Thanks!!! This did it for me… I was stuck at about 50-60 FPS on my 3090|5900x|32GB RAM !
I did all you suggested above, and am now at 144 FPS all the time (Which is GSync for my monitor). I’m sure I could hit quite a lot more, but I don’t care to turn off GSync. 144 is perfect. 50-60 was driving me crazy!!
What’s funny about all this…
D3 can be perfectly smooth at 60FPS. While you can have a great video card and it can turn frames out at 100, 200, or higher per second, many people fail to realize a couple things:
If your monitor refresh has a limit, forcing the GPU to turn out frames faster than the monitor can display is doing nothing but making your GPU work harder than it has to. There are arguments for some games that this can help latency a tad, but for most not enough to notice. And with a game like D3, not required.
Forcing the card to work as hard as it can to produce as much FPS per second as it can also forces the card to work harder, run hotter, use more power, etc. Cap it to a certain FPS and the card doesn’t have to work as hard, run as hot, prolong its life.
Just got done setting up my father with a new HP Omen laptop, that came with an RTX2060. Was capable of running D3 at nearly 200FPS. I capped it to 65 with full screen windowed mode. Butter smooth, maxed graphics and it only kicks the fans in occasionally and doesn’t get hot.
Especially on laptops, you want to consider capping your FPS to help them live longer. lol
Just my view.
Game on.
I am having the same issues. I was on a waiting list for 7 months for a Kingpin 3090 AIO. Built a computer around it. ROG maximus XIII hero, i9-11900k, 32 gig ram so on an so on. I will give audio drivers a try. In fact I am wondering if my audio driver on my PG35VQ has something to do with this. I am not using it but still.
Your totally correct, regardless of how many fps framerates its telling you (100,120, ect.) D3 only uses 60 fps. The rest of the higher framerates are just unnecessary waste and just over works your vid card. The newer cards will read this and have a tendency to throttle the cards output a lot. So if your getting that fabulous 200 fps in D3 and think your card is really making the game fly, in reality your only getting 60 fps.
Really? Got any source for that?
If true, dear lord Blizzard, dont do that in D4 too 
The game has a few years on it, it was coded before the newer vid cards and monitors. Back then 60 fps was fast. I know that its coded around this, but I have to do some searching to find hard evidence. I am also pretty sure it was tweaked sometime later to use higher fps, but that was mostly show and really doesn’t improve gamplay.
Not sure I completely agree with your interpretation of what I meant here.
Essentially what I’m referring to is Monitor refresh limiting your FPS. If you have say a 144hz refresh monitor, then the game should be able to run up to 144FPS providing the card is capable of doing so. THAT said, what does make a huge difference is having the game in full screen exclusive mode vs full screen windowed mode. Windowed mode means it will run at an FPS controlled by vsync (if set) or cap to the FPS limit (if set). Now, running an external FPS monitor (such as Afterburner or the like) or having a monitor that can display FPS natively will show you the true FPS.
I have a feeling that the game forces a cap to 60 when running full screen exclusive on some hardware configurations. But it will unlock to higher FPS when running full screen windowed mode according to Windows desktop settings and actual game settings.
I know that when I used to use Fraps for game recording, it would display the FPS, and yes the game would run above 60 FPS. Anyway.
Nice that someone would agree with me, but I think we are on a different thought path of where I was going with it vs your thoughts.
Game on.
I understand what you was stating about monitors, I was just stating orginally D3 was optimized for 60 fps, which was later updated to handle higher resolutions. The difference between Full Screen, Windows Full Screen and Windows is that fullscreen the game handles the setting mainly, window mode means Windows will handle the settings and windows fullscreen is just borderless windows mode, developed to get rid of the border but still be able to use dual monitors. : Example Fullscreen vsync is handle ingame–Windows Mode vsync is handle in windows settings.
And yet:
I have been using full screen windowed mode for this game for years. It looks identical to full screen exclusive. (no bars, no windows visible etc)
However.
My system drives the monitor in Windows at 144FPS. But in game it drives it 60FPS. Same with Overwatch (I have it set the same way with the except that I let Overwatch run up to 144).
And I can see the FPS difference visually. If I were to set the FPS to say 30 in D3, it WILL run at 30 and its something you can visually see. Despite using Windowed Mode. Despite Windows set at 144.
So…
I can’t agree with that statement either. The game is still controlling the FPS in both modes. Try it yourself. Set it at a ridiculous low FPS and you will see it run at that low FPS even in Windowed modes.
By default vsync is off in Windows and not acessible only thru 3rd party programs, maybe the vid card settings in nvidia or amd.
I was just saying if you choose any window mode its controlled by windows or 3rd party programs, if you choose full screen its controlled more by the game settings.
Where are you getting this info? Because I’m telling you now, this is NOT how it works with D3. Not at all.
If I set the FPS to 15 in D3 WHILE in Windowed full screen (hell even just windowed) the game PLAYS at 15 FPS!
EVEN IN A WINDOW.
Try it yourself! I even just tried it, just now. I set the FPS to 15 and it is literally playing at 15 FPS while in desktop window (not even full screen) WHILE Windows is running at 144…
You can literally see the laggy, jumpy low FPS of the game while looking at perfectly smooth desktop in the background. It might not control the entire video system, but the game itself will set the FPS of the GAME independently of the desktop setting in Windowed modes.
