PoE's performance is poor for a lot of people

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Jiero wrote:

I'll just post this to sum it all up for those that were not here since the beta.

In beta I had a spare media desktop that I used for work (data entry) and playing movies on a old tv (s-video!). It had 2 gb ddr2 ram (333mhz), a slow 15 mb/sec 40gb hard drive (IDE), pentium 4 2.4 ghz cpu and a nvidia 6200.

Basically a toaster... and it broke 50 fps.

It likely wouldn't even be able to load the title screen now.


And yes, it was a old pc even back then... but when you have a PC you use for work and it's all setup it's kind of hard to get yourself to move to something new when your don't critically need to (or really couldn't at that time, since the programs I needed could not be used in a newer OS). I've upgraded it all since then immensely. And no, that wasn't my gaming pc... I was just screwing around when I was supposed to be working.


Just tried it today on systems with better specs after being away for months (last played before atziri was made)... and it's gotten far, far, far, far worse. My current work pcs in a map are slideshows despite being above the recommended stats by quite a bit (and a immense magnitude stronger that then old pc! Weakest card I have now is 20x that old card).

Fully agree

+1 for op

+1 the game definitely runs worse for me now than it did a few years ago. way back in domination and standard. Sure My game is plenty playable, but at times looks like complete ass. The most annoying part is how the game Micro stutters and jitters, like its trying to load something. Yeah the SSD thing has been mentioned, but i don't think i should need to buy an SSD to play a game that looks worse than half life 2.

What does PoE do with Content.ggpk file when it loads? Does it unpack it or is it accessing inside of it? I am asking this because that file is large (6GB+) and I am unsure how much benefit is gained from SSD.

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Ludak021 wrote:

What does PoE do with Content.ggpk file when it loads? Does it unpack it or is it accessing inside of it? I am asking this because that file is large (6GB+) and I am unsure how much benefit is gained from SSD.

When it needs an asset it freezes the game, spins up the drive, decompresses and loads the file into ram (+cache), searches it for that asset, loads the asset into ram, closes the file (and deletes cache), loads the asset into the game then resumes the game. Hence the strongbox freeze. SSD's have no moving components and read a lot faster (10x or more), so the delays are a lot less.



edit - on the downside, they have much more limited lifespans then platter drives if that is an issue. They have a limited number of writes. Older ones (do NOT get a old one) have major issues in that they cannot wear balance (to prolong the lifespan it evens out usage on the disc) and simply fail if the first sector goes bad. IF you get one, it has to be a newer wear balancing one because those early ones are garbage.

It can't decompress it every time, 6GB of decompression would take minutes...Maybe the file isn't compressed at all and game just access the specific rows in it?!

Access time sure is slower on HDD but it's ~20ms, a blink of an eye so unless it's being accessed all the time as fast as it can be there should be very little difference between HDD and SSD when that file is in question.

I do see how shader cache files are accessed much faster by SSD since they are plentiful and there is a lot of them.

PS. HDD is always spinning when it's powered :)

^ It's a partial, not a full decompress (not a solid archive). Same as if you made a rar file with multiple files in it, but only wanted to extract one file out of it. There is a file table embedded in it that shows where the file is, and that is why it's important to run that pack check after updates to eliminate client bloat. That client file bloat (and fragmentation) occurs because it's modifying that compressed file by adding to the end, rather then replace files, since it is quicker that way.


And it is being accessed all the time, cast raise zombie or summon skeletons. That freeze on the first cast is the asset being loaded. And that is compounded with the game being frozen while files are being accessed.


Hard drive can and should spin down occasionally. It reads sequentially as well, so any fragmented files will cause the drive to spin down (slows disc so the head can be moved to a new location), move the head to the new sector, resume disc spin, read the sectors, spin down, repeat. No moving parts means no fragmentation and no need to move that head to read multiple parts of a disc one part at a time.



edit - If you lack a SSD, I'd recommend a disc defragmenter that can optimize (IOBIT has a decent free one). It moves the client file to the furthest sectors on the outside of the platter, so it reads a lot faster. The circumference of the platter impacts inner sector read speed vs outer sector read speeds, so moving the file to the outside sectors often gets a noticeable impact on read speeds.

Jiero, thanks for the in depth post. So it access the table in the file and then goes through it to load what it needs. Well, I don't know how that classifies under the access times, is it small file, large file or...

I have SSD but I don't have space for PoE on it.
I just moved PoE to USB 3.0 flash drive, will see if it plays better (it's not a junk flash drive, it's a 70MB/s drive with very good access times).

They definitely need to shift resources into improving performance and even improving the UI and his functionality in my opinion, I can wait for more content.

I don't feel like playing end game content atm / maps cause no matter what build i play and the what settings i get fps dips rom 140 to 60-70-80 ish..

I have a GTX 780 and I7 @ 4.4 / SSD / newest drivers / 16 GB Ram

ITS PISS ANNOYING !!!