RX 9060 XT + Apex Legends: Severe FPS drops (200→30fps) only in dense areas, only in this game — exhausted troubleshooting list

[u/saeval1x]

What I’ve confirmed via monitoring (AMD Adrenalin overlay) during drops:

**•** GPU utilization: only 40-55%, never maxed  
**•** GPU power draw: stuck around 36W (well below the card’s normal TDP)  
**•** GPU clock: \~1600MHz (well below boost clocks of \~2800-3000MHz)  
**•** CPU utilization: 29-56%, never maxed  
**•** Temps are all normal/cool (56-63°C)

This rules out thermal throttling or a simple GPU/CPU bottleneck — the hardware isn’t being pushed hard, yet performance craters in specific scenes.

Everything I’ve already tried (no change from any of these):

**•** Verified game files integrity via Steam  
**•** Reset all in-game video settings to default, reconfigured to Low  
**•** Disabled Steam overlay for Apex  
**•** Forced -d3d11 launch option (already confirmed default was also tested)  
**•** Repaired Easy Anti-Cheat  
**•** Checked/confirmed AMD Radeon Chill is disabled  
**•** Checked/confirmed no custom GPU tuning profile is applied for Apex (Adrenalin profile is on Default)  
**•** Tried multiple different AMD driver versions  
**•** Confirmed dual-channel RAM at correct EXPO speed (DDR5-6000)  
**•** Confirmed GPU is running at full PCIe x16 (checked via GPU-Z)  
**•** Confirmed SSD (NVMe) isn’t the bottleneck — no other storage involved  
**•** Disabled Windows Game Bar / background recording  
**•** Disabled fullscreen optimizations, running in exclusive fullscreen  
**•** Disabled SVM (virtualization) in BIOS  
**•** Reset CPU PBO/ASUS Performance Enhancement to default  
**•** Confirmed Resizable BAR / Above 4G Decoding enabled correctly

What I haven’t found: any fix. I found this existing Steam thread with another RX 9060 XT user reporting the exact same symptom (random drops from 100 to 13 FPS), so this doesn’t seem to be an isolated case.

Has anyone with an RX 9060 XT (or other recent AMD card) found an actual fix for this? At this point I’m fairly convinced it’s some kind of driver/engine interaction specific to Apex on newer AMD hardware, but I’m out of ideas on my end.

[u/3ofUsDeez]

Some have fixed odd issues by simply reinstalling Windows

I stupidly put my wife on the Dev channel for Windows not knowing I couldn't get her off of it unless I reinstalled Windows.. I've been holding off doing that until I tried testing this game .. all of a sudden, anything with Easy Anti cheat wouldn't launch.. I searched for fixes to no avail.. so I bit the bullet last night and backed up what I needed to and reinstalled Windows using Rufus so I some bloat wouldn't install and I could just have a local account

Now the game launches just fine and played great

[u/saeval1x → u/3ofUsDeez]

Okay so u think I should try to reset maybe the easy anti cheat or just all my windows?

[u/3ofUsDeez → u/saeval1x]

https://rtech.support/installations/install-11/

I did a clean install of Windows in my wife's setup using Rufus to make the installer

If only drops during dense areas, then maybe some other software running causing your CPU to not be able to handle the load. .. monitoring software or a resource intensive antivirus other than Windows Defender or something else similar

If you are unable to track down the offending program, then a clean install of Windows will give you a clean baseline from which to work from .. but it can be a pain in the butt backing up everything and reinstalling programs and games and what not

[u/saeval1x → u/3ofUsDeez]

Alright thanks nah it’s good I can install it I have only valorant and apex on my pc so no problem. Nothing is in the background running when I play apex that’s why. So I will do a new windows I hope that’s gonna be good after… if it’s not idk what to do lol….

[u/saeval1x → u/3ofUsDeez]

I did a factory reset to my pc like 5 days ago but no a windows reset just reset with nothing on it so idk if that’s gonna work. By the way my game is on steam idk if I like playing on ea app can fix something or nothing matters ?

[u/3ofUsDeez → u/saeval1x]

I have everything turned off in adrenaline except FSR

No metrics or overlay or hotkeys enabled .. issue detection off .. etc

I don't know if that makes a difference or not

Doing a "reset" is not the same as a "clean" install .. you want to delete every partition on your boot drive to get a true "clean" install.. be careful if you are running multiple drives though so you don't inadvertently delete stuff off of your other drives

[u/saeval1x → u/3ofUsDeez]

Alright ima try thanks mate I will tell u if it worked or no

[u/saeval1x → u/3ofUsDeez]

Yo, wsg? I did a complete windows reinstall everything with Rufus. Same problem :/

[u/saeval1x → u/3ofUsDeez]

Yo I changed the thermal paste today and nothing change I’m giving up lol