Metro last light low fps with r9 290

I had that issue, but I came back later after disabling Physx and it worked fine. Look up Physx drivers and double check the Physx settings in the Nvidia control panel.

 

I have (or probably had, since I've got a new graphics card since then) the same issue with the DLCs for some reason. The graphics card I had, and everything else in my PC, should've been good enough for it. I could play LL and 2033 very well, but not the DLCs for some reason.

You said it's on 40-50 Fps but suddenly jump down to 10. Could it be possible your PC lacks a sufficient cooling system, so it goes too hot? I have/had that problem with Arma3. I could play Multiplayer for a couple hours or three, and then eventually I just started lagging more and more until I crashed over and over again. Turning off my PC for about an hour and letting in some cool air through the window helped

 

>.< :facepalm: Right.

Well so obviously first, double check that Advanced Physx is disabled. I remember it being under a different tab than Video Settings, so some people can miss it.

And this is probably not the issue, but if you do have SSAA enabled, I would probably disable it (it's a resource hog for a mild picture improvement).

Then if that doesn't fix it, it would be nice to know if it's your CPU or GPU causing problems. So, two quick things:

Open task manager (I figure you probably know how to do this), and leave it running in the background. Should look like this.

Then, I would download a GPU monitoring/tweaking program (though we're only using it for the monitoring); most video card manufacturers make their own version with their name slapped on it; some of the most popular ones include MSI Afterburner and EVGA Precision; these are both free and should be 100% safe to download and use, just don't start clicking and randomly changing number values or something. Look for the performance tab (here's what MSI Afterburner's might look like), and leave it running alongside task manager. Play the game, get to a section where it chugs, and quit out, take screenshots of the task manager and GPU monitoring program (especially looking for the "GPU Usage, %" tab).

This should tell us if it's an issue with your video card, or your CPU causing the low framerate.

 

...Well, I have no damn clue then. You're running this on Windows, right? And no issues with RAM?

 

Tessellation is a feature that dynamically increases the polygon count of a model (all of the little 2d shapes that make up the larger 3d shape) by subdividing existing polygons, and it usually takes advantage of this by shaping those extra polygons based off of textures, through a process called "bump mapping" and/or "displacement mapping" (LL uses displacement, I believe). The subdividing process typically scales up and down based on the distance to an object, meaning that it's normally not a huge performance hit since it only tessellates objects close enough to notice.

TL : DR it makes stuff up close super detailed in a cost-efficient way.

My lower-powered Nvidia card only gets a 20-30% framerate hit with this feature maxed out vs. off, typically. I know that there was a time where Nvidia supported it much better and pressured developers into using lots of tessellation to make games run better on their hardware, but AMD has since stepped up their game to the point where it shouldn't be relevant anymore. A 290 should be more than enough to max out this game at 1080p with no issues. If it's not PhysX being annoying or some kind of unknown bottleneck with your rig, then I haven't the slightest clue what it actually is. Glad you at least got it playable.