Game Optimisation and Misleading Player Complaints
" This addition is great! I noticed you mentioned it's an SSD, I'm guessing you have one that's quite fast. 0% usage may lead someone to think there's something wrong in the data fetching process, but it actually points more to what I mentioned in my original posting. PoE2 streams assets as you play, which is why you see your disk activity increase and decrease as you go If you're in a loading screen and your disk usage is at zero, there can be various reasons for this: - The data may already be cached in RAM, say you're revisiting an area and the assets are preloaded into memory, it won't need to read from the disk again - You're at the decompression phase of the load, which means your GPU/CPU takes over to prepare the assets - SUPER FAST STORAGE SPEED, the data can be loading in bursts so quickly that usage drops to zero in between - Instance generation phase, you'll see your network load increase during this as NPCs, the hideout, and loot tables (Like the shops and stuff) are all generated Likely, since it seems to be your hideout loading in here, it'd be case #1 and generally speaking normal behaviour for a load screen! |
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" hello :) i would still not recommend doing manual deletions. Regarding to poe2vs poe1 its the same engine and they have been testing the shaders on poe1 for years b4 poe2 public. the amount of dead shaders is negligible- again i have been running unlimited sonce day 1, so while technically it will grow it has no practical impact. i would even say its 'healthier' for the user to do this since you wont be doing unnecessary writes on your drive. if we do care about 'health' that much lol |
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Except you used to be able to set video settings lower, make graphics as low as you wanted via config, but GGG locked minimum values to medium or higher for most video settings.
That wasn't a fluke or mistake, that was done deliberately, in attempt to make the game look good on video footage so that nobody can present their game as looking old i guess ?. 100% a pr move, ignoring the demand for high fps that most players have. After 13 years playing poe i would rather reduce visuals and all graphics settings to have butter smooth 200 fps and no clutter on screen than see all those explosions at staggering 10fps during a clusterf'ck fight in the middle of a map. What GGG seem to not understand is that majority of us don't play poe because of graphics, but because of the gameplay. Giving us an ability to remove all the fancy graphics and make the game look like runescape, that would be a huge W, not a downside. Last edited by Rod#7054 on Sep 2, 2025, 10:45:06 PM
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" Like, how expensive are we talking here? Here's me clearing a relatively "busy" Abyss in the jungle and I'm pretty sure my FPS drops below 100 only once. https://youtu.be/sbx-hCWBGU8 |
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" I guess I have to also post a quick screenshot of minimum settings because what are you talking about? I'll almost never drop below 220 FPS at these settings... https://i.imgur.com/x6Q9EDC.jpeg |
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" While I'm definitely getting the tongue in cheek intentions, I'll still say that PC health certainly matters, yes. We spend up to thousands of dollars on them, right? Definitely important to take care of them, no one likes when something doesn't work proper, hence all our frustrations with the game's current performance state, hahaha This said, I understand the apprehension for deleting any kind of files you may not be comfortable with, and I agree that a "No touchy" policy is good practice when a file seems important. What happens when a shader cache is deleted is that the game rebuilds the shader cache again on first load, this is why the first load instance takes longer than normal. If you set a limit, this generally happens on its own without your intervention (And again, the game does do this on its own as well. On first launch of 0.3.0, many users may note that the game took a little longer and under the gears it would have mentioned "Clearing Shader Cache. This may take some time.") If you have it set to unlimited, depending on play and patch frequency as well as your storage space, this is where file corruption and bloat becomes a risk. Some users on Steam Deck have even reported a shader cache increase of 2GB in a single day's play, which can be quite substantial if you don't have much file space to spare. This is why although it may cause more stutter at first to delete your cache to prompt a rebuild, it's good practice to do so from time to time to save your PC from file corruption and other issues related to file space. I do really want to stress though, I'm not saying your recommendation is a bad one and I wasn't being sarcastic when I said it's a good pointer, it really is, but it's always good for people to make fully informed decisions so the other relevant information, drawbacks and benefits are all important to note! I love the call out to saving on future rewrites too, though every compiled shader must be written to the drive at least once, you are correct in that it does save on rewrites specifically which is geared towards your HDD/SSD. However, it ought to be noted this isn't a catch-all on impact on your CPU itself as draw calls are separate from shader compilation. You did actually ask how it doesn't help with CPU load if the shaders can be re-used so to explain draw calls further and break them down: A draw call is a command the CPU sends to the GPU: “Hey GPU, draw these triangles with this material, shader, and state.” - If your game renders at 60 FPS, then the CPU re-issues those draw calls 60 times per second. If the scene is complex and has more draw calls, the CPU workload rises. - Thousands of small draw calls → more CPU time per frame. - Fewer big batches → less CPU overhead. - The CPU “spikes” to process them once per frame, in proportion to how many