Fix for engine multithreading lag/stutter on intel chip

So let me preface this by saying this is the weirdest fix for a problem I've ever discovered. It's possibly already covered in the forums somewhere but when I first had the problem I searched EVERYWHERE on the internet trying to figure out why this game I used to love runs like garbage now. All I could find were other people (a LOT of other people ) having the same stuttering issues. I even found a couple youtube videos people bothered to make displaying the problem, but no comments other than " same problem here " .. " I'm having the same issue " etc.. so I'm making this post here. FEEL FREE TO MOVE THIS TO TECHNICAL SUPPORT MODS BUT I BELIEVE MORE PEOPLE WILL SEE IT HERE.

Apparently as you probably already know, engine multithreading has been bugged for a few patches and causes your CPU on the f1 graph to spike up and down continuously. Some thought this was due to the asyncronous loading feature but I tried every fix for that and it didn't work either. The end result for some systems is that the game just sucks to play. It stutters constantly even at the loading screen. (you can sit at login and just watch the flames in the torches stutter with absolutely zero gameplay going on)

Here's the fix:

Start up youtube and pick a 10hour or so video. I use "living room spaceship"

Turn the volume down and minimize.

This will sort of start to fix the problem but apparently you need to occupy more cores for the fix to work so the second thing I do is fire up a small chess program called "real chess " that I think is a free download. Just start it up and minimize the window.

Then launch PoE. That's it. That's the fix. If at ANY time I close either of these running processes in the background my CPU will start to spike from 1-50-100-32-40-100-23-46 and the problem will start again.

I am not a tech guy to this extent but it appears that if PoE is the only running process your cores will not sync up properly and just trip over eachother constantly. Running a couple non-CPU intensive programs in the background under PoE seems to do something that causes the cores to sync back up.

Maybe on stronger systems you would need to run more programs in the background. This is just what worked for me. You can probbaly use other programs in the background (minesweeper whatever.. )

Also if anyone wants to chime in on why this fix works that would be great.

Hope it helps someone. I was ready to quit this game until PoE2 hoping they fix it by then but I just randomly tried a shot in the dark solution based on a theory I don't really understand and it worked so there you go.

15 years ago I played RF Online and one of big updates made game lag.
Fix was to launch video in some mediaplayer.
Explanation: it's done to activate high-performance mode, coz apparently game is too light (i guess) and is not considered as an app for high performance. I do not remember was that cpu or gpu related, was that powerstates of cores or activation of "3d mode" on GPU, but it was definitely something around this.

I would recommend to use local files if it works, to avoid network loading.
On the other hand browsers nowadays has hardware acceleration so it's might be "stronger" than player :D Although neither of it helps me so idk.

There is a fix from a guy(-RshR-) on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/t1d01u/performance_guide_secrets_of_stuttering_how_i/.

I tried it out and it works.

cstates disabled in powerplan:
cstates enabled in powerplan:

Tried PoE on latest Fedora Linux

CPU: 4790k
GPU: GTX 1080
RAM: 16GB

"

xinator wrote:

There is a fix from a guy(-RshR-) on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/t1d01u/performance_guide_secrets_of_stuttering_how_i/.

I tried it out and it works.

cstates disabled in powerplan:
cstates enabled in powerplan:

Tried PoE on latest Fedora Linux

CPU: 4790k
GPU: GTX 1080
RAM: 16GB

This worked for me too

CPU 4790k
GPU GTX 1070
RAM 16gb

According to that thread, the problem can start at different times based on what attempts GGG is making in their code, but so many people got hit with this on 3.21.2 that it seems like more than a coincidence.

Maybe some amazing algorithm can figure out the chance of CStateBug trigger, but my performance dropped like a rock leagues ago without spikes in anything, and just assumed this was the second in a 1-2 punch.

I would like to note that using ALT+TAB is even more important with this powerplan solution than reducing VGA stress with background FPS limit on at minimum is, so it has to become habit when AFKing for ANY reason. Do we hope there's an in-game solution for this any time soon?

"

xinator wrote:

There is a fix from a guy(-RshR-) on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/t1d01u/performance_guide_secrets_of_stuttering_how_i/.

I tried it out and it works.

cstates disabled in powerplan:
cstates enabled in powerplan:

Tried PoE on latest Fedora Linux

CPU: 4790k
GPU: GTX 1080
RAM: 16GB

I tried it too on ryzen proc (didn't try it on intel yet) and ryzen goes berserk.

Insane heating and all of the CPU's run at 100% utilisation.

Be careful with this one, I advise to have some software which shows temp/util. or at least task manager open before you disable c-states to monitor your CPU.

My problem is Crashing and freezing for 15seconds etc, i don't haveing too much problems with stuttering, this solution can not fix the crashes and freezing i haveing, sad, i already unninstalled the game for good, GGG can not give us a real solution, and crashing every 5minutes of playing is unplayable for me atleast is the end of PoE, sad because i haveing a blast with my RF JUGG, and now i'am prohibited to play, tryied every solution and none fix the cosntant freezing followed by a CTD.

i7 7700k 4.2GHz
GTX 1080 ROG STRIX ADVANCED GAMING 8GB
32GB RAM DDR4
SSD SANSUMG EVO850 250GB
WIN10 PRO

I'm a techie with 30 years experience. There is no way I will be adjusting how my CPU cores function for one single game. How will this affect everything else? We don't know and I'm not wasting time trying to find out.

There is a GGG solution to this for sure. So let's go GGG!!??

"

greatwhitepine wrote:

I'm a techie with 30 years experience. There is no way I will be adjusting how my CPU cores function for one single game. How will this affect everything else? We don't know and I'm not wasting time trying to find out.

There is a GGG solution to this for sure. So let's go GGG!!??

yep, not letting my cpu going to deep sleep could seriously hurt my energy bill :)

I too cannot completely disable processor idle.
So, in order to keep my CPU cores in S-0 state as much as necessary:

- Disabled all but S-1 state in BIOS.
--- Might not be necessary. Later generations can transition to S-0 quicker.

- Applied the following power settings to the Ultimate Performance power plan:
--- Enabled core parking with minimum cores set to 50%.
--- Disabled Turbo boost by setting Processor performance boost policy to 0%.

PoE performance is now better than pre-3.21.2 patch. Windows 10 and Apps perform better too.

GGG's game loop is too efficient for my old i7-4770 Haswell. What are you all going to do with that extra head-room? :)

Finally, this is really a hardware vendor issue. Am I overlooking where all the Intel Power Plans are at? It was fun finally learning how to build custom power plans but I'm trying to level here.

Peace and a good day to all.

Specs:
Intel Core i7 4770 - Haswell
Asus Z97-A Mobo
16 GB DDR3
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM
NVIDIA Driver Version 536.67
FPS Limited to 60 in PoE