Slow Game Performance RTX 3090 Graphics Card [Solved!]

General Discussion
1

For some reason Diablo 3 runs much worse on my RTX 3090 than my RTX 2080 Ti.

i9900K overcloked to 5 GHz (all cores), 64GB RAM, RTX 3090 (Founder’s Edition), 1TB NVME SSD. Running the game at 1440p (not even 4K).

Tried turning off SSAO, turning on low effects, turning off Anti-Aliasing, setting everything else to low and it doesn’t make any difference. I also disabled Gsync and tried with Vertical Sync (native in game) on and off - no difference in jittery, occasionally lower framerate than on my last gen RTX 2080 Ti card.

All else being equal, I’m seeing huuuge frame rate spikes down to 90 fps intermittendly.

I confirmed I have the latest NVIDIA drivers (and even did a fresh uninstall/reinstall), latest Windows updates, etc.

All my other games like Doom Eternal and WoW run at a solid 200fps, but Diablo 3 (and only Diablo 3) took a huge hit when I upgraded to the RTX 3090 for some reason.

Thinking maybe NVIDIA drivers or something with the game client that doesn’t like the card?

I know not many people have this card (yet), but I wanted to report something in case anyone else experiences it.

There’s definitely a bug somewhere… on NVIDIA’s side or Blizzard’s (or both). Even IN TOWN, I’m seeing frame rate dips with all my settings turned way, way down. My RTX 2080 Ti had no issues playing the game at a rock solid 165fps+ on max settings.

To prove this out, I can actively swap back my RTX 2080 Ti card and the FPS immediately improves and is as smooth as butter. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with my RTX 3090 card as it smashed through at least a dozen other games I own at 200 FPS on ultra settings with no issues (including several Blizzard games).

Update [solved]:
Solved! I was researching on the NVIDIA forums and apparently the NVIDIA HD Audio Drivers cause conflicts with some older games that can, apparently, artificially throttle the GPU.

Your suggestion to use MSI Afterburner to confirm I was seeing the same behavior was brilliant. I confirmed even though this card’s GPU is ~1950 MHz, mine was consistently running at less than 900 MHz - and this artificial throttling is what was causing the FPS spikes.

Just uninstall the NVIDIA HD Audio Drivers. Also uninstall NVIDIA Broadcast. Then restart your PC. Then re-install the latest NVIDIA driver (which will also install the HD Audio driver you uninstalled earlier). You can then re-install NVIDIA Broadcast software if you want. A simple uninstall and reinstall of the main driver + NVIDIA broadcast will IMMEDIATELY fix the problem. I confirmed after doing this, my GPU now runs D3 at its full clock speed, rock solid.

And going to test in-game, I no longer see huge stutters or lag spikes.

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2

Question.

What resolution did you run the game at on the 2080?

What is your monitor refresh rate? Be sure to set the FPS to match it, or use Vsync.

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Both the 2080 Ti and 3090 were played with the same 1440P, 165 Hz screen. I had the resolution and refresh rate set to match in both cases.

I’ve tried V sync on and off as I mentioned.

I’m telling you - there’s some issue with this game with the 3090 FE cards.

4

why do you need such a powerful graphics card for D3…it’s overkill.

Also, you pay the price for running the latest gear in your PC…dx needs time to have bugs ironed out, software devs too.

But, congrats on your 3090 - it looks a very nice card I will admit, albeit very expensive. I’m eventually looking to get a rtx 4000 workstation card for my workstation (cuda, tensor and rt cores ftw!).

5

Have you disabled/maxed the in game fps limiters? There’s a thread in the tech support section where some users using that feature, including myself, are actually artificially limiting fps to half of the number configured in the slider.

1 Like
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Yes disabled the in game FPS limiters.

I work in IT - believe me - I’ve tried everything.

I wasn’t looking for tech support suggestions (because I’ve already tried all that before my first post) but rather wanted to raise awareness on the forums in case other people have seen the same behavior with the card. If multiple people chime in, maybe NVIDIA and Blizzard will fix it.

7

I’ve seen some reviews showing 30X0 to have much more variance in FPS, as in even though average FPS is higher than 20X0, it sometimes had really low minimum fps. Maybe this is just one such example.
Though it happening in town is weird.

8

Wouldn’t that be the other way around? There is a problem with the cards with D3.

I’m on a 8700k OCd to 5GHz as well, 144Hz monitor with a GTX 1070SC, an older Samsung EVO 850 SSD, and run buttery smooth 144FPS at 1440P.

I’m sure a driver update will fix it, unless you are having performance issues in other games with this card. It may be a bad card. No reason my 1070 should outperform a 3090.

