Massive perfomance degradation while doing the map

i5-6600, GTX 970, 32GB RAM, game is installed on SAMSUNG 870 EVO SSD, game is running on Vulkan.

This is a screenshot of the perfomance graph taken right at the start of the map:



I have done absolutely nothing in this map; this was taken right after I have portaled in, no skills were used, no movement was done.

This is a screenshot of the perfomance graph taken after I have cleared the map at the exact same spot near the portal at the start of the map:



I have allowed my skills and minions to expire, no monsters were around me, total monster count was 16. Things I have done in this map included going into wildwood + clicking on eater altars and obviously using my skills.

This is a screenshot of the perfomance graph taken at the exact same spot near the portal at the start of the map after I allowed 4 minutes to pass:



I have done nothing since taking the previous screenshot.



Bug report number.

This happens absolutely every map, there's no map where this perfomance degradation does not happen.

This is not a CPU overheating issue (at the start of the map):



And at the end of the map:



Different map same issue:

Same problem here.

Having same issue.

I am also having extreme performance issues today, seemingly out of nowhere. I've played the game for ~900 hours and can only remember having one crash in all that time, until today. I've had three crashes today and no matter what I do, I'm getting a constant stuttering that makes the game almost unplayable. This stuttering is happening even if I'm just idling at the login screen.

I'm on a GeForce 2080 Ti with 11GB of VRAM, and I have an i7-4960X 12-core CPU. 32GB of RAM. Win10 Pro. It should be plenty of machine for the game, and for the most part, it has been. But it really took a nosedive today.

The crashes seem to happen when I enter a map or when I cause something sudden and intense to happen, like setting off an entire Expedition at once with the 'one explosive' passive.

Here is a list of things I've tried so far:

- installing the latest NVIDIA drivers
- making sure I'm up to date on WinUpdates
- validating the game files in Steam
- running Steam and the game in admin mode
- tweaking settings for the game's exe in my NVIDIA control panel, trying a few common fixes such as changing the power usage profile
- deleting the cached shaders in the game folder
- moving the log file out of the game folder and letting it start a new one
- changing the rendering API
- choosing the least fancy graphics settings possible
- changing the number of audio channels the game uses

Nothing has helped. If anything, the problem has worsened throughout the day. I'm running out of options and it's getting really frustrating. I'm going to go ahead and try completely uninstalling and reinstalling the game, but I doubt that will help much.

I am happy to report that my final attempt was successful!

I found that there were also some cached shaders in the %APPDATA%/Path of Exile folder. I suspect those might have been the culprit. It is my experience that cached shaders can play absolute hell with some programs, so cleaning them out can help.

I went ahead and removed these two folders entirely:

%APPDATA%/Path of Exile
My Documents/My Games/Path of Exile

Then I reinstalled the game.

There was an immediate massive improvement in performance, and the stuttering seems to have gone away completely.

If you also decide to remove these files, know that you'll have to redo game settings (audio, video etc.) and lose your local copies of your loot filters, but you can resync from FilterBlade if you have them there.

One thing I should mention is that decreased CPU perfomance persists between areas (portalling in and out of hideout, portalling back into the map).

The only thing that fixes it immediately without waiting is a hard restart of the game.

Problem persists in 3.23.1.

Yea i noticed that after a long session the game become way worse and eats up a lot of RAM that can hog up your system a restart of the game is a temp fix but you will have to do it each time when you see the degradation.

im having the same issue as OP, after doing a relatively juicy map, my fps and performance absolutely TANK, and remain stuck there until i restart poe completely. i normally run at 160 fps, after 1-2 maps and causing lag, performance degrades to the point where my whole game, no matter what i do, no matter where i go, will be locked to somewhere around the mid 20's fps.
it makes trying to trade a nightmare.
it makes playing the game as a whole, a god damned chore, having to turn it off after every 5-10 min map and restart it.

GGG, PLEASE.... do something about this, or tell us how to fix it on our end if it is on our end. this is MADNESS!

Based on other posts I've seen in the last couple days, I'm pretty sure whatever is causing this for you is related to all the crashing problems people have been having since the update a few days ago.

"

Pykl wrote:

im having the same issue as OP, after doing a relatively juicy map, my fps and performance absolutely TANK, and remain stuck there until i restart poe completely. i normally run at 160 fps, after 1-2 maps and causing lag, performance degrades to the point where my whole game, no matter what i do, no matter where i go, will be locked to somewhere around the mid 20's fps.
it makes trying to trade a nightmare.
it makes playing the game as a whole, a god damned chore, having to turn it off after every 5-10 min map and restart it.

GGG, PLEASE.... do something about this, or tell us how to fix it on our end if it is on our end. this is MADNESS!

Pretty sure the problems of the past few days are not on our end. I can't map without crashing to desktop at least once and it started a few days ago after this last update.