New Engine Patches uses twice as much CPU/GPU yet causes insane micro stutter and lag

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POPTOP wrote:

Added a bug report: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3408867
but ill add it here too just in case.

Laptop with:
- Intel core i7 6700HQ 2.60GHz
- RAM 16GB Dual-channel DDR4 1064MHz
- 4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M, (also has Intel HD Graphics 530, this is not used for poe)
- 500GB SSD
- Windows 10 Home 64-bit

I have tried all recommended solutions:
- Pack check
- Updating windows
- Updating GPU drivers using GeForce Experience
- Full fresh reinstall of the game
- Deleting config file.
- Checked Im within minimum requirements, which i am. Heck GPU is better than minimum when compared to requirements from https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3072628
- GPU comparison: https://technical.city/en/video/GeForce-GTX-650-Ti-vs-GeForce-GTX-960M
- Tested various combinations of graphical settings:
____- Everything on low
____- Dx11, Vulkan, Dx12(this gives the best performance, but has occasional spikes to 100% GPU out of nowhere, so something is making it Unstable)
____- Capped fore and back ground fps to 30
____- Windowed mode with 1280x720
____- and more, and etc, and fiddling continues endlessly

Problem Description:
Prior to the first of the series of patches leading up to 3.21.2b, I had managed to fiddle the game settings low enough to where by gpu was running at a stable 34% usage on the GPU, with the expected spikes during combat.

After patch, the GPU usage is unstable, and significantly increased. Average usage is 50% on the GPU, with spikes going to 95% when using a single skill in the wrong spot in hideout. (See Test Below)

Additionally the CPU spikes to 80-100% when loading areas, which ill asume is a different problem all together. Switching to dx11/vulkan/dx12 has some effect on this loading

POE Particle/lighting Performance Test:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFPkdf6oFf4

Conclusion: Game is in an unplayable state on a machine that is above minimum requirements, with a build that speficially is optimised for low end, and while using lower resolution than recommended for minimum specs. This is due to the exessive strain put on the GPU.

The Poe2 lighting/particle effects appear to be the main culprite, as the more of any effect on screen is displayed the exponentially worse the GPU's performance becomes as seen in test above.

This issue cannot be resolved from the player side.

P.S.
Came back to poe after quitting the game in 2020, about 1 week before this shitshow, fiddled the pc to work, got back into buildplanning, and made it to level 7 the sunday before the first patch. FeelsBadMan.

Ill asume heist league was the first time poe2 particle shitstem was introduced, as the current problem is pretty much the same issue that made me quit back in 2020. Had a good 3 weeks of fun back then on self cast desecrate+ detonate dead before heist league, and then after the desecrate effect got changed, the skill became unusage due to its new terrible performance(which seems to never have been fixed btw).

I optimistically wish you the best of luck fixing this, which you will surely need, given Exilecon showed the poe backend being a hardcoded spaghetti ball, and Visual effects guy from day 2 (https://youtu.be/XE3MAFGDzWw?t=3633) explaining how the more cascades he does the cheaper they get, which sounds cool and is probably true, but when put to practise clearlymakes the GPU shit the bed.

Lastly, coming back made me consider getting some of the new specialised stashtabs... but why bother when the game doesnt work.

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Futbeidl wrote:

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Futbeidl wrote:

Game performance is much worse than before the patch with the engine/shader update. The patch stated, that the shader processing moved from the CPU to the GPU. Could anyone tell me why the GPU is then just at halv load (<50% with no fps limiter) when it was at >90% before? The GPU isn't as well utilized as before the patch. That seems for me the main issue why my FPS is now almost halved compared to before, dropping frames to under 20 when in a busy shaderrich environment.

The second reason for the low graphics performance seems to be the low memory usage of the GPU (<1GB on Vulkan, <2GB on DX11 and DX12)

In addition I have immense stuttering with multithreading on. With this option off, the CPU-lag flattens out but over all performance hasn't gotten better.

My graphic options I tried:

° Tripple Buffering: ON/OFF
° Vsync: fast/locked/off
° multithreading: ON/OFF
° API: DX11/Vulkan/DX12
° Dynamic Culling: ON/OFF

Shadows are kept at low and global illumination is turned OFF

My specs:
i7 3770k@4GHz
32GB RAM
GTX 1060 6GB
almost new 500GB SATA3 SSD

Would be nice if you could do something about it before the start of the next league ;)

I also set the shader cache to unlimited in the nvidia driver menue and all else application controlled. I just don't get it, why the CPU and GPU usage is quite low despite the low framerate. (Normally the game should force the CPU/GPU to power up until it reaches the 60FPS for Vsync locked?!)

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Timeishammy wrote:

Before the latest patch, I played 60fps 2K at the highest settings. I deleted the game and installed it. I tried everything, but it didn't work. It goes between 60-35 FPS. Nothing changed in the small patch either. 2 days left until the new league. It has dramatically reduced my enjoyment of playing the game.

System features: AMD 3600 + RTX 3060 + 32 GB DDR4 RAM + 970 PLUS EVO M2 SSD