PoE - Super Nintendo Style (Performance Upgrade - Ultra low end Machines)

Hi, I'm Ebb the Web.

Can I even say nintendo on the title? Is that a thing?

Since my post at https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2033600 got me quite a few pms, I'm posting this tutorial for people who really love the game but, like me, play on a computer that really, is just a potato with wires.

So, that the poor (like me) may rejoice, I bring to you (looking at diamond-harbringuer-supporter of itsy-bitsy-moneybag-madness), the greatest thing you can do to PoE.

Also, there seem to be insane people amongst the community who would actually play this for the nostalgia factor, if this is you, enjoy. Its really not hard to do and undo this process.



Now, I know this look like madness, but with a little work, this is what you'll end up with.


This reminds me alot of Ultima VII and other games I used to play when I was younger

As a comparison, here is me doing NOTHING at "The Coast" using a normal graphics setting and breathtaking 5 fps.


Now, you can't possibly see anything on the log (F1) when you lower the graphics this much, but I get 60-120 fps (30ish around high density areas or graphic intense builds). You don't have to take my word for it, just try it yourself.


How to do it:

First of all, lower all the graphic settings inside the game options menu and turn on predictive mode (for some reason lockstep or auto can have a huge impact on performance), this should solve the fps problem for most of you.

But, if you're so lost in despair that you came to MY post, you probably need something alot more intense, also, you probably already know the production_Config.ini, and that this file is your best friend. If you don't know it yet, you can find it at something like:

C:\User\LadyV\Documents\My Games\Path of Exile

Or whatever address you confined him to.

Now all you have to do is edit that file with any text editor.

File Breakdown

This [DISPLAY] function has ALOT of paramethers and most of those interfere with performance (it is the only function that matters right now). As there are too many, I probably won't ever waste my time describing what each of them do. I'll post my whole display function in case you need any reference, but here's what you're looking for:

resolution_height=150
resolution_width=200
texture_quality=999



These are the settings I use. For resolution height and width, try to keep the ration between them or you'll end up with some funky looking stuff, the lower they are the better the fps, but I found that any lower than that, the game will be just unplayable (at least until I can find a fix for the text size)

For Texture Quality, the higher the better, though it dosen't seem to make a difference from 5 and up, I use 999 because it makes me feel better. Now, save the .ini file, right click it, go into properties and check the box "read only", if you don't do this, POE will try to fix the file as soon as it gets a chance and you'll loose any meaningfull modifications you made.

Try to launch your game now, and you'll end up with something like this.



DO NOT MAXIMIZE THE SCREEN, that will cause PoE to update its graphics configurations (though it wont change the .ini file). Instead, wait until the game finishes loading and reaches the login screen, then just press Alt+Enter and your game will be working on full screen size and looking like sh*t, I don't freaking know why this bypasses the graphic update, ask GGG.

I'm a gamer and a programmer, I'm also a computer science student, poor and lazy. So show some appreciation by commenting your results, commenting your pity on me, or bring me an ASCII cup of coffee, it makes me feel LOVED.

ALSO, Correct my english, i like that sh*t.

Tala Moana Mother****ers.

Amazing. Gotta try this.

Good Job. :D

Cheers!

Edit: But it doesn't work for me. When I hit alt-enter it re-scales the resolution to 640*480 (800*600 when I tried with dx11), which is bad because my monitor is widescreen.

Edit again: I got it working momentarily, though for some reason it changed around a few pixels, but my gfx cards has a hate-boner for dx9...

"

rottenvenetic wrote:

Cheers!

Edit: But it doesn't work for me. When I hit alt-enter it re-scales the resolution to 640*480 (800*600 when I tried with dx11), which is bad because my monitor is widescreen.

Edit again: I got it working momentarily, though for some reason it changed around a few pixels, but my gfx cards has a hate-boner for dx9...

Maybe its an issue with dx11, wish I could help you more, but I can't really reproduce it with my rig (hardware unable to run dx11)

At least you got it working. I'll see if there's anything else I can do with the .ini to help people like you. Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, the real problem is that my gfx card (a cheap knockoff AMD Radeon HD6670) can't stand DX9 Path of Exile. It keeps having those mini-crashes where the screen goes black and windows says the gfx adapter has stopped working and recovered - even when I was trying to play on super-low resolution.

I've been at least a year trying to find a DX9 solution but only switching to DX11 and taking the shadows' frame rate hit gives it any sort of stability. Tech support's got a ton of threads about this, but no word from GGG that I've discovered, and no solution that's worked.

I don't really need to take the graphics down that much, but getting rid of shadows and running in some kind of low resolution would've helped a great deal.

Edit: no, predictive mode is there, I'm just blind.