Operating System: Windows 10
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-8700K Processor (6x 3.70GHz/12MB L3 Cache)
Motherboard: MSI MAG Z390 TOMAHAWK
RAM: XPG 16 GB [8 GB x2] DDR4-3200
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 - 8GB GDDR6 (VR-Ready)
120GB WD Green SSD (7 Days Install Location)
Playing on 2560x1440 resolution - will give more detail on settings after explaining the general issue.
So I was running the game fine for the first in game week, didn't think much of low frames as it was a co-op game on a friends P2P host. On the second horde I noticed a drastic change in frames ( I mean as low as 5-10 frames) at the time I was running a custom set of settings between High and Ultra, reducing the intensity of shadows, grass, and objects. I've played at least 100-200 hours on Alpha 20, this hadn't happened before and usually I am the host this was a rare occasion that I didn't. Normally my frames were steady around 30-60 range at any given time while hosting.
I've noticed a distinct difference between resources used by my machine since this problem has started which is only within the last 2-3 weeks. I've not seen my GPU use more than 30% on its average with occasional spikes to 40% for less than a second. CPU seems to only be clocking 20-30% as well, also only reading out a maximum of 2.20GHz averaging 1.20-1.80GHz, and the GPU seems to only be using around 3GB of its available memory. The only thing that seems to actually being used properly is the RAM at around 60-80% on average.
As a preface, Windows is up to date, and so are my Nvidia Drivers even did a clean install of the Nvidia Driver. I've uninstalled all mods, reinstalled 7days to die, and deleted the mod folder in the 7days directory. I've double checked my friends Window & Nvidia control panel settings on a similar but not quite identical system (Slightly better CPU, GPU, and RAM I believe); this friend is the host and his game is running fine with the same settings. I've also tried turning off frame rate savers, such as AA, V-sync, reflected shadows, Sun Shafts, ect. I've even lowered the Texture size to Quarter. However, I still seem to have a top out frame rate of 40 -50 (it does go higher in some best case scenarios but excluding that as outlier). As soon as I rejoin the MP server the frames cap at about 45 even just standing in front of the base doing absolutely nothing with not zombies around. Just at a general loss for why it seems like my PC is suddenly refusing to pump the proper resources towards the game.
Edit: My friend's resources for CPU/GPU are clocking 20% or double mine so I feel like this area is the definitive problem.
I think that is the best I can describe my issue and the circumstances at this moment, I can try to elaborate on specific questions if they might help me find a solution. Hoping someone might be able to help me figure out the issue here. I believe the issue started after 20.6 patch but not sure if that has anything to do with the problem.