FPS drops over time

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Hello all,

I discovered a bizarre issue, but it appears others have already taken notice of this as well. Bear in mind, I have not started playing this game until recently, after 1.6. So I can't say for sure what the difference was before 1.6.

Firstly, my specs: RTX 3080, Intel 12700k, 32gb of RAM. I use Windows 10.

The good news is, my FPS is usually quite high with this setup. On medium to high settings, sustaining above 100fps is not difficult.

Here is the bad news: no matter the settings, even on the lowest, the FPS goes down with play to the point of it being unplayable.

The way I'm able to replicate it is I will start somewhere out the Badlands, usually the Nomad camp, and I will stay at my capped FPS of 144 on the lowest settings with very tiny stutters as I walk around and interact with things.

Then I will fast travel to Jig-Jig street. It will start off at the capped FPS of 144. Then I will walk around in circles in the market area nearby. Slowly, over the course of around 2 minutes, the FPS will slowly drop. What starts at the capped 144 slowly drops to below 100, even though I'm not doing anything other than walking around. If I do this for long enough, approximately 5 minutes, it will eventually drop to below 60. Once I fast travel back to the same Nomad camp where I started, it will STAY at below 60. Keep in mind this is on the LOWEST settings. Ray-Tracing is off.

I have tried doing a clean install of the latest NVidia drivers using DDU, playing the game as Administrator, disabling Windows fullscreen Optimization, Making sure the game is set to maximum performance in both the Windows Graphics Settings and NVidia control panel. So far, none of these steps has done anything. I've seen people mention that this game for some reason will lower the amount of power the GPU uses, but I haven't been able to quantify that (not that it isn't happening, I just don't have the software to view it).

Anyone else seeing this?

EDIT: After looking into this further using some NVidia software, something else I noticed was that both the GPU Utilization AND GPU Wattage would slowly go down as FPS was slowly going down.
 
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This thing has been afflicting the game for a long time. Reload the save from the main menu and you should be fine again. I suppose you own the 10GB version of the 3080 right? I have the same card and it happens to me as well, specially when visiting interiors or very busy open areas. For instance, I can trigger the fps loss every time I visit the main lobby of the Delamain HQ. The memory leak has been already reported to CDP. I guess we all need a 4090 hehehe
 
Late to reply but I've also been encountering this issue every single time I run the game. I have a 3060Ti, Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB RAM, Win10. I've also only started playing since after 1.6 released.

Strange thing is I recently upgraded my GPU, I was using a 1660Ti before this on 1080p. Never encountered this problem. Only after I upgraded to the 3060Ti and a 1440p monitor did this begin. I have all my settings optimized (with RT) and have tried tweaking things here and there but it seemingly makes no difference in regards to this.

The game runs great initially, and then eventually hits this persistent FPS drop. From what I can gather it seems to coincide with viewing the map for whatever reason as well. The moment the map starts lagging the whole game begins to. I try to avoid using the map as much as possible now and it seems to help prolong things but eventually begins regardless.

At any rate it's starting to drive me nuts.
 
I identified this problem being an issue with VRAM when Raytracing is on and textures set to high when the card has 8 GB of VRAM or less.
But seeing something similar but maybe slightly different is strange.
I don't think this should be happening at low settings.
 
I personally submitted a bug report about the memory leak to CDPR in September 2022 and just got an email back January 2023. So I came into communication with support and I was in contact with support for about two weeks or so doing everything I was asked of.

Naturally as with all support cases, I went through the boring most basic troubleshooting stuff where it is implied that my PC is the issue. So I did everything they asked to not only ensure nothing on my PC is the cause of this issue, but also to show them that it's an in-game bug.

Despite submitting videos, screenshots, detailed explanations what triggers the memory leak, how it triggers, when it triggers, how to fix it and such. Today I got an email that they exhausted all possible troubleshooting ways and... apologized for the inconvenience. Disappointing is the least I can say.

