I think it is time, to finally consider stability

I don't think that FAQ was updated in years, Treffnix.

these are basically the same requirements I started playing PoE with, and even my beautiful potato surpasses them.

I asked Slayer to get "the real" up-to-date requirements for the game, from GGG.
I think the answer would be this picture of Slayer's PC:

The game runs fine at max details on a 500 dollar pc. From that point of view it's well optimized :D

"

Treffnix wrote:

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

please list PC specs for those having issues with the game

You're stalling. Look at what the FAQ (http://www.pathofexile.com/faq#q14) says about min specs for PoE:

"

14. What are the hardware requirements for Path of Exile?

Path of Exile is designed to run on a huge variety of systems, from an everyday laptop to a top of the line gaming rig. Our detailed art is designed to not only look great, but also reveal additional detail as the resolution is increased to the maximum of 2560x1600.

At the moment, you will need a Graphics Card with Pixel Shader 3.0 or higher, and a CPU that supports SSE2. At least 2GB of RAM is recommended, and older Integrated Graphics Cards will not run well.

Try to run PoE on a machine which barely exceeds these specs, if you can still find one (JK's PC doesn't count for you :) ). Then come back and tell us that the game really needs no optimization. Geeeeez.

Jesus Christ. Please point me to where I said the game couldn't use some optimization. Guess what, you won't find it.

John is right in that the min specs have not been updated since beta AFAIK. However, I stand by my original claim. Optimization only gets one so far. At some point, ANY person must realize when they need to start saving for a new rig and realize that their PC is out of date.

E: me personally, I set aside 40-60$ every week as my "fun money". Rest is bills and retirement fund. Roughly every other year I get new PC. Currently waiting for the stacked RAM GPUs to arrive before I build again.

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

... Optimization only gets one so far...

True, but GGG is nowhere near that end yet, has hardly started on an optimization path at all. It is by far the least optimized game I've played yet. And that definitely costs them players and thus, money. Guess it doesn't cost them enough so they don't care or they are simply incompetent. Dunno which is worse. I know I'd be embarassed if my programs would run this badly.

They do have awesome ideas, though, and I guess that saves them.

To give people an idea of how badly the game is optimized, I recently got a new laptop (will be migrating over soon.)

My old HP Pavilion laptop specs has this: ($800 around the time I bought this 5 years ago)
4GB DDR2 RAM
i5 M430 processer
64bit OS on Windows7
ATI HD Radeon 5450 mobility card (512MB VRAM)

In parties my framerate would drop to the 1-20FPS range, not to mention areas that are particle intensive like ground effects and rain-effects. It's bearable, but barely. Also, PoE would take anywhere from 1.2GB of RAM on bootup to nearly 2GB of RAM after playing many maps. That is extremely resource intensive and the RAM usage goes up over time (within 1-2 hours of group-play. Did not notice much RAM usage when soloing maps.)

My new Acer Aspire laptop has these specs: ($900 with $100 rebate)
16GB DDR3 RAM
i7 4510U processor
64bit OS on Windows8.1
Nividia Geforce 840M card (2GB VRAM)

The difference is between night and day. I can run most areas well above 60fps. The hilarious part is that the initial loadup of the game took quite a while. Then I realized it was due to the game loading in the damn global/trade chat which I have off by default on my old laptop. Holy shit does that bog down the game performance.

By definition, I think my old laptop exceeds the minimum specs by a decent margin. From CB to OB, the performance only got worse and worse. I would also take the step to defrag the content.ggpk from time to time to reduce load times and that still isn't enough. The way GGG has made this game to me feels like you need a pretty decent rig to run PoE. 4GB of RAM is fine if you're not running anything else. (I'd often close my Firefox to free up RAM.) On the graphics end, I'm not familiar with the 3D GPU requirements, but clearly 1GB of VRAM is the minimum. Most laptops under the $600 range don't boast vidcards of that caliber, at least not those bought from brick and mortar places like BestBuy or Costco. (Intel integrated Graphics suck balls and not meant for serious gaming.)

...

It's about high time GGG has taken a look at really optimizing the damn game. Adding content without buckling down on the code is not the way the GGG should continue for the longevity and health of the game.

I'm not entirely certain how you example shows how badly optimized the game is. The difference in your hardware is what is night and day.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

I'm not entirely certain how you example shows how badly optimized the game is. The difference in your hardware is what is night and day.

The difference between minimum specs as touted by GGG, which my old laptop had covered well, and my new laptop which is now even better than my old one. The gap is too wide.

My point, is that even with decent equipment, PoE runs like crap. To need higher-end equipment to play PoE goes to show how badly this game runs, or how out of touch the devs are with their own game and how demanding it is on the PC.

To quote GGG,

"

14. What are the hardware requirements for Path of Exile?

Path of Exile is designed to run on a huge variety of systems, from an everyday laptop to a top of the line gaming rig. Our detailed art is designed to not only look great, but also reveal additional detail as the resolution is increased to the maximum of 2560x1600.

At the moment, you will need a Graphics Card with Pixel Shader 3.0 or higher, and a CPU that supports SSE2. At least 2GB of RAM is recommended, and older Integrated Graphics Cards will not run well.

If that's all it took and then some, I wouldn't think people would be having so much issues with PoE's optimization and gameplay perfomance. Clearly this points out to GGG's less than stellar coding.

More of an issue with the fact that there is no set definition of what minimum is. Minimum to GGGG probably means what is required to basically load the game.

I do agree that this should not be the case though. But your old laptop was by no means decent. DDR2 is a dead giveaway to that.

The key words there are 'at the moment' I guess. Those requirements were written like 5 years ago :)

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

More of an issue with the fact that there is no set definition of what minimum is. Minimum to GGGG probably means what is required to basically load the game.

I do agree that this should not be the case though. But your old laptop was by no means decent. DDR2 is a dead giveaway to that.

Actually that was my miss. I assumed it was DDR2 since I bought this a while back, but after checking the model out, it's DDR3. Model is a Pavilion dm4 1063cl model if you want to check.

My old laptop has exceeded all minimum requirements with a relatively large margin back then. Of course, that was back then when GGG hadn't implemented all these mtx and rain effects and whatnot. Performance back in CB doesn't compare to now after the addition of more areas and various graphic effects. I remember running fellshrine just fine, with it's rain effects and all. Then at some point in OB, loading into fellshrine took much longer and my fps average dropped. It only got worse from there, not better. Yes, I remember the time when they fixed the fog effects in certain areas (solaris temple, eternal lab), making it less demanding. That was a much needed fix and we need more of these types of fixes to prevent PoE from being so demanding hardware-wise.

And if the requirements were written so long ago, GGG should update it to reflect PoE's current state.