System Requirements Miscommunication

Hi there,

I want to express my frustration with how the game performs on a rig that is above the recommended system requirements listed for POE2 on Steam

Recommended:
OS: Windows 10
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-10500 or AMD™ Ryzen 5 3700X
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060, Intel® Arc™ A770, or ATI Radeon™ RX 5600XT
DirectX: Version 12
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 100 GB available space
Additional Notes: Solid State Storage is recommended

My PC:
OS: Windows 10
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X (6 Cores)
Memory: 32 GB RAM (DDR 4)
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 3070 (8GB)
DirectX: Version 12
Network: Broadband Internet connection (100 Mbps)
Storage: 300 GB available space after installing POE2
Additional Notes: The game is on an SSD


The campaign and the trials are fine (above 100 FPS). However, mapping feels like Russian roulette. Every time I load a new map, I wonder if this will be one of those maps where my FPS will drop below 50, and my game will start to stutter.

I think I've tried most of the solutions that are out there on the Internet:
- Tinkering with the ingame options doesn't have much effect. I mean, when I lower the settings, I reduce the load on my GPU, but my GPU isn't the issue - it never gets above 9ms. The problem is with the CPU, which sometimes jumps to 27ms.
- I updated my BIOS, my chipset, and GPU drivers
- I activated the resizable bar option
- I cleared my shader cache and increased the size to 100GB
- I tried playing without any browsers open
- I disabled the C-state control of my CPU from the BIOS. I thought this worked for a while, but then I loaded a Savannah map and got the comic book experience

I read a lot of comments that you need a better CPU to play this game without issues, and this drives me mad. If that's the case, then why isn't this listed in the system requirements? I would have never bought the game and spent so many hours going through the campaign and trials if I knew that the endgame would feel like that.

I'm perfectly aware that my CPU is not top-notch but it's on the game developers to communicate clearly and concisely what the requirements are for this game to be playable (47 FPS with constant stuttering is not playable)

On top of that, optimization doesn't look like a top priority for them. They talk about balance, trials, and map stash tabs. The only thing they mention in terms of optimization is investigating the crashes, which is great; they should really do that. But my game is not crashing, and this looks like a different issue.

I'm really disappointed because I feel cheated. It was so simple - just put the actual CPU that one needs to play the game without issues in the recommended system requirements.

well... technically speaking they did communicate that campaign is WIP. I mean you had to watch a vod or read something extra than steam page but this is well known. now i do agree that their recommended CPU is kind of a joke looking at act2 town performance.

The entire game is very poorly optimized at the moment it´s not just your build. Just have to wait and see if GGG does something about it.

intel 14700, RTX 4070 super, 32GB RAM

DirectX12 is crashing every other map but otherwise fine, Vulkan doesn't crash but is stressing something as the fans are extra noisy

I haven't noticed any frame drops, stuttering was real bad until I worked out it was controller vibration causing it

Upstairs PC, intel 9800, 2080 super, 16GB ram game runs ok in 1080p except for silly load times even though it's on an SSD (haven't tried since last patch tho)

The sad part is that every game development those days depends on AI DLSS or FSR or whatever software shit they can come up with to improve the game performance .

This is why POE2 will never be better than POE1 in terms of system tuning and performance. Like when I hear about AI software or something I would expect the game to have 200+ FPS something solid and a good experience.

Right now the AI is used to enhance the game bad optimization to push the performance into something acceptable with a range of 140 fps .

As I said if the deves don't change the way they work this game will never get a better performance than POE1 without using the AI.


Lets be serious the graphics are nice and they look great but they are super close to POE1 and they should not really cause a performance issue . GTX Card can run all of these graphics with 100+ frames. It is all advertisement for the usage of the stupid DLSS and FSR.

In all honesty, this happens only within specific segments of the game - mostly endgame maps that are open/without walls (Savannah, Crimson Shore, etc). If the map has a lot of walls and tight spaces, then the performance is perfect for me. Which gives me hope that it's something they can fix.