Performance degradation after 1.4.2 (detailed description)

PC Bug Report
1

PC Specs:
CPU: i5-12400F
RAM: 32.0 GB (DDR4 dual channel 3600 MHz)
GPU: RTX 4070 (12 GB VRAM)
Monitor: 1440p (144Hz G-Sync Compatible)
OS: Windows 10 Enterprise (22H2)

I have started playing this game for the first time just a couple days ago and not even past the first area, but have been benchmarking and setting up graphics options for the last 2 days (like I do for all PC games before staring a playthrough), so have a very good idea about the performance characteristics of the starting area (snowy region) right before the patch dropped.

Just after the patch dropped last night, I booted up the game and was immediately aware of frame-pacing and frame drop issues that popped up only after the last patch - 1.4.2.

Settings:

  • 1440p in fullscreen window mode
  • DLAA (no super sampling, only AA)
  • ‘Ultra’ preset graphics
  • High Resolution Assets NOT installed - Texture set to max available option at ‘High’.
  • Using RTSS for telemetry (looking at GPU clock and usage, individual CPU cores usage and clocks, FPS, frametimes, RAM/VRAM usage)

Tested in starting area before reaching first town.

BEFORE Patch 1.4.2:

  • Game runs at ~125 FPS when uncapped (no foreground FPS limit), obviously fluctuating a bit based on scene.
  • When capped at 80 FPS (foreground FPS limit enabled) it was super smooth and FPS never dipped below 80 FPS no matter what happened on screen. Perfect!

AFTER Patch 1.4.2:

  • FPS drops to 60s when there are enemies on screen (or nearby but offscreen) below the 80 FPS cap.
  • Even when standing still, uncapped FPS keeps fluctuating between 65-110 FPS.
  • These frame drops do not seem to happen in any indoor area (obvious difference is no snow particles on screen, but could be anything else, don’t want to jump to conclusions).
  • Frametimes are extremely jittery and slowly walking (using controller) and panning the camera shows micro-stuttering and is not smooth even on a VRR monitor.
  • Loading into main menu always produces 2-3 giant (~1s long) stutters consistently when some CPU cores are being hammered for the duration of those stutters. These stutters were absent before the patch.

Attemped resolutions:

  • Dropping graphics preset to Low did not remedy the frame drops described.
  • Disabled GSync in NVCP and tested at fixed refresh rate. No change observed.
  • Reinstalled game from scratch inclusing Battle.net launcher.
  • Updated to latest NVIDIA WHQL driver (555.99)
  • Tested other games and saw no change in performance characteristics using RTSS.

The performance degredations are a real shame, and although they do not render the game unplayable, it definitely takes away from the benefits of playing this title on the PC for a high refresh rate experience.

HELP

I’m not sure where I am supposed to post this information except these forums. I would really like to work with Blizzard technical support to work this issue out or provide detailed reports they might need to look into the issue.

If any mod knows how I can get in touch with the game’s support team directly please let me know.

9 Likes
2

This is absolute true, I confirm it.

You have somehow forced Diablo 4 to run bad on GeForce Now Ultimate = RTX 4080 ; )

…that’s quite an achievment.

FPS’s dropped from hundreds, many hundreds, to 40-90 depending on what’s happening.

This is madness and nonsense.

2 Likes
3

Any solutions? The same exact thing happened to me after this patch.

1 Like
4

I have the same issues, but running with Wine/Proton on AMD 6900XT with Mesa RADV.

The GPU only runs at 30%-40% of its power, I only get ~20fps. It was working fine before. I exited the game, installed the patch and it started to be unplayable. If I set the graphics to low, I still get only those 20fps. The GPU doesn’t clock higher. It is definitely a problem with the patch.

1 Like
5

For me there are 2 kind of GPU behaviours.

When FPS is capped:
The GPU clock varies with load usually staying well below it’s max MHz due to being limited by FPS cap, while trying to maintain GPU usage at ~80%.
This is how many modern game engines behave.

