Performance issue

Technical Support
1

Hello,
It is kinda hard to explain, but I will try. Most of the time game runs smoothly with 130-160 fps. But sometimes it starts to be stuttering for a short time, mainly when I am in town or in the open world or in infernal horde. During the stuttering it looks like there is another window behind the game, but there is nothing, all my other windows on the 2nd monitor. I tried to turn off ray tracing and the 2nd monitor, it is the same. Last time I went in the infernal horde it was unplayable with DLSS because of the stuttering. When I turn DLSS off it is better, but I only have 60 fps. The game is not enjoyable like this. As I remember I didnt have any issues the the start of this season. It started 1 or weeks ago. I will give you my setup:

Windows 10 pro
Nvidia driver 566.14 - Nov 12, 2024
CPU i9-11900KF@3.50GHz
RAM 64G
NVIDIA Geforce RTX 4070Ti

Graphics
Windowed(Fullscreen)
2560x1440
HDR off
Vertical Sync Disabled

NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution
Quality mode: balanced
Sharpen Image 10
NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation: On
NVIDIA relfex Low Latancy: Enabled
Max foreground fps 165
Max Background fps 8

Quality:
Everything on max, except
Clutter: high
Shadow Quality: high
Distortion: On
Chromatic Aberration: On
Low FX: Off

Ray Traced Shadow Quality: Medium
Ray Traced Reflections Quality: Ultra
Ray Traced Particles: On

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Just so you know where I’m coming from, I’m also running an i9 (12900K)
Running a 4080 Super
And a 1440P 165hz curved monitor

This is one potential reason. Best results are found with the 561.09 driver. But rollbacks often fail. nVidia recommends uninstalling the driver and installing the version you want to use, however the DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) tool is the best method providing you follow their directions.

I’m actually running on a much older driver, 551.31. This was the release driver for the 4080S as I bought mine launch day in January. Diablo IV hates my driver (has a big red text warning that its out of date) yet it continues to play the game fine with it.

Use low here. Medium vs Low is a huge impact, even on my 4080S

I currently have this running everything at Ultra with the exception of shadows on Ray Tracing which is set to low.

I run at DLAA (max quality)

I have mine capped to 100FPS. Using a cap actually helps a ton to keep the game smooth.

However in heavy battles even then it can dip into the 80s and 90s and the input latency will increase from 9ms to 15+ms which is not good.

I will agree the game’s performance is not as good as it was pre-expansion. I cannot get the same quality of game play as I used to get, however I have no issues with stability. (mine never crashes or gives me errors)

My biggest recommendation for you is to do this:

Set your Distortion and the Chromatic Aberration to Disabled.
Set your max FPS to 100. If you are still getting dips, drop it to 75. Its better to have it locked in and smooth than to have it jar up and down. Having it locked on a lower FPS will lower your in-game latency response, which you want to be under 10ms if possible.

I have already been contemplating just ditching Ray Tracing myself to eliminate dips in my FPS, and I have a more powerful card.

Anyway, those are my suggestions.

I’m already looking at getting a 5090 at launch in Jan. No point to getting a 5080, as its probably going to be 5-10% better than the card I have. Same goes for the 5070 cards. If you want to upgrade, going to have to jump pretty high.

Sad part, this damn game shouldn’t need that much horsepower. And even now, those on a 4090 are having performance consistency issues like us.

1 Like
3

My game stutters all the time but it’s mostly traversal stutter when travelling around the open world, likely as the game streams data in. In some areas it’s very bad and stutters constantly. It’s been this way pretty much since launch for me. Two areas in particular, Caldeum and the lower PVP zone have a horrible stutter at a consistent interval, when moving around. The faster I move (mount vs on foot), the more frequent those stutter intervals become.

I have a high end PC and have tried all manner of fixes, reported stuttering and performance issues multiple times, but unfortunately nothing has ever been fixed. I’m contemplating getting a 9800x3D in the near future and wondering that might improve things. I do find it interesting we’re all on intel CPUs (my PC specs below). The x3D lineup do typically have better 1% and 0.1% low performance as well. At the same time though, no other game I’ve ever played on this PC has stuttered this bad, so at some point I have to blame the game and not my PC’s hardware.

I will say, ray tracing enabled causing more stuttering for me and larger frametime spikes than with it off. So perhaps try turning it off entirely and seeing it if helps. Like DTMace said, it is a VERY heavy performance cost in this game, in areas with lots of light sources, maybe due to each light casting it’s own rays that need to then be traced? I’m a big graphics/visuals nut but in this game, I turn all RT off. The non RT baked lighting is already really solid imo.

My PC Specs:

Windows 11 (tried Windows 10 previously)
Intel 13700k
RTX 4090
Asus Z790 Hero
32GB 7000mhz RAM
WD SN850x PCIe 4.0
Seasonic 1000w PSU

2 Likes
4

After the latest update one or two days before, I have noticed the game will start stutters when i travel to town from dungeons, not every time, but very often.
When game entering the this state, flash will be triggered every time menus open or close, include smith, stash, paragon etc., and framerate number changes fiercely.
I have tried leave game then start a new one, or switch quality between ray tracing high and lowest, but still in stutters state. Disabling DLSS Frame Generation will pause the problem, no matter vertical sync and reflex low latency are disabled or enabled. But when i enabled frame generation, stutters also came back.
Only 2 ways i have found to get out, one is exit and restart from battle.net client, the other is changing display to windowed and lower resolution. Game will recover to normal state in a short but still noticeable time, then i could change display back to full screen without exiting diablo iv.

