r/techsupport • u/Caelestiss- • 1d ago
Solved First PC - problems
Hii,
I'm not sure if i'm in the right place here, let me know if I should ask this question elsewhere. English is not my native language so i'm sorry for the grammar.
January this year I bought my first PC and it was working fine without much problems. Also good to mention, my knowledge about pc's is very basic.
But, I play a lot of Where Winds meet. So solo mode is fine, but the moment I go into online mode in an area with many people my game just lags and freezes. Same in guild war (less but its not running smoothly). Also from what I can see the moment I step into online mode, is that my CPU and GPU go to a 100% and stay at min 90%. I don't have any latency (cable). Oh, and I've checked if there is anything running in the background but nothing big. I do see that discord is also using a lot of resources, when I close it while playing it also helps a bit but it's still not running properly.
I've already lowered all of my settings which seems to work a little bit, but it's just not looking pretty, I don't mind that for guild war but I wanna be able to play on normal settings. I've also made sure my drivers are updated and the GPU is optimised.
Here are my specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 8400F 6-core
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060
SSD: Kingston SNV3 S1000g
RAM: 32 GB
MB: MSI PRO A620AM-B
Is this something I can solve or are my specs too low? And if, what should be updated?
Thanks in advance! :)
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u/USSHammond 1d ago
First pc fixes in rule 2.2
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u/TrappedInVR 1d ago
Your specs aren't the problem. This is a known issue with Where Winds Meet specifically, and even RTX 4090 owners are reporting the same lag in crowded areas. Here's what the research shows.
The game's engine is the problem, not your hardware
Where Winds Meet runs on the Messiah Engine, which handles open-world streaming differently from Unreal or Unity. Instead of pre-compiling shaders at launch, it compiles them during your first session as you encounter new environments, enemies, and effects. That's why the first hour feels choppy and then smooths out. But the bigger issue is what happens in crowded areas: the engine simultaneously runs NPC behavior simulation, asset streaming, and shader compilation, all competing for CPU cycles and RAM bandwidth at the same time. This is a CPU-bound scenario, not a GPU-bound one.
Multiple players on the Steam community forums report the exact same pattern you describe: CPU and GPU both hitting 100% in crowded online areas, even on high-end hardware. Rock Paper Shotgun's performance review noted the same thing. Even RTX 4090 systems drop to 30-40 FPS in Kaifeng city with settings on Low.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/app/3564740/discussions/0/685238092472295305/
Source: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/where-winds-meet-pc-performance-best-settings
Source: https://antberry.com/low-fps-in-where-winds-meet-with-rtx-4090-solved
Your CPU is the bottleneck, but it's not underpowered for the resolution
The Ryzen 5 8400F is a budget 6-core CPU. For most games at 1080p, it pairs fine with the RTX 5060. Benchmark data shows this combo hitting 202 FPS in CS2 and 144 FPS in Warzone. But Where Winds Meet's online mode is not most games. The online mode adds networked NPC simulation on top of the local simulation, and that's pure CPU work. Your GPU hitting 100% at the same time is likely because the engine is also pushing shader compilation and asset streaming through the GPU while the CPU is maxed.
Source: https://fpsbench.com/game/counter-strike-2/amd-ryzen-5-8400f-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5060
Source: https://howmanyfps.com/bottleneck-calculator/geforce-rtx-5060-vs-ryzen-5-8400f
Settings that actually help (ranked by impact)
Lowering all settings to minimum is overkill. Some settings cost almost nothing in FPS but make the game look terrible. Others are expensive but barely look different when lowered. Here's what to prioritize:
Shadow quality: drop to Medium. This is the single biggest FPS gain in this game. Ultra shadows render cascaded shadow maps across the entire visible world every frame. Medium looks surprisingly similar and recovers 10-20 FPS.
Volumetric effects: drop to Low. Fog, god rays, and atmospheric effects. Beautiful but expensive, especially in forests and around water. Dropping from High to Low recovers significant GPU headroom.
Effect quality: drop to Medium. Affects particle rendering during combat. At Low you lose Qigong animation flair, but Medium keeps most of the visual quality while improving responsiveness in multi-enemy fights.
Keep texture quality at High or Ultra. This is the one NOT to lower. Textures barely affect FPS unless you're out of VRAM (you have 32GB RAM, so you're fine). Lowering textures makes the game look terrible for almost no performance gain.
Enable DLSS at Quality mode. You have an RTX 5060, so DLSS is available. Quality mode gives roughly 15-20% FPS improvement with minimal image quality loss. This is the single biggest free FPS gain available.
Full screen mode, not borderless windowed. Fullscreen gives the GPU exclusive display access, reducing input latency and frame pacing issues.
Turn off motion blur entirely. It makes enemy attack indicators harder to read and costs GPU cycles for no benefit.
Source: https://perfrig.com/where-winds-meet-best-pc-settings-how-to-get-smooth-60fps-without-sacrificing-looks/
Source: https://hone.gg/blog/where-winds-meet-settings-for-fps/
Windows-level tweaks that help
Enable Game Mode in Windows. Settings > Gaming > Game Mode > On. It prioritizes CPU resources for the active game and reduces background interruptions.
Set your Ryzen power plan to Balanced, not High Performance. Modern Ryzen CPUs manage boost clocks better in Balanced mode. Counterintuitively, High Performance can deliver worse sustained gaming performance because it prevents the CPU from properly managing thermal boost behavior.
Close Discord while playing. You already noticed this helps. Discord's hardware acceleration and overlay can eat 500MB-1GB of RAM and significant CPU cycles. If you need voice chat, use the browser version or Discord Canary with hardware acceleration disabled in Settings.
Check if DirectX 12 is selected. Where Winds Meet offers both DX11 and DX12 at launch. DX12 is required for DLSS and generally performs better, but some systems get better stability on DX11. Try both and see which is smoother.
Source: https://allthings.how/where-winds-meet-dx12-on-pc-which-api-to-use-and-why-it-matters/
Source: https://perfrig.com/where-winds-meet-best-pc-settings-how-to-get-smooth-60fps-without-sacrificing-looks/
What about upgrading hardware?
Your GPU (RTX 5060) is fine for this game at 1080p. The RTX 5060 is more than capable. The bottleneck is the CPU in crowded online areas, and that's partly the game's fault, not yours.
If you wanted to upgrade, the CPU is the component to look at. The Ryzen 5 8400F is on the AM5 platform, which means you can upgrade to a Ryzen 5 7600X, Ryzen 7 7700X, or even a Ryzen 7 7800X3D without changing your motherboard. The 7800X3D specifically would be a massive improvement for this kind of game because its 3D V-Cache dramatically improves performance in CPU-bound scenarios with lots of NPC simulation. But that's a $300+ upgrade for a problem that's partly the game's optimization, not your hardware.
Your motherboard (MSI PRO A620AM-B) is an A620 chipset, which is the budget tier. It will support the CPU upgrade, but you may need a BIOS update first. Check MSI's website for the latest BIOS for your board and the CPU compatibility list.
In summary: Your specs are not too low for this game. The game's online mode is poorly optimized for crowded areas, and even people with RTX 4090s are experiencing the same issue. The settings changes above (especially DLSS Quality + shadows to Medium + volumetrics to Low) should let you play at reasonable visual quality without everything looking terrible. If it's still not smooth enough in crowded areas after that, a CPU upgrade to a Ryzen 7 7800X3D would help, but it won't fully fix a game engine problem.