How to Fix Path of Exile 2 Stuttering PC
May. 29, 2025 / Updated by Violet to Gaming Solutions
Is Path of Exile 2 stuttering ruining your experience? You're not alone. POE 2 is one of the most anticipated ARPGs, but its early build has left many PC players battling frustrating performance issues—especially stuttering.
What Is Stuttering in Games?
Stuttering is when your game seems to pause or hiccup even though the frame rate might appear high. Unlike low FPS, which is consistent sluggishness, stuttering happens in random bursts—often during high action, loading, or movement transitions.
Think of it like driving a sports car that suddenly slams the brakes every few seconds. It kills the flow, especially in fast-paced games like POE 2.
Why Does Path of Exile 2 Stutter on PC?
1. Poor Optimization
The game is still in beta/early stages, so don’t expect polished performance. Developers are still ironing out bugs, memory leaks, and code inefficiencies.
2. Outdated Drivers
Old GPU drivers are the number one culprit for stuttering in new games.
3. Hardware Bottlenecks
If your CPU, GPU, or RAM can’t keep up with the game’s demand, you’ll feel the lag.
4. Background Tasks
Too many browser tabs or apps like Discord and Chrome can hog memory or CPU resources.
Minimum and Recommended Specs for POE 2
Before tweaking settings, let’s see if your hardware is up to the task.
Minimum Requirements
CPU: Intel Core i5 or equivalent
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 650 Ti / AMD HD 7850
RAM: 8GB
Storage: SSD preferred
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Recommended Requirements
CPU: Intel Core i7 or Ryzen 5
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1070 or better
RAM: 16GB
Storage: NVMe SSD
OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit
Tip: Always aim to exceed the minimum specs to avoid stutters and freezing.
Fix 1. Check Your System Performance
Before you blame the game, it’s important to check if your PC can handle Path of Exile 2. Stuttering often happens when your CPU, GPU, or RAM is overloaded. Monitoring your system's performance can help you figure out if you need to upgrade hardware or just close some background apps.
CPU and GPU Usage
Use Task Manager or MSI Afterburner to monitor your hardware load. If CPU or GPU is constantly at 100%, that’s likely the bottleneck.
Memory and Storage Health
If RAM usage is maxed out or your HDD is nearly full, that could cause stuttering. Consider upgrading to at least 16GB RAM and use SSD storage.
Fix 2. Update Graphics Drivers
Outdated GPU drivers are one of the most common reasons for stuttering in modern games. When your graphics card doesn’t have the latest instructions to run a new game like POE 2, it can result in freezing, graphical glitches, or sudden FPS drops.
Manually Update Graphics Driver
Press Win + X and select Device Manager.
Expand Display Adapters.
Find the graphics driver and right click. Choose Update driver.
Select Search automatically for drivers.
Manually updating drivers can be time-consuming and error-prone. That’s why many gamers prefer using a dedicated tool like Driver Talent. It scans your system for outdated, missing, or corrupt drivers and updates them with a single click—helping you avoid stuttering caused by driver conflicts.
Download and install Driver Talent.
Launch it and click Scan.
Let it detect outdated GPU drivers.
Click Install All and restart your PC.
Fix 3. Optimize In-Game Settings
High graphics settings can look stunning but may cause your system to choke—especially if you're not running a high-end rig. Tuning down settings inside the game is a quick and effective way to improve stability and eliminate stuttering. Focus on reducing demanding effects like textures and shadows.
Lower Texture Quality
Textures eat up VRAM fast. Drop to Medium or Low if you notice stutters during loading or fights.
Disable Shadows and Post-Processing
Turn off ambient occlusion, dynamic shadows, and motion blur—they look good but kill performance.
Cap Your FPS
Set a frame limit (e.g. 60 FPS) to stabilize frame delivery and reduce sudden spikes.
Fix 4. Disable Background Processes
Even if your hardware meets the requirements, other running apps can slow things down. Background programs eat up CPU, memory, and disk usage—leaving less power for POE 2. Disabling them can make your game run smoother without changing any game settings.
Use Task Manager
Close high-resource programs like Chrome, Discord, Steam overlay, etc.
Disable Startup Programs
Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc
Go to Startup tab
Disable non-essential programs
This helps free up memory and processing power before you launch the game.
Fix 5. Adjust Windows Settings
Windows has built-in features like Game Mode and power plans that can affect your gaming performance. With a few simple tweaks, you can help your system prioritize gaming tasks and reduce interruptions—resulting in fewer stutters and frame skips.
Enable Game Mode
Settings > Gaming > Game Mode > Toggle ON
Disable Xbox Game Bar
Settings > Gaming > Xbox Game Bar > Toggle OFF
Set High Performance Power Plan
Control Panel > Power Options > Choose "High Performance"
Fix 6. Tweak GPU Control Panel Settings
Your GPU's control panel has additional settings that can fine-tune how your graphics card behaves. Adjusting these settings can help balance visual quality and performance, giving you a smoother gaming experience without relying solely on in-game options.
NVIDIA Control Panel
Set Power Management Mode to Prefer Maximum Performance
Turn on Low Latency Mode
Set Threaded Optimization to ON
AMD Radeon Settings
Enable Radeon Boost
Set Texture Filtering Quality to Performance
Disable Wait for Vertical Refresh
Fix 7. Check for Game Patches and Hotfixes
Grinding Gear Games regularly releases patches to address bugs, balance issues, and performance problems. If you’re not on the latest version, you might be dealing with known stuttering bugs that have already been fixed.
Fix 8. Consider Overclocking
For experienced users, overclocking can help unlock extra performance from your CPU or GPU. While risky if done incorrectly, it can eliminate bottlenecks that cause stuttering—especially in demanding games like POE 2. Always monitor temperatures and stability when overclocking.
Conclusion
Path of Exile 2 is an intense game, both in gameplay and system demand. But with the right tweaks—driver updates, in-game settings, and background optimizations—you can fix stuttering issues and finally enjoy a buttery-smooth ARPG experience.
Among all the methods, using Driver Talent is the easiest and most effective way, just start with Driver Talent.
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