So I sent a final email;

I understand and I thank you for taking your time to help with this, but will the issue be elevated to the team and investigated at this point?

Since I've done everything asked here and shown multiple times that these easily reproduced performance issues are exclusively connected to certain actions within the game and do not affect the system itself, especially since it's directly fixed through in-game means by saving/reloading or going to bed.

If it was a system wide issue then it would be affecting the system even after saving/reloading or going to bed or quitting the game, but it doesn't so it's clearly a specifically isolated in-game bug that lasts only while the player has control of V, which can be fixed through in-game means.

Because I'm not the only one experiencing this issue, there are tons of people that have this exact behavior with their game. If you google "Cyberpunk memory leak" there are countless of posts detailing the exact issues I've showcased and explained here word for word. From Steam to Reddit and even Cyberpunk's own forums, I believe a moderator even asked people to provide more info to help investigating these memory leaks in their signature, which is why I submitted this report in the first place.

There's also even a mod made to prevent these memory leaks from happening at https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/3955.. I haven't tried it myself yet since I am reporting gameplay bugs so I don't want to invalidate my reports by using mods.

So should I submit this as a bug report to another branch of support if this is only troubleshooting? I apologize if this was the wrong place, I just thought I was supposed to submit it here since it's a performance bug and CDPR did afterall actively fix the issues related to FPS drops regarding the map and stutters when exiting certain menu and UI elements, so I hoped the issues mentioned here would get the same treatment.

I appreciate the help though.

Just like all the countless posts on Steam, Reddit, these forums and everywhere else... which describe the exact same issue word for word. Game will progressively start running worse and worse until the player reloads a save. And locations such as Jig Jig Street, Cherry Blossom Market, Megabuilding 10, Tom's Diner and the market behind it, which are the heaviest NPC areas in the game will accelerate the performance degradation... because the game has a bug which is permanently filling up the GPU and keeping it filled up, until the player fixes this by simply reloading a save.

So it's not even a system issue, it literally is a game issue solved by reloading just like every other bug in Cyberpunk is solved by a simple reload.

For the record I can maintain high FPS easily. I am on a 3080ti with Ryzen 5950x. Fully maxed out I can play at 60FPS without an issue. Without RTX I can go up to 120FPS. I provided videos showcasing various performance issues for this, such as:

In this video I am showcasing the effects after I stood in Jig Jig Street for about 20 minutes, to showcase the effects of the memory leak which is only present until the player saves and reloads. Observe the FPS in the top left and the GPU usage in the bottom left.

FPS is unstable and GPU usage is above 90%. I can't even maintain 60FPS in the Badlands and Scan Mode will stutter because of it, let alone within the city. But as soon as I save and reload, it magically solves the issue completely and I am then maintaining silky smooth 60FPS without a problem.


I also showcased that going to bed will temporarily reset the GPU usage, but it will go back up as soon as the player gets control of V. And naturally it goes away if the player saves and reloads, doesn't even have to restart the game. So it's definitely a bug within the game where something is drowning the GPU and only cleared on a save reload.

I also showed this issue with mirrors. Plenty of people mentioned that mirrors would crash their game, well I found out why. Here I did a test at the mental institution in Santo Domingo, where these mirrors do not reflect anything nor don't even work. Yet looking at them is causing insane FPS drops, even without RTX on.


So after going through all the trouble of documenting, explaining and providing feedback in hopes that they will take my report into account and properly investigate it, all I get is an apology for the inconvenience caused. Which is so strange considering they keep fixing the FPS drops and stutters with various UI elements, but for some reason not this. Which is so easily reproduced.

In any case, I will update once I get back a reply from support, but for now I am quite disappointed. Why is this issue still not fixed when so many experience it and it is so easily triggered.

