Hi, I’ve been a software developer for 40 years. I am not saying this to brag, I want you to understand I am not a novice at diagnosing software issues.
I am fairly confident you have a memory leak in your client.
After a few hours of game-play, your client will crash. Sometimes it crashes to windows desktop. Sometimes it hangs all windows processes and blanks the screen, requiring a hard powerdown to reboot the PC. Sometimes it blue screens windows requiring diagnostics to be run. The most common of those 3 is the blank screen with a required hard powerdown/reboot.
In compiling this information, I discovered that there is no folder called “AppData” in my C:\Users[username]\ folder. It is simply not there. So, I can’t provide the crash logs or graphics settings per the instructions.
I was able to get System Diagnostics : DxDiag.zip (13.3 KB)
You did not provide your Graphics Ini file so I cannot tell what in-game settings you are using but I have some suggestions & comments.
As you know, LE is currently in Beta and has plenty of know performance issues that cause a wide variety of problems - crashing obviously being one of them… However, these performance issues are more pronounced when trying to push LE in its current unoptimised state and heavily dependant on the users hardware.
I am using a i5-7500/1060/16gb/nvme setup and I am able to play the game at 60fps (framerate limited) on very low settings at 1080p. It is very stable at these settings and has crashed maybe twice with these settings in almost 700h of play…
However, if i push the settings - for example to high, I can barely play for an hour without some sort of problem.
Your CPU is on par with mine (perhaps a little faster in multitasking) but your GPU is seriously underpowered for anything other than the lowest possible settings in this game. It is on average about 80-150% slower than what I am using depending on the task…
Even people with high end processors & 30 series / 6000 series GPUs have to make concessions (less than us obviously) to improve stability and until the devs get around to dealing with the performance and optimisation, this is all that we can do to get the game stable and playable.
Without knowing what you are already running: my recommendations for you would be the following settings:
1080p absolute maximum screen resolution (you may even have to go lower)
60fps framerate limited (must be enabled - your system is likely to be unable to maintain this but the limit must be enable to prevent LE trying to push your GPU - you may have to reduce this to 30fps)
All graphics settings on the absolute lowest possible setting or disabled.
Disable all things like antialiasing.
Set your graphics driver on performance mode rather than quality.
Dont run anything else on your system at the same time as you are using LE.
Some of these may see odd and yes, your CPU should be able to handle things, but your GPU will not and these suggestions are based on what others on the forum have found to be the most stable configuration - obviously higher spec systems can push higher but for what you are using this is probalby the best you can do.
Uh, not sure what you’re talking about here. I have a high end graphics card, capable of playing MMORPGs with 100 v 100 PvP battles with insane graphics smoothly, as well as that graphics-spamming Path of Exile with no drop in FPS. And even so, I already play on the lowest settings out of habit.
This game noticably gets slower and glitchier the longer you play until it eventually crashes out. This is the tell-tale sign of a memory leak.
If my system or card couldn’t handle the game, then statistically, it should crash at random times, sometimes even right after I log in and start. But it never does. It always degrades over time until it crashes. It is so consistent that I can now notice when it starts, and I just quit to desktop, and re-run the client, and I’m fine again for another hour or two until I see it slow down again. I have been able to 100% prevent crashes by doing this, which also shoots down your theory.
As I said, I know a memory leak when I see one. They aren’t all that hard to find with proper Dev tools (especially the fancy ones like Dynatrace, etc.)
→ Doesn’t know how to make Appdata folders visible.
Anyhow, im getting kinda similar crashes too, but they always happen when im entering a new zone, right after zone has loaded. And my game client is only thing that freezes, not whole windows.
Could you upload your log/crash file when this happens.
Does it hang or does it crash? If it hangs, you could try unplugging your speakers/headphones while hangs (as there’s currently an issue which is “resolved” by forcing windows to change the sound device).
The log files you provide indicate that you are using a GTX 660
This is a very old card that is unlikely to handle modern games with insane graphics without making some concessions regarding graphic quality and frame rate.
Ok… So how do you explain the thousands of other players who enjoy the game - me included - who do not experience the same issue that you are having?
Look… You attitude leaves much to be desired… I am trying to help by providing suggestions that work for the majority of people having problems. I am not defending the devs or arguing that the game has performance issues & optimisation that is needed to make the game more stable… I am simply trying to help and if you dont want it then say so.
Sorry you are having these issues… Did you try the lowest settings test I suggested above to see if it helps get past the places where you are having the crashes?
Most people having these crashes usually have some success by dropping the resolution & graphics WAY down to the lowest possible settings as a temporary test - if things are stable, then slowly increasing them back up seems to be the “best” way to get around the problems until the devs get them sorted.
I already told you I have every single setting on the absolute lowest setting possible or just flat “off” if allowed. It doesn’t matter. The game crashes after being played for a while, but NEVER upon login, never in “the same place” (meaning, its just that set of graphics/pallates/etc.). The only factor is TIME. As the game goes on, the clock is ticking until crash.
And again, there are modern games such as ESO, WoW, Path of Exile which put monumental stress on my card and the games run fine and never crash. It’s only LE that crashes.
I get this is a Beta product, so therefore, I am posting my crash files for examination so the devs can fix the memory leak. I have another 60 crash files I can post if needed. After the last patch, it has been harder for me to “predict” when the game is going to crash, and now I basically can’t play anymore.
This needs to be hotfixed asap.
Edit: I just priced those cards. ~$450 to around ~$1600. I am absolutely positive that LE doesn’t want to make a game that requires GFX cards that expensive…
I forgot to mention that all crashes do seem to happen when changing maps. So far, I haven’t had the game crash mid-fight or anything like that. Only when zoning.