When FPS is NOT capped:
GPU clock is at max MHz while usage is what varies with load.
This is strange because whenever there is no load limit (i.e FPS limit is disabled), the clock and usage both should really be at max all the time.
Mine hovers around 40-50% after the patch.

Usually, a below max GPU usage when not frame capped suggests a CPU bottleneck.

However none of my CPU cores seem to be loaded to a level to confirm a CPU bottleneck.

Which is why I think it is very much an engine issue.

6

Same thing , had it capped at 120. Never moved from there, then after patch the numbers are sporadic from 40-90 on a 4080. Doesn’t matter what my resolution or presets are

2 Likes
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Edit: Updated video - https://youtu.be/1r0XTdl7V5I

Thanks for this detailed report. Same thing happening to me as with Krombopulos.

12700K
RTX 3080
32 GB (DDR4 @ 3466)
Monitor 165hz G-Sync Compatible
Windows 10 Latest Update

Same frame pacing issue where the FPS will be sporadic below the cap where as prior it was buttery smooth.

I have clean installed with DDU multiple nvidia drivers and it produces the same behavior. Deleted cache to let it rebuild, does not help. Reinstalled the game, still happens. Scan/Repair, no improvements.

GPU settings are all low and textures on medium. Game has ran flawlessly on these settings until this patch. Not sure if the wings/pets have anything to do with this.

Places where I see no issues:
Town/Helltides/Open World Roaming seem fine.

Places where there are A LOT of issues:
Dungeons
Pits
Pits Boss Rooms are extremely bad

2 Likes
8

I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with your guys’s hardware and entirely the patch they released. every patch the last 2 months has made game performance and stability steadily worse, consistently. We are just going to have to wait for a hotfix. Its ganna be a while from what ive seen :frowning:

1 Like
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What’s odd to me is that I’m watching some of my friends that stream on Twitch and they have no issues and their game is running just as fine. Must just be something with specific hardware I guess.

10

Thanks for the video and confimation of the issue PlayDohBear.

Keep in mind that:

  • The video streams you are watching will be in 60 FPS max. So you will not be able to percieve a drop in FPS (say from 120 down to 80 FPS) as long as stutters are not huge lasting half a second. Most of the degraded performance here comes in the form of micro stutters that are not very perceivable on Youtube video (much like the video you posted).

  • Most people are not super sensitive to frame hitches. I’d say 95% of casual players, even with good hardware are not the nerdy benchmarking sort and don’t even run any telemetry like RTSS or NVidia overlay when playing / configuring their games. Which is why there is no huge uproar for this patch because the game is still largely playable according to most people’s standads, sadly :frowning:

Anyway the best we can do is hope that the devs are looking into this. I don’t expect then to confirm or deny this issue, considering the rabid playerbase that even checks these forums :smiley:

From what many people are saying this is the first time they have seen such a significant FPS drop since release.
I don’t have an anecdote to offer here as I started D4 for the first time a day before the patch dropped unfortunately.

Changes and tampering with the game’s rendering is pretty much expected if they are working on DLSS3 Frame Generation though. At least that’s what I’m telling myself :))

11

Copied from my other post:

Ok guys, call me crazy but this seems to have fixed it at least on my end for the most part. Could still be placebo but I don’t think so. Don’t get me wrong, the stutters are still there, but not as bad?

All I did was turn on OBS thinking it might be an issue with the game after the patch not running the GPU at the correct clocks so to speak. I swear it’s made the stutters go away. I was running around the PIT boss without OBS on and I’m getting the micro stutter drops. Second I turn it on, it goes away. Anyone else?

Edit: OBS Fix? First half no obs, second half obs on: https://youtu.be/jabjEUEuPwk

12

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d4/t/season-4-updates-ruined-game-stability-horrifically-for-hundreds-of-players Here is your anecdote.

