Engine Multithreading Problems after 3.17 patch (or sooner?)

So basically the title says it all.

Last league or at least ~mid league and patch everything was running smooth. In fact I always used engine multi-threading in this game and it was running OK'ish (at least multi-threading wasn't causing any problems for me). But after recent patches (or in this league) I have to turn it off o_0 ... CPU is literally going crazy and frames are all over the place.

I have also noticed that there are quite a few such threads already and many players experience this problem. Not a single thread was answered by the DEVS though... Can't seem to find anything on reddit too.

Can at least a single DEV bump into one of these posts/threads and clarify if GGG is aware of this? Can we expect some fix anytime soon?

THX.

I am in the exact same position. Im playing Generals Cry Berserker so there are lots of effects on screen (desecrate, berserk, blade flurry plus the vast amount of league mechanics in maps now, etc.) and I was stuttering all over the place (I played this build a few leagues ago with no issue, multi-threading turned on, graphics settings to high).

Turning off multi-threading was the only way to make the game playable (barely) however it is so unenjoyable with very low frame rates that I am almost considering trying another build to see if that alleviates any of the problem.

I have attempted to use all the graphical settings (DX11/Vulkan, Vsync On/Off, Dynamic Culling, FPS Cap, etc.), setting everything to low, running a WinMTR to see if Im dropping packets anywhere, turning sound settings to false in the config, closing any background apps I usually have running (which I havent had a problem running PoE with open before). The only thing that made any difference at all is turning engine multi-threading off.

Extremely frustrating that there are multiple threads in the forum at this point and no word from GGG even acknowledging this.

can you post screenshots of the taskmanager's cpu view while you play (right click in the cpu window and choose "show logical processors).

just wanna compare how the load distributes over several cores.

Here are some screens as I just started playing this morning. I did a few with multi-threading off and then turned it on (strangely today it is actually not causing any issue that I could see which is AMAZING!!!)

Multi-Threading Off
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Loading into my Hideout to start out:


Just entering into a map, stood there for a couple minutes before the screenshot:


Started to kill the first bunch of monsters:


Opening a harvest crop:


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Turned Multi-Threading On
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Opening another harvest crop:


Opening a strongbox with a screen capture of the in-game visuals as well, had to resize it to fit unfortunately:

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Like I said I turned on multi-threading and it didnt seem to have a negative impact today, no idea what may have changed?

Hope you can shed some light on this though, thanks for taking a look!

same issue

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Killzu wrote:

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SuperDrop wrote:

same issue

the problem with modern cpu's, if there is just a single core application running, the processor lowers the cylce of some cores to speed up one core which processes the one application faster.

so, enabling multithreading not necessarily makes a app faster, it depends how many other cpu consuming tasks you run which might prevent the speedup of the one core.

Similar problems here with option "Engine multithreading". Attached screenshot:



First 2/3 of graph is "Miltithreading enabled", last 1/3 is "Disabled". With disabled I'm getting flat 15ms for CPU. With Enabled I can get huge spikes up to 200ms.

This screen is taken in Hideout, with nothing happening. Literally standing still.

An update, to my previous post, as something interesting has happened. When PoE client runs alone (no other foreground applications), then CPU has big spikes that jump from 7ms to 100ms. However running MS Edge with eg. Youtube video, stabilizes PoE's Client and makes CPU to have much smaller fluctuations 5ms-10ms.

Perhaps there was change in PoE client, with Thread Affinity settings, forcing windows scheduler to run on separate logical CPUs, and when more real-time apps are running, windows scheduler will force client to run on same CPU.

exactly the same issue here

Honestly I think we're dealing with technical debt around core game logic at this point. I can't spend more money on my PC. Attack a pack of Harbingers with a few polished scarabs and the CPU thread runs up to 40ms-200ms. That's a lifetime when you're frame synced. It will and does drag down FPS making everything feel like ass. A 4090 is at comically low usage in POE these days.

There is no fix; there is no setting that's going to work. Multi threading is a GPU balancing option for DirectX and nothing to do with what's really lagging the game.

What happened to that DX guy they imported from the US a few years back? he was responsible for all the movement forward for awhile.

I don't want to play laggy games in 2023. There is no excuse we're 12 years in at this point. Don't worry Bex is gone no dev will see this thread boys.