I would say:

Deactivate the OC on the video card. Run the game with a locked 30 FPS for at least an hour. See if the performance lasts. If that doesn't work, then you're likely stressing the CPU. I would recommend not pushing it. It's possible to damage the hardware by running things it wasn't designed to handle.