Random Mini & Full Freezes (No Crash / No Logs) — Early Findings & Workaround

I wanted to share some early findings around random freezes in PoE2 on NVIDIA, especially during boss fights, temples, and high-effect content. This is not a full, in-depth test, but it has been consistently working for me so far.

Symptoms
Game randomly freezes or goes “Not Responding”
No crash dialog
No useful Event Viewer logs

Reliability Monitor shows:
PathOfExileSteam.exe stopped interacting with Windows

Happens mostly:
during bosses
during heavy particle effects
sometimes mid-map, sometimes in temples / trials

System:
NVIDIA GPU
Occurs across multiple driver versions
Initially using DX12

Likely Cause
Based on behavior and testing, this appears related to async shader compilation causing a GPU deadlock under load. When new shaders compile mid-combat (boss abilities, heavy effects), the render thread can stall indefinitely, resulting in a freeze with no clean crash log.

This also explains:

Why freezes feel random
Why they often occur during bosses
Why no crash dump is generated
"Confirmed" Stable Workaround (So Far)

Switching to DX11 and disabling async shader compilation has fully eliminated freezes for me so far.

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Steam Launch Options (DX11 – most stable in my testing):
--renderer DirectX11 --noasync --waitforpreload

Results:

Longer load screens (expected)
No freezes
No “Not Responding”
Bosses, Vaal Temple, and high-effect content completed without issues

DX12 Status (Limited Testing, So Far Positive)
DX12 has also been working so far when async is disabled, though testing is still limited.

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Steam Launch Options (DX12 – early testing):
--renderer DirectX12 --noasync

With:

FPS capped (60–90)
NVIDIA Low Latency Mode OFF
Overlays disabled

I’ve run a few maps and multiple bosses without issues using this setup, but I wouldn’t consider it fully validated yet. DX11 remains the safer option for longer or heavier sessions.

Important Notes

This is not a full stress test
Results may vary by system
Reinstalling the game did not help in my case
Driver changes alone did not resolve the issue
This does not appear to be a hardware stability problem

Crashes may not appear in Event Viewer — check Reliability Monitor (perfmon /rel)

Summary / Recommendation
If you’re experiencing silent freezes or “Not Responding” hangs:
Try DX11 + --noasync first
DX12 may work with async disabled, but results are still early
Keep FPS capped and overlays disabled

Posting this in case it helps others — happy to update if further testing changes the outcome.