Max Frame Rate setting on NVIDIA GPUs causes variable FPS reduction in Studio

Bug Reports Roblox Application and Website Bugs
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When opening any project while the NVIDIA Control Panel has the Max Frame Rate option set to any value other than OFF, you get a significant performance decrease that changes depending on the Target FPS you set Max Frame Rate to.

If you want to replicate this issue:

    1. Install the Latest NVIDIA Graphics Driver
    1. Open NVIDIA Control Panel, then click on Manage 3D Settings
    1. Configure the Max Frame Rate setting to 120 FPS (or a framerate that is visible with your monitors refresh rate, all seem impacted)
    1. Open Roblox Studio, check Dashboard animations and scrolling FPS
    1. Open a Project and check FPS (Ctrl + Shift + F5 on Windows, or Fn + Shift + F5 on MacOS)

120 FPS

This is the Max Frame Rate setting I use across all my installed games.

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Result within Roblox Studio:
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75 FPS

This maximum value shows that when the Max Frame Rate is set to a lower target FPS, Roblox Studio reduces FPS even further.

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Result within Roblox Studio:
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This issue does not occur on any other application that has VSYNC turned off. What is also interesting is that when the Graphics Mode is set to Vulkan this issue is not present. Roblox Studio’s Direct3D11 implementation isn’t working correctly when a Max Frame Rate setting at the driver level is configured.

This issue was documented in another post made just a month back from now, however that user claimed turning off the Max Frame Rate didn’t resolve their issue (which it does in my case), and I experience this problem both within Edit Mode and Play Test modes however that user implied it only happened within Edit Mode. I noticed the responsiveness of the Roblox Studio Dashboard is also affected by this issue where animations and scrolling are noticeably more choppy depending on the Max Frame Rate set by the Driver, however I don’t have a solid way of measuring it’s framerate. You’ll have to eye-ball that part of the issue.

System Specifications

  • ASUS P9X79 Motherboard (X79 Platform)
  • Intel Core i7 3930K @ 4.2GHz (OC)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB - Driver Version 576.40
    (168MHz+ Core Offset, running in PCIe 3.0 x16)
  • 64 GB G-Skill DDR3 @ 1600MHz (XMP)

Expected behavior

I expect when I open a project with the Max Frame Rate option set to any value within the NVIDIA Control Panel, that Roblox Studio will respect that value as the maximum allowed FPS when not using any form of VSYNC at the driver level.

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I was unable to reproduce the bug using this configuration. The issue did not occur on a system with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090.

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I did a clean restore of drivers and opened Studio and the FPS problem was resolved, however it appeared again after restoring the Max Frame Rate setting to 120 FPS (or any FPS for that matter). It seems to be scaling off some sort of dividing, but I do not have a lead as to how. Could it possibly be an architecture problem?

I just find it strange as I’ve been using Roblox Studio for months with this exact configuration and it stopped giving me good performance. I recall switching to Vulkan for the longest time but I had to stop as textures were becoming compressed and would fail to load in the full resolution texture under specific circumstances. Visuals in some cases were also slightly inaccurate to the Direct3D11 counterpart.

Also also, this issue does not happen when using the Roblox Client itself. If it were something driver level, I feel as if the Roblox Player client would be suffering a similar issue, but it doesn’t.

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