Performance Problems
Check Grim Dawn Requirements
Minimum:
OS: Windows XP / Windows Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8
Processor: x86 compatible 2.0GHz or faster processor
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series or ATI Radeon X800 series or better
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Hard Drive: 5 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card
Recommended:
OS: Windows 7
Processor: x86 compatible 3.0GHz or faster processor
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: 1.5GB NVIDIA GeForce 500 series or ATI Radeon 6000 series or better
DirectX: Version 11
Hard Drive: 5 GB available space
If your monitor has resolution significantly greater than 1920×1080, you may need a more powerful graphics card or you may need to reduce in-game video options or reduce the resolution the game plays at.
Developers have indicated that if you can run Titan Quest or Titan Quest Immortal Throne, you should be able to run Grim Dawn with medium settings. Some intense fights, however, may experience greater slowdowns than Titan Quest. The general statement was aimed at the final release.
Install Recent Graphics and Sound Drivers
As mentioned in Game Not Starting / Incorrect Operation.
Alpha And Beta
During the alpha and beta period, users may experience bugs or optimization issues that significantly impact performance.
Having hardware that exceeds the stated requirements can keep the framerate at a comfortable level.
Bugs or nonoptimal algorithms may cause the framerate to degrade over time. This is an issue that can be reported but the information provided by you may not be sufficient to find and correct the issue quickly.
By completely quitting and restarting the game at convenient intervals, one can often avoid the worst of such issues in the meantime. The procedure may also reduce the occurrence of other bugs or crashes. During the alpha and beta periods bugs and problems should be reported.
Laptops
If you are using a laptop that has more than one video adapter device/GPU, use options available to indicate that the Grim Dawn should run on the more powerful GPU.
If your laptop contains an Nvidia GPU, create a profile for Grim Dawn via the procedure in the “Create a Game / 3d Application Profile to Set Performance Options” below and be sure to set the option “Select the preferred graphics processor for this program” to “High Performance NVIDIA processor”
When running the game on a laptop, try running the laptop on AC power to see if that improves performance.
Laptops may also have control panels or taskbar notification area controls to change power management modes for the system in general (including CPU, disk…)
Also look at creating a game profile in the video adapter (Nvidia or ATI/AMD “Catalyst”) control panel to set any further performance options.
Desktop context menu options such as Run With Graphics Processor may not have an effect if the game is started indirectly through a program such as Steam and/or via a game (configuration) launcher program.
Also see: Create a NVidia Game Profile for Grim Dawn
Note: As of Grim Dawn, Build 20 (B20), the in-game options menu has been enhanced with the ability to select output graphics render devices. Depending on your system, this may provide the essential control needed. Creating a game profile, may be still necessary for some systems and/or may provide some additional benefits or controls.
Power Options Windows Control Panel
Microsoft Windows has a Power Options control panel. You can choose a different power plan such as High Performance when running Grim Dawn. You can also change a plan’s settings. The control panel can be used even on desktops where power management might not be as great an issue.
Create a Game / 3d Application Profile to Set Performance Options
It is possible that the GPU is staying in low power mode or switching power modes while playing.
Go to the control panel for your (Nvidia, ATI/AMD) video adapter. Add a game or 3d application profile for Grim Dawn.
For Nvidia, this performed in the Program Settings tab of Manage 3D Settings. Click to add a new profile.
Grim Dawn is normally installed under “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Grim Dawn”.
If you can’t remember where you installed Grim Dawn, start up steam, and right click Grim Dawn in the Library and open up properties. In the Local Files Tab, choose Browse Local Files. An explorer window will open that will identify the location.
Then, for Nvidia, select the Power Management Mode feature and select Prefer Maximum Performance.
Also see Create a NVidia Game Profile for Grim Dawn
Lower In-Game Video Options
You may be able to achieve good performance by lowering various combinations of options or disabling certain features. If you are having trouble deciding where to start, use the following as a suggestion.