draw calls there are. If the CPU spends too much time just preparing draw calls, it can bottleneck the GPU, limiting framerate even if the GPU could go faster. The next portion may contain some jargon from the 3D modeling scene but relevant information includes: Path of Exile 2 uses Multi-Pass Shaders - A multi-pass shader is one where the rendering engine draws the same geometry multiple times, each “pass” applying a different effect (like lighting, bloom, outlines, or custom effects). - For impact scale, a single-pass shader draws geometry once. - Multi-pass shader (2–5 passes typical): Geometry is drawn 2–5 times, once per pass. Some complex effects can require 10+ passes. How this impacts draw calls: - Draw calls multiply with passes - If a mesh requires 1 draw call normally, a 3-pass shader may require 3 draw calls per frame for that mesh. - This multiplies CPU overhead because each pass is a separate command the CPU must submit to the GPU. - CPU work scales linearly with passes - Each pass requires the CPU to set shader state, textures, and uniforms. - More passes → more work for the CPU per mesh per frame. - GPU load increases too - Each pass means the GPU redraws the geometry, running the shader code again. - Multi-pass shaders can dominate GPU time if complex effects are applied on large meshes or many instances. The key takeaway Multi-pass shaders amplify draw call costs because each pass is essentially a new draw call. This causes a greater CPU impact because it's spending more time submitting commands per frame, which in turn bottlenecks the GPU due to more shading and texture fetches. This is, in particular, what causes most people's issues in performance. While caching shaders can free up some of the initial render demand, it specifically skips the COMPILATION phase, because it can just load the precompiled shader into GPU memory which does reduce the CPU workload dramatically compared to compiling from scratch. It does not, however, reduce the per-frame CPU cost of issuing draw calls. Even with cached shaders, each draw call still needs the CPU to set shader states, bind textures, and submit the command to the GPU. It also does not reduce GPU load; the GPU still executes the shader every frame. This, in particular is why I recommended rendering during loading screen instead of on encounter. The first portion is also why you as someone who has set your cache to unlimited experience the initial compilation hitch a lot less frequently and why I still note it as an awesome bit of advice! |
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" Awesome PC performance! Most players report severe drops in maps (Endgame) where the density is much more extreme. This said, it should be noted that you did go from a 171 FPS peak at the start to a low of 94. Imagine for a moment that you started at 100 FPS which is arguably good and THEN lost 77 FPS and I think you'll understand the complaints a bit more |
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"thats a long one don't mind if it skip quoting it. Thanks for the detail answer. I was under impression the issue of the OP was 'perceived lag' not 'per frame performance' so re-using shaders will have massive impact on the subject if we stay on topic, unless i mis-understood this: " - When first spawning into a map - Opening a strongbox (Who else avoids these in PoE2? I sure do) - Encountering Vaal monsters (previously improved on in 0.2) - Going into "Town" - Lightning spells are fun (Looking at you, Frenzy empowered Lightning Spear from 0.2) - Act 3 Gateway " manual deletion is not about what folders you are comfortable touching. its not recommended to manually delete caches of this sort in modern systems due to the high degree of integration. but again you do you. regarding cache size, yeah the game will write 2+gb in a gaming session, that doesn't mean its gonna write cumulatively 2gb each session. if this would be tru for poe my disk would be full within few days. again just try it for yourself if you think i'm lying, you wont be avoiding any strongboxes after that i'm pretty sure. and if in your case it will start writing excessively you can just reset the limit via driver utility and it will clear it without manually doing it, its even easier that way anyway. well unless you are on AMD, then regex, but it will do the same thing. its a bit odd convo tbh so imma skip after this one, cheers |
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I rarely complain about issues with optimization as these type of things get fixed on the next or following patch. however, thats not the case for POE.
Unfortunately, it appears that GGG kept a blind eye about this or does not have the capabilities or team capacity of resolving this decade old issues (yes! i was referring to the issues with optimization with POE1 that got carried over to POE 2, and it seems they are following the same recipe of just providing a huge W changes and never addressing these type of performance related concerns) Issue with the frame drops often happen when the shader bar starts spiking, and with GGG's method of keeping the map different everytime may it be rotated or slightly altered version, the shader keeps recompiling each and every time. Campaign is a breeze with minimal FPS drops but a stable experience overall of 190-170fps for 1440p. Unfortunately, once you reach the end game that's where the problem start showing. and the cherry on top that proves that this is an optimization issue is that lowering graphics settings and resolution does not affect or increase the performance. the funny thing is, I have two PC which shows negligible difference despite the power difference. FPS - 190-170fps at 1440p (drops to 46-70 on end game juiced (delirium-breaches) PC Specs: i7-14700K / MSI Z790 Pro Gigabyte RTX 4080 Super 16gb Trident Z5 2x32 DDR5-6800 64GB RAM 2 Samsung 1TB m.2 FPS - 150-120fps at 1080 (drops to 38-60ish on end game juiced (delirium-breaches) Laptop Specs: i5-14500hx / RTX 4060 Crucial DDR5-5600 2x16 32GB 1 Hynix 500gb m.2 1 Samsung 1TB m.2 |
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