I Finally Found the Solution to the Performance Issues

Hey Exiles,

I wanted to share something important with all of you – especially those who’ve been struggling with Path of Exile 2’s performance problems, just like I did.

I've spent hours testing everything you can find on the internet:

Set CPU priority to high
Lowered sound quality
Played with every graphics preset imaginable
Switched between DLAA, DLSS (Ultra Performance), FSR, etc.
Disabled shadows, post-processing, reflections
Tried ultra-low settings at low resolution

Reinstalled drivers, cleared shader cache, even tweaked BIOS settings
➡️ And still, in large maps with tons of enemies and my 30 minions, my FPS would drop below 20.

All of this on a top-tier system:

🖥️ RTX 5090
🧠 Ryzen 9950X3D
💧 Fully custom water cooling
📺 G-Sync OLED TV running at 117Hz

GPU usage? Barely 40% even with DLAA/DLSS. The issue was clearly not hardware-related, but something in how the game handles frames and rendering load.

✅ The Fix: NVIDIA Smooth Motion

And here’s the miracle: I enabled just one single setting – and the problems disappeared completely:

NVIDIA Smooth Motion
(also known as Smooth Frame Delivery or Frame Generation via driver)

📌 You can find it in the NVIDIA Control Panel, under advanced graphics settings (requires latest drivers).

Since I enabled this:

I’ve had a rock-solid 117 FPS, with no drops, no stuttering, even in the middle of complete screen chaos.

It genuinely feels like a new game – absolutely smooth and enjoyable.

ℹ️ What GPUs support Smooth Motion?

So if you own an RTX 50/40 like I do: Turn this on – it’s a game changer.
If you're on an RTX 40 card: Download the Preview driver and give it a try. It might already work well depending on your setup.

💬 Final Thoughts

I don’t know how long it’ll take GGG to fully optimize Path of Exile 2, but with NVIDIA Smooth Motion, the game is already buttery smooth – at least for those of us with compatible hardware.

➡️ Please try it and share your results.
If this helps more players enjoy the game properly, it’s worth spreading the word.

See you in the Exile – finally, with smooth framerates!
– Shadowbrain1979

thanks for the tip, gotta try it out.

Keep in mind tho, it's frame gen. If u're running a lower end card it could have negative effects with increased input latency ect.

Thank you for this!. I only knew about the sound quality which itself is a performance boost. Will try and reply.

AMD 7900 XTX owner here. I think for AMD the equivalent is AMD Fluid Motion. However online says to use FSR over AMF because it provides better performance and also incorporates AMF anyway.

When I switched from NIS, I indeed felt things are smoother with FSR but in heavily infested areas I sitll drop to 40 fps.

So I tried Smooth Motion for a while today, but it didn't seem to improve performance. In fact I lost overall FPS while running it.

Maybe it's a Linux issue or there are other factors like CPU bottleneck.

I'm usually running at capped 120fps@4k, having 100-120 during low density and 50-80 in high density situations. (occasional 30fps with delirium, abyss and shit going on at the same time)

After activating Smooth Motion, my idle fps in maps were at 80, never reaching 100+. The FPS drops were also higher with as low as 20 fps in high density situations.
What was noticeable aswell was the textures and UI elements like the overlay map getting blurry during those fps drops.

So yeah, it would be a net negative to activate this feature for my setup.
(Ryzen 5800X3D, RTX 5080, Nobara Linux 6.16.6-200, Nvidia driver ver. 575.64.05, GE-Proton10-15)

The real fix is GGG doing a optimization pass for 0.4

Are those issues only Nvidia RTX?

I use an AMD Card RX 7900XT and I wonder if it will cause any issues, which I hope it won't.

I haven't been following every single thing about the game, but what are the devs saying to those issues?

Sadly enough, my RTX 3060 Ti doesn't support this feature, so I can't really try it out.

I've already tried like 20-25 potential "fixes" and tweaks to mitigate this with no result. It's getting quite frustrating.

Ideally GGG just tones down the massive screen obliterating spam that comprises almost every encounter.. I dunno how, but they have quadrupled the stream of mobs coming from everywhere (including thin air) and firing hundreds of projectiles a minute over 10 different ground effects, amongst 15 on death explosions that people claim was so bad in PoE1 while reducing our mobility and ability to clear the screen (except for meta builders). This has created a toxic, headache inducing, exhausting experience that grinds on our machines and our eyes.

RTX5090 here as well. Smooth Motion worked for me massively. Smooth, solid frames during Abyss mob surges. Seems Low Latency is also turned on to Ultra by default. Thanks so much for this tip, OP.

Still running on Vulkan and NIS at 4k resolution.