This is key… Not everyone is going to be able to play the game and instability and performance issues are a given. Older hardware will suffer more than newer and that is simply the nature of software…Comparing LE to other games that have been in development and optimised over many many years is irrelevant. I am sure that the devs will resolve the issues when they get to them… for the moment, we simply have to make the best of what we have.
This is up to the developers.
No-one is suggesting that - in fact, that would be folly… However, this does not change the fact that your specific GPU is very old. I consider my 6 year old 1060 very old and I have to accept that it will not run things with all the bells and whistles enabled… Yours is from 2012 and there is no reference to indicate how it would perform - especially with a beta product. I do not even think your GPU is capable of the latest directX…
This is a known result of the graphics settings in the game. It is usually solved by following the graphic settings suggestions I have already outlined in a previous post. i.e. lower resolution, framerate limiting, all settings disabled or very low.
Same here, zero crashes while playing the game. It only hangs right after new map/area/zone has been loaded. Tried with the lowest settings and it’s still happening. Geforce GTX 1070 here.
I’ve got an I7-6700, 1070, and 16gb of ram and a similar issue to Zaodon. A 1070 isn’t the newest thing out there but it’s more than enough to handle really spammy PoE gameplay with most graphics on higher settings, and even Global Illumination enabled. The fact that some of the settings dont’ seem to have any visible difference from Very Low all the way up to Very High but still slam the framerate is a bit eyebrow raising too. I get that it’s a beta, but in my experience if optimization isn’t done in the first place it’s almost never done later.
I haven’t had a long enough session in 0.8.1G yet but in the last two letter-versions there’s clearly a leak. Last Epoch steadily eats more ram until it’s thrashing Swap at which point it hangs and/or hard crashes to the desktop.
After my most recent crash I also wound up with a ghost process (not visible in task manager) holding on to some Swap/RAM and keeping Steam from launching the game since Steam thought it was already running.
I have been playing exactly 3 Echos, then quitting to desktop and relaunching the game. “3 shall be the number of counting, and the number of counting shall be 3. 5 is RIGHT OUT!” (Monthy Python quote)
I have NOT CRASHED ONCE IN 12 HOURS OF GAMEPLAY. Repeat, by intentionally ditching and relaunching, my game no longer crashes. Or, you can say it literally crashes every 3 echoes. I mean, it basically is the same thing.
Anyway, if it were my GFX card, again, I feel I can’t say this enough - then at some random point of playing, it should crash. But if I dump the game out and restart, that never happens.
Yip… The difference in graphics quality isnt that obvious to me either so your observation about changing to very high settings and just seeing a knock in FPS but no visual change is pretty much why I, and most people having hassles, are recommending not going higher than Medium for now…
I have zero access to the devs so I have no idea on the optimisation process they will follow etc… and they have not chipped in on the forums about this yet.
Since getting involved in this thread, I have been monitoring RAM on my system (i5-7500/1060/16gb/NVME). I play at 1080p, 60fps rate limited, everything on very low or disabled whatever option is the lowest. Textures on Medium. I get performance of 40-60fps 80-90% of the time, with dips into the 20s in busy moments. The game has not crashed for me more than 3 times in about 700h of play with these settings. I use MSI Afterburner to see stats.
After multiple 3h+ sessions on the latest 0.8.1G and the previous F patch, I have noted the following.
RAM usage jumps up RAPIDLY to about 10.5GB.
RAM usage fluctuates between 10.5GB and 12.5GB but does not go higher no matter how long I play.
There are moments where the RAM spikes up a GB at a time - difficult to be able to correlate this to a specific repeatable moment in play, but its usually when loading a new area.
RAM sometimes releases quite quickly in town but it plateus at a level that seems to be related to the last map run… i.e. sometimes it will drop back down to 10.5g other times it will hover in the 11.5g range and then drop back after the next MoF run.
My system is not using SWAP that I can detect - I am monitoring disk access on my SSD that hosts the swap disk of 7GB - it is different to the game file drive which is obviously very active during play…
Before the recent patches, I have played LE for well over 8h+ in single sessions and had zero problems and while I was not monitoring RAM usage at the time, I do always have task manager and MSI Afterburner open to see if anything untoward is happening.
I have tried to BREAK LE by doing other things on my machine at the same time - like play 4k youtube videos and stream Netflix at the same time… Other than the obvious FPS drop, I have been unable to “make” it crash on demand.
A surefire way of making LE crash for me right now is to bump up the in-game settings… I can “make” it crash by pushing everything up to Ultra - it will crash within 30minute of play if I can stand the stop-motion-animation long enough… I can toggle settings to make a very noticeable difference in stability and FPS. Even things like Texture levels for the graphics card can cause issues (I have a 3gb 1060, and if I set the textures to max things get rapidly fishy…)
Maybe I am just lucky… One thing I am NOT doing is denying that there is a memory leak… However, I am saying that it may not be as simple as a blanket statement “LE has a memory leak” - there are far too many people playing the game for this not to be the #1 error posted on the forums if that were the case.
I will definitely say that LE has performance & stability issues - whatever the cause - and that there are ways of getting around most of these issues temporarily…
Your card is very old… There is no way around that fact. It is going to struggle with LE - even after the devs resolve the issues. I am using a card 4 years newer than yours and I am running on the lowests possible settings because its not worth running the game in its current state at anything higher.
By restarting your game every 3 echos you may be allowing the card to reset (clear its memory etc) thus allowing it to progress more. There are many people who are able to play stably with just as old cards when they dial back their settings in favour of stability and expectations regarding fps. LE is very fickle when it comes to stability and this presents in very different ways to different system setups.