- Go to Jig Jig Street and Cherry Blossom Market
- Keep going back and forth within the two for about 15-20 minutes
- Scan Mode will start stuttering every time the player enters it
- Total FPS will start dropping massively where previously the player had high FPS
- Saving and reloading will clear the GPU usage and the player will have proper high FPS performance in the same place they kept dropping FPS
 
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I personally submitted a bug report about the memory leak to CDPR in September 2022 and just got an email back January 2023. So I came into communication with support and I was in contact with support for about two weeks or so doing everything I was asked of.

Naturally as with all support cases, I went through the boring most basic troubleshooting stuff where it is implied that my PC is the issue. So I did everything they asked to not only ensure nothing on my PC is the cause of this issue, but also to show them that it's an in-game bug.

Despite submitting videos, screenshots, detailed explanations what triggers the memory leak, how it triggers, when it triggers, how to fix it and such. Today I got an email that they exhausted all possible troubleshooting ways and... apologized for the inconvenience. Disappointing is the least I can say.

So I sent a final email;



Just like all the countless posts on Steam, Reddit, these forums and everywhere else... which describe the exact same issue word for word. Game will progressively start running worse and worse until the player reloads a save. And locations such as Jig Jig Street, Cherry Blossom Market, Megabuilding 10, Tom's Diner and the market behind it, which are the heaviest NPC areas in the game will accelerate the performance degradation... because the game has a bug which is permanently filling up the GPU and keeping it filled up, until the player fixes this by simply reloading a save.

So it's not even a system issue, it literally is a game issue solved by reloading just like every other bug in Cyberpunk is solved by a simple reload.

For the record I can maintain high FPS easily. I am on a 3080ti with Ryzen 5950x. Fully maxed out I can play at 60FPS without an issue. Without RTX I can go up to 120FPS. I provided videos showcasing various performance issues for this, such as:

In this video I am showcasing the effects after I stood in Jig Jig Street for about 20 minutes, to showcase the effects of the memory leak which is only present until the player saves and reloads. Observe the FPS in the top left and the GPU usage in the bottom left.

FPS is unstable and GPU usage is above 90%. I can't even maintain 60FPS in the Badlands and Scan Mode will stutter because of it, let alone within the city. But as soon as I save and reload, it magically solves the issue completely and I am then maintaining silky smooth 60FPS without a problem.


I also showcased that going to bed will temporarily reset the GPU usage, but it will go back up as soon as the player gets control of V. And naturally it goes away if the player saves and reloads, doesn't even have to restart the game. So it's definitely a bug within the game where something is drowning the GPU and only cleared on a save reload.

I also showed this issue with mirrors. Plenty of people mentioned that mirrors would crash their game, well I found out why. Here I did a test at the mental institution in Santo Domingo, where these mirrors do not reflect anything nor don't even work. Yet looking at them is causing insane FPS drops, even without RTX on.


So after going through all the trouble of documenting, explaining and providing feedback in hopes that they will take my report into account and properly investigate it, all I get is an apology for the inconvenience caused. Which is so strange considering they keep fixing the FPS drops and stutters with various UI elements, but for some reason not this. Which is so easily reproduced.

In any case, I will update once I get back a reply from support, but for now I am quite disappointed. Why is this issue still not fixed when so many experience it and it is so easily triggered.

- Go to Jig Jig Street and Cherry Blossom Market
- Keep going back and forth within the two for about 15-20 minutes
- Scan Mode will start stuttering every time the player enters it
- Total FPS will start dropping massively where previously the player had high FPS
- Saving and reloading will clear the GPU usage and the player will have proper high FPS performance in the same place they kept dropping FPS

That's wild. It's definitely been something that's easily found to be discussed online so I'm not sure why they can't figure it out. It's so obvious every single time I play. It seems to mainly be effecting RTX cards for whatever reason I guess, as I said above I literally encountered none of this on my 1660ti with the exact same CPU. I'm hoping this very recent patch fixed something but I haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Look forward to any updates. I'd really like to get this sorted as it's ruining the game for me.
 