Use the native resolution of your monitor in full screen mode unless you have a very high resolution monitor and know via other games a resolution to use.
If you have a very high resolution monitor and know you need to reduce your resolution but don’t know where to start, using 1920×1080 (or 1920×1200 if your monitor has a 16:10 aspect ratio) would be reasonable, if your monitor or TV supports that resolution. Otherwise, consider using a supported resolution approximately 2/3 of the horizontal and 2/3 of the vertical resolution. If outputting to a (non-CRT) TV, one should probably use progressive rather than interlaced output mode.
Turn off Antialiasing. Choose a low level of anisotropic filtering (2x-4x).
Turn off triple buffering and vsync.
If that doesn’t yield good performance and if not as important as other options, turn off depth of field and/or post processing effects.
If that doesn’t yield good performance change other settings to medium.
If that is not ok, then turn off post processing and depth of field.
If that is still not ok, consider changing the options to low. At this point, you may want to lower or turn off anisotropic filtering.
Finally consider lowering the resolution the game plays at. This might make the game look significantly worse depending on your monitor and the resolution you choose.
When you have achieved acceptable performance, one can change some of the options to higher levels. If one hasn’t lowered the resolution on a monitor at resolution ~ 1920×1200 or lower, start by increasing the texture quality.
Turning off general options, Target Outline and Camera Shake could help deal with low FPS situations.
Free System Resources and Stop Multitasking
Close other programs, browsers, video players, chats…
Clear as many warning or pending actions by windows update, antivirus or the action center as possible.
Close any unnecessary task bar / notification area items that you can.
Try using the Indexing Options control panel to exclude the “My Games” directory and subdirectories for your userid (if not for all users).
Outside Questions - Possible Clues
Do you have multiple monitors? Have you plugged in or removed a monitor recently?
Are you running at your monitor’s preferred resolution?
Have you asked windows to enlarge items on screen or perform color correction?
Have you used the graphics adapter control panel to change scaling, desktop appearance, or default 3d graphics options? Try resetting them.
Disk Maintenance
You can perform some of the following actions to help maintain disk performance.
Use chkdsk to check for filesystem errors (usually caused by removing power before shutting down) and attempt to correct them. Click you system drive (normally C:), right click to bring up the context menu and select properties. Then select the tools tab and then press the check now button under error checking. See that automatically correct errors is checked and scan for bad sectors is not and hit start. A dialog box will say it cannot do it now; click to schedule a disk check at next boot. Reboot and let the check run. After that, check the other disks on your system especially if you use them to store games or steam. Normally, you will not have to reboot.
Use cleanmgr to clean off temporary files, logs and other data that you probably don’t need. Go to the control panel and open up Performance Information and Tools. Select Open Disk Cleanup. Choose your disks one at a time starting with your system disk (usually C:). Choose the items you want to clean and start the process. You can click clean up system files; this gives you more options to clean. Each type of item to clean has a description. Most items can be cleaned with minimal issues. There are a couple of items in windows 8.1 that relate to windows update and drivers that are best left unchecked – the tool tips are useful.
Then defragment your disks. Clearing out temporary files and internet browser caches help speed up the process. Right click you a drive in the windows file explorer to bring up the context menu and select properties. Then select the tools tab and then press the Defragment Now button under Defragmentation. Defrag the system drive and any disks you have steam or games on. Don’t defragment solid state drives or flash disks. If you open up an administrator command prompt you can invoke defrag with the /h /u /v options against the drive(s) you want.
Why not do this before you install a large game?
It is not recommended to defragment a solid state disk.
General Windows Operation
TweakGuides has some System Guides that can help users understand how to operate the windows operating system.
http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html
There are some guides http://www.tweakguides.com/System.html that include some material on how to use Nvidia and ATI/AMD driver control panels – these have not been updated recently but have information and explanation that new users will find helpful.
The Nvidia GeForce Tweak Guide has been updated recently.