IMPORTANT: Everyone playing on Windows 7 or 8.1 immediately stop and upgrade to Windows 10.

I've been playing PoE on Windows 7 Pro forever and have been stuck with lackluster performance forever. Anytime there are large mob packs there was always huge stuttering/lag frequently followed by the "You are dead" message window (can't kite properly). It's been frustrating me for years. Today I did 1 thing, I upgraded from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro with the latest 1909 version (November 2019 edition). To say WOW! is an understatement. The performance difference is like night/day and then some. Now my stuttering is completely gone. What a huge QoP difference Windows 10 Pro 1909 makes.

I've been incrementally upgrading my gaming rig this winter. It's a Dell T3610 with an Intel 1620 v2 cpu (4C8T), 16 GB of DDR3-1866 ECC ram, and a 500 GB Samsung 840 SSD. First I was gifted a Team Group MP34 NVMe 1 TB SSD and an 8 core E5-2650 v2 for Christmas. The NVMe SSD (in a plug in PCIe x4 adapter) is super fast:

Crystal Disk Mark 7 in Windows 10 Pro:


12 second Windows 10 boot to the desktop with all drivers loaded super fast. Then I found that an 8 core cpu is great except the E5-2650 v2 is only a 2.6 to 3.3 GHz cpu so the raw speed hit was worse playing PoE (I figured it would be but tried it anyway to please my BFFL gift) so I went back to the E5-1620 v2 4C8T @ 3.7 to 3.9 GHz. Playing over the last year the stuttering in PoE was progressively getting worse. So last week after much research I bought an E5-2667 v2 cpu (8C16T @ 3.3 to 4.0 Ghz). Crossed my fingers and ran PoE. Nope, PoE was still laggy and stuttering just as much with 16 threads to run PoE on (even though PoE probably doesn't use all 8 cores). Crap, there went $127.00 USD bucks down the drain.

But hold on, I'm still running a 2009 operating system that's been patched so many times it's a wonder it works as well as it does. So I finally downloaded the Microsoft Media Creation tool, created a Windows 10 1909 flash drive install, and ran it. A couple hours later and I'm looking at a Windows 10 Pro desktop and Device Manager has 0 yellow triangle exclamation errors. Nice, everything upgraded perfectly (that's a rarity and a huge relief).

Now for the acid test, with trepidation I ran PoE (stand-alone client). I noticed immediately that the login screen came up faster. Entering my first map it loaded quicker, so far so good. Ran the whole of the Geode low level map perfectly with no stuttering. Nice and smooth. Ok. Time for a rare yellow map with Alva. Got a twin boss level 9 map. Everything runs silky smooth with very large mob packs and no stuttering at all. The twin boss battle equally ran nice and smooth (no stuttering) and kiting around and shooting mines was great (Blastchain Toxic Rain Saboteur). The bosses died nice and easy with very good QoP. Found Alva, time for a temple run (that causes the worst stuttering of all). First temple room run was smooth and stutter free. Second one was good QoP too. Third room equally smooth moving and toxic rain on all the mobs. My PoE stuttering/lagging is gone! I'm still in Predictive mode what with crappy Networklayer Internet connection in SE USA but now I can experiment with Lockstep again as Windows 10 has removed my PoE performance problems.

So maybe my Windows 7 was foobar'ed from all the bug and security patches over the years (Meltdown and Spectre, to name a couple), or more likely is the fact that multitasking in the Windows 10 Kernel is significantly better than Windows 7 and 8.1. with Win 10 handling thread scheduling and cpu core assignments (load balancing) much better.

Windows 10 spreads the PoE processing load (plus browser and PoB) across my 8 core cpu very nicely. Ran Open Hardware Monitor and after an hour of mapping my Win 10 Pro stats are this:



Maximum cpu load across all 8 cores is pretty uniform from 52.3% to 66.4%. So it appears that the GGG coders have gotten better at the black art of multi-threaded programming. Excellent! My Geforce 1060 AMP! is getting 100% loaded at times so the next upgrade I do will be a faster GPU (maybe next Christmas my BFFL will gift me an AMD 5700 (Navi 10) video card... should be selling by July).

So anyone still playing PoE on older Windows, IMMEDIATELY STOP AND UPGRADE TO WINDOWS 10!.

