GPU Glitch No More: Path of Exile 2 Developers Conquer Nvidia Driver Issues

After a long journey of testing, the developers of Path of Exile 2 have finally tackled a pesky driver bug that was causing major headaches for players. Imagine this: you’re deep into a quest, and suddenly, your game freezes every 20 minutes. You sit there anxiously counting down the seconds, praying your character doesn’t meet an untimely end when the screen finally decides to respond.

This frustrating situation had been affecting players since the early access launch of the game, with numerous posts on forums highlighting similar issues. The only temporary fix involved lowering graphics settings, which made the game look far from its best. Thankfully, Grinding Gear Games (GGG) has now put an end to the freezing madness after a year and a half of relentless troubleshooting.

So, what was the cause of all this chaos? Game director Jonathan Rogers revealed in a recent video that the team pinpointed a specific Nvidia driver code responsible for the disruptions. However, Nvidia needed detailed steps to replicate the issue before they could do anything about it – and “just grinding through top-tier maps” wasn’t exactly the answer they were looking for.

The developers kicked off their investigation by having someone play the game for hours on end in hopes of triggering the crashes. Unfortunately, this method was more like a wild guess than a reliable strategy. As Rogers put it, “you really are just taking shots in the dark at that point.”

As progress stalled, the GGG team decided to create a workaround to prevent the game from crashing completely. The freezing issues were linked to GPU crashes, causing the game to reload everything without shutting down. While they implemented some temporary fixes, the focus remained on figuring out the root cause. “So we went down an incredibly deep rabbit hole of trying to reproduce it,” Rogers stated.

To help diagnose the problem, GGG introduced tools to track data and even created a specialized replay system to review long gameplay sessions. Eventually, their persistence paid off, allowing them to recreate the issue on a consistent basis every five to seven minutes.

With this replay data in hand, the developers sent an entire rig – complete with a PC, monitor, keyboard, and mouse – directly to Nvidia. After a bit of back and forth, Nvidia responded with a solution: by increasing the shader heap size, the crashes could be eliminated. Shortly thereafter, the Nvidia Game Ready Driver 610.88 was released, fixing those annoying long pauses experienced during gameplay.

Rogers celebrated the resolution, noting that now the engine programmers can refocus on other performance issues. After nearly two years of tackling a problem that wasn’t inherently theirs, it’s a relief for both the developers and the players. Now, gamers can dive into the action without the fear of freezes interrupting their adventures as Path of Exile 2 heads toward its full launch later this year. Fingers crossed for a smooth ride with no more unexpected bugs!