False Minimum Hardware Requirements

According the Steam page the game requires at least an GRAPHICS: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960 (3GB), Intel® Arc™ A380, or ATI Radeon™ RX 470 (ADDITIONAL NOTES: A GPU with at least 3GB of VRAM is required).
I've tested PoE2 with an RX 580 with 4Gb VRAM.
Act 1 is mostly fine. Very little issues, an occasional stutter.
Act 2 way more lags, stutters and additionally screen freezes
Act 3 Pretty much unplayable. Especially when opening an Abyss or with higher mob density.
Constant game freezes, stutters and lags. GPU constantly out of VRAM and it's 4Gb VRAM. Your minimum requirement on Steam Store Page says 3 Gb VRAM. That is a completly false statement and should get fixed asap. Fortunately i have another PC on which i can run it fine but that doesn't change that the stated requirements of 3 Gb VRAM is misleading. Seriously. I have absolutely no clue how you come up with these minimum requirements. An RX 580 with 4Gb VRAM may not be much better than a RX 470 but still has more capacity. If THAT are your minimum requirements how do you expect people to be able to play PoE2? A minimum requirement should not mean having a picture show where everything teleports around and you die while the screen is frozen.
Please update your minimum requirements. An RX 470 is completly unable to handle act 2 and higher.

When i press F1 and see all the stats it shows me 2.1 VRAM used.

The game is way more CPU hungry than GPU hungry, and running the minimum requirements means you are signing up for performance issues, just like running the recommended specs does not magically unlock flawless gameplay.

Those are just recommendations to get the game running, not a legally binding promise of smooth frames.

POE1 has been broken performance wise for many players since mercenaries patch (3.2.6) launched. Since this patch (I think) many players (myself including) have massive "shader cache" resource consumption near the start of every area, even ones that we have already visited in the same play session. This means constant regeneration of shader assets in the same play session leading to bloated shader cache folders on the order of dozens of GIGABYTES.

The in-game resource graph for "shader" shows constant spiking with windows resource monitors (e.g. librehardwaremonitor) showing constant huge CPU consumption (fans sound like a jet engine revving up) and temperatures relative to GPU consumption and temperatures.

This is not even an acknowledged issue for the devs for many months now and it's affecting a huge amount of POE1 players regardless of hardware setup, drivers, windows optimization, etc.

The performance of this patch is absolute abysmal. You probably couldnt have picked a worse patch to try this out.

Games never stop loading assets, shaders never filling, game stops rendering entirely, mechanics that pop up on maps instantly pixelating the entire game.

It's a mess.

"

mnieradko#6070 wrote:

POE1 has been broken performance wise for many players since mercenaries patch (3.2.6) launched. Since this patch (I think) many players (myself including) have massive "shader cache" resource consumption near the start of every area, even ones that we have already visited in the same play session. This means constant regeneration of shader assets in the same play session leading to bloated shader cache folders on the order of dozens of GIGABYTES.

The in-game resource graph for "shader" shows constant spiking with windows resource monitors (e.g. librehardwaremonitor) showing constant huge CPU consumption (fans sound like a jet engine revving up) and temperatures relative to GPU consumption and temperatures.

This is not even an acknowledged issue for the devs for many months now and it's affecting a huge amount of POE1 players regardless of hardware setup, drivers, windows optimization, etc.

Yep, hope its addressed in 3.28.

"

Toforto#2372 wrote:

Yep, hope its addressed in 3.28.

They cannot meaningfully address or fix an issue caused by your hardware limitations, and in the OP’s case, where the system is even more constrained.
Perhaps this Christmas is a good time to treat yourself to a new setup, it’s about time.

"

VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

"

Toforto#2372 wrote:

Yep, hope its addressed in 3.28.

They cannot meaningfully address or fix an issue caused by your hardware limitations, and in the OP’s case, where the system is even more constrained.
Perhaps this Christmas is a good time to treat yourself to a new setup, it’s about time.

Sure, if someone gifts me a new PC for free. I'd love that.

My dude I just said it has nothing to do with hardware constraints. I "treated myself" to a new PC setup this fall after waiting 10 years to ugprade. Lots of internal cooling, good compatibility of components,good build from reputable local company, etc. It's not near "cutting edge" but for a 2013 isometric game with "incremental" graphical upgrades it should be more than fine. My POE1 graphical settings now probably amount to an average that is slightly below "medium".

I then did a bunch of jumping through hoops with both windows 10 and NVIDIA optimization before installing and launching POE1.

I start a toxic sewers map with these settings, in which there are no monsters present, no delirium fog, no league mechanics on my screen, and immediately my shader cache meter explode while I alt-tab to my second monitor and right click "properties" on the ever expanding shader cache folders. Through this time, probably a minute total, my CPU temp is at 70-80 C and my computer case sounds like it's going to take off and fly through my window. No I'm not running 10 tab of google chrome or whatever if that's your suspicion.

I finish said map, go to my hideout, launch another toxic sewers and repeat the same process again in the same play session.

And then there are people with much better systems than me and they have the same issue regardless of drivers, optimization, in-game settings, etc.

"Hardware constraints" all of a sudden happen to a MASSIVE amount of players from one patch to another in the same game? Nope

The game already had horrifically bad optimization BEFORE this mercenaries issue shader issue started, but for many players now the game is near unplayable, especially if you value the longevity of your CPU, GPU, RAM, SSD, etc.

"

mnieradko#6070 wrote:

My dude I just said it has nothing to do with hardware constraints. I "treated myself" to a new PC setup this fall after waiting 10 years to ugprade. Lots of internal cooling, good compatibility of components,good build from reputable local company, etc. It's not near "cutting edge" but for a 2013 isometric game with "incremental" graphical upgrades it should be more than fine. My POE1 graphical settings now probably amount to an average that is slightly below "medium".

I then did a bunch of jumping through hoops with both windows 10 and NVIDIA optimization before installing and launching POE1.

I start a toxic sewers map with these settings, in which there are no monsters present, no delirium fog, no league mechanics on my screen, and immediately my shader cache meter explode while I alt-tab to my second monitor and right click "properties" on the ever expanding shader cache folders. Through this time, probably a minute total, my CPU temp is at 70-80 C and my computer case sounds like it's going to take off and fly through my window. No I'm not running 10 tab of google chrome or whatever if that's your suspicion.

I finish said map, go to my hideout, launch another toxic sewers and repeat the same process again in the same play session.

And then there are people with much better systems than me and they have the same issue regardless of drivers, optimization, in-game settings, etc.

"Hardware constraints" all of a sudden happen to a MASSIVE amount of players from one patch to another in the same game? Nope

Yep exactly this. Shaders are just broken, the game keeps re-loading them every map acting as if its the first time you're seeing all the mechanics/effects/monsters. Its just broken right now for people with all kinds of PC setups from low-end to NASA Supercomputers. Its just bricked.