9

Ummm…he probably plays more than just D3…

7 Likes
10

duh! Either way, OP is at the cutting edge of graphics cards and you can always expect issues when living on the edge.

1 Like
11

I love threads like this… “protect the game at all costs!!!”

OP thanks for the info.

12

It’s drivers. Nvidia will fix it.

13

Brag thread?

I’m running D3 on Ryzen 2600x with an rx480 8gb. 100+ frames consistent on QHD 120hz.

OP must have a bottleneck issue or maybe is using the wrong data port for their monitor?

14

It could be backwards compatibility issues, 12 year old game vs King pin current gen - speaking two different languages.

I doubt Blizz is going to update compatibility for that or Nvidia create updates to patch in games this old to make them run properly.

15

Don’t quite think it’s a brag thread, I think it’s just a player being frustrated that such a basic game is experiencing performance issues with an elite graphics card. Kind of understandable.

nvidia’s entire 3000 series GPUs have been a huge screwup anyway…driver issues, availability issues you name it. Not that AMD is any better!

16

Hi, i have the same problem. My pc crash in d3 . Other games runs perfektly. The rtx runs under 900mhz in d3. Use msi afterburner. We must wait for a new driver

1 Like
17

Solved! I was researching on the NVIDIA forums and apparently the NVIDIA HD Audio Drivers cause conflicts with some older games that can, apparently, artificially throttle the GPU.

Your suggestion to use MSI Afterburner to confirm I was seeing the same behavior was brilliant. I confirmed even though this card’s GPU is ~1950 MHz, mine was consistently running at less than 900 MHz - and this artificial throttling is what was causing the FPS spikes.

Just uninstall the NVIDIA HD Audio Drivers. Also uninstall NVIDIA Broadcast. Then restart your PC. Then re-install the latest NVIDIA driver (which will also install the HD Audio driver you uninstalled earlier). You can then re-install NVIDIA Broadcast software if you want. A simple uninstall and reinstall of the main driver + NVIDIA broadcast will IMMEDIATELY fix the problem. I confirmed after doing this, my GPU now runs D3 at its full clock speed, rock solid.

And going to test in-game, I no longer see huge stutters or lag spikes.

2 Likes
18

That is quite interesting, and fairly bad. Hopefully Nvidia fixes it. Most people wont figure out they had to do that. I wonder if it is affects all Nvidia cards or only the 30X0s.

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It’s possible that only newer versions of the HDMI audio drivers are causing the issue. nVidia’s drivers past the 442 branch seem to have major issues with many games, so much so that unless you have a 3xxx series GPU, the advice is to stop at the 442.xx driver (both regular and Studio drivers) to avoid the conflicts.

The problems affect both the Standard drivers and the DCH drivers. Users want the Standard drivers where possible, as the DCH drivers force the use of the Microsoft Store version of nvidia’s control panel, which is crippled vs. the Standard version. Unfortunately even with DDU, getting off the DCH drivers can be a hassle for those not quite tech savvy.

20

I tried some of the solutions suggested and most did nothing to stop the choppy video performance.

I run an i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz, 64 Gb RAM and the RTX 3090. The monitor is an older Sony Bravia 40" 1080p. What should be seamless graphics suffered horrible chop. The more mobs, the more stutter and skipped frame rates I got.

I’ve edited the D3prefs file, experimented with sync(s) off and on, refresh rates, max FPS settings…literally everything that could affect gameplay.

Tried installing with and without audio HDMI drivers. Tried just installing the graphics drivers instead of the entire NVidia software suite.

My final solution was actually simple. I edited 1 line in the D3PREFS.txt file
-changed DisableTrilinearFiltering “0” to DisableTrilinearFiltering “1”. Saved and exited the edit.

  • inside the game OPTIONS - VIDEO, I changed display mode in the game to ‘Windowed Fullscreen’
  • unchecked max framerates for both foreground and background
  • unchecked Vertical Sync
  • left Reflections checked
  • Texture, Shadow, Physics, Clutter Density all on High
  • Antialiasing set at 8X
  • SSAO checked

With these settings, I run 180 to 240 FPS .

It turns out the biggest problem was the mode of display. When the option was set to ‘Fullscreen’, I got all sorts of chop, stutter and skipped frames. When I reverted to Windowed Fullscreen, all problems vanished and play became fluid.

It seems that when NVidia installs an updates driver, Diablos’ display mode defaults back to Fullscreen. I have to reset the display to Windowed Fullscreen manually and then everything works fine again.

Perhaps some of what I’ve written may help others. This was my solution.

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