Hi guys,

I've verified with 2 other friends in my network using Houdini Indie from Steam, but since around the introduction of the Vulkan renderer (timeline wise, not directly related), when Discord is opened at the same time, Houdini would drop to sub 20fps rates from 60+. The moment Discord is fully closed from the systray the frame rate instantly is restored.

I've tested with a 3 of our clients a mixture of the following with no improvements:
1) Disabling overlays in Discord
2) Changing hardware acceleration for windows
3) Swapping between vulcan and openGL for Houdini
4) Rolling back different versions of NVIDIA drivers, and upgrading to various latest game ready versions. Others tested with studio drivers as well with similar results.

These are all on Windows 11 machines with latest updates >= 64GB RAM, >= RTX3090, AMD Ryzen 8core+ (a bunch on 9950x3D) but also happens on laptops running 4070.

In older versions this wasn't really an issue. Our currently work around is to open discord in chrome/edge, or inside my custom electron app and there are no slow downs. It's specifically happening with Desktop Discord.

My current hunch still is that the clients are fighting for the overlay layer where the HUD is being run on for Discord, but I don't have any other more definitive metrics.

If anyone has suggestions on other things to try or can validate it on your end as well, please let me know.

Thanks!

Nice one