Severe performance issues

PC General Discussion
1

First time poster for any Diablo board. Just trying to get some opinions or suggestions here. I’ll try to keep this post somewhat short, but I am a very long-winded person.

I’m having some really bad problems with D4 and I was hoping someone could help me understand why. The problems include extreme framerate lag/stuttering, to the point of 1 frame every couple of minutes. Sometimes when I run, my character slips around like he’s on an ice rink. Any time I start combat, my game freezes until I die, and then it’s back to 60 FPS.

If I stand still, it’s 60 FPS consistently, until I move, then it’s 1 frame every couple of minutes. The WORST lag I have ever had, bar none. My game frequently crashes any time I go to town, but it doesn’t close. It just stays open and doesn’t do anything. If I try to force close it, a window pops up that tells me it’s not responding, and then that crashes and my whole computer crashes and is basically held hostage until D4 closes finally.

For reference, D3 runs amazingly. I have a constant 60 FPS in any situation, no matter how big the pulls are, how many spells are going off…it runs like a dream. I have had some struggles playing WoW, but nowadays, now that I don’t use Spotify, to help reserve RAM, it runs beautifully too, on medium settings even.

I have D4 set to absolute low. Every setting. I looked at my system specs in reference to the requirements for D4 and I line up perfectly. An adequate graphics card, RAM is exactly what it should be, internet speed is fine, file space is fine, all of that stuff. And it’s still brutal.

I was talking to a friend that said maybe I got some kind of weird glitchy/broken client and I should reinstall. I don’t know what downloading 160gb of files in just a couple of days will do to my internet limits. I think I’ll be okay, but I really don’t want to sit and wait all day long for this twice either.

Any help would be appreciated, please and thank you.

tl;dr my game runs really bad wat do?

2

This isn’t really server performance, this sounds more like your system is struggling. I would probably submit a ticket with your DxDiag file and see what blizzard says directly. Game was smooth all weekend for me.

A few things I’m thinking it could be, Graphics card (While it may hit requirements, if it’s not properly maintained, dusted off, drivers updated, etc) or Network adapter on your MOBO. I played over ethernet and experienced little to no issues. (I have a newest gen graphics card and was averaging 180ish FPS with a 4 year old CPU)

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Yeah, my computer is about that old. It has never been spectacular. I got it for about 800 bucks. It’s an Omen desktop I got from Best Buy. I don’t know exactly what model, but it’s always been really good.

I was just now thinking maybe it’s a RAM issue. Because I have exactly how much the game requires and I suppose if any other program is using any other bit of RAM, it could be totally affecting my gameplay. Like I said, it was a problem in WoW when using Spotify, until I started using Spotify on my phone instead. Now it’s fine.

So, little bit of info: I have a friend who is possibly sending me an external SSD for my birthday in a few months, that will line up perfectly with D4’s release. Would installing D4 on the SSD help at all? I know it makes loading faster, but would it help with all these issues? I’m trying to figure out if I should fix these problems now, or just wait it out until the actual release, if I’m going to be fine then.

Thanks for the reply though. I appreciate it.

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The SSD likely wouldn’t do anything to help it. RAM could be it as back then 16gb was a bit higher end and 8gb was probably standard (which is the minimum). I would say most likely is graphics card maintainance. Easiest solution is a dxdiag to blizzard though. I don’t necessarily think that everything they give is the best option, but with beta, it could be unique to your graphics card.

5

Right on. I guess I could send them a diagnostic and see what they say. I could find little ways to increase my RAM, or decrease its usage while running D4, to see if that helps. I’m sure there’s some things I can force close, that I don’t need running. I haven’t tried running it without Discord, because it usually doesn’t cause any problems, but it might be now.

Thanks for the advice though. I’m glad this isn’t just a beta issue. A lot of my WoW friends are having a fun time with D4 too. I just wish it ran like D3, lol. I want to love this game, not be butthurt over it.

