FPS Drop on Movement Input (5.4.4)

Development Getting Started & Setup
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Unreal Engine FPS Drop on Movement Input — Seeking Insight

Issue: In my UE5 project, pressing any movement key (WASD) causes an immediate and repeatable FPS drop—roughly halving the frame rate and doubling frame time. This happens even if the character doesn’t visibly move (e.g. tapping W), and even before any animation visibly plays. The drop is isolated to movement input only—camera rotation, crouch, roll, and other inputs do not cause it. (using forward shading msaa, but taa/tsr make no difference)

:magnifying_glass_tilted_left: What I’ve Tried

  • Blueprint Audit: Movement input is gated by a branch (Axis != 0) and uses Add Movement Input. No loops, no tick-bound logic, no excessive polling.

  • Animation Blueprint: Swapped to a minimal AnimBP. Issue persists. Even idle state shows active animation evaluation across multiple worker threads.

  • Leader Pose Component: Disabled Set Leader Pose Component syncing across multiple skeletal meshes. No change.

  • Character Movement Component Tweaks:

    • bAlwaysCheckFloor = false

    • bUseFlatBaseForFloorChecks = true No improvement.

  • Collision & Physics: Disabled physics and collision on mesh and capsule. Still drops.

  • Profiling Results:

    • stat game shows high World Tick Time (~48ms) when movement input is pressed.

    • stat anim and thread profiling show constant animation evaluation—even when idle.

      Any help or other ways to debug would be appreciated

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Update, built game, using overlay to monitor fps + frametime.
doesnt half and doesnt effect msec. =/

must be a artifact of the built in showfps details (when you move)

???