Game performance is ABYSMAL.

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DeF46 wrote:

I'd say the game runs pretty darn well considering my graphics card has 512 MB VRAM and is three generations behind.

As i said in my earlier post, the game really doesn't require that much GPU power, it is the CPU that becomes the bottleneck, if anything.

You have a Core i5, which has a good clock speed, thus the issue does not exist for you.

To be fair there are very few games that utilize all the CPU. I have the same "problem" with my quadcore Core i5.

A game like Path of Exile is probably the least well suited for multi threaded CPU usage.

In general games have moved away from CPU to the GPU, it's hard to make use of four cores when the bulk of the graphics rendering is done by the GPU.

But you could email Euclidion and ask them for a sample executable :) I'm sure their Infinite Detail Engine uses all the CPU :)

Jest aside, you need to look at exactly how the graphics rendering works. If we were still computing the image with the CPU like Quake did back in the days, then yes most games would make very efficient use of all four cores... and my fan would have to increase to cool it down :p

The AI in modern games, especially "simple" games like a ARPG is usually less than 5% of the code that runs every frame. Games like Civilization or Skyrim maybe make more sense because there are lots of AI running in the background.

You can't compare a game with applications like HandBrake that convert DVD to MP4 or WMV. Those types of operations are algorithms that have a fixed logic that is run on a big load of data, and you can easily split the data in separate pools.

Like I said the only equivalent to that would be to render the game with the CPU. Those days are over, but there is still hope with Euclidion's Unlimited Details Engine ;)

Dude my CPU and GPU are three years old, end of story.

I don't know what config you have but I just checked and Task Manager CPU Usage is 15-20% right after alt tabbing, and the four cores don't seem to ever use more than 30%.

A three year old CPU is not bottlenecked, not even in one core.

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DeF46 wrote:

I don't know what config you have but I just checked and Task Manager CPU Usage is 15-20% right after alt tabbing, and the four cores don't seem to ever use more than 30%.

A three year old CPU is not bottlenecked, not even in one core.

Alt tabbing minimizes the game, which stops all rendering, lowering usage. Run the game windowed and then check core usage while the game is the active window.



Even though the 1090T BE is a faster CPU than the 1055T, it's not even on even ground against an i5. Note that Crysis only uses a single core, like Path of Exile.

If it's so difficult to use CPU power, why is Path of Exile so CPU heavy in the first place?

There are various things that CPUs CAN still handle, like physics, vegetation simulations, AI, and to some degree, shadows, too. Gamebryos ancient engine that was used for Skyrim, puts shadow rendering in the hands of the CPU, along with other things, which without optimization flags enabled for newer instruction sets in the earlier versions of the game thanks to a mess the PC devs made with the compiler, turned the game into a nightmare in areas like Whiterun, while people with high end Intel CPUs reported stable 60 FPS everywhere. Even after the patch that fixed the compile, the game still runs sluggish on many rigs that have a CPU with low single core performance. And that game barely uses any GPU power, too.

It's not a case of rendering moving to GPU, its' a case of developers relying on single threaded engines and hoping that nobody notices/cares. With games like Battlefield 3 and Starcraft 2, they would have been shot down by everyone for having poor performance for a large portion of their playerbase, but thanks to their multithreaded design, they have been great successes performance wise, across all types of hardware. And we all know how good both those games look like. They are graphically far more intensive than Path of Exile.

Game sits at 100 fps for me at all times and has been that way since I first got the beta 8 months ago. CPU sits at 20% in windowed mode. Obviously for me, the performance is not abysmal. My suggestion is to send your specs and info on your problem to Chris through a pm.

I disagree on some points about arguments about multithreadedness.

As a gamer I have a tendency to yell and scream when a game wont use all of my cores.
As an old gamer I have a tendency to buy the processor that has the most powerful core, water cool it, then crank up the voltage to rediculous levels, overclock it to the moon, then send it back for replacement when it dies or simply buy a better one.
As a programmer I understand that games are terribly difficult code for multithreaded environments.

I do agree 100% on some points, the chat window and things related to that should NOT be rendered as part of the same object, it should be an overlay on a seperate thread which can refresh seperately. The main renderer should look up the current rendered to memory state of the chat and display it for each frame. Same should go for all other overlays. This would isolate the main render and the games flow from disturbances caused by the chat code and or overlay code (which are quite common, just push F1 and look at the difference between having the map off the inventory closed and and the character screen closed then press tab i c and look at the framerate now.) Quite simply, it would be acceptable if the chat refused to update to a newer image or capture and display new lines at all on a single core machine unless the framerate was above its average point.

Since the games special effects are client based it would be nice if they ran on another thread. In all honesty the projectiles and other effects not even real in a sense of accuracy to time and space of the real server tracked projectiles (UNFORTUNATELY, I dont think this would be possible due to semi-transparency and refraction effects. tradeoffs could likely be made to have a low quality multithreaded effect layer which people with weaker cpus could use instead.)

To put my 2 cents in, I've been playing this game since the end of April and have had zero performance issues. I've gotten server lag a few times, and disconnected a few times, but thats it. Large mobs w/ global chat running does nothing to slow me down. My rig is an AMD Phenom X4 955 (stock @ 3.2GHz), 4GB G. Skill DDR2, Radeon HD7850 2GB and a couple of slow 7200 RPM old HDDs (not in RAID or anything). I feel that I have a fairly basic system, except for the new GPU.

The only issue I consistently have is some black tearing across the screen, usually barely noticeable, but sometimes it's aggravating. Although I'm pretty sure it's just because I have a crappy AMD system, as I've seen this happen on other games as well.

PoE runs perfect for me (besides the black tears), everything maxed out.

well the performance is not horrible on my ATI5770,intel e5300 dual core 2.6 OCed to 3.2GHz,4GB ram.
but yes i noticed that global chat makes my fps drop(sometimes, not always but happens).

LOL @ this thread

So much knowledge in here! If only GGG could call on you to explain how to write software properly!