I have not played PS2 for quite some time and decided to give it a shot again. Last I played was before the burst rifle update. I used to have 60+ FPS in 90% of gameplay situations, which is not all that great, but hey, at least it felt like 60 FPS. I played with all graphics on low/off, particles untouched, 1920x1080, 75% render quality, no smoothing or VSync and 1200 render distance. I was mostly CPU-locked before update.

Fast forward to today, post-update and my FPS tanked horribly to the point it constantly dips below 40-50 in VR freaking training on a nearly-empty server. When I stand staring at a wall I get around 70 FPS. The moment I start moving it drops to 50-60 and when I make any sharp turns/run around the map it constantly dips below 40-50. The worst thing is, I lowered my settings(particle and render distances. No effect. Not only that but even when frames are above 60 it doesn't actually feel like it Also, post-update I'm GPU-locked. The only way I can have a semi-playable game is 50% render quality 1366x768, but that introduces other issues, such as target acquisition and wanting to claw out my own eyes. I also tried disabling CPU core 0 and setting priority to high. They give a marginal FPS boost but the issue still persists.

What am I doing wrong and how can I improve FPS? My rig(yes, it is a laptop, but I had no performance issues pre-update) is I7 3630QM 2.4GHZ, 8 RAM, and GTX680M with 2 gigs of VRAM. The game is run off a HDD, the operating system is Windows 8.1 with the latest updates and drivers installed. All NVidia control panel settings are configured for max performance and yes, the card is used while playing, I double checked it.

I really love this videogame, despite all the numerous issues, but I can't, since the only way i can have it playable is if it looks like this.

Please send help.