Performance Issues on High-End PC

Hi GGG,

I'm experiencing massive performance issues in POE this league (3.23) and have tried loads of different things in order to mitigate the issues.

My rig:
CPU: Intel i9-13900K 3GHz
GPU: ASUS ROG RTX4090
RAM: 64 GByte
OS: Windows 11 Pro
HDD: WD_Black SN850X NVMe SSD
Internet: Connected via LAN, 250 MBit down / 50 up
Playing from Europe

Issues:
Playing high-density maps feels "clumsy" like walking through knee-high mud. I am experiencing massive input-lag when there's just a bit going on like during a Harbinger event, Altar-Mobs spawn, etc.
The FPS rate is stable at 120 FPS, so is the latency, though I've noticed that "Shader" is spiking.
Even when I'm in my hideout, moving around with Shield Charge feels laggy and clumsy.
The problem doesn't seem to be related to certain skills.

I am not experiencing any such issues in any other games - Cyberpunk on Ultra with highest settings is running like a charm.

What I've tried:

- Played around with all graphics settings, including fps limiting, renderer, etc. with no effect.
- Disabled all MTX.
- Completely removed POE and installed it from scratch.
- Changed networking mode.
- Deleted all cache and shader files.
- Moved the shader folder to my POE folder.
- Made sure that the energy profile of my rig is on "Performance" in Windows.
- Switched servers - ideal would be Frankfurt though since this league, the server is unplayable for me (Deutsche Telekom is my ISP). I've tried Milan and Paris mainly.

Current game settings:
(again, I've played around with them all)
- Windowed Fullscreen (tried fullscreen as well)
- Resolution is 2560x1440 (native, also having the same issues with 800x600)
- DX12
- Tripple Buffering Enabled
- No FPS cap (tried with capping it to 120 as I'm using a 120Hz screen)
- Antialiasing Quality: off
- Lightning: Shadows
- Shadow quality: Low
- Number of lights: Low
- DoF: Disabled
- Water: Low
- Texture: Medium
- Filtering: 2x
- Dynamic Culling: Disabled
- Dynamic Resolution: Enabled
- Engine Multithreading: Enabled

Screenshot of the graph in-game:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fm3kswhd4wy0nbpms33n2/Screenshot-2023-12-23-235540.png?rlkey=995r5cwa9zwaw0mxqt2y8wyb3&dl=0

Please help - it just feels so bad for me right now to play even mediocre juiced maps and enjoying the game.

Everyone is having issues, be it from the low-end specs to the higher end. Some of us in the mid-tier can't even run the game at the moment, and some get crashes before they even load up an area of an Act. And none of us know why.

Have same problem with rtx 3070 and 12700k. Whatever i change in settings does not matter.

I have input lag, desync and stuttering in sanctum, where you basically have toilet-size rooms with 10-15 enemies max. Its the worst state of the game.

"

GimmeZeLoot wrote:

I have input lag, desync and stuttering in sanctum, where you basically have toilet-size rooms with 10-15 enemies max. Its the worst state of the game.

Agreed. People can't even run the game, or risk their PCs crashing if they do. Worst state it's been in by far.

Same here intel core i913980HX + RTX4080, 32gb RAM, 7000Mbps SSD, 100Mb internet, 30-50ms ping.

144 fps cap. But feels laggy every other second or so.

Graphics settings does not make any better. It's like not stutters, but a constant internet connection lags. IDK...

The same problem, the system is stable and not overloaded. FPS is locked to 120 and does not drop, the Internet is fine, but the game is slow, as if it does not have time to load locations, but in the same location, after slowing down, it can suddenly speed up as if it had finished loading.
I did everything I could, from checking the Internet to pre-installing Windows, the shaders folder and all possible solutions to the problems, but it didn’t help.
Moreover, sometimes this problem does not exist and the game works stably, but after a couple of hours of play the same thing happens. At these moments the computer rebooted and checked the Internet, but it did not help, it continued to lag. The next day it’s the same, you play for a couple of hours and it starts to freeze. I thought it was cache, but clearing it doesn't help.

I have the same issue.
Path of exile installed on a very fast SSD, I9 (dont remember number) high end cou and a 4070 TI GPU.
I am running high density maps with a headhunter, and I can end up with as low as 3 fps when fighting.
I have all settings on low and using DX12 (changed from 11 to check performance).

Not possible to go lower om settings than i have. I even switched to a worse monitor and changed from 4k to 1440x1200 something in in resolution without any help. Ended up with as low as 7-10 fps with resolution lowered. Makes no sense at all. I do not want to play on that resolution. I even trued lowest res without any better results. Yes headhunter svreen flickering and artifacts got less of a problem on lower resolution, but the fps is still crap.

"

DarkenX wrote:

Everyone is having issues, be it from the low-end specs to the higher end. Some of us in the mid-tier can't even run the game at the moment, and some get crashes before they even load up an area of an Act. And none of us know why.

I think we all know why.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3406424

PoE 2 particle system engine patch. This patch has destroyed performance for many players or made it much worse / much more intensive on your hardware. Before this patch, PoE was running much better. Not to mention that shaders now are being downloaded constantly, which didn't seem to be happening before.

"

Henry_GGG wrote:

Hey all, just wanted to say we're not ignoring the problems that are mentioned here.
We've been working non-stop ever since 3.21.2 was deployed to improve things.

I have replied to this post in the past: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3407216
And was reading replies as they were made. But this thread slipped by, so I'll check here as well.

We added these threads to help gather more information from reports about performance: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3425526
It's also helpful if people add videos with their F1 graphs open showing the performance metrics.

With that being said, we apologise for the frustration these problems have been causing you. We also suffer from the same problems when we get home after work and play PoE, hopefully our work will show better results for you all in the near future.

Henry admitted himself that they also suffer from same problems, yet after that darned particle patch there was little improvements made, and it's like what, 3 months have passed or more.

This is the link to the thread where he said that:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3411543/page/26

This is some poor excuses from ggg as always, when something is definitely broken. We've been working non-stop since 3.21.2, but guess what, nothing changed and performance is still garbage dogshit dumpster crap. Lies to players, nothing new. Bald dude did it too many times already.

Now dont forget their regular excuses about "skeleton" team 1-2ppl working on poe1, because everyone is busy with poe2(and we are beta-testing this particle nonsense already), and everything makes sense now. Only thing i believe they work hard is MTX non-stop produce, thats for sure. They have spare time to edit/delete/removeBySupport posts on the forum, but no time to fix the game/help the players.