Memory Leak, resulting in unplayable performance drops.

Well I'm not sure how else to describe it but I'm fairly sure it would be called a memory leak.

When I first start playing the game, the memory usage sits at 1,375,000kb after awhile of playing (can't give an exact time because I only notice after the problem has already occured)
The memory usage will jump up to 2,500,000-3,500,000 and beyond when it reaches this point the game becomes unplayably choppy and gets me killed usually.

Something doesn't seem right here, I mean take Skyrim for example, ultra high settings with full AA and AF runs at a whopping 750,00kb, Borderlands 2 maxed settings, 800,000kb...Torchlight II 650,000kb in full party online. Now I understand that every game is different but what I don't understand is why the memory usage continues to climb to a point where the game becomes unplayable?

I've played many many titles on this computer and all play flawlessly which leads me to believe the problem lies on your end.

System specs:
Amd 965 quad core 3.4ghz
8gb ddr2 1066
radeon 4870, have also tested on a 7870 to see if it was a graphics related issue
850w corsair psu
x-fi sound card

Could be related to my issue indeed. I just hope it gets fixed, no matter what it is. Until then I'm running max 4 people parties with max 1 skill spammer ^^

Buried 5 pages back already, any other thoughts on this issue?

Most likely the degradation of performance is due to excessive paging. Next time this occurs monitor the game's process using Task Manager, enable the "Page Faults Delta" sample from "View -> Select Columns" and report back with a rough estimate of the column value for PoE.

EDIT: Also ensure that, again from the View menu, the update/refresh rate is set to "High"

EDIT: If you're running full-screen either use a remote session from a different machine or you could interpolate by using the "Page Faults" column.

It sits at 0, occasionally it will jump up to 50+

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It sits at 0, occasionally it will jump up to 50+

Was this observed during the time at which you were experiencing the performance issue? Even at the main menu I see ~30, during idle gameplay ~250

The game must actually be under load while you monitor it for this data to be relevant.