huge FPS Drops 1.11.0.16 | Foundation City Builder | Page 1

harsh helm Mar 19, 2026, 6:56 PM

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im running foundation on a 7800x3d and a RTX 4080super
64 gigs of Ram @ 6000mhz
Kingston SSD x 3 1tb each
Nvidia drivers are studio 595.79
Windows updates are all current.

What happens is I play foundation and its fine up to a point, and then FPS drops off a cliff, and it persists on exiting the game, but wierdly when I load up another game, my computer recovers and fps increases, like its no longer choppy.

anything that can record anything is disabled. no steam overlay or windows overlay.

and my cpu gpu never hit high temps, or my memory doesn't fill.

i don't know whats going on. i assume my gpu is running out of ram because its being filled up but not cleared out? I don't know.

snow ingot Mar 19, 2026, 8:41 PM

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Hi Kupoe,

My first thought would be thermal throttling either of the PC or the CPU, this would continue after closing the game and could be reset by starting a new game up.

You say that temps are fine, but worth checking. Thermal throttling would show in the Windows event viewer for the CPU, not sure about GPU though. You can always get free monitoring software like HWiNFO which can show clearer signs of thermal throttling.

2nd thought:

Faulty GPU drivers. Foundation uses OpenGL, which most others games do not. Starting a new game would reset the shader cache.

Use a 3rd party uninstaller (such as DDU) to remove drivers and reinstall (or reinstall using the clean install option).
I would suggest doing this anyway as a troubleshooting step.

Other potential issues:

Overclocking or undervolting GPU. More so the overclocking but undervolting can also cause stability issues.
running on old BIOS which can be a particular issues with the X3D series. There has been a known AMD issue with BIOS and X3D systems. RAM stability was an issue that should have been fixed by AMD with more recent BIOS updates.
They also fixed some voltage issues.
3rd party software. I've seen issues being casued by software such as MSI centre, ASUS ROG armoury crate, Sonic audio, Steelseries recorder amongst others. These are issues affecting a bunch of games and can cause instability running in the background.
Windows recorder - I have seen similar issues to what you are describing with the Windows Capture settings. Some of the people it affected told me it was switched off but after checking found it on. Switching it off fixed the issue.
You can find the setting by typing "Captures settings" in the Windows search bar then looking for "Record what happened"

harsh helm Mar 19, 2026, 8:50 PM

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yeah. I turned off everything. like everything. no captures overlays, or anything really. I don't have armory crate, and my bios is current.

what im seeing is that this fps drop is related to error collection?

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like it seems memory management regarding mod files is not clearly defined. so models are being loaded but not cleared from vram, so vram is loaded up with garbage.

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reading the error logs im seeing this error, where something is null and not defined.

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I've cleared out all the mods and just went with vanilla, so far its doing ok?

but its definitly related to nvidia and gpu memory cache.

as i can play a different game and the fps issues affecting my whole system (the slowdown persists past log out) disappear, but once i reopen foundation, it starts to lag immediately.

snow ingot Mar 19, 2026, 8:56 PM

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can you drop the log files here or via DM please?
There are generally a lot of "normal" errors in the log files. But if you are using mods then for sure, there may be issues. The log files will help.

I would also recommend reading my previous comment and doing some troubleshooting steps. The issue you are posting can be covered by other causes and I have been caught out on wild goose chases before when the fix had already been suggested in my first post. Writing from pained experience sadly.

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you have probably already seen them but the modding.log and foundation.log files would be useful to take a look at.

harsh helm Mar 19, 2026, 8:57 PM

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like right now, its fine. but lemme see if that log didnt delete itself

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brb

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that was the last time I loaded it where it went right into a chopfest.

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so i exited game, loaded the beta version (like swapped version)

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then deleted all the mods inside the beta, then back to current version

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and now its... running fine? i didnt load that many mods though. tried it vanilla, it didnt lag, added a bit more, it seems to be ok.

snow ingot Mar 19, 2026, 9:01 PM

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Alright. if (and probably when) the issue shows again can you send over the modding.log file. I'll ask one of the team to take a closer look.

