Horrible Diablo III performance

[ibex333]

I am trying to play Diablo III on the desktop in my sig, but the FPS is extremely unstable and constantly fluctuates between around 8 fps and 75 fps.

Yes, I admit, it's a very old rig, but it meets and exceeds the minimum requirements by far! I checked with MSI afterburner, and CPU never goes above 75% usage and GPU hovers around that and drops to less all the time as well.

In Town, FPS are anywhere between 20-30 fps with 29 being about average.

Inside rifts or areas, FPS spikes to 75fps, but as soon as there are people with me, shooting off their special effects and whatnot, not only does fps drop to low teens, but the whole game "stops" for like 1-3 seconds every now and then. Everything just freezes and I have to wait till stuff "resumes".


What the hell gives? This PC performs excellently for games 2012 and older, and can handle some games all the way up to 2017 on medium or low.

I scoured many forums and you-tube and tried all kinds of fixes like editing the "prefs" file to set everything to absolute lowest, making sure all drivers are up to date, etc, etc. Nothing helps!

Dropping the resolution all the way down to 800x600 doesn't change anything, even in window mode.

I tried the 32bit Diablo client instead of the 64 bit, and performance is somewhat better, less "stops" but still FPS is abysmal.

You might say I am CPU bound despite what MSI Afterburner says....


Ok, so I tried another computer

i5 650
8GB RAM
R7 250


Still a weak computer, but the CPU is definitely better. Components significantly newer. And despite the anemic R7 250, it still exceeds the system requirements.

Guess what. Performance is even worse.... I go down all the way to 2 fps sometimes...


What are your thoughts? What is going on there?

An upgrade is a definite no-no. I don't play enough right now to justify any upgrades.

 

[Tweak155]

Only thing I've noticed with Diablo III is that it seems to run noticeably slower on a laptop even if the FPS numbers are healthy. I always get bad performance in town on a laptop, I don't know why.

Usually Blizzard games are great for lower hardware, but D3 seems to have some weak points. Only thoughts I have are that 4gb RAM seems low, but your 2nd system shows 8gb so that's likely not the issue. It may run smoother / more consistent on an SSD is the only other thing I can think.

 

[ibex333]

Will try from the SSD.

I did try running it on my laptop, and performance is just as bad at higher res, although I do get 60 fps with that i3/940M at 1024x720

 

[magomago]

assuming drivers are wiped clean and at the latest versions, something doesn't seem right - its times like these that, despite the fact that it sucks, i end up reformating the entire PC. the only thing i may try on my mind is if you have a bunch of wonky peripherals or some crazy programs that interact (even if unplanned interactions) in ways that aren't expected. A reformat is the cleanest way to do that.

 

[Zenoth]

There's two clients for D3 now, it's fairly recent. There's the original 32-bit client and the 64-bit one. Have you tried to check the 'other' one? I'm not sure if the 64-bit client now runs by default. You'd have to change that from the Battle.net launcher's D3 settings if you want to give it a try. Additionally, in the D3's graphics options, try lowering or disabling (or enabling) some settings one by one and see if it helps; like shadows, AA, V-Sync, etc.

 

[ibex333]

assuming drivers are wiped clean and at the latest versions, something doesn't seem right - its times like these that, despite the fact that it sucks, i end up reformating the entire PC. the only thing i may try on my mind is if you have a bunch of wonky peripherals or some crazy programs that interact (even if unplanned interactions) in ways that aren't expected. A reformat is the cleanest way to do that.

This was after the format. I tried it.

There's two clients for D3 now, it's fairly recent. There's the original 32-bit client and the 64-bit one. Have you tried to check the 'other' one? I'm not sure if the 64-bit client now runs by default. You'd have to change that from the Battle.net launcher's D3 settings if you want to give it a try. Additionally, in the D3's graphics options, try lowering or disabling (or enabling) some settings one by one and see if it helps; like shadows, AA, V-Sync, etc.

32 bit client gives only "slightly" better performance. No programs running in the background.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What's your internet connection like? D3 being an "always online" game, doesn't take too well to severe internet connection speed fluctuations, as my friend found out the other day.

He was getting inconsistent speed tests, and after he rebooted his router/gateway, the "stuttering" as he described it, went away.

 

[daveybrat]

What's your internet connection like? D3 being an "always online" game, doesn't take too well to severe internet connection speed fluctuations, as my friend found out the other day.

He was getting inconsistent speed tests, and after he rebooted his router/gateway, the "stuttering" as he described it, went away.

That would cause a lot of rubber-banding issues, but it shouldn't affect his FPS. I really think both systems are just too weak to play D3 in it's current state. The game has had some graphical upgrades via patches over the years and is more demanding graphically than most assume.

 

[Spjut]

I haven't played Diablo 3 myself since launch but it got DX11 support along with better graphics back in December. Tried switching between DX9 and DX11?

 

[jpiniero]

Sounds like VRAM swapping to me.

 

[XavierMace]

You haven't specified what settings you're trying to run the game at. I'm assuming the specs in your sig are the rig in question, if that's not the case, let us know what your specs are.