1 Like
13

1.4.2a seems to have messed with my game, making it a lot more unstable than before. Things that were fixed in the past are back now. Frozen game for seconds, unusually long loading times, one complete crash.

14

i am having the same issues with nvidia GEforce RTX 3090

15

After 1.4.3 im still having this issues.

2 Likes
16

I’ve just made this topic here S4 FPS issues anyone?

but it seems it’s the same issue.

1 Like
17

Same issue, and I have not found a fix yet. I also only began playing after the 1.4 series. My hardware is only a little worse than OP’s and should run this game seamlessly.

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Here’s a video of my stutters - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRNmn8Yd67c

In the video, I show the main problem areas that stutter the most. Then I go to Scosglen and Fractured Peaks to show how those areas exhibit almost no stuttering, so the game is able to run well sometimes, in certain areas. For me, Caldeum, Denshar (lower PVP zone), and the area outside Gea-Kul by far have the worst stuttering, where the game will stutter at consistent intervals depending on how fast I am travelling. The faster I travel, the more frequent the stuttering becomes but always remains at consistent intervals. This is 100% something to do with how the game is loading the world as I travel. Areas like Scosglen and Fractured Peaks mostly play 100% smooth with no issues. Then many other areas of the game stutter somewhere in between, where they’re not as bad as Caldeum/Denshar/Gea-Kul but also not as smooth as Scosglen and Fractured Peaks. It certainly makes for a very inconsistent and frustrating gaming experience.

I’ve had stuttering issues since way before this season but it certainly seems more common/worse in recent months. I’ve reported stuttering problems multiple times already, showing videos with RTSS’ frametime graph enabled, yet nothing ever gets acknowledged by Blizzard and nothing ever gets fixed. So I’ve quite frankly given up on it unfortunately.

The game is also horrible with mouse/USB polling rates. With the paragon menu open, and if I have 4+ boards attached, any mouse/keyboard reports as in just moving the mouse or left-click/right-clicking will cause fps drops lol… CPU and GPU utilization both go down and therefore FPS along with it. At 1000hz polling rate, this lowers my fps down to single digits. At 500hz, it still happens but only a ~20% reduction or so. I similarly will get FPS drops at 1000hz mouse polling, when in a party and moving my mouse on the social screen. At 500hz it’s again much less. The more paragon boards I attach, the worse the FPS drop becomes. With 0 boards attached, I get no FPS drops. If I attach all boards (just for testing purpose), the FPS drops literally down to like 4 fps and GPU usage reports 0% with CPU usage also dropping to around 5%. No other game I play has issues with mouse/USB polling

I’ve tried everything from re-installing the game, in-game settings, windows settings, NVCP settings, bios settings, different GPU drivers, windows 10, windows 11, installing the game on a different drive, and none of it makes a single difference.

PC Specs:

Intel 13700k
RTX 4090
32GB DDR5 7000mhz RAM
WD SN850 (pcie 4.0) 2TB nvme
WD SN750 (pcie 3.0) 2TB NVME
Windows 11 (currently - was on Windows 10 previously)

1 Like
19

Same issue here, much lower frame rates and stutters. Before, fps would be 100-120. Now it plays 20-50fps. Upon starting up the frame rates look good, but within a few minutes it drops significantly with lots of stutters.

Nvidia RTX A4000 Laptop GPU.

20

Hello, same issue here on Linux.

Game run perfectly before this patch 1.4.2 patch : 60-80 fps stable on RTX3050.
After patch, it runs at 10-30 fps. (Cyberpunk 2077 runs at maximum settings perfectly …)

I tried same thing as other people here : lowest graphics settings => no change at all in FPS rate

I notice that GPU usage is < 40% with nvidia-smi tool.
Definitively, it’s a game issue, not a setup issue.

I’m not playing anymore as the game as user experience is bad … (and the game has no challenge, too easy, but that’s another topic)