That's wild. It's definitely been something that's easily found to be discussed online so I'm not sure why they can't figure it out. It's so obvious every single time I play. It seems to mainly be effecting RTX cards for whatever reason I guess, as I said above I literally encountered none of this on my 1660ti with the exact same CPU. I'm hoping this very recent patch fixed something but I haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Look forward to any updates. I'd really like to get this sorted as it's ruining the game for me.
I don't know truly why they haven't fixed it yet, but it's 200% an in-game bug confirmed.

I can also confirm that it's not a PC issue, as I did one final test to prove it apart from the fact that these issues are literally solved through in-game means by simply reloading a save. GeForce Now is an Nvidia streaming service which is FREE and allows people to play any game we legitimately own, through their streaming PCs.

So I linked my Nvidia account and fired up Cyberpunk on their streaming service, which uses an Nvidia Tesla GPU and some processor I never heard of. Guess what... same in-game memory leak issue on their service. Same exact Scan Mode stutters, same exact performance degradation as every single post ever made about this.

I'm going to wait and hope that I get a reply back at least acknowledging the issue.
 
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Just wanted to update everyone suffering from these issues;

I did receive a response back;

Hi, thanks for the response. We are continuously working on optimizing the game and improving the performance. So I can assure you that we are doing our best to address this.

So there is hope that they may fix this eventually. I really hope they do, because the game is so fun and enjoyable when it runs silky smooth consistently.
 
Just wanted to update everyone suffering from these issues;

I did receive a response back;



So there is hope that they may fix this eventually. I really hope they do, because the game is so fun and enjoyable when it runs silky smooth consistently.

Thanks for the updates. Really appreciated. At least they acknowledged the issue now. Hopefully something comes of it by 1.7
 
I'm having the same issue. After playing for an hour or so the performance starts to drop. I've been getting like 8fps on my 970. I almost got crazy trying to figure out what was happening by enabling and disabling mods.

By the way, I'm having HUGE fps drops (to around 10fps) when having certain characters on screen? My PC can run the game at 25-30 with a mostly medium preset but I'm currently having this issue with Panam, Mitch and the veterans, on both the Aldecaldo camp and on the Train Station (the starting place of the Basilisk quest). May this be related to the memory leak too?

I have an i7-4770K, GTX970 slightly OC and 16GB ram. The game is installed on an HDD.
 
By the way, I'm having HUGE fps drops (to around 10fps) when having certain characters on screen? My PC can run the game at 25-30 with a mostly medium preset but I'm currently having this issue with Panam, Mitch and the veterans, on both the Aldecaldo camp and on the Train Station (the starting place of the Basilisk quest). May this be related to the memory leak too?
I don't think so.

The performance degradation over time will affect the entire performance throughout the game and follow no matter where you go, until you save and reload.

Experiencing FPS drops at specific locations is caused by something else. Most likely mods since you said you're using them and these seem to happen with specific NPCs at specific locations.
 
I don't think so.

The performance degradation over time will affect the entire performance throughout the game and follow no matter where you go, until you save and reload.

Experiencing FPS drops at specific locations is caused by something else. Most likely mods since you said you're using them and these seem to happen with specific NPCs at specific locations.
Thank you for your answer! Just tried unmodding the game and redownloading it again from GOG Galaxy and the problem still happens. I think i'll open a new thread for it since this is not related to the memory leak.
 
Hi, I came here to say that I'm also having like a memory leak or fps bug. Most common times it happens is during cutscenes and opening and existing out of menus sometimes just randomly forcing me to re-log. Hope this gets fixed soon.
 
Same issue here. The game stutters like crazy (almost like freezing) when opening the map or opening any menu for that matter. The stuttering wears off after 5 seconds or so, but it does happen 90% of the time. The menu does not stutter during the first 5-10 minutes of play however. There is also a severe fps dip after about 30-60 minutes of play, going suddenly from 85 fps average to 55. The frame pacing is erratic asf after the dip, so it’s basically unplayable and requires a restart (I play with vrr, so the stuttering is not down to simple vsync stutters).

