Program Not Responding 0.2 Freeze

This post is rather lengthy as I'm trying to include as much info as possible so that a solution can be found. I include all of my System Info, Game Settings, and more.

PoE2 worked absolutely fine in 0.1. I was able to blast fully juiced Breaches on a HOWA Tempest Flurry Invoker going 100mph while watching a stream on my other monitor if I wasn't streaming to Twitch myself with 0 crashes.


After 0.2 update the game continuously freezes followed by the Windows hourglass cursor, and 9/10 times leads to a Program Not Responding prompt - sometimes the game continues working after a minute or so, most often it does not and I need to close the program. The other 1/10 times the game continues. The performance graphs do not change since the game is frozen.

This issue occurs at least once an hour, with some luck every 2 hours. I've had this freeze occur while I'm alone in my hideout, at the onset of boss fights, and during intense combat with many monsters on my screen. It can happen seemingly at any time not just during performance intensive moments.

***IMPORTANT***
Since I was not able to gather any information from the frozen in game graphs, I decided to keep Task Manager open and monitor PoE2's performance. I monitored the CPU and GPU leading up to and during the crash and there were no abnormalities. Occasionally the CPU usage can spike during load screens and during heavy monster/skill loads but it quickly returns to normal.

***The one thing I did notice in Task Manager in the "Details" tab, under the "Memory" column, was the amount of physical memory being used by PoE2 was anywhere between 3,500,000 K to 5,000,000 K but when the game froze this number dropped to 200,000 K.*** I'm not sure if that helps pinpoint the issue but I hope it does as that's the only discrepancy I was able to find.

I have tried numerous adjustments on my side, like enabling and disabling Hardware Accelerated GPU, setting my shader cache to 100GB, I've deleted unused programs so I now have over 200GB of free space, I've checked all the connections and wires in my PC, I've cleaned the fans, set PoE2 to not use Cores 0 and 1, and much more.

The in game graphs usually read as follows:
Frame: around 10MS, maxing at around 20MS in combat

FPS: 110-120 in hideout 70-90 in combat

CPU: 7ms-8ms(13ms-17ms in combat, sometimes reaching highs of 23ms but rarely)

GPU: 10ms-12ms

Network: 24ms-25ms

Server: Have never seen the bar fill or a number value appear

MEM: 2.9GB on launch, increasing to 5GB as I play, have never seen a number higher than 5.5GB

VRAM: 1GB on launch, increasing to 2.3GB as I play.

Drive: 6MB/S-15MB/S increasing to slightly over 40MB/S when I first zone into a map or when a lot of monsters are on my screen. I've never seen this number go over 50MB/s except for load screens.

Shaders: Bar fluctuates from empty to completely full almost constantly except for hideout.

My Sys Info:
CPU: 11th Gen i7 11700F @2.50 GHz, 2496 MHz, 8 Cores, 16 Logical Processors

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 1660 TI

RAM: 16GB DDR4

Monitor: 27in 2560x1440

My GPU runs at a cool 61-63 Celsius, I've never seen it in the 70's ever, not even after gaming for 12+ hours with a space heater on in my room.

Since my GPU isn't exactly state of the art I run all graphics on lowest settings possible with the Exception of Max Render Resolution which is set at 1970x1108 as anything lower than this decreases performance.

In Game Settings:

Renderer: DirectX12 (Tried switching to Vulkan which made performance worse and did not fix the issue.

Mode: Windowed Fullscreen

VSync: Adaptive

Upscale: NIS

Sharpness: 18%

HDR: Off

Brightness: 0.2 for scene and UI

Texture Filtering: Trilinear

Bloom: 25%

Dynamic Culling: On

Multithreading: On

I have tried numerous adjustments on my side, like enabling and disabling Hardware Accelerated GPU, setting my shader cache to 100GB, I've deleted unused programs so I now have over 200GB of free space, I've checked all the connections and wires in my PC, I've cleaned the fans, set PoE2 to not use Cores 0 and 1, and much more.

This issue has been haunting me since 0.2 launch and is pretty maddening given how much I blast and it's even more frustrating when it happens while I'm trying to stream. Please help so I can enjoy your game again. Thanks

same exact problem here

I started monitoring my PC performance through Norton and get a notification that my CPU is being eaten up by PoE2 3/10 times I experience the crash, the other 7/10 times it just crashes, CPU usage completely normal.

There are cases of super high end PC's experiencing the same issue on Steam forums so the game just needs to be optimized.

I've been disabling PoE2 from using cores 0-3 (was previously only disabling 0) and setting the fans to max performance through my BIOS interface and that's lessened the frequency of the crash. I've also been farming Trials of Chaos and haven't experienced the crash once.

Sure it will be fixed soon hang in there.

Updating to newly released Nvidia GPU driver has fixed issue.

Updated driver same problem. 14900k/3090ti plenty o ram. I couldn't find any consistency but i def notice more during the boss fights. Internet is stable 40ms?
idk if there's a way to fix this but it also resets the instance I'm on. This is my biggest gripe as the monsters around u also seem to give you a breather to catch up.

This completely resolved all crashes. Have been crash for over at least 60 hours of play time. Just updated to Windows 11 today, so it works for Windows 10 too.

In Steam Library, Right Click PoE2 Game → Manage → Browse local files
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Path of Exile 2
Right Click PathOfExileSteam.exe → Properties → Compatibility Tab → Compatibility mode: Windows 8
Do this for PathOfExile_x64Steam.exe also

Full Link Here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2694490/discussions/0/598514011709915121/?l=danish&ctp=2

I did this through File Explorer instead of Steam, should have same result though.