DX11 categorically worse: poor FPS, memory leaks

After being forced onto DX11 to avoid graphical issues, I've become reacquainted with the shortcomings of DX11 that kept me away since its inception in this game. First, FPS, i.e. CPU/GPU usage, is simply worse on DX11. Whereas on DX9 I would often get a workable 30 FPS when the going was good, on DX11 it never tops 20. In all cases DX9 outperforms DX11, and in almost all cases DX9 wins out in FPS, the exception being DX11's dynamic resolution, which will force FPS up at the cost of resolution. Since the result of this is a miserable blurry mess (MAYBE 240p?), I can hardly call the move to DX11 an improvement.
Second, and worse, something about the move to DX11 seems to have sprung a memory leak. My system has a hard memory cap of 8GB. On DX9, PoE would occupy about 1.5-2GB on startup, allocate more over the course of several zones, and plateau at about 4GB, leaving comfortable headroom for a media player and the inevitable poe.trade. With DX11, memory usage starts at about 3GB and increases similarly, but never stops; it keeps growing past 6GB until either Windows pops a warning about memory capacity or PoE hits the hard limit and hard crashes to desktop. As a result, I can now no longer keep a browser open for trading; I have to restart PoE any time I want to look up something, and close my browser immediately to save the memory in order to extend my playtime between restarts. This is very annoying.

Everything you are describing here sounds like a problem with your graphics card, honestly. I'd strongly suggest checking it has sufficient power, is correctly seated in the PCI-E bus, the fans are working, etc.

One notable difference between the DX9 and DX11 clients is that the former is a 32-bit application, and the later is a 64-bit application. This means that the DX11 client can use more memory than the 32-bit one, simply because there are some very hard limits on memory use in a 32-bit application.

That said, the behavior you describe does sound odd. I'm not certain how you were measuring that, but I see ~ 1GB used on load, and 1.3GB after zoning in, dropping to 1.2GB after garbage collection releases some memory. (Obviously, with the DX11 client, for a reasonable comparison.)

I'd suggest you investigate anything that might be injected into the rendering path: overlay software including VoIP clients, overwolf style things, FPS display software, things like Riva Stats Server, etc. They could be causing this sort of issue.

I'd also strongly suggest you ensure your drivers are up to date, in case it is something with one of them. It certainly could be.

That GPU performing poorly with DX11 is certainly possible related to driver issues, or hardware limitations, too: it is pretty old, so might exist in that sad period where DX11 driver optimization was poor.

This is a laptop (albeit an old one), and the graphics card is integrated with the motherboard. I have also replaced said motherboard in the past for unrelated issues, so I know hardware connections or power issues cannot be the issue. My system uses the same fan/sink system to cool both CPU and GPU and it does not spin up to the "straining to cool" speeds at any point during PoE run, so I can also rule out overheating.

I'm aware of the difference between 32 and 64-bit, but a slow and steady increase of usage over zones indicates some error in garbage collection, rather than capacity actually required by the game. My method of measurement is very simple; I use Process Explorer, and watch all the little memory usage graphs before and while I run PoE. I know how much my system occupies while idle, and how much my media player uses (both amounts that do not vary). Out of memory crashes are trivial to identify, since the graph simply hits the top before dropping sharply to system idle levels.

Software I can likewise eliminate as a possibility, since I reinstall my operating system rather frequently, and the only programs of note on this latest such instance are my browser, my media player, and PoE.

As a matter of course I have checked my drivers to ensure they are up to date, but AMD has long since relegated this GFX card to legacy status; updates are few and far between.

Poor support for DX11 is indeed a possibility, but that does not address the issue of memory allocation well, and, at any rate, amounts to an SOL answer, so I'd like to focus on other possibilities.

P.S. I just recalled that an acquaintance of mine, running on an entirely different, far more modern desktop system encountered these exact same problems (worse FPS, out of memory crashes after several zones of play) on DX11, and solved the issue by reverting to DX9EX (though without encountering the graphical issues I suffer). This strongly suggests that these issues are not confined to some aspect of my hardware or driver configuration.

Hey, Chris from Overwolf here.
Overwolf shouldn't cause any FPS drops and if it does we'd love to hear about it. We are all gamers here and this is extremely important to us.

I would recommend to try and disable Overwolf and see how it affects your FPS in game. If while running only Overwolf with the game you still experience FPS drops, you're more than welcome to contact our support team and we'll have a look!

wait, when i stand still i got gebetween 59-63 fps, in combat 1 year i had 45+ now i got 18+ IF AM LUCKY like.. i dont think my grahpcs card just lowered it performance over time did it? thats wierd.. my not be the game -

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chriskate wrote:

Hey, Chris from Overwolf here[...]

Since I do not use overlay software, of which I assume Overwolf is a subset, I conclude that my problems here are unrelated. Further, I cannot hope to use any accessory software when the PoE base game already limits my continuous playtime based on my memory capacity and the rate at which it inflates its memory footprint.

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chriskate wrote:

Hey, Chris from Overwolf here.
Overwolf shouldn't cause any FPS drops and if it does we'd love to hear about it. We are all gamers here and this is extremely important to us.

I would recommend to try and disable Overwolf and see how it affects your FPS in game. If while running only Overwolf with the game you still experience FPS drops, you're more than welcome to contact our support team and we'll have a look!

For the record: I have no reason to think Overwolf is in any way responsible for this, I just suggest it as (a) an example that people have likely heard of, because it is good, and (b) to eliminate any possible cause, just to be thorough. :)

I have subsequently discovered that if I exit PoE successfully before a memory crash occurs, the System process maxes out one of my two CPUs with kernel activity for between 3 and 10 seconds immediately after PoE releases all its memory.

I have also tried futzing with my paging file, on the off chance that some part of PoE takes the position that the lack of one is some heinous crime. No dice.

Had you had the pagefile set to anything other than default when the crashes were occurring? I ask because I had a custom pagefile setting at one point; dealt with a few memory usage shutdowns. Once I let Windows set the pagefile size, I haven't had a crash yet.

At the same time, it just sounds like you're trying to run with too much stuff open at once.

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三日前 wrote:

I have subsequently discovered that if I exit PoE successfully before a memory crash occurs, the System process maxes out one of my two CPUs with kernel activity for between 3 and 10 seconds immediately after PoE releases all its memory.

I have also tried futzing with my paging file, on the off chance that some part of PoE takes the position that the lack of one is some heinous crime. No dice.

Interesting. In general, FWIW, having some paging file space is a good idea for any OS with virtual memory; it allows the OS to be smarter about handling memory that otherwise sits around and does nothing of value. Reduces waste.

Anyway, that aside, it definitely sounds like something odd is going on. Perhaps emailing GGG technical support will help out: they may be able to guide you through how to give them further information on what is causing this issue. (Though it could just be that a 32-bit client fragments memory enough that it can't do more, or the GPU texture memory, etc, can't be defragmented enough and suffers the same outcome.)

Sadly, there is no easy way to proceed here, since this isn't a universal issue, and there are not really any tunable anythings that might help with this problem. I'm sorry.