I just bought the game on Steam and its pretty great.

However, is anyone else having issues with playing it? such as, it works perfectly on Ultra settings for a 10 - 15 minutes or so then pretty severe frame rate issues begin rendering the game not unplayable but very annoying. Putting the graphics settings down doesn't affect the problem at all.

I am not too knowledgable about computers so any help would be much appreciated it.

I am going to copy my system information from steam to let you know what I am running it on.

I am running it on:

Processor Information:

Vendor: GenuineIntel

Speed: 3192 Mhz

8 logical processors

4 physical processors

HyperThreading: Supported

FCMOV: Supported

SSE2: Supported

SSE3: Supported

SSSE3: Supported

SSE4a: Unsupported

SSE41: Supported

SSE42: Supported

Operating System Version:

Windows 7 (64 bit)

NTFS: Supported

Crypto Provider Codes: Supported 311 0x0 0x0 0x0

Video Card: Driver: AMD Radeon HD 7970M

with AMD crossfire X on.

DirectX Driver Name: aticfx32.dll

Driver Version: 12.104.0.0

DirectX Driver Version: 8.17.10.1191

Driver Date: 28 Mar 2013

Desktop Color Depth: 32 bits per pixel

Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz

DirectX Card: AMD Radeon HD 7970M

VendorID: 0x1002

DeviceID: 0x6800

Number of Monitors: 1

Number of Logical Video Cards: 1

Crossfire Detected (2 GPUs)

Primary Display Resolution: 1920 x 1080

Desktop Resolution: 1920 x 1080

Primary Display Size: 26.65" x 15.00" (30.55" diag) 67.7cm x 38.1cm (77.6cm diag)

Primary Bus Type Not Detected

Primary VRAM: -2048 MB

Supported MSAA Modes: 2x 4x 8x

Sound card: Audio device: Speakers (Sound Blaster Recon3D

Memory: RAM: 32718 Mb

waaaah information overload!

For future reference, your fine just posting the gfx cards name and number, in this case AMD Radeon HD 7970M.

And the processor usually has a number to identify such as an intel 2700 or 3770 etc. Which in that huge dump of information is the only thing i can't actually see. I'm sure someone here might be able to identify it in that mess of information.

Those are generally the only two things that you need to list in order to judge how it should perform. Oh and also RAM.

I'm guessing that there might be a specific post processing or lighting effect that your card may be struggling with, try and identify when it starts to chug what is displayed on the screen at the time. For instance their might be a graphically intensive lighting or fire effect for example that when you look at it your framerate will start to drop.

I'm not familiar with the graphical options in this game, but it might be worth trying to isolate what is draining performance by turning down effects one by one. Depending on the graphics card, and specifically with laptops, often you can run everything fine on high settings - but it might struggle with one particular graphics option which might even need to be low such as specific types of shading etc.

Options that commonly drain performance are Anti aliasing, post processing and shadows/lighting.

Otherwise some games require high amounts of VRAM for detailed textures.

Is it possible your rig is overheating? Does it feel particularly warm and are you seeing any artifacting or flashing? It's possible it's running fine for the first few minutes until it starts to overheat.

Edit - The first thing you should do is install the latest graphic card drivers if they are not already up to date.

I forgot to mention the game also crashes a lot

Definitely check to make sure it isn't overheating then because it's possible you are frying your card by overheating it.

Also go here and download this.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst13-8WINBetaDriver.aspx

@rowr: thank you for the response.

I am not sure if it is overheating as the computer is almost always warm when I am playing something.... it doesn't feel any warmer when I play this, if that helps at all...?

also, I have installed the latest drivers and the link you sent me when downloaded, doesn't install properly so I assume it either can't install on my computer or I already have it... or my computer is messed up.

I frequently use this program offered on the AMD website that automatically checks for updates and downloads them for me.

other than that, do you think the issue is crossfire related? I have been reading some things saying that you should turn that off in some cases. I am not playing anything on dual monitors, only on one.

finally, should I just wait for a patch in the coming couple of days/weeks. I assume it can also be the game's fault and not mine.

thanks again for your help.

@katygaga: You might want to head over to the official support forums https://support.ubi.com/ and check there. As far as I know there are not any wide spread crashing issues on PC.

I can confirm major crashing issues on my end - and I'm running a high-end desktop with the drivers fully updated.

@crysack: I just turned off v-sync and it seems to be running much better now. I'll post more here if something goes awry again.

are you having the same issues? where the game runs fine for a while when all the settings are on ultra, and then after a few minutes the fps drops leading to potential crashes?

@crysack: @katygaga: Did you guys install the update for the game? If you got the game through UPlay, you have to download and install it manually, and from what I saw of the patch notes, it fixes a lot of crash bugs. I would figure that steam would auto update, but I know there has been issues between steam and uplay in the past.

@raethen: yeah, I have the update. Got it through steam

I'm getting no fps drops at all except occasionally as a level is loading in. I'll just get random crashes out of nowhere. It's kind of infuriating really.

The problem is the lack of Ironside.

@rowr: {Says... waaaah information overload!} oh man i cant stop laughing, I thought i was never going to stop scrolling!!. KatyGaGa As for this post i would say definitely try and disabling crossfire and see if that helps, A lot of problems can happen through sli if a certain game is not optimised properly for it. if you are not sure what temps you are getting i would recommend downloading HWMonitor its a small program and quick to dl.

BTW what is the game like so far,what you have played .

@cloudnineboya: thanks for the information, I'll definitely try that dl you recommended and turning off crossfire.

the game is pretty amazing so far, and this is coming from a person who doesn't like Splinter Cell games, so take that for what you will.

Driver updated? March 28th is a pretty decent amount of time between driver updates

I got the beta Nvidia driver and running on ultra at a solid 60fps. No crashing however in multilayer it locks up for a while when the host migrates. Everything else runs fine.

Evga gtx 760 sc

I5 4670k oc'd to 4.2ghz

8gb ram

Give this a read too http://deviatedhacking.com/index.php/topic/1918-splinter-cell-blacklist-blacklist-dx11-gameexe-has-stopped-working-error/

I had the same problem and changing the settings helped. It still crashes but after a good time into the game. I hope they fix this soon.

Your laptop may be overheating and under clocking itself to prevent damage. I have an i7 and dual GeForce 660's in SLI and the game runs like a dream for me maxed out in 1080p.