Extreme framerate issues on PC

#1 Edited by Strangestories (109 posts) -

I recently bought Saints Row: The Third for like $10. The problem is, the framerate drops from 50-60 indoors to 30 outside and an awful 10-15 while driving. This is on a pretty powerful gaming laptop I bought about six months ago. Changing the graphics settings from maximum (what the game recommended) to even the lowest didn't do anything. I did a little looking around and found that there's a massive thread on the Volition boards that started right after the game's launch with people who all have the same problem. People are still posting in it, too. It seems that SR3 has issues with a lot of AMD graphics cards (which my laptop has) and a few Nvidia cards. A Volition employee eventually responded saying that they were working on a fix for it with AMD. Close to two years later and that fix still hasn't been released. The funniest part is that AMD is advertised when you start the game up.

Driving in SR3 is a large part of the game so having to do it at 10-15 frames makes it sort of unplayable. Reading through some of the thread I mentioned made me feel really bad for people who paid full price for the game. Heck, I felt cheated paying $10 for something I only got 30 minutes out of.

#2 Edited by believer258 (11565 posts) -

I have played SR3 on two different AMD cards and experienced no problems.

Are you playing in DirectX 10 and 11? And I know you said "powerful gaming laptop", but post your specs. Last time I heard that, it was just a "decent" gaming laptop. In this case, however, you have said that it's the same issue no matter the settings so I don't think it's a weak card or processor.

#3 Edited by Strangestories (109 posts) -


Switching between DX11 and DX10 did nothing either.

Laptop was around $1200

GPU is an AMD Radeon HD 7970M

CPU is just an AMD A10-4600M (basically the laptop has a very good graphics card for a sort of mediocre CPU to keep the price down)


Windows 8

This laptop ran Skyrim and Metro 2033 at max settings for some sort of reference. That includes AA as well.

#4 Edited by believer258 (11565 posts) -

@strangestories: Uh... most modern very high-end PC's have some issues running Metro 2033 at max.

Regardless, your machine shouldn't be having issues running this game. Are you certain that your drivers are up to date? Also, many gaming laptops use the integrated graphics until you start a game, and sometimes it doesn't switch to the graphics card. Make sure it's using the 7970M and not the onboard chip.

I'm on my laptop and not my PC so I can't check SR3's options menu, but can you try turning the graphics quality to High, NOT Ultra, and turn shadows off. See what happens. It's just a guess, by the way. I'm also looking around the internet and thinking that maybe this Enduro thing is, or was, an issue. It's a graphics-switching technology for laptops that use AMD cards, from what I understand.

EDIT: Apparently Enduro has caused issues for people in the past. Games wouldn't utilize the entire GPU, only about half of it, and it isn't something you can easily disable. I don't know if it's still an issue but you might want to look into it further.

#5 Edited by Strangestories (109 posts) -


I said my laptop runs Metro 2033 perfectly at max settings. Not sure I get your first sentence. It was just a reference to what types of games I can run maxed out compared to SR3. If a lot of high-end rigs have trouble running it then maybe I'm lucky? I mean, I booted it up just a few days ago and it ran/looked pretty dang good.

Yeah I've tried all your suggestions. Every game I play I'll start up, then exit immediately so I can switch to the high-performance setting. You can tell when the 7970 is the one being used because it sounds like a jet engine. I updated drivers, rolled them back. I messed with every setting combination. My graphics switcher is called AMD Catalyst Control Center. Not sure if that's Enduro or not.

I guess the main point of my post is that Volition released a game that's sort of broken for quite a number of people, acknowledged the issue, promised a patch that would fix it, then never released it. When I last checked the thread at Volition, it had reached a couple hundred pages and new posts had been made within a couple of days still hoping a patch would be released.

#6 Edited by Dalerax (45 posts) -

I have similar issues. It's the first game that's been causing noticeable issues for me. Now, I don't have a recent PC, but typically I can play games on medium to high with little to no framerate issues. Bioshock Infinite was fine, Tomb Raider handled decently in most areas and even Sleeping Dogs runs better on high graphic settings than Saints Row does for me on the lowest settings. I have no idea why but it's seriously making me consider buying the Saints Row IV for the 360 instead of getting it for PC like I usually do (not in a position to upgrade my PC at this time).

#7 Edited by Strangestories (109 posts) -

@believer258 said:


If it's not easily disabled then I'm not going to bother. I'll try playing the game on my PC which shouldn't even hold a candle to my laptop. It has a fairly old Nvidia card but it might work if I play on medium or low.

Thanks for the help, though!

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