I started noticing this recently, possibly since the 1.3.1 patch but whenever I have the Paragon menu open, whether it be the smaller menu that takes up the right side of the screen OR the full expanded menu that takes up the full screen, any mouse movement causes severe fps drops and frametime issues. If I don’t move the cursor all is fine. If I wiggle the mouse around the FPS goes all over the place and using tools like RTSS to monitor frametimes, the graph is also all over the place.
This only happens if my mouse’s polling rate is set to 1000hz or 500hz. If I set it to 250hz, the problem goes away. However, this is clearly an issue with the game and should be fixed.
I’ve also experienced the same issue when in the social screen, whilst in a party with other players. If I move my cursor over my friends list, all is fine. But the moment I start moving my mouse cursor over my character and my other party member’s characters, in the social screen, the same FPS drop and frametime behavior happens. This issue has been happening to me since launch and was never fixed.
I have a high end PC that plays other games flawlessly. Things I’ve tried are:
Re-installed the game
Lowering settings
Turning Nvidia Reflex on/off.
Turning g-sync and v-sync on/off.
Even formatted my PC and re-installed Windows (wanted to anyway)
The issue still persists. My friend is now also experiencing the issue in the social screen, so it’s likely an issue with one of the recent updates.
Higher polling rates on mice use more CPU and you can demo this for yourself on your desktop. Set your polling rate to something like 1000hz, open the task manager, set the update rate to high, go to the tab with the performance tab and watch the CPU threads graph, while making circles on your desktop. You’ll see one thread pegged high if you’re running higher polling rates. If you have a weak CPU, you might be tapping it out in that menu, which will lead to frame rate issues. It could also be some kind of gsync issue as well, but I find that unlikely in this scenario.
Long story short: It sounds like you’re CPU bottlenecking. Post a DXDIAG report on pastebin and link it here.
I figured higher polling rates use up more CPU resources but I have an Intel 13700k and don’t have this issue in literally any other game I’ve played on this PC. The issue is also isolated to the paragon menu and the social menu, only if other players are in the party. No other menu or area in the game exhibits the same behaviour. It also hasn’t been a problem until most likely the latest patch. I’ve been playing since launch with probably 500+ hours already and never had a problem before, with the exact same hardware/PC.
I have always noticed, however, that the game really loads up like 1 core and 1 thread to very high utilization, like 80% leaving almost all other cores in the single digits. I’ve always thought this could be an issue if the game is maxing out cores/threads.
Here is the pastebin, let me know if I didn’t copy/create it correctly:
I’ll have to test it out some then, but I can see it potentially being an issue like you’re stating. Contrary to what a lot of people might think, UI related things are actually very expensive and if the game is still ticking behind the menu, it could be tapping out the main game thread on the CPU. Having party members probably causes a whole much of extra calculations/updates each tick as well.
That’s completely normal. Pretty much every single game you’ve ever played does all their main loop on a single thread. The other threads are for async tasks usually and most game engines don’t scale well beyond 4-6 threads before hitting diminishing returns. As for all the other cores being low load, that’s also due to the Windows scheduler load leveling cores.
I’m still on my 4770k until I get done with dealing with insurance issues 500 miles away (yay family that is more liability than useful to my grandpa) and while the CPU utilization goes to 15% spinning the mouse around at 1000 Hz, it doesn’t really do much of anything else.
However, with Diablo 4, and D2R that have always on controller polling, the mouse will cause engine interrupts (essentially the software version of an IRQ conflict) if set to a super high polling rate. My default is 500 Hz on my G9x and it doesn’t produce issues with framerates in D4. I’ll go in and try 1000 Hz though.
One thing to keep in mind with high polling rate devices - if you have more than one device on the same bus that polls excessively, that can cause all sorts of hitching due to constant interrupts. An example of this is a high poll rate mouse + high poll rate gaming device on the same USB controller. If both devices were on ports that each had their own controller, no conflict would occur. That’s one of the frustrations of the shared bus with USB, and it affects USB-C just as much as USB 2.0. The CPU utilization comes from the fact that while USB ports have a controller (hub) chipset, the CPU is what controls that hub/chipset, and thus the spike in utilization. Combine that with D4’s controller polling and you can have major issues.
Edit: I just performed a test with my mouse set to 1ms polling (1000 Hz) and am unable to replicate the framerate drops, and I have a much weaker computer than the OP’s system (minus my 4090). So it isn’t just the latest patch - there’s a conflict somewhere. If you have a webcam connected (even if it’s turned off/disabled at the moment), try disconnecting that and seeing if it helps. Even when disabled it’s still polled by the OS simply because it’s connected.
Just keep in mind that a polling rate of 250hz is still PLENTY enough for gaming. Unless you’re playing at 240fps on a 240hz monitor, it’s pretty much never going to be an issue and you’d never notice a difference between different polling rates (this could easily be A/B tested). Anything beyond 500hz on a mouse is overkill, from an objective standpoint. It’s just one of the latest trends in selling hardware to justify selling some refresh of a mouse model so they can slap a $90 price tag on it. Don’t even get me started on the 8khz polling keyboards lol…
The point is, it’s most likely adding to a CPU bottleneck if you’re on a weaker CPU.
I think this is more susceptible on older gen CPU hardware. Though any system will get taxed more when you are requesting a higher polling (essentially feedback) of a device.
Until last week, I was playing this game with a Logitech Performance MX mouse from like 2008. Had the rechargeable NiMH double AA battery and featured Darkfield tech. The primary button finally started to die and glitch, not clicking or double clicking, etc.
So I replaced it with a MX Master 2S. Essentially the same mouse, but with built in Li-ion battery, BT support, and 3 selectable connections. But I run them with standard drivers, default settings, they work fine for Diablo in general.
But when I play Overwatch I switch to my backup corded mouse, a Razer Basilisk V2. That one I can change its DPI profile on the fly when playing different heroes. And I think it may be set to a higher polling rate, I need to check.
Point is, I normally have no reason to, nor do I run high polling rates for most tasks/games. Anything above 500hz is ridiculous for this game.
I can’t really think of a good reason to have a high polling rate or what possible benefit it may bring.
Now those who may play an FPS game competitively and/or professionally may need higher polling rates to improve their device reaction time a tad and help them be more accurate with their tracking, movement and aim. But 3rd person games, not so much.
But that’s my opinion, and everyone has their own.
What are your primary system specs (CPU, RAM, GPU, Motherboard) and what peripherals (mouse, keyboard etc.) do you have connected to your system.
Wondering if there’s a piece of hardware/peripheral we both have that’s causing the issue. If we can narrow it down to something, there’s a better chance Blizzard might be able to fix it.