I've just reinstalled Windows 10 as part of trying to troubleshoot some performance issues. This issue was hardware related, and has now been resolved.

Prior to fixing the issue, only about 10 days ago, I was getting solid performance in Pillars 2. Easily around the 60 FPS mark.

Since reinstalling Windows 10 and reinstalling pillars, my FPS is sitting in the 10-15 FPS range. Even on the lowest settings, I only gain about 5 FPS.]

I'm running the latest Nvidia drivers (the latest drivers for everything really).

I think you should provide more information about your hardware, the hardware related issue you had and how you solved it.
The OS reinstall alone doesn't justify the performance drop you are experiencing.

PC is a Dell Inspiron 7577 laptop:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz
16.0 GB RAM
Intel HD Graphics 630 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q

The issue was dust in the CPU fans and it needed a thermal repaste. Since doing so, all thermal throttling has stopped and my core temperatures are well and truly down to reasonable temps again. I did a Windows 10 reset also because I wanted a fresh start.

One of the games I was having thermal throttling issues with before the reset was Diablo 2 (the remaster). That runs fine now, on pretty high settings. Prior to the reset, my frames in PoE2: Deadfire were a solid 60+ FPS, apart from when I started getting FPS drops from throttling. Now, FPS is 10-15 FPS and when I loaded a save in a city location, my FPS was probably in the 3-8 range.

I have tried:
- Validating game files -> no improvement
- Moving the installation to the laptop SSD rather than the HDD -> no improvement
- Updating all drivers -> no improvement

Another thing I did notice... I had Task Manager open while playing to monitor CPU/RAM/GPU utilisation. Utilisation was consistently below about 30-50%. I would expect that utilisation would be much higher than that....

As you can see in the screenshots below:

CPU and GPU utilisation is very low, and RAM about 50% overall.


Using the Nvidia overlay, I'm getting 2 FPS in Tikawara, with wattage only 24 watts and GPU voltage 0.7 Volt

Very strange indeed. Are you experiencing the same issue in games other than "Pillars of Eternity 2"?

I suggest you to open the NVIDIA Control Panel and try setting the power management mode to "Maximum Performance".
If the problem persists, the PSU might not be transmitting enough power to the GPU, hence the issue might be there.

Yea this has actually blown out a fair bit more than I thought...

So I get perfect performance in Diablo 2 Resurrected. But in Deadfire, Ghostrunner, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, even Unreal Tournament (1999), I'm getting FPS < 10.

I randomly played Ghostrunner using the DirectX 12 executable rather than the default (which I assume is DX11) and it runs perfectly.

It looks like any game using DirectX < 12 doesn't work properly.