Lag spikes (apparently not network related)

While playing I'll experience stuttering and frame drops - at least, that's what it looks like - where for a fraction of a second the game seems to stop and then keep going. This happens multiple times a second while in combat, and lessens (but does not stop) while standing still in town or my hideout.



Each lag or stutter coincides with the white spike in the graph. I've turned off or stopped all extraneous applications and services to see if it's a CPU or Windows issue, but the problem persists. I've changed which server cluster I connect to, but this doesn't help.


Running AMD 7950X3D + 96GB DDR5-6000 + RTX4090. CPU and GPU temps do not exceed 75C, both are water cooled and monitored. Bios is up to date. Windows version is 23H2, all updates applied. Stress tests and benchmarks don't indicate a performance issue under loads that are far greater than POE2 provides. Network monitor on my router doesn't show anything unusual, as there are no corresponding spikes or latency in traffic.

I'm at a loss. Is there a known cause for this, or a workaround or something? It is an extremely distracting problem while playing.

Thank you.

Isn't popping out when you're getting a new message on chat window?

If it found. Try /clear
To clear your chat log. It helps sometimes. I dunno why.

I am not receiving messages (that I'm aware of). I'll test it though.

There are parts of it that seems tied to chat. I had the trade channel open, but everything else turned off. After restarting the game and turning off trade chat, with only the required local, party, and whisper channels open, then the stuttering mostly stopped. There do seem to be instances where it will do it for a few seconds, and then quit, but I can't correlate that with chat messages (as I wasn't receiving any).

Either way, it seems the chat system negatively impacts the game. Should be stripped out completely. Yup.

As I am one quarter Swedish, one quarter German, and half Deep Earth Troglodyte I have no problem playing without constant yippy-yappy chat spam.

@pickyni#6295 - Thanks for pointing me to that.

Unfortunately we can hide the general and trade chat. But it stacks chat log anyway.

As you can see like that General (25<= unread chatting count)

I've tried turning off the chatting. But the /clear command still works fine lol.

When you feel spiky try the command.