Is it trickery? Not exactly. In truth the system is still running at 144 FPS (or whatever your individual system is set for) for the desktop. But the windowed environment is running a different FPS depending on the setting.
With just vsync, it will try to match the monitor refresh.
With FPS capped, it will run at or near the cap.
That’s it.
In exclusive full screen, then it has priority. But often you get more issues with being jittery and it plays less smoothly on many systems vs using windowed modes.
Take it how you want, but that’s how it works.
Thats an in game limiter, its job is to limit the fps. If you set it to 15 fps the game will run no more than 15. But it does not control anything else, if you set it to 120 fps does not mean it will run 120. What I am saying the vsync and other setting will be controlled either thru nvidia or amd software depending if your in windows mode or fullscreen mode.
Unless your desktop is already running at or above 120. My desktop is set to 144FPS in Windows Settings. So yes, the game will run at 120 if I set it there. But I have no reason to set it there and normally run my game at 60.
Essentially, when operating in desktop windowed modes your FPS will not exceed the desktop FPS setting. Period. And that limit is NOT 60. Its whatever your desktop FPS is set at. Most are defaulted to 60, unless you specify it directly in the windows settings. Which I have.
Want to muck it up further?
Try running a 3D enabled system. I used to play D3 on a 3D enabled laptop, complete with the 3D glasses. That required 120 to make it work properly. (glasses used 60 per lens alternating)
So… (you know, I actually miss playing D3 that way, it was so awesome in 3D).
Just saying.
I had the very same issue, my RTX 3090 was running at 80-120 fps. I’d probably ignored that, but it was stuttery as well. It seems like FPS limiter is bugged. Disabling FPS limit completely fixed the issue for me. Thanks!
This is probably the dumbest crap I’ve read on these forums. Probably why I stopped comin’ here 4-5 years ago. Rendering above 60hz isn’t an accomplishment, it was done in GLQuake… in 1996, and a few years later I was playing Quake 3 at 160hz in 2001.
Please don’t spread information for which you have no idea what you’re talking about, it’s very easy to establish if each frame is unique in a game with tools to prove that.
Ugh this really annoyed me. I really need to never come here and read this type of stupidity.
You know, I hate to be “that guy” but honestly. How does one visit the forum years later and find a thread from 9 months ago, that began nearly 2 years ago to complain about?
Do you search for threads with video card info specifically or something, or were you looking to solve a similar issue, read this thread and posted that instead?
I’m just confused. lol
Please don’t bump old threads if you can avoid it. Unless you are going to post about a related issue that the thread helped you with. Replying to most posters in an old thread may not be read by the original posters anyway in many cases.
Game on.
Don’t wanna be that guy, but then proceeds to be that guy…
Had performance problems with my 3080ti. This thread came up, I was scrolling for info, saw stupidity, saw people believing it, had to correct it.
I’m having the same issue, RTX3090 FTW3 Ultra on a 5GHz all core 8086K.
I’ve turned off resizable bar, helped a bit.
Reinstalled drivers, no difference.
Notice PerfCap reason is idle… so used nvidia settings to set GPU to performance mode for DiabloIII.exe. Helped a bit.
Turned up graphics settings, counter intuitive, GPU utilization up and thus holding fps more stable.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not terrible fps, but I got better from my GTX1080ti. Used to run 200-300fps all the time and thus when vsynced never dipped below my monitors refresh of 144Hz.
Now it’s normally around 200fps and it frequently dips to 90-130fps which is below my monitors refresh. Annoying…
Turning AA to max and OCing the GPU core 200MHz seems to keep it out of the “idle” state and above 144FPS, but I’d really rather not have to do that. I’d rather turn off AA and power limit the GPU while forcing it to stay 100% performance. Can’t seem to be able to do that though.
Why not try capping your FPS to 144? Sounds dumb, but it may fix your issue. Having it go faster than your monitor refresh rate isn’t going to solve anything.
I have an RTX 3060 currently, coupled to a 7th gen i5. Still runs butter smooth, and while i can run it at 144, I cap it to about 65. (Setting it to 60 actually forces it to run less than 60) The card doesn’t even heat up enough to kick the fans on.
I am running max quality settings on every aspect of D3 video options, and audio including max sound channels. No issues whatsoever.
Sometimes I think the newer hardware can actually create more problems with old games then you would expect them to, but that’s just me.
For example, D3 doesn’t like the newer CPU multi-core processors. You might try changing the affinity to just one core only for giggles.
But honestly, cap the FPS. D3 doesn’t need high FPS rates, and doesn’t suffer the same latency issues higher refresh helps, like on a FPS game…
Game on.
I normally do run vsync, but it’s dipping below that which has been annoying me (results in frame pacing issues) which s why I turned it off and starting looking into it.
I actually have a 3060ti laying around and I put that in, runs 200-300 FPS like my 1080ti used to. So D3 runs better on a 3060ti than a 3090 /facepalm
I’ve tested other games and the 3090 performs as expected (ie. 60-80 fps in doom eternal on the 3060ti is over 200 fps on the 3090)
This is the same CPU I’ve been running for years and only started having these issues with the 3090. So I don’t see how it could be anything to do with the CPU.