Game freezes on loading screen

Any news?
nvidia 4060
5700x3d
Tried everything, nothing works

Before Necro Settlers works fine
Same problem for me: Random deadfreezes on loadingscreens between locations or to town after opening game, cpu loading fly up to 100% from 50-70% normal usage(even if only poe launched too!) on all loading screens...
Pc Spec:
Xeon e3 1275 v1 (with vurtalization and turboboost turned on)
Nvidia p106-100 (render, chosen in game and all setup right, because works fine with many other games)
Msi Hd 7870 (video output)
16gb ram (problem repeats too if im adding my all ram left 4gbx2 to system, total 24gb)
250gb SATA3 SDD (System and PoE)
1tb SATA3 SSD (other games and stuff storage)
Win 10 Pro 22H2 19045.4894

Actually tried some launch options and after added: --noasync --nopreload to shortcut its instantly let me in in town after many tries w/o options, will update info after couple hours or next day...

Update 1: Launch options did nothing, it was just a random... Tried to rollback my drivers to 546.01(cuz for p106-100 hard to find modded drivers for any nvidia drivers ver). Will update later

Update 2: Drivers downgrade actually helps, game start to be more stable, and for last 3 acts i completed(wasted on it around 3hrs) never gets the same problem! Im think you should try to downgrade your drivers to one was released before march 2024...

yeah im on 24h2 also. rolled back nvidia drivers. It did not work. The game was perfectly fine before necro settlers. Can you guys please provide us with any info the game is literally unplayable rn.

So I rolled back my nvidia drivers to version 561.09, and I think it works now. I didn't freeze in about 6 hours of play time. But I also thought the BIOS update fixed it, and it froze after 4 hours, so I'm just going to pray that it's fixed now.

I'm going to edit this again if I freeze.

Edit:

I FUCKING CAN'T! I made this post after 6 hours of playing without issues, watched a few Youtube videos, logged back in, and instantly froze.

At this point, the game is just gaslighting me.

Reporting similar issues here on my new build. I'll provide sufficient details for people to figure out if they're really having the same issue.

Specs:
Ryzen 9800X3D
Asrock Taichi x870e, latest BIOS 3.10
64GB G.Skill TridenZ Neo 6000CL30, disabling EXPO = same behaviour
Windows 11 24H2 on a Samsung 990 Pro, PoE also on this disk, so other disks are irrelevant
Latest AMD chipset drivers installed 6.10.17.152
RTX 3090, latest drivers 566.03
Corsair AX1600i PSU

Storage, GPU, PSU transported from previous build - these are known-good components.

Behaviour:
I've only done stress testing with Cinebench and played PoE Necro Settlers so far.
The issue has only ever happened during zone transitions to town in PoE. Happened 4 times so far.

CPU temp spikes from ~50 to 90 instantly on zone loads, then drops off to 60 as cooling kicks in. Might be a red herring. It's not a cooling issue since sustained all core stress testing has the CPU maxing out at 79 degrees.

When the issue occurs, zone load causes game, video on second monitor and mouse movement to stutter, audio sometimes loops. After a few seconds usually everything locks completely, unable to move the mouse, etc. Once I could continue to move my mouse cursor in a choppy fashion, but absolutely nothing else is responsive. There's no option to do anything except shut down the PC by holding down the power button.

Same behaviour on DX12 & Vulkan. Won't try DX11 as performance is atrocious on DX11.

Steps performed so far:

Not a temperature issue:
- CPU temperatures are stable on all-core load, maxing at 79 degrees
- GPU temperature never exceeds 75 during stress testing
- Case temperatures are fine - SSDs at 35, motherboard components at 45

Not an EXPO issue:
- Same behaviour with RAM running stock clocks/timings

(Probably) Not a CPU issue:
- Multiple Cinebench runs complete without any issues

(Almost definitely) Not a GPU hardware issue:
- GPU's the same as in my old build, has been fine since 2020
- Multiple Cinebench GPU stress tests complete without any issues

(Almost definitely) Not a storage issue:
- Same SSD as in my old build
- No SMART errors

(Almost definitely) Not a PSU issue:
- Same PSU as in my old build, no reason to suspect it now

Next steps:

Easy - Wait:
- Issue appears to be combination of latest nvidia drivers and windows 11 24h2
- Can't rollback to 23h2 due to this being a new install. Can't clean install because only 24h2 media is available (thanks Microsoft)
- Can't be arsed to DDU to rollback GPU drivers to older version since there's mixed
reports on that even helping at all

Hard/Annoying:
- Hunt for 23H2 ISO somewhere
- Clean install W11 23H2
- Install older GPU drivers

Easy - Validate memory & motherboard DIMM sockets:
- Run both sticks of memory separately in each DIMM slot and attempt to repro issue
- run memtest
- If failed: Hard/expensive:
- Buy new set of DDR 5 memory
- Try to repro the issue
- If can't repro: RMA RAM

Hard/Expensive - Validate CPU:
- Buy another AM5 ryzen
- Try to repro the issue
- If can't repro, RMA 9800X3D

Hard/Expensive - Validate motherboard:
- Buy another AM5 motherboard
- Try to repro the issue
- If can't repro, RMA Taichi


Edit: Been playing pretty much all day since making this post. No issues yet today. Haven't changed anything. #Magic.

I am experiencing exactly the same issue since necro settlers, with a GeForce RTX 3070. This is not a Ryzen-exclusive problem, unfortunately.

Tried clean reinstalling in a different disk, worked for a while, then started freezing on the first loading screen after character selection again.

Same here, game locks up on loading screens. Happened 10-15 times now. I got level 50 for the box and I'm stopping until it's fixed.

This has been happening since the insider preview of Windows 11 24H2 in July/August. I think it even happens on 23H2 if you have the performance patch (KB5041587) applied but I could be wrong on that.

Kinda wild that this still hasn't been fixed since 24H2 came out officially on October 1st. The way this game hard freezes your entire computer due to this bug is pretty rough. Haven't found a single other game that does this on 24H2, maybe a crash to desktop at most.

Disabling Engine Multithreading fixes it for now but that also cuts your performance to an unplayable level.

Yes, guess the only way is to disable Engine Multithreading. But i enable it on a map, then disable before i about to use teleport. Pretty scuffed but it works.

"

MAGEFISTtv wrote:

Yes, guess the only way is to disable Engine Multithreading. But i enable it on a map, then disable before i about to use teleport. Pretty scuffed but it works.

Ah, that's clever.

Definitely seems to be some strange threading issue seeing as disabling Engine Multithreading fixes it. I just tried disabling SMT (Hyperthreading) on my 5800X3D and it changed the behaviour of the freeze slightly. Windows still locks up but your cursor will be silky smooth instead. Gonna try disabling some cores on the PathOfExile.exe process (CPU 0 and CPU 1) and see if that maybe gives Windows some headroom to recover or perhaps even eliminate the freeze entirely with.