Why does sRGB cause frame rate drops in games?

Everything runs normally on the desktop, and the game behaves reasonably well as long as there is no input; however, the moment I move the mouse, the frame rate—especially the 1% low FPS—drops drastically.

Do you use the Macros feature in SignalRGB with any mouse button bindings? If so, that’s very likely it, macros with mouse input install a system-level hook that intercepts every mouse event before your game gets it, which shows up exactly as those 1% low spikes when moving the mouse.

Try disabling mouse-bound macros (or hit Ctrl+Shift+Delete to disable all macros) and test again. Let me know if that clears it up.

Sounds less like sRGB itself and more like something hooking your mouse input. SignalRGB polls devices constantly, so if it’s grabbing your mouse it can tank 1% lows the moment you move.

No, I checked the settings and it wasn’t enabled. I confirmed that sRGB is the cause because the game runs perfectly fine once I exit the software.

During normal gameplay, GPU usage is stable at 99%. However, after enabling sRGB, while the character is stationary things are fine, but moving the mouse causes GPU usage to drop sharply, accompanied by a rapid drop in low-end frame rates.

It must have suddenly appeared after an automatic update; at the very least, I am certain that this issue didn’t exist at all when I installed it last June.

Can you check a couple of things:

  1. In the Lighting section, what effect do you currently have selected? If it’s Screen Ambience, that’s very likely it. Try a different effect if that makes any changes.
  2. In Settings, under Macros, is anything listed there at all, even something that looks disabled? Keyboard macros specifically (not just mouse ones) can also add a small hit under the right conditions.
  3. Are you running the game in exclusive fullscreen, or borderless/windowed mode?