PoE Steam Client - 32bit/64bit problems

So I have been playing on the same PoE client (no reinstall until today) since 2014. I have been having weird problems and never really found out where they came from. Recently I was concerned that the game performance was really really shitty and that my PC (i5 7th gen, 32GB RAM, GTX 1060 and PoE on SSD) should be able to render the game without any issues.

So I set myself on the task to find out what was going on and I quickly discovered the following things:

1. I was unable to switch the renderer to vulcan, the option was simply greyed out on DX11
2. The client i was running was 32bit (which should be impossible, since DX11 client has always been 64bit)


I tried everything to convince steam to run the 64bit client. But even manually starting the 64bit steam executable, the game was still launched on 32bit. So moved the 32bit exe from the folder, started the 64bit steam exe and then STEAM (not the game, steam!) complained about the 32bit exe not being there.

I proceeded to delete the full PoE steam folder, downloaded the installer for the standalone client and installed the full 25GB again.

Now I can run the 64bit client, I can switch the renderer to vulcan.

And my performance issues are completely gone. The game runs smooth, no stutter, no fps drops, no 3 second freezes when my screen explodes thanks to Gladiator Bleed explosions.


If you, another fellow player, are having similar issues, open your task manager and check if the executable running is the x64 version. If you render option is greyed out and you cannot switch to vulcan, the chances are high you are having the same issue I had.

@GGG Please check what is going on with the steam client. Something is really wrong with it right now. I do not know when the issue started for me, since I only just figured it out myself, but at some point during the 32bit to 64bit and DX9 to DX11 transition something went wrong for my client and from what I found on google, it seems like I have not been the only one in the recent years.

Cheers have a nice sunday.