6

While this may be a performance issue on your end (I, too, play on an HP Omen), if you aren’t used to playing pre-launch/beta tests, this will be disconcerting. Virtually all my experiences in betas see this; performance issues, disconnections, stuttering and overall lag. It’s nothing to be concerned about; your system is likely fine. Due to heavy loads put on the servers (known as a ‘stress-test’) it’s not uncommon to come across this. They actually want you to ‘crash’ the servers to see how much of a load they can handle optimally. It is also good to give feedback if you aren’t experiencing these same issues in other MMOs. But, for now, it was perfectly within acceptable operations for a new title.

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I have a PC that exceeds the recommended requirements in every way except one: I don’t have an SSD.

For me, the game performs well except in every way except for one, the game occasionally lags and then slingshots or stutters for a few seconds. It’s pretty well guaranteed to happen when I teleport to a town or exit a dungeon, but sometimes it happens when I am just exploring as well.

It’s not game-breaking; the game is still very much playable and it very rarely happens at a critical point, but I do suspect that an SSD does make a difference, because I do note that the hard drive is spinning hard when it happens.

I think that Bliz can and should be able to optimize this by preloading areas into memory (if memory is available) when exploring and by keeping non-SSD users at a loading screen for a few seconds longer when teleporting. I hope they do this.

I use High graphics quality, not ultra; I didn’t download Ultra because I don’t have a 4K monitor and download size is an issue for me.

8

See, that’s what I thought too. It was just that all my friends aren’t struggling in the slightest. I think they have hella strong PCs though, so that’s probably why. My PC is pretty dated, so I can see why I’d struggle more. I’ve just never struggled this hard on any game, ever. Even GTA: Online runs at 60 FPS and I barely ever struggle with it. I’m not saying D4 isn’t beautiful, but right now, I have it turned down as low as possible, so not only is it ugly af, but it doesn’t hardly run at all.

I really wanted the rewards for getting to level 20, but if I have to miss them, to then install again in June and then have a mostly (hopefully) flawless experience playing on release, that’s totally fine. I mean the wolf cub is adorable, but I don’t HAVE to have it.

I just want to feel comfy and cozy, thinking these issues won’t be there for release. If you say I might be fine then, that’s totally okay. I wasn’t expecting total ease of play for the beta, but this is ridiculously bad. Way worse than I was expecting. I guess maybe I just got the short end of the beta stick, lol.

I figured it might. We shall see if I can hook one up soon. Even just for WoW, if it only helped with that, would be fine. My HDD loads stuff in WoW so dang slow. I’ve been told SSDs are way faster and therefor more pertinent for games like WoW, instead of a basic HDD.

I had a conversation with the friend who wants to send me one and he wasn’t sure if installing to an external SSD would give the same fast loading benefits as an internal one. But, even if it doesn’t help, having a whole other TB of storage would be sweet. :slight_smile:

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For this specifically yes, an SSD would help. Loading information from system storage is one thing, going from 60FPS while standing still to 1FPS while moving is something else entirely. That’s beyond Storage.

1 Like
10

This might be your first clue.

11

Yeah, it kinda popped up in my head as I was typing that. I mean if a game requires 100% of your current RAM to work properly and you’re using even 1% of that RAM on something else than I can see why it would struggle to maintain. I have a bunch of nonsense background processes that use up RAM. Stupid stuff like Xbox Connect or whatever (I don’t even have an Xbox) that I can’t even turn off on Startup. I could probably spend 5 minutes going through my processes and turning stuff off, that is totally non-priority, and get 20-30% of my memory freed up.

I think WoW probably requires less overall RAM, so turning off Spotify helped a lot, but in the case of D4, it might be eating up so much, that even a little being spent on Discord, for instance, is bogging it down hardcore.

I can play around with that and see if it helps. It really is time for a rig upgrade, even just bits and pieces brand new. Like I said, hopefully getting an SSD soon, I would love a more up to date card, maybe some more RAM, etc. etc. We shall see. I might be able to update my drivers too. It’s been a while since I looked, but I trust my computer to know when it’s needed.

I could update my OS too. That might be causing problems. I think it just updated the other day, but I swear, it needs to do it almost every day or it is so lethargic.

Like Illesdan said, it could be partially chalked up to my computer versus a beta client. Perhaps when the game is totally finished, it’ll run smoother.

We shall see.