Something introduced a HORRIBLE GC bug

I'm seeing behavior that is extremely consistent with thrashing graphics memory and pausing for GC. It started yesterday; I don't think that was a client patch but it was an update to the NVidia driver through Windows Update, so I would point the finger there.

The client still processes input (within the limits of click placement without screen updates), so for example holding down Rmouse will spam my rmouse skill even though I'm not seeing anything moving. Freezes are much more common when interesting visual effects are in progress, or when loading new textures (probably when causing a GC to make room for them)

Reducing resolution, texture size, and other graphics speed factors has had much less effect than I expected on the frequency of these freezes. Perhaps the new driver is doing something dynamic with its pool size, or the PoE graphics code is doing something.

I have tried backing off to unthreaded graphics and the non-ex DX9 setting. I am about to take a deep breath and try the DX11 setting if Win7 will let me.

I'm damned glad I don't play hardcore, as I've had about 3 or 4 deaths this weekend from not being able to guess well enough what was going on in a breach.

My rig is an i7 at 4GHz and 16Gb RAM, my card is a GTX760 with 2MB. It's not SotA, but it was running PoE just fine until I updated Windows.

DXDiag64 output is available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B90TwHOrgClRY2VJUUtsRnNpR0E/view?usp=sharing.

A litle more info, from paying close attention this time.

I suspect you have a reference cycle or otherwise something that is defeating GC, because it took a while for the first freeze to happen, then they started up just as frequently as before.

I am experiencing this very same behavior myself, where things start out alright for a little while but then devolve into constant freezes. Like weregamer, I see that the game still observes inputs but there are constant interruptions at the rate of once every five seconds or so.

I had taken a break from the game for a week or two and things were fine before, but since I came back the other day this behavior has been frustrating to deal with.

I'm having this same problem, but I have an AMD card so I don't think it's the NVIDIA drivers. All of a sudden the game is lagging like mad inside of breaches. This started pretty early on the 17th for me although I didn't play on the 16th. I noticed there was a recent download, not sure if that's related. I have also seen graphic glitches from breach rings, lightning arrow, and blast rain but they're not consistent.

This is happening to me as well and is extremely frustrating. I have been unable to pinpoint it. for me it started around the 13-14th-ish. I thought it was an Invidia Driver as well but now I am not sure.

I have the same problem here; i think this started 3 or 4 days ago.
Im using a Core 2 Quad 9650 running at 3Ghz and 8GB RAM, video card is a PNY with Nvidia GTX 650ti boost 2GB

i was using Geforce GTX 650 ti 372.54-desktop-win10-64bit-international-whql the i upgraded today to 376.33-desktop-win10-64bit-international-whql hoping that that would solve the problem, no luck

For Windows im using Windows 10 Ultimate x64 (version 1607 OS Build 14393.576), and i have not updated it prob for the last 3 months (im using WSUS to deploy updates and i havent approved anything since october or so), so i would say problem is not caused by new updates distributed by microsoft via windowsupdate.

I tried also running both the classic and the new 64 bits clients with different graphics settings; changing texture quality, antialiasing setting, testure quality and filtering, disabling post processing, engine multithreading and the different directx versions (no luck, i still get the stuttering in every single setting i tried with different combinations)

Tried deleting the content of the two shadercache folders (ShaderCache and ShaderCacheD3D11) no lucj

Tried running a full malware scan using malwarebytes with definition v2017.01.19.04 and a full virus scan using Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.6 (12.1.RU6 MP5) build 7004 (12.1.7004.6500); also ran Kaspersky antiRootKit tdsskiller. No virus or malware or anything found.

I monitored the system resources using windows task manager and noticed that the cpu load was only at 54%. hard disk activity was 3% and memory usage was 4.8GB (1008MB compressed) out of 8GB

To monitor the video card i used GPU-Z 1.16.0 and i couldnt see anything "strange" there neither; gpu running a 1097.4Mhz memory clock 1527.4Mhz, memory used 2006 MB BUS Interface 11% GPU Temp 81 degree, Power Consumption 80.9% VDCC 1.160V.

So everything looks good, but the game stutters ( i dont have problems playing any other game (tried using GTA V, NFS 2015, Dying light.

Any idea?

Hurrah, patch 2.5.2b seems to have fixed this. I played for several hours last night without more than a flicker of graphics freeze.