Video playing on browser is extremely choppy when playing Path of Exile

Hi, I simply can not figure out my issue after researching it for days now.

Whenever I have PoE focused, youtube videos play at very low fps and becomes choppy (the audio is fine). The moment I have PoE running in the background and click on my browser, the video plays just fine.

No other game gives me this issue at all.

I have tried fullscreen mode, windowed mode, and fullscreen windowed.

I have turned down all my settings.

I have tried to play with the dynamic resolution.

Tried vsync on and off. Tried using nvidia free sync mode as well.

Made sure my refresh rates on both monitors are the same.

Nothing works at all.

I love this game, but let's be honest, during farming, you want to watch videos as you map. I can't do this and it's terrible.

It baffles me that even if the game is running as long as it's running in the background and not focused (in windowed full screen mode), youtube videos no longer 'lag' (its not the internet connection, the video just runs at a very low fps) and plays fine. Click back into PoE and the video is choppy as hell but the audio is fine.

Anyone else having this issue?

My specs: 7700k, 1080ti, 16 gb ram. Clearly it isn't my system. I quad box diablo 3 while playing youtube just fine.

PS. I have tried every single browser (Opera, Mozilla, Edge, Chrome, etc.) without a single extension enabled. Hardware acceleration also disabled.

Thank you for reading.

browser hardware acceleration would have also been my guess ;)

can you run cpu-z and gpu-z to see whether your cpu or gpu is at full load while running both programs?

I have this exact same problem and it's so frustrating. After weeks I finally got stable FPS with the game, but this is one thing I can't figure out.

My specs are the same but I have a 1070 gtx, i7 6770k and 24gb ram.
Same as OP I've tried other browsers like Chrome/Edge. Primary is Firefox.
I always have a video playing either from youtube or netflix and do it it games like Battlefield V, GTA V, WoW and ARMA 3 which is notorious for high cpu usage. My GPU is at 99% as usual but it will go down to a few % when not in a game. I did try the suggestion of changing hardware acceleration but it hasn't helped.

Here's taskmgr when no video is open at all.


Here it is with a 1080p youtube video playing.

What worked for me was switching shadows to low. No more choppy video.