So, the game is pure bliss the first 10 minutes, then it gets worse and worse and the engine just commits suic!de for some reason. The game actually CTDs sometimes, always during the fps dip phase.

specs are: 4070 ti, Ryzen 5600, 32 gb ram, sn850x ssd, 4K 120hz display. Settings are: Basically max rt settings with high textures, ssd mode and low npc density, performance dlss + frame gen. This is not a ‘12 gb too little vram’ issue, that’s ridiculous.

Something is SERIOUSLY wrong with the game when playing at high picture settings and it must be adressed. Ffs, half the appeal of the game are the graphics.

EDIT: Turning off rt shadows seems to fix the lag/stuttering issues. The game still ctd's though. The CTDs are now impossible to predict because the game doesn't lag before the ctd. If I remember correctly, the rt shadows were revamped in the 1.5 update, namely the rt local shadows, so perhaps that's the root of the lag issues?
 
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Same issue here. The game stutters like crazy (almost like freezing) when opening the map or opening any menu for that matter. The stuttering wears off after 5 seconds or so, but it does happen 90% of the time. The menu does not stutter during the first 5-10 minutes of play however. There is also a severe fps dip after about 30-60 minutes of play, going suddenly from 85 fps average to 55. The frame pacing is erratic asf after the dip, so it’s basically unplayable and requires a restart (I play with vrr, so the stuttering is not down to simple vsync stutters).

So, the game is pure bliss the first 10 minutes, then it gets worse and worse and the engine just commits suic!de for some reason. The game actually CTDs sometimes, always during the fps dip phase.

I recommend reporting it to Cyberpunk PC Support so that they'll hopefully get to the bottom of this. They said they're doing their best to address this, so more reports might help them do this.

Because every single person is always mentioning the exact same symptoms, so it's definitely not a system issue.
 
specs are: 4070 ti, Ryzen 5600, 32 gb ram, sn850x ssd, 4K 120hz display. Settings are: Basically max rt settings with high textures, ssd mode and low npc density, performance dlss + frame gen. This is not a ‘12 gb too little vram’ issue, that’s ridiculous.
From what I understood, frame generation on Ryzen CPU cause stutters and performance issues on both CDPR games (Cyberpunk and The Witcher 3).
 
I recommend reporting it to Cyberpunk PC Support so that they'll hopefully get to the bottom of this. They said they're doing their best to address this, so more reports might help them do this.

Because every single person is always mentioning the exact same symptoms, so it's definitely not a system issue.
The lag/freezing disappear after disabling rt shadows. See my edit.
 
It sounds like there are a few, disparate issues being discussed here (...even though they might all appear to be "performance loss" in some fashion.)

The OP sounds like it is probably a throttling issue, due either to heat or voltage being limited by a Windows power management setting. Whereas, the inconsistent performance drops followed by the FPS increasing after intervals of time is not the same thing. The lagging and freezing being corrected by disabling shadows also sounds like a completely separate issue.

I'd recommend everyone send in an official ticket to CDPR Support:
 
So guys i think i know the cause. Go to MSI Afterburner setings and change "low-level access to hardware" to kernel mode. You can read there that user mode can cause problems whith memory in some aplications. In my case now after driving around V's house in Watson there are drops like 2 or 3 frames (lock to 60) but leaving area things are back to normal. Same situation in Jig Jig streat. I hope it helps.
 
So guys i think i know the cause. Go to MSI Afterburner setings and change "low-level access to hardware" to kernel mode. You can read there that user mode can cause problems whith memory in some aplications. In my case now after driving around V's house in Watson there are drops like 2 or 3 frames (lock to 60) but leaving area things are back to normal. Same situation in Jig Jig streat. I hope it helps.
Good element to add in. Even quietly unassuming and generally very functional, 3rd-party software can create these sorts of issues. If using something like Afterburner or RTSS -- please ensure you disable it while troubleshooting.
 
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