Blade 2014 and Diablo 3 Performance

Hey guys wanted to start a separate thread on this to see if anyone had any suggestions. My Blade 2014 seems to have shockingly bad performance with Diablo 3 RoS. It's currently connected to my 1080p external monitor. Even playing solo, my FPS frequently drops into the high teens/low 20's especially when there's a lot of action on screen. I've played around with a lot of settings including V-Sync enabled and Low FX mode. They certainly help performance but i'm still getting big drops in FPS. When I play four player, it gets extremely choppy. My five year old Core 2 Quad 9550 desktop performs a lot better than this... and that has a Radeon HD4890.

At this point, I'm thinking it might be CPU related since I'm able to crank up the resolution and i'm still getting around the same average FPS. The CPU settings are at default (i.e. I haven't undervolted) so I'm kind of left scratching my head. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to improve performance? Understanding that Diablo is a fairly inefficient engine, I still expected a much better experience from my Blade.

 

This may be a dumb question, but are you running Diablo 3 with the dedicated graphics card?

 

Yes. I even forced the Nvidia Control Panel to default to the 870m when Diablo 3 is launched but still no go. During busy scenes, FPS drops to high teens/low 20's. Anyone else have any experience with D3 on this machine?

 

It seems like its a software issue. I have heard people with dual SLi cards who are still experiencing FPS lag

 

I played RoS on a MacBook Pro (with Bootcamp obviously) which had a GT 650m. This is not a demanding game, so this is a surprising result you are getting.

 

Does this happen when playing using the laptop's display?

 

Something is definitely wrong. I can run D3:ROS at very high settings on 1900x1200 res (Dell U2412M) at a rock solid 60 fps. Have you tried using GeForce Experience's automatic settings tuner? I usually install a game, open it once to get settings files created, close it, run the GFE optimization tool, then reopen the game and set it to my monitor's native res.

Here's a video that was created before Youtube enabled 60 fps, but you can see things are quite smooth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNvUxCUJx9A

When you play do your fans spin up? Run a temp monitoring program and check whether your discrete GPU is heating up as expected or not when the game is active. If it is not, maybe try checking if any power saving settings are enabled.

 

So just another update on this. I've done some more testing. In solo play, I get a solid 50-60fps in all situations. The problem occurs during multiplayer, especially with 3-4 players and a bunch of monsters and attacks on screen. In these situations, my fps can dip down to the upper 20's/low 30's. I know it's not stressing the GPU so I assume it's just extremely CPU intensive. At default voltages my CPU temp spikes to 92-95C. I improved performance a bit by turning off all of the health numbers which I previously had enabled so I only show monster bars and damage numbers. I'm assuming this alleviated some strain on CPU computation. To see if it's temp related throttling, I undervolted my CPU to a stable -80mV and now the temps peak at around 87-88C in mutiplayer. These changes now result in D3 hitting the 20's FPS less than before but it still hits those levels during intense 3-4 player sessions. To address HFM's question, I have not yet tried running it on the laptop's monitor but I'm going to try that shortly. In case anyone has any other thoughts, my setup is as follows:
System: Blade 2014
Monitor: Dell U2312HM connected to Blade via HDMI to DVI adapter
Resolution: Native 1080p and D3 at 1080p
Settings: Optimized GeForce Experience settings

 

I have the same problem with u. Running diablo with rzer 2014 and have low fps and i use geforce experience optimal setting. Can u please help us

 

Okay so this is what I've found so far (using Diablo 3's built in FPS meter):
1) This is not a resolution or processing power issue (duh). I turned down the res to 1600x900 and turned on LOW FX and it doesn't meaningfully affect performance.

2) This is an issue strictly with multiplayer. Oddly, it seems even more specifically restricted to four player games. I haven't done extensive testing but subjectively I'm only seeing FPS drops with four players on the screen (not three or two). In single player, my FPS is rock solid regardless of resolution, settings or how many objects/enemies are on the screen.

3) It IS a software issue on Blizzard's side that they're investigating. How long it'll take to fix.. no idea.
Massive FPS drop in 4 play rifts/mobs - Forums - Diablo III

4) While I haven't fixed the FPS stuttering issue yet, I'm exploring a couple of options based on this thread:
FPS drops? Lag spikes? Stuttering? SOLUTION here! WORKS! - Technical Support - Diablo III General Discussion - Diablo III General Forums - Forums - Diablo Fans

Here are a few options to try (none have worked for me so far):
1) force Diablo 3 to use the dedicated GPU at launch via Nvidia Control Panel
2) force Diablo 3 to use the dedicated GPU at launch using Nvidia Inspector
3) Reduce the audio channel settings from the in-game menu from 32 to 16; this made the audio cut in and out.

My final option is to see if there are updated drivers for the audio chip. If that doesn't fix the issue, I'm officially giving up and flipping the bird to Blizzard.

 

Just another update before I hit the sack. I tried upgrading the Realtek audio driver to the latest version (released May 2014) and it didn't really help. Still getting framerate drops with 4 players on-screen. I've checked CPU usage in these situations and it never goes above 25-30%. I have my CPU undervolted and the temps never go higher than the high 80's C. The fans do spin up but the GPU only hits around 85-86 C. As far as I can tell, everything is running safe and "cool". This has to be a software bug because it's certainly not a power issue. Last thing i'm going to try is just disabling ALL damage counters and anything that even hits at calculations. It's a stupid thing to do but it sucks when the game just starts crawling at around 20fps.

 

There's an interesting theory on a related thread about the FPS drops: is the FPS issue ever going to get fixed? - Forums - Diablo III

The theory is that, since Monster AI, Skills, and damage are all calculated on the server side and encrypted/decrypted between machines, having less than ideal latency also impacts FPS. Four players puts a high strain on data throughput between Blizzard servers and the local machine especially if one of the participants has poor latency. The frame-buffer essentially is waiting for data to render the frames. The original poster obviously is much more verbose than I am but it is an interesting theory. Also, if it is true, there is no fix on our end. It has to come through Blizz.

 

Dang, its pissin me off plsyin d3 with 30 fps pls anyone help us

 

Did you read the link? There's nothing to help... If the post is accurate, the FPS drop is due to bandwidth related issues from Blizzard's servers. Blizzard has to fix the code. Short of living really close to their servers and playing with all local players, you can't really do anything.

 

That or stick with solo play. My FPS is buttery smooth with 1-2 players.

 

Im playing solo and the latency is still 30fps

 

That's weird. What resolution are you playing at? If 3200x1800 then yeah it won't be the best especially with all the particles flying around on screen. Decrease res to 1080p or turn down some of the graphical settings. Low FX would probably help. Also, it's a known issue that the new sewers level gives crap DPS.