Note to GGG: If my experience is typical (I have no way to tell) you should put up a news post immediately explaining the importance of why everyone needs to play PoE on Windows 10. Better yet just tell everyone that you are no longer supporting Windows 7 and 8.1.

Have a great day exiles.  :)

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Edit: Follow up post #1:

Edit 2: Follow up post #2:
Post of my vastly improved Windows 10 performance in the "Really GGG???" thread

Edit 2: Follow up post #3 (April 7, 2020):
Now after 2 months of running Windows 10 and still having above 100 fps in all areas plus always at the max 200 fps in my hideout I have come to the conclusion that PoE needs not only Windows 10 (I guess GGG coders have focused on optimizing for Win 10 and not for Win 7) but most importantly PoE needs more than 4 cores (8 threads) to run properly. Other more recent posts on bad quality of play from others is showing a trend and I'm coming to the conclusion that a cpu with >10K Passmark score is required to not get fps bogged down and suffer from stuttering/lag much of the time. Here's a few of my replies to other posts trying to help with why my cpu + Windows 10 is so successful:

1. 55% CPU-Load at 1 FPS, bad poe code?
2. 55% CPU-Load at 1 FPS, bad poe code?
3. 55% CPU-Load at 1 FPS, bad poe code?

They did. There was a whole lot of discussion. They even told us how it worked to improve performance.

But people still held on to their conspiracy theories that Microsoft was putting out 10 to trick you into giving up your soul.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

They did. There was a whole lot of discussion. They even told us how it worked to improve performance.

But people still held on to their conspiracy theories that Microsoft was putting out 10 to trick you into giving up your soul.

Oh! I'm in the forums daily and even I missed it so GGG should re-emphasize this again. This should eliminate some of the performance rant posts.

Hah .. Imagine using Intel in 2020 :D

W10 is over 5 years old. I have no doubt that we're in for another round of this within the next two years. If I were M$, I'd go with Windows17... just to freak people out.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

They did. There was a whole lot of discussion. They even told us how it worked to improve performance.

But people still held on to their conspiracy theories that Microsoft was putting out 10 to trick you into giving up your soul.

There are a number of legitimate concerns regarding Windows 10 that have been put forward, you know.

Ah, I get it. It's easier to characterize people voicing them as tin-foil-hat morons accusing MS of trying to steal their soul than to actually acknowledge them as genuine concerns.

If that's your style, then who am I to stop you? Carry on.

Lmao the title is sensationalist tosh windows 7 is fine, not that there is anything wrong with windows 10 either but whenever you upgrade somethings are gained and others are lost.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

W10 is over 5 years old. I have no doubt that we're in for another round of this within the next two years. If I were M$, I'd go with Windows17... just to freak people out.

Microsoft has said they don't plan on changing the number of their OS any time soon (10 is here for a long time). Only way to identify your Windows 10 edition is by it's version number: Settings => System => About (scroll down).

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gibbousmoon wrote:

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

They did. There was a whole lot of discussion. They even told us how it worked to improve performance.

But people still held on to their conspiracy theories that Microsoft was putting out 10 to trick you into giving up your soul.

There are a number of legitimate concerns regarding Windows 10 that have been put forward, you know.

Ah, I get it. It's easier to characterize people voicing them as tin-foil-hat morons accusing MS of trying to steal their soul than to actually acknowledge them as genuine concerns.

If that's your style, then who am I to stop you? Carry on.

Of course there are always going to be security problems with any operating system (not just Windows). But with normal support of Windows 7 discontinued (January 14th) there is no reason for PoE players to not upgrade. The Windows Media Creation Tool 1909 is free and as long as you have a normal activated Windows 7 or 8/8.1 the upgrade to 10 is still free. My upgrade never asked for a CoA key and now Windows 10 Pro is activated (and I've used it to upgrade 2 other computers also for free so I know it works perfectly). Most importantly, PoE doesn't stutter anymore on my 8 core cpu.

Some of the Windows 10 security alarmists are wearing tin-foil (most likely aluminum foil) hats but some Win 10 security flaws are legit and real, such as the one in Remote Desktop (RDP) that was revealed by the NSA recently.

Even the NSA is urging Windows users to patch BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708)

I exaggerate their concerns to make fun of the more lunatic fringe of the holdouts because I find them funny. Sure, there's concerns. But they're funny concerns.