The most annoying thing is there is no problem in dungeons, but when i leaving and walking out the portal in town, stutters start.

My Spec:
Legion R9000P ARX8 2023
Windows 11 23H2

Ryzen 7945hx laptop
RTX 4060 laptop 8GB (DCH 560.94)
DDR5 5200 48GB * 2
SSD NVME 1.4 2TB
ViewSonic VG2481 4K@60HZ HDR Type-C DP Alt

5

This is usually indicative of the Direct Storage issue.

You can disable this, by adding -disableds under the Command line options for the game in the battlenet launcher settings (gear cog next to play button)

Both of you might want to make absolutely sure you have GPU Scheduling Enabled in your display settings under Windows. And for Tree, make sure you have any options for variable refresh set to the internal laptop panel’s maximum refresh rate. Variable will also cause issues and the flashing described sounds like a refresh issue.

They don’t make a 48GB stick? 32 and 16 here maybe? Or do you have a pair of 32 and a pair of 16? I quoted this as it doesn’t make sense the way you wrote it. And if your statement is true, then you have a total of 96GB of memory?

Just wanted to clarify what you were talking about here.

And as you are running on a 4060 with that laptop:

DLSS set to either Performance or Balanced
Disable Distortion and Chromatic Aberration
Disable all Ray Tracing
Settings to Medium or High
You are also trying to run @ 4K on that card. Which is a huge ask.
Video driver version is fine. I wouldn’t go any newer than 561.09 for now.
Cap your FPS in the game settings. I would aim at 60FPS to start with, see if that helps the game.

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Cheers for the response. Unfortunately I have already tried that, even somewhat recently again, and it didn’t make a difference.

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Have you set a static swap file?:

-Diablo IV has run out of memory - #103 by DTMAce-1687

Use the value of 32768 for yours but the rest of the instructions are the same.

I would also advise setting an FPS cap. Even though you have a higher notch system, set a cap at say 100FPS for now, see if it smooths it out at all. Also make sure you have GPU Scheduling enabled.

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Thans for your response. I downloaded and intstalled the nvidia 561.09 driver and changed everything you said. It is better but sometimes in dungeons and infernal hordes the fps drops to 60-70s or 30-40s. I am turning off both ray tracing and give it a go.

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In game, set a cap of 60FPS. So it can’t go any higher than that.

And again, turn off ALL ray tracing features. And disable the Distortion and Chromatic Aberration.

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My laptop has been modified, it doesn’t focus on game.
I do have 96 GB Memory, I know it doesn’t help D4, RTX 4080 laptop or above which have at least 12GB GDRR is much more helpful.
4K@60Hz is the cap of my external monitor, and I know the cap of RTX 4060 and Type-C DP Alt connection port are only a little higher than it. The monitor doesn’t support variable refresh rate, the data transfer rate need for 3840x2160@60hz is already too high, it equals 2560x1440@120hz or 1920x1080@240hz, there is no more capacity as my laptop use a type-c port as DP connection.
I have even shut down my internal monitor, so the external monitor is the only one connected to RTX 4060.

4K@60Hz can be achieved in D4, this is not like WOW, and my eyes not very sensitive at above 50Hz.

Before Monday or maybe Sunday, game could be stable at:
4K@60Hz HDR, quality Ray Tracing High, DLSS SR with Performance, DLSS Frame Generation on
or
4K@60Hz HDR, quality High, DLSS SR with Quality, DLSS Frame Generation off.

Sometime there’s maybe background windows task running or i open some menus for the first time, FPS varies and game lag one second before resources full loaded. But screen never shake.

After the latest update, i didn’t notice the problem at the first time, as it not appears at special hardware configuration or game options.
But when I finished an infernal hordes and travelled to favorite town, it was triggered. When I walked in town, screen shook occasionally, but when I opened smith menu or spam “A” to switch on/off paragon menu, screen shook at my hitting frequency.
Then I tried leaving game, changing quality to lowest, switch on/off DLSS Frame Generation, and couldn’t recover to the behavior several minutes before.

I thought it was just an accident, so i exited d4 and restarted, then it was ok at first then triggered again after traveled from pit. This time I found switching to windowed mode and setting a smaller window size could get it back to normal.
I switched to full screen and tried dungeons, carefully using action wheel to open world before using town portal to town. It trigger at 2nd dungeon.

So I know this is not accident, and start to looking for someone have similar experience and more details or workaround, it seems this is the first topic.
I’ve also checked the GDDR usage, lower quality release only a little memory, while lower resolution release much.

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Well if you’re running that odd of an out-of-box setup perhaps there’s some incompatibility with an update who knows.

Obviously if it was ran configured with the internal monitor as a test and it stabilizes and runs better, that only tells me the game is running fine under normal expected circumstances.

But since you’re using an external monitor that is apparently connected to a USB c port (which I find odd as most laptops at least have a HDMI out) that in itself creates a unique connection situation that might not be ideal for all uses. I personally don’t have much experience with that type of setup as I simply don’t explore that option if I can avoid it.

I do know they run GPU in a box setups with USB-C connections but I know there’s some specific requirements for it to work right. But I don’t think that’s what you’re doing here.

But if you’re using a 4060 to power a 4K gaming screen, you are going to have performance problems with that. It’s just a common accepted stance. 4K gaming is going to do better with at least a xx70 series card unless the game is tweaked properly to run well enough on a 4060.

I run a 4080 Super but I’m hooked with a DP cable to my 32-in curved 1440p monitor. And I’m still capping it no higher than 100 FPS. And that’s not even a 4K monitor!

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