Possible lead on performance problems

So, as the performance problem persists for almost 4 months, already, TOTA included, I have tried to find whats the issue exactly myself. So far I have managed to deduct that game has a problem with shader caching.

Game compiles a shader every time something on the screen is drawn, even if the shader had already been compiled before and seats neatly in the shader cache, located at /%appdata%/PathOfExile/ShaderCache<Graphics API name here>. I am using DX11 in this case, since it has been the most stable one for me. It can be possibly pulling it from an existing shader cache that sits in the game folder proper, /Steam/steamapps/common/Path of Exile (for the Steam version at least), but the game struggles with objects you have already seen too. Do I have a proof of this, however? Of course I do.



Here is my Appdata shader cache, from few of my recent game sessions. Last one was just me booting up the game. Notice the times when changes were made in each folder (last ones are basically half an hour ago in my timezone). I have been playing the game for years, last time being before this whole performance decline, in Crucible, so by all means, if its working correctly, it can't be pulling existing shaders from the existing shader cache? Speaking of that, also.

Shader cache in the game folder is older than the Appdata one, but it also affects the game if deleted, making loading times astronomically long.

From my point of view that I have described above, two conclusions can be made:

1) GGG has relocated the shader cache for whatever reason (for Standalone and Steam version unification purposes??????????), and now the game is copying hundreds of these miniscule shader files into the new one, and has messed it up in a way that it pulls them time and time again, not checking if they're already present. But they're already inside memory for the current level, so you don't see them loading and unloading at random.

2) GGG has messed up the shader caching process entirely, making the game recompile them from the ground up time after time. Same as 1, they're already inside the memory for the current level, so there's no flickering

Both of them line up for extended loading times for non-hub areas, GREATLY extended loading times for hub areas, because it has to repull/recompile hundreds, if not thousands of various MTX shaders. And it also explains missing textures for enemies, their effects, auras, attacks, missing ground textures and models, et cetera, within the first few seconds of seeing them, as the game thinks you're seeing all of it for the first time.

Hope this is gonna be helpful to GGG in figuring out the root of the issue once they come back from the holidays.

Yeah my shader bar always goes full for a few seconds even when entering a map that I've done over 100 times with the same mechanics, same scarabs etc. Even when going back to my hideout which I've used for ages and haven't changed at all. Something is definitely wrong with the shaders, they didn't used to do this before. Also saw some missing textures in gardens-like map areas too so that's fun.

the craziest part is they haven't said anything about it for like 2 leagues lmao

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Rextec wrote:

the craziest part is they haven't said anything about it for like 2 leagues lmao

Yeah its just sad, they're sweeping it under the rug pretending the shader thing isn't a total buggy mess. I'm tired of my PC's fans speeding up on every new map or just when going back to hideout or opening the fucking atlas lol

Thanks for the information dude!

Its a shame GGG wont use it to finally fix a part of their game.

Maybe they aren't noticing this because they work on 32+ core threadripper/epyc/xeon machines. I upgraded to 7950X3D (16 cores) a few weeks ago and shader activity is very brief on map start.

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Aderahl wrote:

Maybe they aren't noticing this because they work on 32+ core threadripper/epyc/xeon machines. I upgraded to 7950X3D (16 cores) a few weeks ago and shader activity is very brief on map start.

If these devs expect us to have 20K $ PCs that's even more sad.

Need a 20k usd pc to play poe 1

poe 2 requirement: 40k usd pc

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Warvald wrote:

Need a 20k usd pc to play poe 1

poe 2 requirement: 40k usd pc

I wouldn't be surprised, performance in that game will probably be 10x more horrible if my GPU and CPU go to 70C+ while playing simple league mechanics in poe 1 atm lol