Something is terribly wrong with Shaders since 3.27

CPU: i7-4790
GPU: 1050 2GB
16GB RAM
SSD for cache and PoE. 10GB Nvidia cache.

DX12.

I know my PC is pretty old, but it was more than playable pre-3.27. I don't remember my FPS ever dropping below 30-40. But since 3.27 launch, it's been nearly unplayable. I can play for 5-10 minutes, and then suddenly the textures become blurry, my "DRIVE" graph shows 400-500 MB/S, and my FPS drops from a stable 60 to 10-20.

Funnily enough, I can trigger this bug by opening the inventory, Genesis Tree, or alt-tabbing. It seems the game tries to load low-res textures, but then fails when loading regular textures again. Sometimes this goes away after a minute or two, but then happens again.

And my "Shaders" graph is almost constantly at maximum. This never happened before.

I tried DX11. There is no such problem there, but my FPS is 30-40 at best, and most often it drops to 20-25.

Yep, my specs are pretty much the same as yours. Game was fine at 60 fps in 3.26, then this patch bricked everything. Shaders constantly re-load things when they should have loaded already. Even in a 0 monsters remaining map if I go out and in again it loads shaders again. Even in my own hideout it loads them every time.

Something is seriously wrong with the coding of how the game does Shaders. It was not doing this before this patch. This needs to be looked at because the game is unplayable for so many people, and the constant full shader bar is also probably making loading screens take way longer.

Hi did you tried this one?

Windows -> System -> Display -> Graphics -> Custom
check if PoE is listed if not add the .EXE and set to High Performance.

It was the only solution for me


hope it helps

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indrox#0829 wrote:

Hi did you tried this one?

Windows -> System -> Display -> Graphics -> Custom
check if PoE is listed if not add the .EXE and set to High Performance.

It was the only solution for me


hope it helps

Nope. Not the slightest change.

This game is 12 years old now, and while they have certainly made upgrades to it, there's no excuse for performance like this.

I can run way "heavier" games on this pc with extremely fast loading times. It's wild that they allowed it to get to this state. POE1 should not have these crazy loading times.

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jovack#1283 wrote:

This game is 12 years old now, and while they have certainly made upgrades to it, there's no excuse for performance like this.

I can run way "heavier" games on this pc with extremely fast loading times. It's wild that they allowed it to get to this state. POE1 should not have these crazy loading times.

Agree! I can run "Overwatch 2" 100-120+ fps, but somehow PoE1 doesn't want to work properly. DX11? Lags. Vulkan? Artifacts. DX 12? Destroys my SSD.

I have the same GPU as you, similar spec too, and used to run this game just fine at 60 fps before the supposed "optimization" patch in 3.25
They killed the game performance for old hardware, they rely on their players having high-end PCs now, because they forgot how the game engine works, it's absurd a 2013 game runs like this

I have a 4070 TI super with a Ryen 9 3900xt and I have high drive and random high cpu issues for a few leagues now. Same with poe 2. Only game two games I have a problem in.

bump

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Deonix_#0855 wrote:

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jovack#1283 wrote:

This game is 12 years old now, and while they have certainly made upgrades to it, there's no excuse for performance like this.

I can run way "heavier" games on this pc with extremely fast loading times. It's wild that they allowed it to get to this state. POE1 should not have these crazy loading times.

Agree! I can run "Overwatch 2" 100-120+ fps, but somehow PoE1 doesn't want to work properly. DX11? Lags. Vulkan? Artifacts. DX 12? Destroys my SSD.

Overwatch 2 is made to run on potato PCs. Recommended specs are low-end i5 and i7, and GTX 1060/1650. Those are low budget tier components. Not remotely the same thing.

PoE supports up to 16 logical processors, aka. threads, and is very CPU heavy. A better CPU carries you much farther. It can actually fully utilize my 9800X3D. Even so, with the right build, it will still be bottlenecked by a 9800X3D in 4k. Ask me how I know.

Your PC is not only kind of ancient, it's also way below low budget tier. A GTX 1060 6GB, the current king of low budget tier on the used market, not accounting for the lack of driver support in the future, is twice as fast as your GPU. The ~€100 i5-12400F is almost 3x as fast as your current CPU. It's not hard to make a strong budget PC with second hand parts.

PoE is constantly evolving, and thus hardware requirements become more demanding. You can complain that your toaster PC isn't up to par and blame the game for it, or you can invest a little on the low end and get something more longer lasting. That is, assuming you can spare like $200 to spend on PC parts. As it stands, the GTX 10-series reached end of life support as of October 2025, but the 16-series, i.e. 1650/1660 Super, will continue to receive support. Windows 10 support will also cease with October 2026.

I'd say it's beyond time you upgraded your PC. You can't reasonably expect the devs to continue to develop for potato tier PCs. You can get a 1650 Super pretty cheap these days, though better alternatives exist, i.e. the Intel Arc series that is great value for money and fits right into your budget tier. Upgrading to Intel LGA 1700 socket and something like an i5-12400F should cost you around €100 in second hand parts (based on my local used market, but in the US parts are always cheaper). You can go Ryzen if you want to, but that CPU in particular is great value and Intel is less desired now, so prices have dropped. Plays well with PoE, too (I once owned one).