All other pure Fullscreen games work just fine. World of Warcraft is the only other Windowed (Fullscreen) game that I’ve played and I didn’t test it at length so I’m unsure if the issue is as impactful with WoW.
That said, when Diablo 4 is minimized or out of focus, the framerate on everything else suffers dramatically. Scrolling, tabbing, un/minimizing other windows such as task manager, etc. Even the minimize animation becomes a slideshow. After minimizing the game too frequently (i.e., to use my browser for game info etc.), the game’s performance begins to deteriorate as well, sometimes even leading to a total freeze. I’ve tried setting a generous frame rate limit for the Background FPS setting with no luck.
I want to be clear that this behavior was not present on Windows 10 with the same settings during Beta. My wife upgraded to Win11 the same day I did and is using the same graphics driver on an RTX 2060 @ 1080p, same game settings, without issues. Currently using NVIDIA GRD version 535.98 and this is a fresh install with a driver wipe in safe mode, after the Win11 upgrade.
Windows Info
Edition: Windows 11 Home
Version: 22H2
Installed on: 6/3/2023
OS build: 22621.1778
Experience: Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22642.1000.0
System Specs:
i9-10900K @ 3.70GHz
PRIME Z490-P
32 GB DDR4-3600MHz Thermaltake TOUGHRAM
MSI Gaming X Trio RTX 3070 @ 1440p
1TB WD Blue SN550 M.2
I can play the game but the rest of my system being crippled by it is frustrating so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Lower your background FPS for Diablo IV. I have my foreground at 240 and background on 60, nothing is high usage except for VRAM and RAM when it’s minimized and i could probably load up 1-2 more games to play while it’s out of focus with my 3090 and 64GB RAM… If background fps is high then GPU would still be being fully utilized.
Edit: if that didn’t work (as stated in OP) then you might not have enough VRAM to multitask with Diablo IV.
Maybe it’s a VRAM issue after all given that the 3070 only has 8 GB. I’m using the default High settings on 1440p with the frame cap set to 141 on a 145 (or 165 OC) screen. My VRAM usage usually starts at 6 GB and slowly leaks to 8 GB due to the never-ending memory leaks in Diablo. Only reason I’ve remained unconvinced so far is that I’ve had zero issues with any other title at High/Ultra settings on 1440p, games ranging from Warzone to NMS, Division 2 to Destiny 2, etc. Heck, even notoriously resource-greedy games like GTA on FiveM servers run just fine.
I should mention that I played WoW for a bit today and had similar issues. Tabbing away from the game causes the same poor frame rate and general performance issues with other apps but not as pronounced. Funnily enough though, despite running all High/Ultra settings in WoW, I don’t use even half of my VRAM. Once I tab back into WoW, the game runs fine, another difference from my Diablo issues.
I’m really at a loss as to what it could be. I don’t think it’s the NVIDIA drivers because there would be a boatload of complaints about it. Doesn’t seem likely that it’s a Windows 11 issue either. A friend of mine just picked up Diablo yesterday, using the exact same GPU that I have, same drivers, same Win11 version, but on 1080p… has zero issues.
I think it’s a combination of poor optimization in general and instability with 1440p. Other games with much higher fidelity and greater resource consumption do not have very many, if any, of these issues that I’m experiencing with D4.