Sudden FPS drop in games

[TS-56336]

What causes a game to drop its frame rate and suddenly hangs? I usually experience this when I play League of Legends, where I get a stable 60 FPS cap but when more graphic details kick in it drops for like between 20-30 FPS.

I always update my graphic drivers and use a good graphics setting that suits me. Anything?

 

[dscales]

Whenever your graphics processing unit is receiving massive amounts of visual data into itself it generally has to stop and "think" and process all that is being handed off to it. With more high end cards, you wouldn't really notice the lag, however with a normal / standard gpu that came with the computer, most times, people work around this by lowering the graphics setting in game to very low quality, thus improving the smoothness of the gameplay.

 

[Relic]

As dscales points out, the more information that needs to be processed the more your graphics card needs to work and in turn can degrade your performance in the process (lower fps). If you're standing around in game by yourself against the edge of a map you may have real high FPS, but that number is irrelevant if you can't have playable frames when 4-5 people are right next to you on screen performing some action (spells, graphical effects, etc.). Your best bet is lowering your settings and finding a good balance that gets you playable frame rates, or you can invest in an upgrade.