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Before you cleaned up the mods had you downloaded any manually from mod.io? as well as downloading via the game?

harsh helm Mar 19, 2026, 9:02 PM

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umm. long time ago i downloaded it manually from mod.io. it instantly bricked everything when I loaded the game

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i deleted everything, and went back to vanilla. was doing ok after I did that.

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then i added new mods and after that it just stopped working. im thinking one of the mods itself is either messed or, nvidia is doing something wierd with its memory.

snow ingot Mar 19, 2026, 9:04 PM

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Oh! Haha! I was going to say I saw a comment recently about this (hadn't followed up yet) but I think it was you on Steam 😆

harsh helm Mar 19, 2026, 9:04 PM

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because my cpu and like cpu memory is only at 5% and 15%? yet my fps drops off a cliff and goes to 6fps.

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but my gpu cores are only at 10%

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yeah that was me. wasnt too sure if you guys read the steam place.

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so i joined discord.

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I play CS2. reporting bugs on steam feels like screaming into the void... heh -_- ;;

snow ingot Mar 19, 2026, 9:06 PM

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We do read Steam, I answer where I can but it's hard to do any support through Steam forums. It's much easier here or via email as we inevitably need to grab files.

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Alright, I gotta log off it's very late here.

Can you send me a dxdiag report please? I'll have a scan through in case there are any obvious issues showing.

Fire over a modding log if you get the choppiness reoccur.

harsh helm Mar 19, 2026, 9:08 PM

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yep.

snow ingot Mar 20, 2026, 11:48 AM

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I had a look at your dxdiag report, thanks for sending it over. You have a bunch of P1: 141 - LiveKernalEvent errors in the report. These errors are hardware errors and GPU related. Usually timeout errors (TDR).

It suggests your GPU is unstable, which could be drivers, overclocking, power supply, BIOS issues or thermal issues.
Possilby other causes too.

Your BIOS is 1.A21 which is from October 2024. There has been 13 BIOS updates since. Some of those updates are for the X3D CPU, RAM optimisation, PCIe compatability and a lot of AGESA updates.

One of the BIOS updates mentions updating the chipset drivers too (Improved gaming performance).

It wouldn't be the first time I have sen issues with an old BIOS so this is something I would strongly consider looking at.

harsh helm Mar 21, 2026, 5:21 PM

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yeah. its just this game that does it

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from what I can tell, it has to do with how the game is engaging the gpu? like when I load up a game before I play foundation, it seems to work just fine all day.

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if I play foundation from startup, i get that chopfest.

harsh helm Mar 21, 2026, 5:40 PM

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like.. even if I do other things, like watch videos etc, if I don't play an actual game, foundation collapses. i wonder if the engine isnt loading gpu drivers correctly? like its checking but not.. sending a command to load.

snow ingot Mar 23, 2026, 4:03 PM

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The game calls the OpenGL API via Windows. OpenGL communicates with your GPU, the game itself doesn't load gpu drivers. I would need to confirm the start up sequence but it should be loading shaders on game initialisation. If there was a wider issue with that startup sequence, it would be affecting all Nvidia users.

The issue is almost certainly localised to your PC and it could be a shader caching issue. If you have a lot of startup programs and you start the game quickly after Windows loads then it is possible that shaders don't get loaded into memory correctly. I don't think that is the issue here but it's very hard to diagnose without having hands on.

You do have an AMD iGPU in your system too. You could update those drivers (clean install) too, just in case there is a conflict with the drivers. Both will have OpenGL components. Again, it's a long shot but worth troubleshooting.

Make sure everything is up to date. As mentioned in my previous post, check chipset drivers and any other motherboard drivers. Update Windows if there are updates.

Sadly there is little else to suggest as the issue is local to your PC. Windows Event Viewer might give you more information. You can look in the Windows logs -> System, which records errors and warnings. There will likely be something there around the time that this happens and might shed some light on it.

harsh helm Mar 24, 2026, 8:39 AM

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i think it might be that opengl isnt playing nice with nvidia drivers and an internal gpu

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i turned off shadows, and I haven't had a crash yet

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what ive noticed is that it seems to crash when autosave kicks in.

#huge FPS Drops 1.11.0.16